Thoughts From A Conservative Mom

Posts Tagged ‘Big Brother’

Apparently Chairman Obamao is convinced that our children can’t get off to a good start without an inspirational pep-talk from on high.

Yesterday, White House sources confirmed that President Obama will deliver another back-to-school address aimed at all of the nation’s children. That’s right, the president will make September 14 the second-annual Obama Day at your local school!

You might recall last year’s Obama Day, for which the U.S. Department of Education put out teaching guides that gave parents across the country reasonable cause to fear a day of liberal politics and celebrating President Obama. You might also remember the divisive national uproar that precipitated, which ultimately culminated in a relatively staid — but nonetheless campaign-esque — speech, not to mention a fair amount of after-the-fact sneering at people who either didn’t want public-school kids exposed to left-wing politicking or just wanted their kids, you know, left alone by the president. Finally, you might recall the May Parade magazine graduation “address” the president wrote that offered just the kind of profit-denigrating, “service” extolling rhetoric that people feared eight months earlier:

Of course, each of you has the right to take your diploma and seek the quickest path to the biggest paycheck or the highest title possible. But remember: You can choose to broaden your concerns to include your fellow citizens and country instead. By tying your ambitions to America’s, you’ll hitch your wagon to a cause larger than yourself. You can choose a career in public service or the nonprofit sector, or teach in an underserved school. If you have medical training, you can work in an understaffed clinic. Love science? You can discover new sources of clean energy or launch a business that makes the most efficient and affordable solar panels or wind turbines.

So will this year’s Obama Day be as controversial as the last installment? Probably not.

For one thing, unless the White House is not just wearing blinders, but living in a full-on isolation tank, it won’t authorize the release of any lesson plans to go with the talk. And if it does, it will scrutinize them, put them before focus groups, and torture them until they give up any and all material that could be even minutely controversial.

Second, while there is plenty of anger to go around right now, there’s been no burning summer of discontent like last year’s spree of town-hall conflagrations. It seems the growing ranks of fuming Americans are now more focused on ballot boxes than soap boxes.

Read more at the CATO Institute

My Little Comrades

It’s Not About the Speech to Schoolchildren

Trusting obama with our kids

Elementary Epidemic: 11 Uncovered Videos Show School Children Performing Praises to Obama

Mama Grizzlies: Obama Wants More Time With Your Cubs

Nickelodeon Cartoon: Homage to ‘Dear Leader’ Obama for Preschoolers

Think about it. Out of all the world regimes over the past century, which ones do you think would be most opposed to homeschooling? Nazi Germany, communist Russia, and nations enforcing Islamic Sharia Law first come to mind. And what is the common tie to all of these? Control. Unfortunately, with socialist agendas sweeping the globe, the mindless conformity of youth through indoctrination at government-run schools to the government’s point of view on social, political, and moral issues is a top priority of many nations falsely aspiring for a global community of “tolerance.”

But today, the suppression of parental rights to teach and influence their own children isn’t restricted to overtly fascist regimes. Take a look at Sweden, home of Ikea and Volvos. A couple months ago in June, attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund and the Home School Legal Defense Association filed Johansson v. Sweden with the European Court of Human Rights so that that the Swedish government will return a seven-year-old homeschooled boy to his parents. Dominic Johansson was forcibly seized by Swedish authorities from his parents in June 2009 after they had boarded a plane in their move to India. The reason? He was homeschooled. No warrant was issued before taking him into state custody, and the family was charged with no crime. Young Dominic was abducted because officials deemed home instruction to be an unsuitable method of raising a child, insisting that the government knows better about how to rear children.

Dominic is now in foster care and attends a government school. Heartbreakingly, his parents are only allowed to see their son for one hour every five weeks. To “justify” their action, Swedish authorities cited the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and quite shockingly, the White House and some members of Congress have expressed interest in ratifying this authoritarian treaty so that this type of government control could be exercised on our shores.

