Thoughts From A Conservative Mom

Posts Tagged ‘Individual Liberty’

Numerous opinion polls show that after the November elections, the Republican Party will have regained enough seats in the House to take back the majority position and the Speakership. Results for the Senate are less amenable to forecast, but even so, gains up to and including a remote chance for a majority are possible there as well.

It is necessary to remind Republicans of one salient fact about this predicted shift in political strength as a result of the 2010 midterm elections, and it is a fact that can be expressed in just a few words:

You may have a majority, but you do not have a mandate to govern in any way that you choose.

Read more at American Thinker

Memo to Republicans: It’s Big Government, Stupid!

Midterms Not Just Toxic for Democrats

The giveaway regarding presidential candidate Barack Obama’s plans for America was his repeated use of the words “fundamentally transform.”

Some of us instinctively reacted negatively — in fact, with horror — at the thought of fundamentally transforming America.

The “us” are conservatives.

One unbridgeable divide between left and right is how each views alternatives to present-day America. Those on the left imagine an ideal society that has never existed, and therefore seek to “fundamentally transform” America. When liberals imagine an America fundamentally transformed, they envision it becoming a nearly utopian society in which there is no greed, no racism, no sexism, no inequality, no poverty and ultimately no unhappiness.

Conservatives, on the other hand, look around at other societies and history and are certain that if America were fundamentally transformed, it would become just like those other societies. America would become a society of far less liberty, of ethically and morally inferior citizens and of much more unhappiness. And cruelty would increase exponentially around the world.

Read more at Real Clear Politics

Why the left hates conservatives

The World Doesn’t Hate America, the Left Does

The most dangerous president in history

What’s so wrong with Social Democracy?

The United States faces overwhelming fiscal problems. Our current level of government spending and future entitlement obligations are simply unsustainable. However, as concerning as these fiscal matters are, the biggest problem America faces has nothing to do with economics, but rather psychology.

The strength of a nation reflects the character of its citizens. While America was once considered a nation of individuals fiercely independent and self-reliant, her citizens are moving closer to a state of dependence, characterized by irresponsibility and ambivalence. This change has been instigated by the politics of collectivism and the growth of the social welfare state.

F.A. Hayek, the famous Austrian-born economist and political philosopher, warned of the dangers of excessive government.

The most important change which extensive government control produces is a psychological change, an alteration in the character of the people.

To understand how this alteration occurs, one must first understand the psychological concept known as locus of control. In 1954, American psychologist Julian Rotter introduced the concept that describes how individuals could be divided into two basic groups, which represent two ends of a continuum (Figure 1): internals believe that their locus of control is within themselves, and externals believe that they are under the control of outside forces.

According to Lee Harris, author of The Next American Civil War:

[Internals] believe that they are the masters of their own destiny; they tend to be high-achievers, optimistic about their ability to improve their lot, and to discard bad habits. They believe in willpower and positive thinking. They are determined to control their own lives, for better or worse. [Externals] look on themselves as victims of circumstances, the playthings of fate. If they go to bed drunk, light up a cigarette, and burn their house down, they explain the disaster as another instance of their bad luck, and not their poor judgment, much less their bad habits.

Read more at American Thinker

Why the Left Despises Personal Responsibility

Paul Ryan: 70% of Americans Becoming Dependent on Government

Tax Day or Payday? How the Tax Code Is Expanding Government and Dependency

The Fall of Rome and Modern Parallels

To Reform Government, Reform the Culture

This is a fantastic documentary!  I highly recommend that you get a copy and show it to your church, small group, and friends, whether believers or not!

View on YouTube – Part 1

View on YouTube – Part 2

View on YouTube – Part 3

View on YouTube – Part 4

View on YouTube – Part 5

Can Christians be Capitalists?

The 5 Big Lies About American Business: Combating Smears Against the Free Market Economy

Money, Greed, and GodThe Ugly Side of “Social Justice” Theology

Evangelical Left Twists the Gospel in ‘Social Justice’ Fervor

Barack Obama’s Marxist Spiritual Advisor

Is Socialism Biblical?

The Base Metal of Christian Socialism

TRUE Social Justice: Transforming Lives In Need

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

I’m proud to join the ranks of homeschooling parents this fall, as I begin teaching Kindergarten with my oldest, 5-year-old Eva.  It’s going to be an adventure, having a preschooler and one-year-old in the mix, but completely worth it!

