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A case to watch as it wends it way through the appellate process. A very big win for the ACLU, with major implications for federal intelligence gathering in general. 

Good commentary from Joe the Plumber.  Note that none of the proposed  unconstitutional gun control laws deals with rampant psychic drug problem behind nearly ALL mass murder situations.   We need background checks not on honest and patriotic gun owners but instead on psychic drug crazed shrinks, politicians, idiot educators and the greedy madness their pharmaceutical corporate benefactors foster. Without the Second Amendment, the rest of the Bill of Rights is just a wish list. "Reading an article this morning (Cover-Up: Are Psychotropic Drugs To Blame For Adam Lanza?) got me thinking about this, and how this is not really something new. It is surprising to me, with all the media attention on gun control and mass murderers (mass shooters as they incorrectly call them), you would think the lamestream media would clue into a correlation that so many others have. That is the link between these mass murder incidents and prescription psych meds. Almost every single one of the mass murderers in recent years has been on psyhschotropic medicine of one form or another, going all the way back to Charles Whitman in 1966 (he was on Dexedrine, or dextroamphetamine). I'm sure some gun control advocate will happily point out the few exceptions to this rule, but the evidence is pretty overwhelming. Shockingly, prescription medicications with known side effects such as mood swings, psychotic breaks and violent outbursts are linked to a ridiculously high percentage of these incidents. (Can you see my shocked face? :-O ) Just a week before famed rifle maker John Noveske died in a rather mysterious car crash on January 4, 2013, he posted his last Facebook post, which was a look at this correlation. He went through and listed a large number of these incidents, noting the murderer and their medications. Below is what he posted:"

"Doug Casey on American Socialism"  .  Awesome interview, especially the discussion on Liberalism and how the socialist Norman Thomas decided to co-opt the term as an effective replacement for the disreputable socialism.  Links to the Thomas 1932 socialist platform that Casey points out has pretty much been put into place.   Good discussion.  Focus on an article published by socialist apologist and idiot, Allan Colmes.

I agree that Colmes is far from the sharpest knife in the drawer. In my opinion, he was largely a Fox News invention to give Shawn Hannity a far weaker opponent to argue against that Hannity's idiocy could still overcome. There are in reality liberals that Hannity could never have gone toe-to-toe with. (That's not an endorsement of liberalism; it's commentary on the quality of Hannity's arguments.) The show was mostly a variant of the straw man logical fallacy; the fact that Colmes lacked the ability to think critically or communicate effectively made Hannity "win" the pseudo-debate in the eyes of those unable to think critically themselves. I have some criticism of Casey's remarks that apply more generally to my experience of strict Libertarians and perhaps even farther to strict adherents to any "ism." My criticism boils down to a couple of examples of hard issues usually avoided by strict Libertarians. -- The Disabled: When discussing Social Security disability benefits, Casey changes the subject from the genuinely disabled to a short rant about those whose disability claims are bogus and the "ambulance chasing" lawyers who pursue their claims. But if pressed to the wall and forced to answer, I strongly suspect that Casey would admit that there are people, likely the majority of Social Security disability benefits, whose claims are genuine. The net effect of his relevant argument: an impression that he has a Darwinian view that he would leave the disabled dying in the streets without sustenance or medical care. That kind of society is unacceptable to me. Perhaps it is to Casey too, but if so I think it was incumbent on him to offer a solution for the genuinely disabled. (In fairness, I'll note that at one point Casey hinted but did not forthrightly say that he would favor financial assistance for single mothers in Harlem.) -- Medical Care: I agree that our health care system is badly broken. But again Casey is long on criticism but short on realistic idea

obama care starting to take its toll

"Newsmax asked vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan to provide his prescription for fixing the American economy and a defense of his proposed agenda, in light of the Obama's administration's refusal to address out-of-control entitlements. Here is his exclusive Newsmax Op-Ed. When President Barack Obama took office in 2009, he assumed a degree of command over the federal government that few U.S. presidents have enjoyed. His party had just enlarged its already-large majority in the House of Representatives, and gained a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. The president enjoyed tremendous popularity following his historic victory. During his campaign, then-Sen. Obama argued that what had stopped us from meeting our nation's greatest challenges had been "the failure of leadership, the smallness of our politics - the ease with which we're distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our preference for scoring cheap political points instead of rolling up our sleeves and building a working consensus to tackle big problems." To solve this problem, he pledged to help us "rediscover our bonds to each other and get out of this constant, petty bickering that's come to characterize our politics." Urgent: See Newsmax's Special Report on Paul Ryan - Includes Exclusive Interview The last three and a half years of divisive politics and broken promises have been disappointing. "

