A. The US Supreme Court has found roadblocks to be legal for a variety of purposes, the most prominent being so-called “sobriety check points.” There is a longer history of roadblock approvals related to checking vehicles near or at national border crossings…
Everyone knows about the military-industrial complex, which, in his farewell address, President Eisenhower warned had the potential to “endanger our liberties or democratic process” but have you heard of the “Deep State?”
Mike Lofgren, a former GOP congressional staff member with the powerful House and Senate Budget Committees, joins Bill to talk about what he calls the Deep State, a hybrid of corporate America and the national security state, which is “out of control” and “unconstrained.” In it, Lofgren says, elected and unelected figures collude to protect and serve powerful vested interests. “It is … the red thread that runs through the history of the last three decades. It is how we had deregulation, financialization of the economy, the Wall Street bust, the erosion or our civil liberties and perpetual war,” Lofgren tells Bill.
Lofgren says the Deep State’s heart lies in Washington, DC, but its tentacles reach out to Wall Street, which Lofgren describes as “the ultimate backstop to the whole operation,” Silicon Valley and over 400,000 contractors, private citizens who have top-secret security clearances. Like any other bureaucracy, it’s groupthink that drives the Deep State.
In conjunction with this week’s show, Mike Lofgren has written an exclusive essay, “Anatomy of the Deep State.”
Producer: Gina Kim. Segment Producer: Lena Shemel. Editor: Rob Kuhns. Intro Editor: Sikay Tang.
Bend over, grab your ankles, turn your head and cough, and pee in the cup or we cannot let you on the bus… this is going to get frigging ridiculous, and real quickly.
Counter-terrorism experts have renewed calls to tighten security on America’s mass transit lines following two would-be terrorists’ foiled plot to blow up a Toronto passenger train.
The alleged plan to attack Canada’s transit system has shed light on the vulnerabilities that still exist in America’s commuter system and the challenges involved in keeping it safe for travelers.
“The millions of Americans who take public transportation need to be assured that everything possible is being done to ensure their security and safety,” American Public Transportation Association President and CEO Michael Melaniphy told FoxNews.com on Monday, adding that federal funding should be increased.
… “This country has to change its outlook on day-to-day life,” he said. “We can’t let out guard down.”
….ORWELL’S 1984 IS HAPPENING. We are one crisis away from a police state. All the powers are in place. Someone will flip the switch. Whether a Cyber Attack, escalating Currency War tensions or a ‘terrorist’ attack by indebted college youth, it is only a matter of time and circumstance.
click the pic to read the entire dsytopic tonic on this topic at ZeroHedge
Regardless of how many wars on poverty are declared and how often calls are issued to make the rich pay their fair share, neither the rich nor the poor will be going anywhere anytime soon. The question is what forces will keep the poor impoverished and where the rich will derive their wealth from.
The founder of Subway recently said that he could not have started up his company today. Similar messages have come from the founders and heads of other major companies. That isn’t to say that companies will cease to exist. What we think of as business has been changing for some time.
In most countries, starting a business does not begin with a great idea. It begins with connections. Knowing the right people is still important, but in most places it’s the most important thing. Continue reading →
DC has always been distant from the people. Apart from the IRS and the draft, they were “the other” we read about in the papers, running gangsters and spies to ground, getting the interstate built, fighting wars and generally looking out for the Little Guy. We believed they were the Big Picture People doing things on the largest scale on behalf of all who worked hard, lived responsibly and stayed right with the law. DC was the captain and crew of our mighty ship, alert and sure, cutting cleanly through heavy seas and turgid morass alike, while their grateful passengers shuddered at the hardship and horrors beyond the delights of the endless buffet on the promenade deck. Continue reading →
The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decisions regarding police powers were mixed, thus offering a reminder to civil libertarians that they cannot depend upon the high court to protect the public from unwarranted government intrusions.