Despite the proliferating homeschooling movement in the U.S., with between two and four million children now being taught from home, the education and judicial systems have had a hard time leaving the influence of youth to their parents. Case in point: In the Matter of Kurowski and Kurowski, a legal matter that demonstrates how the courts have leaned toward state influence over parental influence when it comes to the education of children. Following a divorce, the father of 10-year-old homeschooled Amanda Kurowski had second thoughts about his former wife homeschooling their daughter, even though she performed well both socially and academically. The father contended that his daughter’s strong Christian beliefs needed to be sifted and challenged in a public school setting, and the lower court agreed in July 2009, issuing an order for her to enroll in a government-run school and discontinue homeschooling.

Now, of course, sometimes divorced parents do not agree on details of how to raise their child. Courts may rightly be called to resolve such disputes. But a judge must exercise the right standards when called upon to break a deadlock. When a dispute between these parents arose over homeschooling, the court looked past traditional arguments and made the chilling observation that Amanda’s “vigorous defense of her religious beliefs to [her] counselor suggests strongly that she has not had the opportunity to seriously consider any other point of view.” In other words, the court was attempting to say that it knows better than a parent when a child is getting too much religious teaching. Such reasoning goes to show that, even in the U.S., it has become a main priority of public schools to challenge and convert students’ thinking to reflect that of the state, rather than those espoused at home.

Read more at Advancing Religious Liberty

Court orders Christian homeschooled girl to attend public school

California Court Rules Homeschooling Illegal

Swedish court refuses to return homeschool boy to family

US grants home schooling German family political asylum

The Shocking Origins of Public Education

Threat to Parents’ Rights a Bigger Issue than Rights of a Child

There is a little piece making its way around the Internet. It has turned viral mostly because many see so much truth in it.

“If a conservative doesn’t like guns, he doesn’t buy one.  If a liberal doesn’t like guns, he wants guns outlawed.

If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn’t eat meat.  If a liberal is a vegetarian, he wants meat products banned.

If a conservative is homosexual, he quietly leads his life.  If a liberal is homosexual, he demands legislated respect.

If a conservative is down-and-out, he tries to better his situation.  A liberal wants to know who is going to fix it for him.

If a conservative doesn’t like a talk show host, he switches channels.  Liberals want those they don’t like to be silenced.

If a conservative is a nonbeliever, he doesn’t go to church.  If a liberal is a nonbeliever he wants any mention of religion silenced, unless, of course, the religion is from another culture.

If a conservative needs health care he shops for it, or looks for a job that will provide it.  A liberal demands that the rest of us provide for it.

A conservative will read this and will forward it, so his friends can have a good laugh.  A liberal will read this and delete it, because he’s offended.”

There is a widely held perception that liberals want governments to control almost everything. Conservatives don’t.

Astute readers are already lining up defenses based on hypocrisy. Be careful, the exceptions are not as exceptional as they may appear.

Liberals, for example, don’t believe the government should ban abortions and gay marriage, and conservatives call for restrictions. It appears hypocritical on its face, but is it?

Liberals frame these issues in terms of “choice” and “consent,” but continue to demand governmental intervention to validate their choice. In fact, liberals wish to use the governmental purse and the authority of governmental courts to push these issues on everyone irrespective of the stated wishes of the majority expressed through the ballot box.

Read more at the WCF Courier

Big Brother out of control

New Threats To Freedom

The Obama White House has created an uncertainty surplus as investors and corporations wonder what kinds of anti-business regulation the president might end up supporting.

This uncertainty is why we hear so much speculation about the economy moving toward recovery but not fast enough to create new jobs. Job creation requires investment and investment requires confidence. Even Wall Street adores certainty, and uncertainty over Obama’s intentions is causing businesses to sit on their cash instead of plowing it back into the economy.

As of the end of March, non-financial companies in the U.S. were holding on to $1.84 trillion in cash, a staggering 26 percent increase from a year earlier. Even companies with good earnings are reluctant to convert those earnings into capital investment and hiring until they get a clear sense of the regulatory climate that’s going to take root under Obama. And companies looking for signs of a pro-growth regulatory regime won’t find any comfort in the president’s apparent fondness for net neutrality regulation of the broadband Internet. Call it rent control for the Internet.

Like rent control, the changes being pushed like net neutrality by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski with White House backing are almost confiscatory when it comes to broadband networks that are the backbone of the Internet in America.