This fall, as moms and dads around the country are getting backpacks stuffed with pencils and notebooks and scissors and glue, ready for their children to take to school, a rapidly increasing number of families are sending their children … nowhere.

Instead, more and more parents are opting to educate their children at home. In fact, statistics show the number of homeschooled students in the U.S. has nearly doubled over the past 10 years, making learning at home the fastest growing form of education in country.

“Homeschooling grew from 1.7 percent of the school age population in 1999 to 2.9 percent in 2007, a 74 percent relative increase over 8 years,” states Dr. Brian D. Ray of the National Home Education Research Institute.

And according to a NHERI fact sheet, those percentages have continued to climb. NHERI estimates the homeschooling movement has been growing at 5-12 percent per annum over the past several years, a quicker clip than private schools are growing, while public schools are seeing their percentages decline.

The total number of students now forgoing school buses for learning at home is best estimated in the neighborhood of 1.9 million – 2.5 million children.

“The increasing popularity of homeschooling should not come as a surprise,” claims a statement from The Old Schoolhouse Magazine, a popular periodical for home educators. “Parent-led, home-based education is now bordering on ‘mainstream’ in the United States.”

Read more at World Net Daily

Forced Participation: Public Education’s Fatal Flaw

Homeschooling: Socialization not a problem

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

News Wednesday afternoon that an armed gunman had entered the cable TV headquarters of Discovery Communications in Silver Spring, Maryland and begun taking hostages alarmed people throughout the Washington, D.C. area and around the country. As law enforcement officials negotiated with the suspect, posts on social media outlets inevitably began arguing over the ideological motivations of the hostage-taker, James J. Lee. Conservatives were quick to point out the suspect’s radical environmentalist manifesto, while left-leaning sources disclaimed any connection. News a few hours later that the suspect had been shot and killed by police spawned a round of smug black humor, concluding that he had been successful in accomplishing one of his chief demands, a smaller world population.

The immediate verdict from the online world seems to be that Lee was simply insane, even as differently motivated voices tried to pin the source of his insanity on each other. If we take a step back, though, we can look at the demands he made — which law enforcement officials said “mirrored” those in his online manifesto — and see the wider context of Lee’s beliefs.

His focus on population control is clear from the beginning. Lee demands that the Discovery Channel and its affiliates must “Focus…on how people can live WITHOUT giving birth to more filthy human children since those new additions continue pollution and are pollution.” On the topic of immigration, he recommends that we “find solutions to stopping ALL immigration pollution and the anchor baby filth that follows that” and in order to safeguard the future of wildlife, he writes that doing so “means stopping the human race from breeding any more disgusting human babies!”

While his rhetoric is crude and offensive, that doesn’t mean his ideas don’t have wider currency. From the time of Paul Ehrlich’s infamous 1968 manifesto The Population Bomb to the work of groups like Zero Population Growth (first re-branded as simply “ZPG” and currently known as “Population Connection”), the specter of unsupportable population growth has been one of the environmental movement’s greatest scare stories. It’s the kind of all-encompassing disaster that was supposed to be hard to ignore — even if you didn’t care about the environment, the pitch goes, you have to be worried about overpopulation! You don’t want millions of people to starve to death or see wars spawned by a fight over food and scarce natural resources, do you?

But how does a concern over famines and resources depletion translate into the vicious anti-human ideology of a James Lee? The answer is clear — combine one old theory about the inherent limitations of mankind with one new theory about the alienation of human beings from the rest of the natural world. Lee provides us with all of the leads we need when he demands that the Discovery Channel “develop shows that mention the Malthusian sciences.”

Read more at American Spectator

The Malthusian Delusion and the Origins of Population Control

James Lee Discovery Channel bomber – Al Gore disciple

My Ishmael by Daniel Quinn – James Jay Lee’s bible

John Holdren, Obama’s Science Czar, says: Forced abortions and mass sterilization needed to save the planet

Call for two-child limit on families from the Government’s leading green adviser

Fewer Children to Save the Planet?

Environmentalism Is the New Religion

Inhofe: Some Senators Share Holdren’s View That Born Babies Are Not ‘Human Beings’

People asks: How many kids are too many?