“The U.S. Supreme Court handed police one victory and one loss on Tuesday,” reported National Public Radio. “In one decision, the justices limited the power of police to detain people who are away from their homes when police conduct a search. And in a second case, the justices ruled that drug-sniffing dogs don’t have to get every sniff right in order for a search to be valid.” Continue reading →
So if you had any doubt that NDAA, CISPA, DHS, drones, warrant-less searches, TSA, the Newtown-circus and citizen disarmament etc. were a prelude to your preemptive criminalization, consider yourself disabused of that comforting notion.
Make no mistake about it you tinfoil hat wearing, gun toting, Bible clinging, knuckle dragging anachronisms: YOU ARE the the threat. YOU are the enemy. YOU must be handled, managed, silenced, marginalized and entrapped.
The state fears nothing so much as an awakened, empowered and angry citizenry and so you sheep are not allowed off the farm. Punishment will be severe.
So, what are you going to do? I think that the time for calls and letters to Congressmen, candlelight vigils, writing op-eds and cordial, thought provoking discourse to the uninformed has long been over: That stuff is pointless. The time is here to get ready for the long pull, the dark struggle, the end game.
I say it is time to disappear, opt out and go Galt. I say the ‘laws’ and Government are now so illegal, so immoral that the only ethical course of action is to withdraw from that context. In other words, I quit. I am forming and fostering a new society of the like minded. If that makes me a “sovereign man” to you Mr. FBI person, so be it. And fuck you. I’ll be out here working for the good, and working against you if needed.
Good luck on getting me back in the corral.
G.E.
With almost no media coverage, the White House last week announced its new Interagency Working Group to Counter Online Radicalization to Violence that will target not only Islamic terrorists but so-called violent “sovereign citizens.” Continue reading →
“… He asked me would I mind if he searched my vehicle, and I said, ‘Well, yes, I would mind if you searched my vehicle.’ ”
But thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court, the deputy did not have to take no for an answer. In the 2005 case Illinois v. Caballes, the Court declared that “the use of a well-trained narcotics-detection dog…during a lawful traffic stop generally does not implicate legitimate privacy interests.” So the deputy was free to walk his dog around Burns’ truck. “He got out with this dog and went around the car, two or three times,” Burns says. “He came back and said the dog had ‘passively alerted’ on my vehicle.” via This Dog Can Send You to Jail – Reason.com.
…the US Constitution was essentially a coup; the delegates to what we now call the Constitutional Convention were not empowered to replace the existing government – only to improve upon the Articles of Confederation between the then-independent states. The framers of the Constitution drafted it with the notion of a national government already in place, but calmed fears of loss of state sovereignty by calling the new government the “United States of America” – a verbal sleight of hand that worked for over half a century. Then the southern states decided to exercise what these words imply, their right to leave the union… and as the government becomes more powerful, it’s completely predictable that everything – including the justice system – will become ever more politicized… As great as a US citizen’s risk is in the marketplace these days, the greatest single risk to their wealth and health is the government... via ZeroHedge
Project censored: The expanding police state tops the annual list of stories under-reported by the mainstream media, By Yael Chanoff – Thursday, October 11,2012
People who get their information exclusively from mainstream media sources may be surprised at the lack of enthusiasm on the left for President Barack Obama in this crucial election. But that’s probably because they weren’t exposed to the full online furor sparked by Obama’s continuation of his predecessor’s overreaching approach to national security, such as signing the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, which allows the indefinite detention of those accused of supporting terrorism, even U.S. citizens.
We’ll never know how this year’s election would be different if the corporate media adequately covered the NDAA’s indefinite detention clause and many other recent attacks on civil liberties. What we can do is spread the word and support independent media sources that do cover these stories. That’s where Project Censored comes in. Continue reading →
“Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grand-children are once more slaves.”
“Cubic is the world’s leading provider of automated payment and fare collection systems and services for the transportation industry.” Cubic’s purchase of Abraxas in 2010 for $124 million (US) in cash made sense looking at where the $1.2 billion dollar Cubic Company does business. A large chunk of that money comes from its Defense Systems and Mission Support Operations segments (where Abraxas is apparently operating). Roughly $415 million comes from its Transportation division.
