“Don’t drone, me, bro!”—that’s one way to sum up Charles Krauthammer’s heated reaction to last week’s news that the Federal Aviation Administration had loosened restrictions on local police departments’ use of surveillance Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.

“Stop it here, stop it now,” Krauthammer exclaimed on Fox News’s “Special Report” Monday, “I don’t want to see it hovering over anybody’s home. … I’m not encouraging, but I am predicting that the first guy who uses a Second Amendment weapon to bring a drone down that’s been hovering over his house is going to be a folk hero in this country.”

The neoconservative Krauthammer is rarely mistaken for a civil libertarian, yet here he finds himself to the left of the ACLU. And he has a point. “Drones present a unique threat to privacy,” the Electronic Privacy Information Center explains; they’re designed to “undertake constant, persistent surveillance,” and with special equipment, they’re capable of “peering inside high-level windows,” perhaps even “through solid barriers, such as fences, trees and even walls.”

In several cases, the Supreme Court has held that warrantless surveillance by manned aircraft doesn’t violate the Fourth Amendment. But small, cheap, maneuverable, and often undetectable drones may create cases in which a difference in degree becomes a difference in kind.

CONTINUED at Reason. Written by Gene Healy.

Opponents of a U.S. law they claim may subject them to indefinite military detention for activities including news reporting and political activism persuaded a federal judge to temporarily block the measure.

U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan yesterday ruled in favor of a group of writers and activists who sued President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and the Defense Department, claiming a provision of the National Defense Authorization Act, signed into law Dec. 31, puts them in fear that they could be arrested and held by U.S. armed forces.

The complaint was filed Jan. 13 by a group including former New York Times reporter Christopher Hedges. The plaintiffs contend a section of the law allows for detention of citizens and permanent residents taken into custody in the U.S. on “suspicion of providing substantial support” to people engaged in hostilities against the U.S., such as al-Qaeda.

“The statute at issue places the public at undue risk of having their speech chilled for the purported protection from al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and ‘associated forces’ – i.e., ‘foreign terrorist organizations,’” Forrest said in an opinion yesterday. “The vagueness of Section 1021 does not allow the average citizen, or even the government itself, to understand with the type of definiteness to which our citizens are entitled, or what conduct comes within its scope.”

CONTINUED at Bloomberg.

Surveillance aircraft used by the U.S. military overseas could soon be coming to the skies above Los Angeles County.

KNX 1070′s Charles Feldman reports the Federal Aviation Administration is making it easier for local law enforcement agencies to fly unmanned drones.

The FAA has streamlined the process that would allow agencies to fly smaller, unarmed versions of the drones that hunt down terrorists in places such as Pakistan and Afghanistan.

While the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has not yet applied for an application to fly drones over our skies, its Homeland Security chief Bob Osborne said drones could be in the department’s future — with some caveats.

CONTINUED at CBS Los Angeles.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus has announced it will introduce legislation designed to strip Americans of the right to defend themselves. Called “Stop Shoot First Laws,” the amendment to the Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations bill under consideration in the House would deny states federal funding allocated under section 505 of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 if they continue to allow citizens to defend themselves.

“Shoot first laws have already cost too many lives,” said Progressive Caucus co-chairs Keith Ellison and Raul Grijalva upon introducing their amendment. “In Florida alone, deaths due to self-defense have tripled since the law was enacted. Federal money shouldn’t be spent supporting states with laws that endanger their own people. This is no different than withholding transportation funds from states that don’t enforce seatbelt laws.”

“The message here is if you have this kind of law that your federal funding is going to take a hit because they make states less safe,” Adam Sarvana, communications director for Grijalva, toldPolitico.

In other words, the Democrats will force states to choose between putting their citizens at the mercy of violent criminals or taking federal largess.

Because the House does not have an open amendment process, the amendment will likely not see a vote on the floor. Ellison and Grijalva introduced the amendment in and effort to further politicize the Trayvon Martin case and increase pressure on the Second Amendment.

Democrats are using “Shoot First” instead of “Stand Your Ground” in an effort to portray self defense as homicide.