Perhaps the most difficult economic lesson is that we live in a world of scarcity and everything has a cost. Scarcity exists whenever human wants exceed the means to satisfy those wants. For example, Rolls-Royce produces less than 4,000 cars a year, but it’s a safe bet that more than 4,000 of the Earth’s 6.5 billion people want a Rolls-Royce. That means Rolls-Royces are scarce. But it’s not just Rolls-Royces that are scarce. It’s clothing, food, land and most anything a human would want. There’s not enough to meet every single want.

Scarcity means there’s no free lunch. Having more of one thing requires having less of another. You might say, “Williams, that’s where you’re wrong. Someone gave me this newspaper and I’m reading your column for free!” Not true. If you weren’t spending time reading my column, you might have spent the time reading something else, chatting with your wife or children, or going out for a jog. You’re reading my column for a zero price but you’re not doing so at zero cost. You have to sacrifice something. There are zero-price services such as “free libraries,” “free public schools,” “free transportation” and free whatever. It doesn’t mean costs are not being borne by somebody.

Read more World Net Daily

Walter Williams: Good Intentions

Give Capitalism a Chance

Keynes vs. Hayek: The Great Debate Continues

View on YouTube

You don’t win elections by watching Glenn Beck. You’ve got to do the hard work – walk precincts, talk with neighbors and lick envelopes. Scott Ott, Stephen Green and Bill Whittle tell you what it will it take to deliver a Republican majority in Congress on Election Day. The midterm elections, Obama and the Tea Party Movement on this edition of Trifecta.

Listen on YouTube

From the Right Scoop:

An excellent monologue from Mark Levin talking about how we must be active in politics in order to take back our country. He says we can’t just sit on the sidelines and expect to win the biggest elections of our lifetimes, in 2010 and 2012, and we can’t leave these great Tea Party candidates hanging out to dry. We must be politically active to restore our country to the principles on which it was founded.

You know, personally, I felt like Levin was playing off of the big rally this weekend, even though he never mentioned it directly. He has always been critical of Beck who tends to take a somewhat ‘hands off’ approach to politics and I think there is something to be said for that. But in this monologue I think Levin was saying ok, this rally thing was good, but we must turn this into a political movement or else we lose.

Now to just differentiate for a second, Beck believes that if you live up to a high standard by turning back to God and letting Him guide you, then you will pick candidates who reflect the Godly principles of how you live. I think he’s right and I don’t think Levin would disagree at all. But Levin looks at the practical side as well and emphasizes that you must do the hard work of getting candidates elected in order to affect change. I think he’s right as well. In fact I think they are both right and that both philosophies need each other to get maximum effectiveness of political change.

But let me add that I don’t believe that Beck would just have you change your lives for nothing. I think he too believes you must be politically active as well, or else we lose. The main difference in the two of them really is nothing more than emphasis. Beck is emphasizing the ‘God side’ while Levin is emphasizing the ‘activist side’.

But try not to look at this as Beck vs Levin and visa versa. They both have the same goal in the end of seeing this country turned back to God and the founding principles on which this great nation was established.

Activism or Awareness? A False Choice

Join the fight to take back our nation!

As the son of a Hamas co-founder who became a Christian, a spy for Israel and a consultant to the Holy Land Foundation terror-finance trial, Mosab Hassan Yousef offers a rare perspective on the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood – at once the spawn of nearly every major Islamic terrorist group and of “mainstream” operatives in the U.S. such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Yousef, who recently was granted asylum in the U.S. after the Department of Homeland Security tried to deport him, told WND in a telephone interview Americans must understand that the ultimate goal of the highly influential Brotherhood is not terrorism but to establish a global Islamic state over the entire world.

“If they can establish this in a peaceful manner, that’s fine,” he said. “But they are required by the Quran to establish this global Islamic state on the rubble of every civilization, every constitution, every government.”

The Holy Land Foundation trial in Dallas in 2008 – the largest terror-finance case in U.S. history – presented evidence of the Muslim Brotherhood’s “100-year plan” to gradually destroy the U.S. and Western civilization from within “so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

“This is not a doctrine of some freak Muslim,” Yousef observed. “It’s the doctrine, the requirement, of the god of Islam himself and his prophet, whom they praise every day.”