Cubic’s acquisition of Abraxas and its magic bag full of electronic tracking/snooping tools was made two years prior to the 2012 Olympic Games in London.In 2011. The transit authority there had recently installed video cameras on all of its 191 buses. Continue reading →
…The amendment was sponsored by Democratic Sens. Frank Lautenberg N.J., Barbara Boxer Calif., Jack Reed R.I., Bob Menendez N.J., Kirsten Gillibrand N.Y., Schumer and Dianne Feinstein Calif.. S.A. 2575 would make it illegal to transfer or possess large capacity feeding devices such as gun magazines, belts, feed stripes and drums of more than 10 rounds of ammunition with the exception of .22 caliber rim fire ammunition…via The Hill’s Video.
The police state is not only here – it is being welcomed with open arms. Exhibit A: In Aurora, Colorado, police searching for suspected bank robbers locked down an entire intersection, dragooned 40 random motorists out of their cars at gunpoint, handcuffed them and “asked” for permission to search their vehicles…. via A Robbery of a Different Kind | Eric Peters Autos.
Wall Street is Treasury and the Fed, while Google is the Pentagon. Only natural. I.e.:
One of the most top-secret Pentagon departments — the same that spawned America’s drones, military robots, electromagnetic guns and other sci-fi weaponry — is about to lose its top officer to Google. Continue reading →
… This is not a law. It’s simply a new policy that a federal agency decided to impose, in its sole discretion. And it happens every single day across the hundreds of federal agencies in Washington– a sort of ‘self-legislation’ which creates thousands of pages of new regulations that each and every American is obliged to obey. Not exactly what the Founding Fathers had in mind…
In the case of FinCEN, the agency has conjured a rule creating (by their estimate) 31,000 new unpaid government spies. You might be one of them. And in the coming months, you can expect more rulings that will apply to other professions– real estate agents, pawn brokers, and just about anyone who deals in cash.
Recently, I published an article covering the January 22-26 multi-agency exercises being conducted in the Los Angeles area.
As I outlined in the article, this is in fact part of a broader trend of joint military-police drills (which often include other agencies, hence the “multi-agency” label) that have been occurring across the United States.
It seems hard to ignore the fact that the armed forces of the United States are training for urban warfare, not urban warfare in the Middle East, but instead here in our own nation. via Activist Post
and let’s not forget about all of those dangerous veterans that we have to be afraid of too: see Kevin Hayden’s take on an article claiming that “Police Get Help With Confronting Veterans”(see my posthere)
A Colorado judge this week ordered a woman to decrypt her laptop so that law enforcement officials could use the information against her in a pending fraud case.
“I find and conclude that the Fifth Amendment is not implicated by requiring production of the unencrypted contents of the Toshiba Satellite M305 laptop computer,” Judge Robert Blackburn wrote in his decision. […] In the course of the investigation, the FBI executed search warrants on Fricosu’s home and seized her Toshiba Satellite M305 laptop, among other devices. Upon inspection, however, they discovered that the device was encrypted, barring the agents access to its contents.
Fricosu has refused to provide the password to her computer, asserting her privilege against self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment.
In reaching his decision, Judge Blackburn referenced the case of Sebastien Boucher, who was arrested in December 2006 when he and his father tried to cross the Canadian border into Vermont. Border officials found child porn on his computer and confiscated the device, but when they tried to access it later, it was password-protected. By December 2007, a Vermont federal judge ruled that Boucher could not be forced to reveal his computer password and incriminate himself.
On appeal, however, a grand jury required Boucher to produce a decrypted version of his hard drive, not the password. With this workaround, constitutional rights are not violated, the jury found, because the contents of the device “are a foregone conclusion…”
Google said Tuesday it will follow the activities of users across e-mail, search, YouTube and other services, a shift in strategy that is expected to invite greater scrutiny of its privacy and competitive practices. The information will enable Google to develop a fuller picture of how people use its growing empire of Web sites. Consumers will have no choice but to accept the changes… via The Washington Post.
