Congress Killed Our Privacy and Empowered the NSA

Which is more dangerous to personal liberty in a free society: a renegade who tells an inconvenient truth about government law-breaking, or government officials who lie about what the renegade revealed? That's the core issue in the great public debate this summer, as Americans come to the realization that their government has concocted a system of laws violative of the natural law, profoundly repugnant to the Constitution and shrouded in secrecy.
The liberty of which I write is the right to privacy: the right to be left alone. The Framers jealously and zealously guarded this right by imposing upon government agents intentionally onerous burdens before letting them invade it. They did so in the Fourth Amendment, using language that permits the government to invade that right only in the narrowest of circumstances.

http://reason.com/archives/2013/06/27/congress-killed-our-privacy-and-empowere 

Euro-Crisis

Italy to Spend 1.5 Billion Euros on Youth Employment

BBC

• Greek Prime Minister Says Saving Greece is the "Overriding Ideology" of His Government

  UPI

• Irish Bankers Joked About Luring the Government Into Subsidizing Business

  Irish Independent

• Democratic Left Party Leaves Greek Coalition Government

  BBC

Modern-Day Puritans Want to Ban Things That Make Us Happy

People say America is a free country. But what if you want to drink, have a cigarette or make a bet? Government often says "no" to protect us from ourselves.
It's as if the government is still run by the Puritans who settled this land four centuries ago. They said pleasure and luxury are sinful.
Today's government has a better argument when it seeks to restrict activities that might harm others, but I notice that even then, it often focuses more on things that upset modern-day Puritans.
Drinking and driving can be fatal. But government data show that sleeplessness and driving are just as deadly. Having kids in the back seat, looking at GPS map instructions, fiddling with the radio and eating while driving are often deadly, too.

http://reason.com/archives/2013/06/26/the-government-bans-fun-not-danger

Obama’s Eco-Assault on America

On Tuesday, President Obama announced a sweeping series of initiatives, including the use of executive powers, to combat global warming.
The plan will involve federal funding for renewable energy technology, and spending for areas hit by storms and droughts aggravated by an allegedly changing climate. Yet the most ambitious part of his agenda is an effort to force a reduction in so-called greenhouse gases from the nation’s coal-fired power plants. Prior to the speech, Daniel P. Schrag, a White House environmentalism adviser and director of the Harvard University Center for the Environment, got to the nub of that agenda: “Politically, the White House is hesitant to say they’re having a war on coal,” he explained. “On the other hand, a war on coal is exactly what’s needed.” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) explained the consequences of such a war. “Declaring a ‚ÄòWar on Coal’ is tantamount to declaring a war on jobs,” he said. “It’s tantamount to kicking the ladder out from beneath the feet of many Americans struggling in today’s economy.”

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/56177 

SEC Cleared on Its Probe Into Stanford Ponzi Scam

The Securities and Exchange Commission should not face a class action for its failure to investigate R. Allen Stanford's $7 billion Ponzi scheme, a federal judge ruled.
     Several investors in Stanford International Bank Ltd. sued the agency in 2012, seeking relief under the Federal Tort Claims Act. They said the SEC knew of the bank and Stanford Group Co.'s scheming, and that former Fort Worth regional enforcement director Spencer Barasch "was negligent and engaged in deliberate misconduct" by failing to investigate before the investors suffered massive losses.
     "Had Barasch not done as he did, none of the plaintiffs would or even could have invested with SIBL - its' doors would have been shut - and the damages suffered by the plaintiffs would have been completely avoided," according to their complaint.
     The federal government later moved to dismiss the suit for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, arguing the SEC enjoys complete discretion in deciding what matters to investigate under the discretionary function exception to the FTCA.

http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/06/26/58858.htm 

Anatomy of a Controversy

The subject of climate change has returned to news headlines lately because of the president's speech at Georgetown U. However, the response by the broader population was not enthusiastic endorsement, but rather, intensification of the controversy. It's helpful to inquire how the transition came about.
It was 25 years ago this July that a Congressional hearing was staged to promote the idea that CO2 emitted by mankind burning fossil fuels is causing the globe to heat up excessively. Then-senator Al Gore was a major booster of the idea, which was subsequently emphasized in his book Earth in the Balance.
About 8 years ago, the belief was near-universal that global warming was real and dangerous. Since then, new scientific data has emerged showing it isn't so. Moreover, people have learned that the cost of complying with proposals to eliminate CO2 will be very high.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/06/anatomy_of_a_controversy.html#ixzz2XPiE8xii

Obama’s War on Prosperity

President Obama’s Administration is beginning to feel like one endless freshman orientation, you remember the kind where they used to sit you down the first week of college and tell you you’d been oppressing blacks and women all your life and had to spend the next four years doing penance?
Four years ago he began his Inauguration by announcing that fossil fuels were a thing of the past and that we would now get our energy from “wind, sun and soil.” He spent the next four years trying unsuccessfully to push cap-and-trade through Congress and subsidizing a bunch of scraggly “renewable energy” projects that haven’t produced much of anything except a few notable scandals.

http://spectator.org/archives/2013/06/27/obamas-war-on-prosperity