One of the Brotherhood’s prime strategies to help achieve its ultimate aim is to spin off groups such as the Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, that attempt to give Islam a positive face, he pointed out.

American foreign policy, especially under President Obama, he said, has “bought the lie of Muslim groups who are trying to make Islam look good in the eyes of Westerners.”

Because of that approach, he said, Muslim leaders such as Feisal Abdul Rauf have developed “the courage to come forward with a very aggressive symbol” of Islamic authority, the proposed Islamic center and mosque near the site of the 2001 World Trade Center attacks.

“If it was any other American president, we wouldn’t have this aggressive step,” Yousef contended.

Defenders of the proposed Ground Zero mosque cite American Muslims’ First Amendment freedoms to practice their religion.

But Yousef makes a distinction between Islam and other religions, arguing Islam is a subversive system that threatens America’s very existence.

“Even if it’s a religion, and 1.5 billion people around the world believe in it, this doesn’t mean that they are right; and this doesn’t mean that we compromise with them,” he said. “We tell them, ‘You’re accepted, but guess what? This is the red line: We don’t compromise with your god. We don’t compromise with your belief system.’”

Yousef reasoned that he certainly would not be allowed to create a religion in which he demanded that his followers kill everyone who doesn’t embrace his beliefs.

“Will I be able to register this religion here and build my symbols for this religion in this country?” he asked. “I will go to jail for that – and all my followers as well.”

No one in the Middle East has the courage or the power to confront Islam, he said, but transformation can start in the most powerful country in the world.

“Instead of giving Islam credit, this is the country where we can start to fight – not against Muslims, against the bad teachings of Islam.”

Americans can begin, he said, by “understanding the real nature of Islam.”

“I am telling you, this is not a matter of politics,” he said. “It’s a matter of life and death. It’s a matter of hundreds of millions who have been killed because of this deadly ideology of Islam that has been here 1,400 years.”

“This is the time” to speak out, he said, “especially here in America. This is the time to stand firm and strong against this crazy, big system.”

Yousef said that while some may want to “scare people about Islam” for some kind of financial or personal profit, he is speaking out because of his concern for America and as “a person who loves my people.”

If America leads the way in confronting Islam, change can come, he said.

“I cannot wait for them to be liberated,” he said of his fellow Palestinians and Muslims worldwide. “And when I see the example of liberty and freedom in this country, I want this to go to my people.”

Read more at World Net Daily

Escape from Hamas: The Story of Mosab Hassan Yousef

God bless Walid Shoebat for having the courage to speak out and expose this man!

Just who is ‘moderate’ Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf? He’s no moderate at all. He’s the funder of the controversial Ground Zero Mosque in New York and a financier of the Turkish Flotilla, along with the Turkish government that funded the terrorist group IHH which has ties to al Qaida and Hamas in Gaza

What’s more, Iman Rauf is calling for a worldwide return to the most radical form of Islam in history, turning the hands of time back to an era when Muslims ruled much of the known world. See eye-opening article below that was translated by Walid.

The following is a translation of an Arabic language interview conducted by Iman Rauf that should put shivers up your spine as to what the world will look like if he gets his way: Islamic world domination, death and enslavement to anyone who gets in his way.

The interview was translated from Arabic to English by Walid Shoebat, a former Palestinian terrorist who converted to Christianity and became a U.S. citizen.

Essentially Rauf wants to use peaceful means including lobbying governments and establishing charities to incrementally implement the principles of Sharia law worldwide so once the stranglehold is established, potentially enacting Sharia-ordered decapitation and stoning of ‘infidels’ (any non-Muslims).

READ FOR YOURSELF What Ground Zero Mosque Iman Says:
(Translated Verbatim from the Arabic Language into English by Walid Shoebat)

Question: What does it mean to separate religion from state in Islam?

Abdul Rauf: “…we collectively believe that the state that was erected by the prophet in Medina was the ideal model for an Islamic state. The challenge today in the Islamic world is how do we accomplish this in our current era.”

Question: Many of the political Jihadist Islamic movements are talking about an Islamic Caliphate based on the prophet’s approach. Can we accomplish this today?