“Stand Your Ground” is a legal extension of the Castle doctrine stating that a person has a right to defend himself against an intruder. “Stand Your Ground” laws state that one can use deadly force in any location one is legally allowed to be and removes the requirement that the threat must occur on one’s own property.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus is the largest caucus within the Democratic caucus in Congress. It is supported by the Institute for Policy Studies, MoveOn.org, the NAACP, National Council of La Raza, Hip Hop Caucus, and other liberal and so-called “progressive” organizations.

Source: Infowars. Written by Kurt Nimmo.

Refuses to buy stock over privacy concerns.

In an interview with CNN, Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian said he would refuse to buy Facebook stock because of the company’s appalling attitude to privacy and its support for the CISPA bill.

“I’m not planning on it…I understand the business value to what Facebook is doing. We’ve never seen a company like this before–ever. And it knows things about our private lives that no one else does. And one of the big issues that a lot of us in the tech community have had of late has been their support for bills like CISPA that make it really easy for companies like Facebook to hand over private data about us without any due process. So that’s why I’ll be holding off,” said Ohanian.

Reddit joins Mozilla as the only other major tech company to decry CISPA, with firms like Facebook, Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Oracle, Symantec, AT&T and Verizon all backing the bill. Last week, Mozilla released a statement calling the legislation an “alarming” threat to privacy, adding, “The bill infringes on our privacy, includes vague definitions of cybersecurity, and grants immunities to companies and government that are too broad around information misuse.”

CISPA has been identified by many as a greater threat to privacy than SOPA, which was opposed by a deluge of major tech firms after a viral online opposition campaign, but because CISPA has received less attention, corporate giants have found it easier to stay mute.

Not only would CISPA mandate ISPs to share Internet data of users with government “notwithstanding any other provision of law,” it also empowers the Department of Homeland Securityto monitor the communications of the federal courts and Congress, and intercept tax returns sent to the IRS.

The bill “gives companies a free pass to monitor and collect communications and share that data with the government and other companies, so long as they do so for ‘cybersecurity purposes,’” the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has noted. “Just invoking ‘cybersecurity threats’ is enough to grant companies immunity from nearly all civil and criminal liability, effectively creating an exemption from all existing law.”

CONTINUED at Prison Planet. Written by Paul Joseph Watson. Video at link.

*Written by Rob Rimes.

I barely have time to write this essay or whatever you want to officially call it, just as I haven’t had much time to write anything lately. Right now I am trying to finish up a few projects for work while packing and prepping for my long weekend trip to Gainesville. I’m going up there to visit my cousin and his college aged friends – some in school, some not. The booze will be aplenty and the party atmosphere should be monolithic, as that wild college town never fails to disappoint in the realm of pure debauchery and substance-enchanced frenzies. Between the usually free-spirited and good-hearted college kids encompassing downtown and the campus areas to the good ol’ boys on the outskirts of the concentrated action, trouble is something hard for one to avoid when the ante is upped and the whiskey is flowing. The only thing that can stop such fun-filled insanity is one of those damned Sunday nights when you are ill-prepared and find yourself out of alcohol in a county that decides to go dry for twenty-four hours during the Deep South’s weekly church day. Last trip, I found myself and a few of my cousin’s friends driving frantically through the dark North Central Florida wilderness in an effort to cross the county line and find anywhere that might have any sort of alcohol available for purchase. It was also a race against the clock as it was about closing time for most liquor stores in the state. Luckily, the mission was accomplished and we left with some fanciful artistic vanity beers, some PBR and a couple bottles of various 80 proof (or higher) swill.

This is probably what awaits me over the course of the next few days and I do need to get my shit together for the small vacation. However, I couldn’t resist sitting down at my temperamental Apple computer to type up my thoughts on the events of today. Hell, it isn’t even noon yet but the news is full of stories about the Paul Family. It’s a good day to be a Ron and Rand Paul supporter, as things are seemingly looking up in a few different ways.