“…. Let’s be clear,” [Press Secretary] Carney said. “The passenger was not detained. He was escorted out of the area by local law-enforcement.”
But Sen. Paul told TheDC that he certainly felt like he was detained. “If you’re told you can’t leave, does that count as detention?” Paul asked.“I tried to leave the cubicle to speak to one of the TSA people and I was barked at: ‘Do not leave the cubicle!’ So, that, to me sounds like I’m being asked not to leave the cubicle. It sounds a little bit like I’m being detained.”
Levin’s verdict: Barack Obama and modern American liberals are firmly in the Utopian camp—pursuing a vision fundamentally at odds with limited government and human freedom…“I believe to a great extent we now live in a post-constitutional country, where much of the Constitution is ignored or evaded,” Levin told CNSNews.com. Mark Levin on ‘Ameritopia| CNSnews.com.
Depressing synopsized word cloud follows (don’t bother reading it. GE.) … National Security Agency, NSA, eavesdropping, private email, phone calls, security/industrial complex, marriage of government, military and corporate interests, keeping Americans under constant surveillance, GPS tracking, secret spying on Americans, technology, our ability to control it, our Frankenstein, given it free rein in our lives, Continue reading →
One of the most extraordinary documents in human history — the Bill of Rights — has come to an end under President Barack Obama. Derived from sacred principles of natural law, the Bill of Rights has come to a sudden and catastrophic end with the President’s signing of the National Defense Authorization Act NDAA, a law that grants the U.S. military the “legal” right to conduct secret kidnappings of U.S. citizens, followed by indefinite detention, interrogation, torture and even murder.
Another example of your fine public servants looking out for you…
…The gang in question is the Spokane Police Department, which even now refuses to acknowledge that Thompson – who was a nominee to become Chief at the time he murdered Zehm – ever did anything wrong when he clubbed, tased, and suffocated a terrified, innocent man who did nothing to provoke the attack, and who put up no violent resistance to the assault…
” If Obama does one thing for the remainder of his presidency let it be a veto of the National Defense Authorization Act – a law recently passed by the Senate which would place domestic terror investigations and interrogations into the hands of the military and which would open the door for trial-free, indefinite detention of anyone, including American citizens, so long as the government calls them terrorists…”
Madison Ruppert, Contributing Writer | Activist Post
“This is one of the most tragic events I have written about since establishing End the Lie over eight months ago: the horrendous bill that would turn all of America into a battlefield and subject American citizens to indefinite military detention without charge or trial has passed the Senate.
To make matters even worse, only seven of our so-called representatives voted against the bill, proving once and for all if anyone had any doubt remaining that our government does not work for us in any way, shape, or form.S.1867, or the National Defense Authorization Act NDAA for the fiscal year of 2012, passed with a resounding 93-7 vote....”
“… If the Supreme Court finds that law enforcement were within the law when placing a GPS tracking device on the car of suspected drug smuggler and nightclub owner Antoine Jones, it would open the door for even more egregious violations of our privacy. This decision would essentially allow the government to monitor anyone and everyone’s movements without a warrant for any reason or no reason at all… ”
The US Supreme Court delved Tuesday into the issue of privacy amid 21st century technology, hearing arguments on whether police can use a GPS device attached to a vehicle to track a suspect without a search warrant…At issue is whether by attaching a GPS, or Global Positioning System tracking device without a warrant, police violated the man’s constitutional guarantee in the Fourth Amendment against unreasonable search and seizure…
Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben told the nine justices on the top US court that the GPS device simply monitored the suspect’s location on public streets, which could be done by police visually without the need for a warrant. The US government attorney said the GPS technology simply “can make police more efficient” and that “police efficiency has never been equated with an invasion of privacy.”