A few random thoughts on the budgetary gridlock in Congress: -- The elephant in the room that both parties are ignoring is bankster control of the money supply. Any budgetary reform is doomed unless the power of banksters to print as many dollars as they want is eliminated. In terms of purchasing power, the incredible dilution of the dollar's value that commenced when we abandoned the gold standard has put massive upward pressure on prices and budgets, both governmental and private. The Constitution explicitly forbids anything other than gold or silver to be used for payment of debts. -- Both parties and Obama have been guilty of drawing lines in the sand as preconditions to negotiation. E.g., no entitlement cuts, increased taxes on the wealthy, no defense cuts, no new taxes, etc. These are terms of surrender, not terms of negotiation, akin to an advertising campaign based on the fine print of the sales agreement rather than on why the customer should buy the product. As any successful negotiator knows, the keys to a successful negotiation are: [i] agreeing at the outset that there s no deal until all terms have been agreed to; and [ii] focusing on what you are willing to offer the other side as incentives to agree to a deal, not on areas of disagreement. A successful negotiation results in a deal where both sides feel that the deal puts them ahead of where they began. -- Arguing over pre-conditions is not negotiation; it is no more than a lame excuse for not negotiating. But that is what the White House and both parties have been doing. -- By functioning as an echo chamber for preconditions to negotiation, constituents, wittingly or not, aid in prevention of serious negotiation. Serious negotiation has no substantive preconditions; everything is on the table. And the focus is on what each side is willing to give the other if the entire deal is agreed to, not on what each side is unwilling to offer. -- The major players in the White House and Congress alre

Let's not forget that because Congress recently decided to revive Patriot Act sect. 215, the FBI is authorized to gather medical records for foreign intelligence and anti-terrorism purposes and according to ex-NSA chief scientist William Binney, the NSA in fact collects medical records and makes them available to law enforcement agencies without a warrant or court order.  http://motherboard.vice.com/read/i-toured-stasi-hq-with-nsa-whistleblowers  One judge has found that statute unconstitutional and may rule in the next few days. A court of appeals has found that the statute did not authorize bulk collection of telephone metadata records. An Oregon federal judge ruled that the DEA cannot obtain prescription records (in part because they are medical records) without an individualized search warrant, specifically ruling against the bulk collection argument. Maybe someday someone in federal government will get a clue that medical records are not one of the "haystacks" the NSA is permitted to create.  Involuntary medical treatment is another giant legal hairball. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_treatment   

When radical leaders over the last 2,500 years have sought to enforce equality of results, their prescriptions were usually predictable: redistribution of property; cancellation of debts; incentives to bring out the vote and increase political participation among the poor; stigmatizing of the wealthy, whether through the extreme measure of ostracism or the more mundane forced liturgies; use of the court system to even the playing field by targeting the more prominent citizens; radical growth in government and government employment; the use of state employees as defenders of the egalitarian faith; bread-and-circus entitlements; inflation of the currency and greater national debt to lessen the power of accumulated capital; and radical sloganeering about reactionary enemies of the new state. The modern versions of much of the above already seem to be guiding the Obama administration - evident each time we hear of another proposal to make it easier to renounce personal debt; federal action to curtail property or water rights; efforts to make voter registration and vote casting easier; radically higher taxes on the top 5 percent; takeover of private business; expansion of the federal government and an increase in government employees; or massive inflationary borrowing. The current class-warfare "them/us" rhetoric was predictable. Usually such ideologies do not take hold in America, given its tradition of liberty, frontier self-reliance, and emphasis on personal freedom rather than mandated fraternity and egalitarianism. At times, however, the stars line up, when a national catastrophe, like war or depression, coincides with the appearance of an unusually gifted, highly polished, and eloquent populist. But the anointed one must be savvy enough to run first as a centrist in order later to govern as a statist.

From USDebt.Kleptocracy.us.  These visual depictions of our national debt are based on Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel numbers and the USdebtclock.org.  Warning; this will wreck your day.  Our government is spending us into a hole future generations will never dig out of.  And they refuse to stop spending. $114,500,000,000,000. - US unfunded liabilities To the right you can see the pillar of cold hard $100 bills that dwarfs the WTC & Empire State Building - both at one point world's tallest buildings. If you look carefully you can see the Statue of Liberty. The 114.5 Trillion dollar super-skyscraper is the amount of money the U.S. Government knows it does not have to fully fund the Medicare, Medicare Prescription Drug Program, Social Security, Military and civil servant pensions. It is the money USA knows it will not have to pay all its bills. If you live in USA this is also your personal credit card bill; you are responsible along with everyone else to pay this back. The citizens of USA created the U.S. Government to serve them, this is what the U.S. Government has done while serving The People. The unfunded liability is calculated on current tax and funding inputs, and future demographic shifts in US Population. Note: On the above 114.5T image the size of the base of the money pile is half a trillion, not 1T as on 15T image. The height is double. This was done to reflect the base of Empire State and WTC more closely.

Gotta love Bernie Sanders.

Interesting to watch the various marijuana legalization measures in different states. The lobby money to oppose it has overwhelmingly come from organizations whose financial oxen would be gored, the pharmaceutical lobby, tobacco lobby, alcohol lobby, private prison lobby, and law enforcement lobby. On the latter, state and local law enforcement get huge federal subsidies for drug law enforcement, plus forfeiture of properties in drug cases are a huge source of revenue for law enforcement.

Love the liposuction analogy.

One of Israel's many war crimes recently committed in the Gaza Strip. 

It's often been observed that Washington, D.C. exists in a bubble isolated from the viewpoints of the rest of the nation. The Washington Post is a major component of that bubble's foundation.  During my years of political activism, I made many trips to the nation's capitol. Always I was struck by the profound difference in news coverage, in the newspapers, on radio, and on television, from the news anywhere else. It's good to see some of that difference being documented, particularly the pro-war propaganda that feeds our elected Representatives and Senators War Party stance.