Mr. Genachowski’s “Third Way” plan for net neutrality regulation would force broadband operators to sell capacity on their networks to other companies, including rivals, at prices and conditions dictated by government regulators. You know where that leads: innovation is killed; stagnation and capacity shortages ensue.

By reclassifying broadband from an information service to a telecom service, the FCC would give itself sweeping powers to micro-manage America’s broadband networks. Unlike the Bell telephone networks of yesteryear, these broadband networks were not built with government subsidies in the form of monopoly markets and guaranteed returns. They were built and financed by their entrepreneurial owners, at their own risk.

Read more at Fox News

New U.S. Push to Regulate Internet Access

The Internet “Kill Switch”

US Cybersecurity Czar wants online “identity cards”

There go the 4th and 5th Amendments!

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn’t violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway – and no reasonable expectation that the government isn’t tracking your movements.

That is the bizarre – and scary – rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants – with no need for a search warrant.

It is a dangerous decision – one that, as the dissenting judges warned, could turn America into the sort of totalitarian state imagined by George Orwell. It is particularly offensive because the judges added insult to injury with some shocking class bias: the little personal privacy that still exists, the court suggested, should belong mainly to the rich.

This case began in 2007, when Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents decided to monitor Juan Pineda-Moreno, an Oregon resident who they suspected was growing marijuana. They snuck onto his property in the middle of the night and found his Jeep in his driveway, a few feet from his trailer home. Then they attached a GPS tracking device to the vehicle’s underside.

After Pineda-Moreno challenged the DEA’s actions, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled in January that it was all perfectly legal. More disturbingly, a larger group of judges on the circuit, who were subsequently asked to reconsider the ruling, decided this month to let it stand. (Pineda-Moreno has pleaded guilty conditionally to conspiracy to manufacture marijuana and manufacturing marijuana while appealing the denial of his motion to suppress evidence obtained with the help of GPS.)

In fact, the government violated Pineda-Moreno’s privacy rights in two different ways. For starters, the invasion of his driveway was wrong. The courts have long held that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their homes and in the “curtilage,” a fancy legal term for the area around the home. The government’s intrusion on property just a few feet away was clearly in this zone of privacy.

The judges veered into offensiveness when they explained why Pineda-Moreno’s driveway was not private. It was open to strangers, they said, such as delivery people and neighborhood children, who could wander across it uninvited.

Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, who dissented from this month’s decision refusing to reconsider the case, pointed out whose homes are not open to strangers: rich people’s. The court’s ruling, he said, means that people who protect their homes with electric gates, fences and security booths have a large protected zone of privacy around their homes. People who cannot afford such barriers have to put up with the government sneaking around at night.

Read more at Yahoo News

Senate Democrats Pass Bill Allowing Govt to Collect Addresses, ATM Records of Bank Customers

The Cyber Space Two Step: Privacy vs. Washington’s Big Brother Agenda

The Original Tea Party

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The Civil War and Gilded Age

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Progressivism

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FDR’s State And LBJ’s Society

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Big Gov’t and Tea Parties

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The Constitution and Freedom

Woodrow Wilson and the roots of Progressivism

Barack Obama and “The Second Bill of Rights”

America’s Ruling Class – And the Perils of Revolution

We the Serfs

WHO has changed how the constitution is interpreted?

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“Effective execution of Agenda 21 will require a profound reorientation of all human society, unlike anything the world has ever experienced –a major shift in the priorities of both governments and individuals and an unprecedented redeployment of human and financial resources. This shift will demand that a concern for the environmental consequences of every human action be integrated into individual and collective decision-making at every level.“   – From ICLEI‘s “Agenda 21“, signed by G.H. Bush, 1992

One reason that Portland is so hell-bent on pursuing unsustainable “sustainability” projects is that they’ve signed an ICLEI agreement to reduce carbon emissions by up to 80%, making themselves accountable to an international body of radical environmentalists who don’t have to live with the results at the local level.

Agenda 21 and the United Nations

Freedom Advocates explains the danger:

Right now, in your town and neighborhood, policies are being implemented that will ultimately eliminate your freedoms and destroy your way of life. You need to know what’s going on to stop this process. Many town officials are selling us out to global regional development with help from the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI): Local Governments for Sustainability. ICLEI is used as one of the mechanisms to undo the political recognition of unalienable rights.