To start, the Paul Revolution v2.0 is underway! Sure, I am really looking way ahead here but the younger Dr. Paul is doing all the right things and going against the grain so successfully that the media cannot ignore him. He is sticking out like a sore thumb against a backdrop of middle fingers. He isn’t playing the party politics game and isn’t succumbing to the Beltway bullshit while the vast majority of all the other Tea Party darlings have auctioned off their souls. In fact, Rand Paul probably pisses the Tea Party people off as they are really just grassroots establishment stooges at this point in the game. He is the antithesis to their heroes Marco Rubio, Michele Bachmann, Col. Allen West, Herman Cain, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and now Mitt Romney. Rand Paul recognizes the tyranny that is running rampant due to the PATRIOT Act and NDAA. He knows that the Department of Homeland Security is an over-inflated branch of the government that assaults our constitutional rights. He doesn’t try to convince himself that he must surrender his principles to fear and embrace the ever-expanding police state. As a senator and a direct victim of the TSA’s special brand of tyranny, he knows all too well how far their big brother fingers reach into the heart of liberty.

Rand Paul has officially made it his mission to end the TSA and to free the heart of liberty from their death grip. Like most Americans, Rand is tired of the harassment and horrible treatment of American citizens at the hands of these tyrannical bottom-feeders. Ultimately, he is sick and tired of the horrendous violations against our constitutional rights. To combat the tyranny, he has come forward with new legislation simply called the ‘END the TSA Bill’. You can actually sign a petition in support of the bill at ChooseLiberty.org.

In a nutshell, this law would forcibly privatize the TSA. What that means is that the government would not be able to put their hands on airport security. By privatizing the TSA, it doesn’t end airport security, it opens up competition from all over to come in and compete for the job. In order for the TSA to survive, it would have to adapt to the will of the people and the business owners (i.e. the airports and airlines) or else it would be swallowed up by a competitor that would. This brings the free market into airport security and therefore allows a company that is willing to find the balance between actually effective security practices and respecting the rights of those who pass through their gates. It is a win/win scenario for the citizens, the airports, the airlines and the company that is able to provide the absolute best service. If this scares you than don’t worry, I’m sure your other war-mongering fear turtle Tea Party darlings will strike it down. Ultimately, that is the real problem here and until we get other men and women in Congress who have the sense of Dr. Paul Sr. and Dr. Paul Jr., championing freedom back into our lives will be futile. However, it’s not all bad as the Paul Family message is growing larger everyday.

The second thing worth mentioning is the fact that even though it is pretty clear that Mitt Romney is going to go head-to-head with Obama in November, Ron Paul is still in this thing – making the GOP side of things very interesting. It is a two-man race between Ron Paul and Mitt Romney as every other candidate in this thing has dropped out to sign book deals and television contracts. The two-man race between Paul and Romney was made official today, as even Fox News couldn’t continue their blackout. Nope, Fox News announced that Ron Paul has officially qualified to be able to be the Republican nominee for president, if they decide to choose him over Romney (they won’t). This pivotal point in the race will take place at the Republican National Convention coming up in a few months in Tampa, FL.

Ron Paul has stayed in through thick and thin and has now met all the requirements for his name to be put up there alongside frontrunner Mitt Romney. I guess his delegate-hunting tactic has worked and paid off. This is great news, not because he has a chance of winning at this point – I firmly believe he doesn’t, but because he will be at the convention – in front of the world and will have the opportunity to spread his message further into the minds of all the Americans preparing for the big race between two big government progressive hyenas laughing at those who believe that there is some sort of difference between the two of them: there isn’t.

This could be Ron Paul’s Reagan moment. Like Ronald Reagan’s speech at the 1964 Republican National Convention, where Barry Goldwater won the nomination, Paul’s speech could unleash a tsunami wave of pro-liberty thinking. Sure, it is too little too late for the elder Dr. Paul, as he is walking away from politics after this election, but his son could be set up to take the reigns from his father and push this message forward with youthful vigor and vigilance for decades to come! One can only hope that generations of Pauls continue to follow the path of Ron and Rand and keep giving us a legacy of liberty that isn’t willing to compromise with the beast to save face and further their careers by sacrificing their principles. This brings me to my next point.