But comments from the justices were skeptical. “If you win this case, there is nothing preventing you from monitoring the movements of every citizen of the United States 24 hours a day,” said Justice Stephen Breyer...
The Patriot Act should never have been passed. Ten years later, it should be repealed for at least four reasons…
First, the Patriot Act attacks the First Amendment…
* Americans can be investigated for what they read and write, and what websites they’ve visited
* The Feds can “gag” my bank, my librarian, and my Internet Service Provider, preventing them from telling me if I’m under investigation
Second, it undermines the Fourth Amendment…
* The Feds do not even have to show “reasonable suspicion,” let alone “probable cause,” to gain access to my records
* Because I can be investigated without my knowledge, I have no means to challenge illegitimate searches
Third, there is little reason to believe terror acts have been prevented by the Patriot Act…
* If the law was used to foil terrorist plots, the Administration would boast about such instances
* Instead, foiled terrorist plots are frequently sting operations using undercover operatives and informants
Fourth, there is reason to doubt whether protecting the people from terrorism was ever the Patriot Act’s real purpose…
* Expanded wiretap and search authority are used in ordinary domestic criminal investigations, not just in terror cases
* The Executive branch has a “secret” interpretation of the Patriot Act that is inconsistent with a plain reading of it
* Meanwhile, the FBI continues to collect data collection through National Security Letters — some 40-50 thousand are issued per year (http://tinyurl.com/3varjc9)
How is it permissible for the Executive to have “secret” interpretations of the law? What is the Executive doing with the information it secretly collects about us, without our knowledge? Shouldn’t citizens of a Republic be ASHAMED of this behavior by their “government?”
The Patriot Act attacks our freedom, our values, and our way of life — the very things its supporters claim it protects. It promotes secrecy and prevents accountability in our federal government. It has fostered a Big Brother culture throughout Washington DC that led to similarly egregious legislation like REAL ID and the FISA Amendments Act.
Put an end to this dangerous trend. Stand up and speak out on behalf of the Bill of Rights and against the Surveillance State. Introduce legislation to repeal the Patriot Act.
Americans have long maintained that a man’s home is his castle and that he has the right to defend it from unlawful intruders. Unfortunately, that right may be disappearing. Over the last 25 years, America has seen a disturbing militarization of its civilian law enforcement, along with a dramatic and unsettling rise in the use of paramilitary police units (most commonly called Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT) for routine police work. The most common use of SWAT teams today is to serve narcotics warrants, usually with forced, unannounced entry into the home.
These increasingly frequent raids, 40,000 per year by one estimate, are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they’re sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers. These raids bring unnecessary violence and provocation to nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were guilty of only misdemeanors. The raids terrorize innocents when police mistakenly target the wrong residence. And they have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of drug offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders, and innocent suspects.
An alleged plot to attack U.S. federal law officers by suspected members of a fringe north Georgia militia group was inspired by an online anti-government novel, authorities said.The four listed in the indictment are Thomas; Dan Roberts, 67; Ray Adams, 65; and Samuel Crump, 68. The men live in the north Georgia towns of Cleveland and Toccoa.
Court documents state that 73-year-old Frederick Thomas, a suspected member of the group, told others that he intended to model their actions on the online novel “Absolved,” which involves small groups of citizens attacking U.S. officials.
According to a federal complaint. the four suspected members [my emphasis added to highlight what these nitwits actually MAY have done] …
were part of a group that tried to obtain an unregistered explosive device;
sought out the complex formula to produce ricin, a biological toxin that can be lethal in small doses,
had been talking about “covert” operations … discussing murder, theft and using toxic agents and assassinations to undermine the state and federal government;
At one meeting, investigators say, [Thomas] openly discussed creating a “bucket list” of government employees, politicians, corporate leaders and members of the media he felt needed to be “taken out.”
“I’ve been to war, and I’ve taken life before, and I can do it again,” he told an undercover investigator, according to the records.