ICLEI uses the false premise and outright lies of anthropogenic* global warming to change our way of life, for the worse!

ICLEI: Local Governments for Sustainability promotes Local Action 21, Local Agenda 21 and other United Nations programmes implemented through local town councils, planners, mayors and local governments.

Why should you care?

Social engineering and behavior modification are some of the true objectives being implemented under the guise of environmental and climate protection. This is accomplished by exploiting people’s desire to maintain a healthy and lasting environment in the name of “sustainability.” Here is an example of how ICLEI changes behavior, jut like another organization called “Fostering Sustainable Behavior”.

It is also ICLEI’s job to implement United Nation’s policies that restructure our representative form of government through global and regional development (< click and then view slide show). Policies and programs take control from our representative government and put it into the hands of regional, non-elected boards.  This allows elected officials to shirk their responsibilities. It turns us into a soviet system that is based on Regionalism.  It facilitates both communism and fascism. Representative government with defined limits is the basis of a free and just society.

Cool Mayors Fire-up Hot Debate

ICLEI methods include infiltrating local government. Organization representatives seek to be hired into local planning departments or they provide “toolkits” to staff. Too many elected officials such as Cool Mayors allow ICLEI to influence policy changes through the use of funding incentives and rewards. While some of these policies sound good on the surface, they result in consequences such as:

• High-density housing scams
• Traffic congestion
• Open space where access is not allowed
• Government “partnering” with favored private businesses and non-profit agencies, using your tax money
• Undermining Constitutional administration of government
• Managed control over your life
• Mismanagement of public utilities
• Prohibitions on natural resource management leading to increased fire hazards, lack of water, and private property restrictions,
• Increased taxes, fees, regulations and restrictions

Is ICLEI running your town or coming to a town near you?

Are your elected officials being lured into enacting ridiculous rules and regulations in exchange for funding?  Do your elected officials know that there are long term consequences to their irresponsible actions?

Currently there are more than 550 communities in North America paying membership dues to ICLEI.  Upon becoming a member of ICLEI, members become governed by ICLEI Charter. If your community is one of these, you are paying for the loss of your unalienable rights.

Has your town, city or county signed on with ICLEI?  Find out here.

Patriot and AFP activist Roxanne Ross wrote an editorial on page 7 of the August edition of the Northwest Connection about how the ICLEI agenda threatens Multnomah county.

ICLEI is behind national schemes, as well:

How Obama is Locking Up Our Land

And now: The stealth Obama ocean grab

David Horowitz on Democrats’ Shadow Cabinet and the Green Communists

Global Warming Alarmism is a Grave Threat to our Liberty

Environmentalism: The New Communism

“Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.” ~ Ronald Reagan

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Here come the food police – literally!

When the 20 agents arrived bearing a search warrant at her Ventura County farmhouse door at 7 a.m. on a Wednesday a couple weeks back, Sharon Palmer didn’t know what to say. This was the third time she was being raided in 18 months, and she had thought she was on her way to resolving the problem over labeling of her goat cheese that prompted the other two raids. (In addition to producing goat’s milk, she raises cattle, pigs, and chickens, and makes the meat available via a CSA.)

But her 12-year-old daughter, Jasmine, wasn’t the least bit tongue-tied. “She started back-talking to them,” recalls Palmer. “She said, ‘If you take my computer again, I can’t do my homework.’ This would be the third computer we will have lost. I still haven’t gotten the computers back that they took in the previous two raids.”

As part of a five-hour-plus search of her barn and home, the agents — from the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office, Los Angeles County Sheriff, Ventura County Sheriff, and the California Department of Food and Agriculture — took the replacement computer, along with milk she feeds her chickens and pigs.
 
While no one will say officially what the purpose of this latest raid was, aside from being part of an investigation in progress, what is very clear is that government raids of producers, distributors, and even consumers of nutritionally dense foods appear to be happening ever more frequently. Sometimes they are meant to counter raw dairy production, other times to challenge private food organizations over whether they should be licensed as food retailers.