Rand Paul has a serious ball that he can pick up and run with. His father has done a fantastic job of laying the groundwork for the next generation to use to their advantage. Maybe this has been the Paul family agenda all along; who knows? The point is, the foundation has been built and it is pretty fucking strong. Guys like Rand Paul, Justin Amash and Gary Johnson could use this to their advantage and really our advantage as well. I don’t think that this is the year for Gary Johnson but the future could be very bright for him as well as the younger Paul and Congressman Amash. In 2016 or 2020, we could have a real pro-constitutional candidate in the mix who has enough steam and power to bulldoze through the establishment competition. If the momentum of the Paul message continues, the people just may be ready to commit and see this thing through. The numbers could very well be to the advantage of truth and for the first time in a very long time, America could move in the right direction. That is, of course, if the current crop of politicians don’t completely burn DC to the ground.

I know that I have come across as overly pessimistic at times in my writings, especially as of late, but it is hard to not give up hope when the hole you are in is so deep that you can’t even see the surface above you anymore. Maybe everything will crash and burn and at this rate, it is the most likely outcome but even if this does happen, we still need the type of leaders that can get us out of all this. Eventually the damage may be so bad that the only thing we can do is rebuild from the ground up. We will all pay for the crimes committed from those we elected and truthfully, we deserve to pay the price of our own ignorance and blindness. Our complete lack of vigilance and our blind faith in political parties has been our downfall. You can continue to point the finger at Washington DC, the Federal Reserve, Wall Street or whoever else but the truth is, American citizens are the ones who are at fault. The longer we assume that government will take responsibility for our lives and our well-being, the longer we will have to live with our heads in the clouds as shivering weaklings unworthy of walking on the same soil as our Founding Fathers. Until we overcome our own denial we won’t overcome our own self-perpetuating tragedy. The bull is staring coldly into our eyes, right in front of our goddamned faces but we aren’t grabbing the fucking horns! Why?!

This isn’t a dose of pessimism, it’s a dose of realism. With that said, to be real, I feel the need to point out that, in this case, the proverbial “beacon of light that guides freedom-loving people everywhere” could just be Senator Rand Paul. An article I came across on Business Insider’s website this morning talks about Rand’s potential 2016 or 2020 presidential run and how he is already working towards building a solid relationship with many of the key people that can help him reach levels greater than his father. Hell, the Evangelical sect of the voting public is taking to the younger Paul even though historically, they have not been too supportive of his father. Christian TV producer Justin Machacek said it best when comparing Rand to his father:

From my perspective, Rand is certainly more popular. I think he’s from a younger generation and I think he speaks a more modern language. He’s easier to understand, so I think his message is much clearer. Not that it’s a different message from a policy standpoint, but I think his communication style resonates much better.

Things are looking up for the Paul legacy, despite whatever the horrible results of the 2012 election will be, and if the right people are won over before the next election cycle and the message of constitutionalism continues to expand, the future could be bright. Of course, playing devil’s advocate, this is assuming that the Republican Party can actually change or that a third party could actually rise to challenge the two party monopoly. As hopeless as it seems, it’s very much possible if we want it badly enough.

Now grab the fucking horns.

New legislation would abolish government involvement in airport security.

Senator Rand Paul has issued a press release in which he vows to lead the charge to “end the TSA” and put a stop to the needless and humiliating groping of toddlers and grandmothers.

Earlier this year, Paul was detained by the TSA after refusing to submit to an invasive pat down after already having passed through a body scanner. The incident prompted national headlines and caused the Senator to miss his flight.

“It’s time to END the TSA and get the government’s hands back to only stealing our wallets instead of groping toddlers and grandmothers,” says Paul in the statement.

The accompanying article sent out to Campaign for Liberty members encourages recipients to sign a petition in support of Rand Paul’s ‘End the TSA’ bill.

The legislation would forcibly privatize the TSA and kick government out of airport security entirely. A recently passed bill actually allows airports to replace TSA screeners with private security but they have to go through a complex TSA permission process to do so, meaning only a handful of small airports have applied to evict the TSA.