Abdul Rauf:  “How do we call for the principles and standards that the prophet (peace be upon him) used to build the Islamic state in Medina? The challenge we have today is how do we accomplish this while keeping the prophet’s methodology in our current changing times. This challenge was an issue that the scholars and Caliphs had to face throughout the Islamic history, which resulted in the creation of several Islamic schools of thought with multiple views that are viewed equally.

So the question in our era throughout my discussions with contemporary Muslim theologians that an Islamic state can be established in more than just in a single form or mold; it can be established through a kingdom or a democracy. The important issue is to establish the general fundamentals of [Islamic] Shariah that are required to govern.

Question: So we understand that separation of religion from state, that is, it depends on the Muslim governors that so long they were spreading Islam and justice… but when the rulers are ruling under traditional laws contrary to Islamic laws, what then should the Islamic institutions do?

Abdul Rauf: ”In our modern era, governments that want to ensure the new laws as to not contradict Shariah rules—so they create institutions to ensure Islamic law and remove any that contradict with Shariah.

So we advise that when there is a problem in the relationship between state and religious institutions in the form of the question you just asked, that people need to use peaceful means to advise the governors and government institutions and use peaceful means that are available to send their message out to the masses.

And we also suggest to the governors and political institutions to consult [Muslim] religious institutions and [Muslim] personalities in the field as to assure their decision making to reflect the spirit of Shariah.

Read more at the Walid Shoebat Foundation Blog

Walid Shoebat’s Interview on Fox News About Ground Zero Mosque

Ground Zero Imam Supports Imposing Sharia in America

Ground Zero Imam Says U.S. Worse than al-Qaeda

Founder of Ground Zero mosque part of group that helped fund Gaza flotilla

Sharia, Jihad, and Terrorist Recruitment: The Real Issues Behind The Ground Zero Mosque

From the Constitutionalist Today:

I got asked yesterday, “What happens to the Tea Party after Election Day?” It’s a great question as the loudest drum beat has been leading us to 2 November, 2010. The first reaction is to say it depends on who wins and it is becoming clear the Progressives will lose on many fronts. For the thousands in Colorado who have come to meetings, gone to rallies, town halls, written countless letters and made calls to elected officials on issues ranging from health care to out of control spending, it has been a long road. Many will look at 2 November as the culmination of all their efforts, but it’s a dangerous conclusion to reach as the real work begins the morning after no matter who we send to Washington or Denver.

If the GOP takes over the US House, possibly the Senate, and makes major gains in Denver you’ll see those who really haven’t been active beyond the lure of a few rallies go back to sleep. Even some hard core Tea Party members will want to take a breather. After two years of fighting it’s not a bad thing, but that rest will be short lived.

Tea Party members understand an unchallenged GOP will not seriously carry the fight of limited government. It won’t be the Lindsey Grahams displaying the political courage to defend what will be described as draconian spending cuts. That will be left to the true conservatives. Bad things are coming from Washington and they can not be stopped unless those we elect are truly prepared to make the political sacrifices needed to reverse the damage of the last 18 months. Politicians taking the hard stands will be under enormous pressure from a defeated Progressive Party and the propaganda driven press who paint their efforts as destructive and extreme. Where does the political courage to fight come from? It comes from those that send politicians to Washington and Denver. The first time a conservative stands up with a meaningful reduction they better see a field of Gadsden flags behind them or it will be our failure, not theirs, if they never try it again.

It will take the Tea Party having the courage to defend those who we demand make the hard choices because with real cuts comes real pain. We must be willing to not just educate the public on why this pain is required, but we must be willing to endure the pain ourselves. It’s one thing to just tell government to cut programs; it’s another to actually do without what they provide.

After Election Day, the People must retake the reins of government. That requires active involvement at all levels. It involves making the effort to actively support and hold accountable those we elect in November. No one can do this alone and, thankfully, we are not alone. The working Tea Party groups, The 9-12 Project, CCM, AFP, Liberty on the Rocks and the many other liberty groups are the business end of the Tea Party movement. Join them. Work to advance the victories of Election Day or they will be lost forever. Americans stood up to an out of control government and are on the verge of victory. What we do with it will set the course of the nation for decades. Our involvement has given the Republic a second chance, we may not get another.

A Tea Party Manifesto: Take Over The GOP

GOP needs to move beyond ‘Default Mode’

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