What’s behind all these raids? They seem to stem from increasing concern at both the state and federal level about the spread of private food groups that have sprung up around the country in recent years — food clubs and buying groups to provide specialized local products that are generally unavailable in groceries, like grass-fed meats, pastured eggs, fermented foods, and, in some cases, raw dairy products. Because they are private and limited to consumers who sign up for membership, these groups generally avoid obtaining retail and public health licenses required of retailers that sell to the general public. (For more on what’s behind the raids, see this new post.)

Read more at Grist

S510 Vote Delayed, But Not Defeated

Food freedom under attack

The FDA vs Raw Milk and the Constitution

Delia Lopez: Our government has gone Gestapo

The Oregon Consumers and Farmers Association endorses Delia Lopez for Congress

‎”If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” ~ Thomas Jefferson

Leftists at Think Progress are getting themselves into a tizzy over this clip of Glenn Beck exposing a Center For American Progress report that calls for the elimination of several education programs which teach history, civics, economics, and the constitution:

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The Liberty Tree Lantern illustrates how the proof is in the details:

The Special Interest Group with very high influence at the top levels of  the U.S. Government called the Center for American Progress, funded by George Soros, has developed and submitted a document called “Education Transformation – Doing What Works”.

Page 13 of the report is titled “Programs Recommended for Elimination” Amongst others the following are some of the programs that this special interest group is calling for the U.S. Government to eliminate from our children’s education.  The following comes from the report:

Small niche programs: There are numerous small education programs that are limited in scope and people served. Often these programs represent sole-source grants or congressional earmarks, which should be limited. It was beyond the purview of this report to determine whether recipients meet the requirements of sole source grantees, which requires that they be unique among other potential grantees and possess capacity for innovation and cost-effectiveness. But the question is whether these arrangements work, are superior to other options, and represent the highest value for the public investment. Based on these concerns, the following programs should be eliminated:

•  Academies for American History and Civics, authorized under the American History and Civics Education Act of 2004, provides workshops for both veteran and new teachers of American history and operates Congressional Academies to instruct high school students. This is a small program with no supporting evaluation or performance reports. The teacher workshops are not coordinated with ESEA Title II professional development programs, which support increases in the number of highly qualified teachers and principals, or based on the needs of states and localities and those of teachers and students.
•  We the People, authorized under ESEA, Title II, Part C, Subpart 3, Sections 2341- 2346, is a noncompetitive, direct earmark grant to the Center for Civic Education to operate an instructional program for elementary, middle, and high school students on the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, called “We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution.” The program has had a positive evaluation.10 Yet the Center for Civic Education’s curricula and materials serve a small number of students annually. The Obama administration proposed elimination of the program in the FY 2010 budget because it is too small to have an impact on history and civics achievement nationally.
• Excellence in Economic Education, authorized under ESEA Title V, Part D, Subpart 13, is a small grant to a national nonprofit education organization that is meant to promote economic and financial literacy among students in kindergarten through grade 12. The FY 2010 appropriation was $1,447,000.  
• Teaching American History, authorized under ESEA Title II, Part C, Subpart 4, provides grants to local education agencies to improve teachers’ knowledge of traditional U.S. history. A 2005 evaluation found that grants funded projects in districts with high-need students, and participants reported positively on the effectiveness and quality of projects. But the evaluation also concluded that the projects may not have reached teachers typically considered most in need of additional professional development. The evaluation also found that the training provided did not always match research-based definitions of effective professional development, and that internal evaluations lacked the rigor to measure projects’ effectiveness accurately.11 The FY 2010 appropriation was $118.95 million. This program is subject-specific with limited reach and lacks demonstrated effectiveness. It should be eliminated.

Okay, so now America is not going to teach our children American History, Civics, U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, and Economics and financial literacy.  Does anybody else have a problem with this?

The Shocking Origins of Public Education

The Fourth Purpose: The Enigma of Public Schools

The Cartel: Education + Politics = $

The summer of 2010 is turning out to be a hot one – and not just because of the weather. The duration and depth of the recession, exacerbated by the high-tax, big-spending policies of the Obama administration, has led Americans to take a closer look at those who purport to “lead” us. We don’t much like what we see.