Financial contributions are also being sought to launch a “full, targeted media campaign to convince representatives and senators to either get on board or be held responsible for this continuing outrage.” A previous ‘End the TSA Money Bomb’ started by Congressman Ron Paul following his son’s treatment at the hands of the federal agency has already raised over $1.6 million dollars.

The email points out that the TSA’s invasive and dangerous body scanners have been proven to be completely useless, most recently by engineer Jon Corbett who was able to fool the device by simply sowing an object into a side pocket.

The email lists a handful of recent TSA outrages amidst the deluge that occur on a weekly basis.

- A TSA agent patting down a young girl at New Orleans’ Louis Armstrong International Airport in 2011. The video shows a cooperative family, and when the girl’s mother asks, “Can’t you just re-scan her?” the agent replies, “No” and proceeds to grope the poor child;

- A cancer survivor in Charlotte was forced to remove a prosthetic breast;

- A young mother of a two-week-old infant in Florida was harassed to open the bottles of baby formula she was traveling with on her flight, which would have spoiled the only food available to the infant;

- Detroit TSA officers ignored a man’s warning about a colostomy bag, breaking it and forcing him to board a plane covered in urine.

Read the full text of Rand Paul’s statement below. Donate to the ‘End the TSA’ cause by clicking here.

Sometimes our liberty slips away silently, and it is almost hard to notice what went wrong and where. The one fortunate thing about the TSA is that they certainly don’t fit that definition.

The American people shouldn’t be subjected to harassment, groping, and other public humiliation simply to board an airplane. As you may have heard, I have some personal experience with this, and I’ve vowed to lead the charge to fight back.

Please read the email below from my friend Matt Hawes at Campaign for Liberty. Campaign for Liberty is leading the fight to pressure Congress to act now and restore our liberty. It’s time to END the TSA and get the government’s hands back to only stealing our wallets instead of groping toddlers and grandmothers.

I hope you will join Campaign for Liberty in this fight.

In Liberty,

Senator Rand Paul

*********************

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show and Infowars Nightly News.

Source: Prison Planet.

My thoughts on what some in the Tea Party call the Conservative Savior. Who really is Marco Rubion and what does he stand for? Is he just a puppet for the Bush family? This and much more. Subscribe to my channel for weekly updates and follow me @Fabian4Liberty

A new proposal by Texas Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee threatens to give the Department of Homeland Security the power to spy on Congress and the Judicial Branch.

Under Jackson Lee’s amendment, the already controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) — a bill that would enable the sharing of information  about cyber threats between intelligence agencies and private corporations — would also empower the secretary of DHS to “intercept” and “use” information collected on federally-affiliated networks.

The amendment would also authorize the secretary of DHS to enact “countermeasures” against perceived network threats.

In particular, the amendment reads, ”the content of communications will be collected and retained only when communication is associated with known or reasonably suspected cybersecurity threat, and communications and system traffic will not be associated with such threats.”

A broad range of civil and digital liberties groups across the ideological spectrum have repeatedly expressed their concerns over the bill.

“Ryan Radia, associate director of technology studies at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian-leaning think tank that has criticized CISPA, suggested that it could also allow DHS to monitor the communications of the federal courts and Congress, and intercept tax returns sent to the IRS,” CNET reported on Tuesday evening.

CISPA — first introduced in November 2011 — currently enjoys the support of 112 cosponsors and a broad range of business groups. Facebook has also come out in support of the bill, much to the displeasure of many Internet users. As of Monday, 18 Democratic congressmen and Texas Republican Rep. Ron Paul had voiced their opposition to the bill.

CONTINUED at The Daily Caller.

Apologists here for Obama’s use of executive orders point out the other recent presidents who’ve also overreached their use of executive orders. This makes the abuses more important, not less, as this has been an on-going deviation from the Constitutional limits of the president since at least FDR in the 30s. An executive branch run wild makes the abuses of kings and dictators almost inevitable. That is why it must be reined in; that’s why the framers constructed limited powers in their document. On the otherhand, there’s clear evidence that all of Obama & co.’s study of the Constitution must have been focuses on tactics to skirt its limitations.