Friday, June 21, 2013

Droit du seigneur FBI style

If an FBI agent shoots you it's because you needed shooin'.

The FBI has deemed every agent-involved shooting between 1993 and 2011 as justified.

Every single one.  Helpful hint:  avoid the FBI like the plague because they are clearly not accountable.  And nations with unaccountable paramilitaries (with almost 5,000 unread and uncomprehended laws to choose from) are the cornerstone of the modern compassionate fascist state.

Heck, they might as well just get it over with and pass a general law for 'anti-Federal Activities'.


Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Cougars: coming to a forest near you

“Every year we see more of them,” said Mark Dowling, a founder of the Cougar Network, a nonprofit research group and a leading source of online information about cougars. “It used to be a rarity when a mountain lion showed up in Missouri. It’s almost routine now.”

Eek.  Or should I say Rowrrr?  Here.

Man bites dog: Glenn Greenwald makes sense

Usually Mr. Greenwald is cheering for more state power and restrictions on people's rights:  More restrictive laws and the shackles and cruel punishmens that go with them.  But at least when it comes to the overreaching national security state his judgement is sound.  The money graf from the Guardian:

The way things are supposed to work is that we’re supposed to know virtually everything about what they do: that’s why they’re called public servants. They’re supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that’s why we’re called private individuals.
This dynamic – the hallmark of a healthy and free society – has been radically reversed. Now, they know everything about what we do, and are constantly building systems to know more. Meanwhile, we know less and less about what they do, as they build walls of secrecy behind which they function. That’s the imbalance that needs to come to an end. No democracy can be healthy and functional if the most consequential acts of those who wield political power are completely unknown to those to whom they are supposed to be accountable.

Monday, June 10, 2013

Authoritarian Synergy in the Federal Superstate

According to Ira Stoll, the Feds used Verizon's need for FCC approvals to extort 'cooperation' for it's massive citizen surveillance data programs.  No matter how innocuous it seems, when you make the superstate more powerful anywhere, it ends up hurting liberty.  Everywhere.

The Federal Super State is not your friend.  Break it up, break it all up.