The problem? It’s the sense of entitlement, stupid. Democrats, who are in control of Washington, have long decried the excesses of “the rich.” President Obama has repeatedly called for “sacrifice,” meaning tax increases for those earning over $200,000 per year. In the meantime, his wife describes traveling to Denmark at taxpayer expense to lobby for the US Olympics as a “sacrifice” – long before setting off on the first of the eight vacations she is enjoying this summer (including one at a five-star Spanish resort).

 In a democratic republic, government employees are supposed to be the people’s servants, not their masters. Unfortunately, America is now ruled by a government class occupied by too many who are too far removed from the lives of those they are supposed to serve. Some, like Daschle and Geithner, benefit from a special set of rules reserved for the powerful and connected. Others – like the President– make plenty of money from the easy celebrity won through pursuit of public office. Yet others (like Rangel) use the power of their government positions to raise money for their own personal projects.

Read more at Townhall.com

America’s Ruling Class – And the Perils of Revolution

Class War: How public servants became our masters

U.S. Military Serving as Chauffeurs, Babysitters for the Pelosi Kids: Receipts That Will Blow Your Mind

Prior to 1913, there was no federal income tax. The states had rights and representation in Washington DC, there was no Federal Reserve Bank, and the federal government lived under the enumerated powers afforded within the US Constitution. What a difference one year can make…

Almost a hundred years later, it’s clear that the policies established in 1913 must be revoked in order to restore power to the people and the states. But can the American people stuff the Genie back in to the bottle?

The History of the US Tax System can be summed up in one paragraph…

Prior to the enactment of the income tax, most citizens were able to pursue their private economic affairs without the direct knowledge of the government. Individuals earned their wages, businesses earned their profits, and wealth was accumulated and dispensed with little or no interaction with government entities.

Passage of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution would forever change life in America and not for the better.

The 16th – The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

It’s hard to imagine how the aforementioned amendment could have been written any broader, or why 36 states would agree to such an open ended federal power to strip citizens of their rightful earnings via taxation without representation and with literally no boundaries or limits to how far the federal government could ultimately go in their effort to buy the votes of some with the assets of others.

Since 1913, the federal tax code has been used as a primary tool of leftist social engineering in which the people have been forced to fund a government they no longer recognize and no longer support. The US Congress has a mere 11% approval rating today and the Executive branch is supported only by the 28% of citizens who benefit personally by the robbing of fellow citizens.

The states are now fiscal dependents of the federal government and the federal government is a twenty trillion pound ape trampling through the rose garden of American life, and nobody seems to have any clue how to rein it all in.

Further, thanks to the passage of the 17th Amendment, also passed in 1913, the states no longer have representation in Washington DC. Once again, what seemed like a simple sentence and a good idea to some at the time has since been used by the federal government to eliminate state’s sovereignty and rights.

Read more at American Thinker

The Income Tax and Government Spending

It’s Time To Repeal the 16th Amendment

How the 17th Amendment has led to unrestrained federal powers

Repeal the 17th Amendment

President Obama was highly critical of the Bush administration’s implementation of the Patriot Act but conceded at the time that it was a necessary evil.  While running for president he said that he would look into “dialing back”  various elements of the act.  

In February 2010, however, President Obama not only allowed all the current provisions under the Patriot Act to stand, he extended them for a year.

Last week, not only did he fail to pull back some of the FBI’s jurisdiction on information gathering, he seems to have expanded the previous law by adding four words to illuminate for federal law enforcement what powers they actually hold. Section 505 of the Patriot Act, covers National Security Letters (NSL’s) that are to be administered to various communications service providers (phone companies and ISP’s) by the FBI.  It allows them to secretly demand information regarding users private information.

Under the expanded definitions the information is allowed to be obtained without a court order for a person having been suspected of a crime, without said person ever even knowing they are being investigated:

• Your basic subscriber records, including your true identity and payment information;
• The identity of anyone using a particular IP address, username, or email adress;
• The email address or username of everyone you email or Instant Message, or who e-mails or instant messages you.
• The web address of every website you visit.
• Allows authorities to gain access to your private credit and financial information -
• Your ISP, bank, any other business from which the FBI gathers your private records is barred by law from notifying you.

