Archive for the ‘Homeland Insecurity’ Category

Ban Down Under: What Happens When a Nation Surrenders Guns – Video

Monday, January 21st, 2013

Liberty Crushed Down Under

If you’re still on the fence about gun control, or you know somebody who is, it may be time to acquaint yourselves with the recent  experiences of the Australian people, who in 1996 enacted a ban on all semi-automatic and pump-action weapons in private possession. While the murder rate from guns has diminished in very small ways, their overall crime problem has since gone through the roof. It’s really no surprise that the results have been exactly opposite of what was promised, and contrary to all of the alleged “good intentions.”  As Aussies have discovered, now that the gun ban has made things worse in the aggregate, reclaiming their gun rights will be nigh on impossible.  Once liberties are taken away, they’re seldom returned, and if it’s your right to keep and bear arms you’ve surrendered, you won’t even be able to fight for them. The Australian experience should serve as a warning to every American.

Take a look at this video and acquaint yourself with what Obama and his ilk are really after:

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGaDAThOHhA]

Knowing that the overall crime statistics have worsened, you might be surprised to find that even the Chicago Tribune acknowledges that in Australia, since the ban, deaths by firearms haven’t diminished at a rate faster than they were already falling prior to the ban.  As they suggest, while mass shootings have dropped to zero, this may owe more to random chance than to any effects of the gun ban.  Considering the UK as another example, overall violent murders have increased despite the all-out ban on guns, and it shouldn’t be a surprise that once you remove the great equalizer, those who are the traditional targets of villainous scum would have a lesser chance of surviving an attack in a world in which they are legally disarmed, and by definition of their physical stature and condition, less able to defend against brutal attackers.

David Plouffe has been running his mouth, and he has stated that he thinks the President may have the votes in Congress for some sort of gun control action. If this is the case, it comes down to a bunch of sell-out Republican moderates in the House, never mind the Senate, where McConnell ought to be able to filibuster the thing to death provided Reid and the Democrats don’t employ the nuclear option.  Once again, as the tide is shifting against the President and his leftist agenda, Republicans in Congress are contemplating surrender.  If the Republicans go along with gun control, they will lose the House in the Senate and they will face a complete revolt by 2016.

Flash: TSA Detains Rand Paul at Airport in Nashville

Monday, January 23rd, 2012

What the ???

I believe this is one more reason we need to seriously consider sun-setting the TSA in its current form, if not altogether.  Sure, we absolutely need security on the airlines and in the airports, but I think TSA has begun to get out of hand.  Monday morning, TSA detained US Senator Rand Paul(R-KY,)  after he refused a pat-down when the full body scanner revealed an “anomaly.”  Upon hearing this, one friend remarked, “Yes, they were probably shocked to see a politician with a pair.”  Jokes aside, the situation is typical of what travelers face daily as they contend with full-body scanners and pat-downs, and long lines. There’s nothing wrong with making our airlines secure, but are we to believe detaining somebody’s grandmother or a US Senator is actually helping the situation?

When President George W. Bush signed into law the bill that created the TSA in the aftermath of 9/11, it was an understandable but still wrong-headed response to the situation.  Too many security audits have shown that the TSA really provides no substantial improvement over the security that had been in place prior to 9/11, but what the TSA has accomplished is to make travel more difficult and frustrating.  I think it’s time to revisit all of this, and consider the reasons why we believe we need this new federal bureaucracy.  This case merely points out how self-defeating this approach has been.

Homeland Security to Monitor Journalists, Bloggers, Social Media

Tuesday, January 10th, 2012

Guess Who Is Watching

As if we didn’t know that this was already under way, it’s being reported that the Department of Homeland Security has moved to monitor media, particularly those who use “traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed.”  Congratulations! This blog is being monitored. The monitoring will be under the auspices of the Nation Operations Center’s Media Monitoring Initiative, defined last November at DHS. For those who aren’t worried, you should consider that it will collect personal identifiable information, permitting DHS to directly or indirectly learn about individuals.  This is another example of government gone wild, and while I can understand the security imperatives with which that agency must contend, I also know that this will wind up being used as a tool of political oppression.

Of course, we learned last month that DHS would be monitoring Twitter and Facebook for words like “collapse,” “drill,” “recovery,” “trojan,” and “illegal immigrant,”  among others, so to now learn that “Big Sis” will be watching those in the blogosphere and social media is really not a surprise.  The more ridiculous aspect of all of this is how it will be used, and one can only imagine what will happen to a hypothetical blogger who might write something like this:

“DHS is conducting a drill to practice for the collapse of the Euro, and while they’re using the pretense that we’re in an economic recovery, they’re using an outbreak of crime by illegal immigrants to bolster security measures by DHS, which is serving as the Trojan horse for stricter measures against the people.”

A line like that would probably set off every warning bell in Washington DC, and the fact that it appeared on a blog or in social media that is used to keep readers up to date with real-time information would make it especially noteworthy to security monitors at DHS.  Apparently, this will be the new wave of the future, in which government monitors everything for our safety and security.  What this means for Americans is that we’re lurching ever more rapidly toward some form of police state in which nobody is free from government snooping under any circumstances.