[Thomas and Roberts are] accused of buying what they believed was a silencer and an unregistered explosive from an undercover informant in May and June.
Prosecutors say he discussed using the weapons in attacks against federal buildings,
[Crump also] discussed making 10 pounds of ricin and dispersing it in Atlanta and various cities across the nation, suggesting it can be blown out of a car speeding down an interstate highway;
[Adams] is accused of showing an informant the formula to make ricin and identifying the ways to obtain the ingredients;
[Thomas] is accused of driving to Atlanta with a confidential informant on May 24 and scoping out an IRS building there and an ATF building “to plan and assess for possible attacks,” the indictment states.
And now the punchline: ” U.S. Attorney Sally Quillian Yates said the case is a reminder that “we must also remain vigilant in protecting our country from citizens within our own borders who threaten our safety and security.”
Thus, these four elderly rubes – all stupid enough not to avoid being framed and to be able to maintain basic operational security in their ‘terrorist operation’ – are now trotted out as one more reason to strip civil liberties from United States citizens. I guess that the FBI was having trouble finding enough home grown Muslim terrorists to justify the police state.
Ten years ago today, in the name of protecting national security and guarding against terrorism, President George W. Bush signed into law some of the most sweeping changes to search and surveillance law in modern American history. Unfortunately known as the USA PATRIOT Act, many of its provisions incorporate decidedly unpatriotic principles barred by the First and Fourth Amendments of the Constitution. Provisions of the PATRIOT Act have been used to target innocent Americans and are widely used in investigations that have nothing to do with national security.
Much of the PATRIOT Act was a wish list of changes to surveillance law that Congress had previously rejected because of civil liberties concerns. When reintroduced as the PATRIOT Act after September 11th, those changes — and others — passed with only limited congressional debate.
Just what sort of powers does the PATRIOT Act grant law enforcement when it comes to surveillance and sidestepping due process? Here are three provisions of the PATRIOT Act that were sold to the American public as necessary anti-terrorism measures, but are now used in ways that infringe on ordinary citizens’ rights:
This is what we are supposed to buy into as a justification for our police-state? A 26 year old entrapped loan wolf with some model airplanes and blocks of FBI-supplied silly putty?! Groan….We are being played.
Q. Are roadblocks legal?
…Top 20 U.S. Airports for TSA Agent Firings for Theft
DC has always been distant from the people. Apart from the IRS and the draft, they were “the other” we read about in the papers, running gangsters and spies to ground, getting the interstate built, fighting wars and generally looking out for the Little Guy. We believed they were the Big Picture People doing things on the largest scale on behalf of all who worked hard, lived responsibly and stayed right with the law. DC was the captain and crew of our mighty ship, alert and sure, cutting cleanly through heavy seas and turgid morass alike, while their grateful passengers shuddered at the hardship and horrors beyond the delights of the endless buffet on the promenade deck. Continue reading 
“… He asked me would I mind if he searched my vehicle, and I said, ‘Well, yes, I would mind if you searched my vehicle.’ ”
People who get their information exclusively from mainstream media sources may be surprised at the lack of enthusiasm on the left for President Barack Obama in this crucial election. But that’s probably because they weren’t exposed to the full online furor sparked by Obama’s continuation of his predecessor’s overreaching approach to national security, such as signing the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, which allows the indefinite detention of those accused of supporting terrorism, even U.S. citizens.
“Cubic is the world’s leading provider of automated payment and fare collection systems and services for the transportation industry.” Cubic’s purchase of Abraxas in 2010 for $124 million (US) in cash made sense looking at where the $1.2 billion dollar Cubic Company does business. A large chunk of that money comes from its Defense Systems and Mission Support Operations segments (where Abraxas is apparently operating). Roughly $415 million comes from its Transportation division.
Recently, I published an article covering the January 22-26 multi-agency exercises being conducted in the Los Angeles area.
The Grey Enigma 