Previously the language under the Patriot Act was vague and ambiguous; it requires Internet service providers to produce the records said Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the Justice Department’s national security division. “As written it also causes confusion and the potential for unnecessary litigation as some Internet companies have argued they are not always obligated to comply with the FBI requests.”

To assist in clarification, the administration added four words, “electronic communication transactional records” despite many issues brought to light by the San Francisco based Electronic Frontier Foundation as well as the ACLU. Essentially, the Department of Justice is asking Congress to pass this broad new language meant to expand the kinds of data that can be acquired through National Security Letters.

The administration’s proposal to change the Electronic Communications Privacy Act raises serious privacy and civil liberties concerns. In a statement released Thursday, Senator Patrick Leahy D-VT said, “While the government should have the tools that it needs to keep us safe, American citizens should also have protections against improper intrusions into their private electronic communications and online transactions”.  Senator Leahy plans to hold hearings in the fall on this and other issues involving the law.

Read more at New Patriot Journal

Obama’s Assaults on Liberty Proceed Unabated

Poor Richard’s Internet

“In our dreams, people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present education conventions of intellectual and character education fade from their minds and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk.  The task is simple. We will organize children and teach them in an perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way.”  – Mission Statement, John D. Rockefeller’s General Education Board, 1906

The Daily Caller reports:

If Education Secretary Arne Duncan has his way, kids would be spending a lot more time at school — and a three-month summer would be a thing of the past.

Duncan joked with attendees at a luncheon at the National Press Club Tuesday in Washington that he would like schools to stay open 13 months out of the year. Then he told the audience of over 100 that he seriously supports longer school hours.

“In all seriousness, I think schools should be open 12, 13, 14 hours a day, seven days a week, 11-12 months of the year,” Duncan said. “This is not just more of the same. There would be a whole variety of after-school programs. Obviously academics would be at the heart of that. But you top it off with dancing, art, drama, music, yearbook, robotics, activities for older siblings and parents, ESL classes.”

You have to ask yourself why? And the answer is so ridiculous that once you see through the smokescreen you see that this is about control of your children. They don’t trust you to raise your children. They know better.

So why does Mr. Duncan think we need longer school days and years?

Daily Caller reports:

“As you guys know, our world has changed, our economy has changed,” said Duncan. “The days of telling kids to go home at 2:30 and having mom there with a peanut butter sandwich, those days are gone. Whether it’s a single parent working one, two, three jobs or two parents working, the hours from 3 o’clock to 7 o’clock are a huge anxiety, and that’s why we have to keep our schools open longer.”

So let me get this straight. Many parents can’t be home with children when they come home at 2:30 and that’s bad so instead of giving parents tax breaks or incentives to stay home with their children they decide to spend more taxpayer money to keep schools open 12 months a year and 12 hours a day making it harder for parents to be able to afford to stay home because they have to pay for all these programs.
The question must be asked whether parents staying home with children is a societal good. And if so shouldn’t the federal government be doing more to encourage it, rather than making it harder.

But when they say more time at school, they actually mean less time with family.  This is their end game. Remember “It Takes a Village.”  Well, the village looks an awful lot like the federal government. And a lot less like Mom with a peanut butter sandwich.

Read more at Creative Minority Report

H/T Barbara Curtis at MommyLife.net

The Shocking Origins of Public Education

Mama Grizzlies: Obama Wants More Time With Your Cubs

Stealth Education Overhaul

Threat to Parents’ Rights a Bigger Issue than Rights of a Child

Daycares Don’t Care: How Can a Daycare Love?

Hey mama grizzlies, it appears as if the White House wants more time with your cubs. Yep, I guess Barack and his socialistic cabal have had a rough go at “fundamentally transforming our nation” in dealing with the increasingly-jaundiced thinking adults who’ve lost the Obama buzz, still dig America, love God and our Constitution, and ask questions (and crap like that). So, like good brainwashers who cannot bamboozle adults, they go in for our babies.

Yep, for the sake of socialism and with an eye to “changing our traditions, our history,” as Michelle Obama said, BHO’s boy Arne Duncan is tabling a plan for parents to give “them” more time with our tots. That means “alone time,” as in big chunks of alone time with the teachers whom “they” have fed a steady diet of “America sucks and socialism is yummy” sauce.

It’s the same stack of teachers the NEA has greatly encouraged to read Saul Alinsky’s commie rag, Rules for Radicals. And you won’t have to worry about them being physically harmed while they’re away from your gaze, Mr. and Mrs. Grizz, because radical gay activist Kevin “Fistgate” Jennings will make sure your kids are okay. Especially your teenage boys.

This past week, Secretary of (Re)Education Arne Duncan said at the National Press Club that he’d like to have schools open 12 to 14 hours a day and 11 to 12 months out of the year. Dr. Evil couched his desires for huge chunks of time spent with your children in the most flowery of language, musing aloud that he wanted to have your children for an extended period to help them “compete internationally.”

Really, Arne? Correct me if I’m wrong, but we used to compete internationally … as in run the flippin’ planet … didn’t we? That is until dipsticks like you and your progressive posse decided to toss God, the Constitution, common sense, a clear delineation between right and wrong, and discipline out of school and replace it with Muslim sensitivity training classes, books about Penguins sodomizing each other, and social justice as you passed out condoms to first graders and provided secret abortions for 13-year-old girls. It’s funny that America never had a problem excelling until secular progressives, with their Marxist bent, became the pace car for the public school system.

The ambitious Obama administration, mama grizzly, is not content with trying to rule our freedom of speech (especially squelching critiques of their feckless policies), but they also want to put the joystick of our economy, our car companies, our health care, our self reliance and independence, our retirement, and now our kids into their sweaty palms because, you see, they’re wiser than we are in regard to what our kids need to know about how the world should tick—thus Duncan’s talk about more time to uh … um … “educate” your cubs.

Read more at Townhall.com

Stealth Education Overhaul

Trusting obama with our kids

Threat to Parents’ Rights a Bigger Issue than Rights of a Child

Politico reports:

Senate Republicans on Tuesday blocked legislation requiring fuller disclosure of the money behind political advertising, derailing a major White House initiative and virtually ensuring an onslaught of attack ads during this year’s midterm election season.

The vote — in which Democrats fell just shy of the 60 votes needed to avoid a GOP filibuster — marks a major setback for President Obama, who has railed against the influence of special interests in elections and pushed for the legislation as a counterpoint to court rulings freeing up the use of corporate money in politics.

The development also represents a significant victory for Senate Republicans and business groups, which portrayed the measure as a Democratic attempt to tilt the playing field by discouraging corporations and other likely critics from spending money on political ads. The measure is the latest in a series of Democratic initiatives that have been approved by the House only to die in the Senate, including comprehensive climate-change legislation abandoned last week.

Conservative blogger Bruce McQuain observes:

But Chuck Schumer is promising a “flurry of votes” on the bill until it finally passes.  Republicans held solid on this attempt to get around the Supreme Court ruling that found the former campaign finance bill unconstitutional on 1st Amendment grounds.

Senate Democrats were only able to muster their 59 votes, which, of course has Ezra Klein and others calling for an end to the 60 vote Senate rule for cloture.

I say the act is defeated for now for a reason.  And that reason, as usual, is Olympia Snow (R-ME):

Olympia Snowe (Maine), whose vote was closely watched on the issue, said the bill wasn’t in a position yet where she could support it.

Key word is “yet”.  The promise in that word is Democrats can do something that will put her in a position to support it.

CitizenLink is celebrating the demise of this censorship bill:

From the ACLU to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, liberal and conservative advocacy groups are hailing the bill’s momentary demise as a huge “win” for free speech and the integrity of the electoral process.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., pointed out on the Senate floor today the hypocrisy of the bill – which he dubbed the Free Speech Reduction Act – which claims to be transparent, but was done without consideration or debate:

“Their one goal here is to get people who would criticize them to stop talking about what Democrats have been doing here in Washington over the past year and a half.”

From Banning Books to Banning Blogs: How the DISCLOSE Act would restrict free speech

DISCLOSE Act Seeks to Blunt Impacts of Citizens United Supreme Court Decision