A Quick Note On Airline Safety - Part 2

I mentioned yesterday that there was a simple solution to preventing exploding terrorists from getting onto airplanes. Dogs.

Janet Napolitano famously said "the system worked" and then began backpedaling furiously. Apparently someone pointed out to her that the terrorist was not in fact stopped by Sky Marshal Chuck Norris, and instead was stopped by a his own inability to set his crotch-bomb on fire and some Dutch guy.

Perhaps, if we aren't going to get dogs to search passengers, and if we aren't going to coordinate intelligence between agencies who are fervently waving red flags, we should try another approach.

I suggest TSA hire these guys:
It would've prevented this attack.

A Quick Note On Airline Safety

The Terrorists' Secret Weapon
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-12-30/the-terrorists-secret-weapon/full/

The article mostly laments the TSA's inability to deploy some magical supertechnology that searches for airborne particles that indicate the presence of the explose compound PETN.

The article discusses the tech solution and at one point hints at the simple solution, but doesn't ask why it isn't used.

Let me make this as simple as possible:

From the article, where the writer doesn't seem to see what he just wrote:

Bomb-sniffing dogs can also detect PETN. Well-trained dogs can also sniff out particles left on a bomber’s clothing or body from having handled the powder.

Dogs and handlers work. Searches on people in the US are forbidden by the Supreme Court as government intruding into an individual's reasonable expectation of privacy.

The same does not hold true for people entering the United States. Nor do the airlines, who are allowing people access to their services, have to abide by the same rules as govt. If an individual voluntarily enters a service contract with the airline where the airline states "we reserve the right to sniff you with a dog", the problem is solved. Why? It's not the government (the dog and handler as extensions thereof) doing the sniffing. It's the private entity and the private individual entering the contract.

TSA, as a government institution, is by its very nature incapable of using dogs inside the US in such a fashion. TSA also doesn't check passengers and planes coming from Nigeria, Holland, or anywhere else outside the US.

The problem with this is that airlines will face the same nonsense that they did with the Flying Imams, a bunch of islamic agitators out to test airline security and sue anyone who said "yeah, those guys shouting "Allahu akbar!" are kinda suspicious". They were terrorists attacking us with legal means as well as physical means. They hoped to terrify us by accusing us of prejudice.

They hoped to make us feel shame for singling them out when they attack us. I'll liken it to having a toddler steal a cookie, and when the parent corrects the child (time-out, spanking, etc.), the child then accuses the parent of being mean. Any parent worth their salt will be an authority figure and not put up with that. A parent completely devoid of self-assurance will bend to their child's opinion of them and the child will have run of the house while the parent is devoid of will.

Note that these aren't statesmen, diplomats, negotiators, businessmen, or anything other civilized men (I'd say "and women", but Islam demeans and subjugates women). These aren't representatives of a state or a people asking for redress of greivances. These are fucking terrorists who want to kill people who've done them no harm. They're the toddler lashing out at their younger sibling because they know that hurts the parent.

But seeing as how dogs, like dancing, music, women, beer, short-sleeved shirts, men without beards, gays, lesbians, bacon, images of people (especially the rapist of Aisha), and pretty much everything offends muslims, there'll be some kind of outcry, and maybe a lawsuit terrorist (like the libel tourists) who come to sue with their multi-bazillions stolen from their people by being hereditary sheiks and princes.

If we ditch the "what will the terrorists think of us?" whimpering and just do what works, this problem would be dealt with.

Dogs are superb at detecting explosives, and especially with good handlers, provide for a very dynamic response to terrorism.

Even with all the other failures of the system - despite Janet Napolitano saying "it worked" when a terrorist failed to detonate his explosives because he was jumped by a Dutch guy - the addition of another line of defense would help to make it work - a dog would've found this. If everyone's so afraid of making a judgement call that they won't say "this dude's a terrorist" - even when the terrorist's father says "my son's a terrorist", then we need another line of defense.

Dogs work. Dogs aren't bigoted, dogs don't mistake a peaceful Sikh for a terrorist Muslim, dogs don't discriminate between humans - they won't overlook a white British convert to Islam and they won't harass any little old ladies. Their nose works just the same if it's Irshad Manji or Wafa Sultan they're walking past or if it's John Walker Lindh or David Hicks. They discriminate based on who's a terrorist carrying bombs and who's not.

Lt. Colonel Allen West

Lt. Colonel Allen West, U.S. Army (Ret.) is running for office in Florida's 22nd congressional district. Lt. Colonel West has a masters degree in political science. You can learn more about Lt. Colonel West at his campaign website. The following is an excerpt form a speech he made at the American Freedom tour in Fort Lauderdale, Florida:

America, this man is the type of people we need running for office.

Wreaths Across America

I had the pleasure this morning to attend a Wreaths Across America ceremony sponsored by the local Civil Air Patrol. The ceremony took place at Tyler Memorial Cemetery in Tyler, Texas. It was raining and cold, despite the weather, the ceremony boasted a decent turnout. Around 200 wreaths were laid on veteran's grave stones. Next year they are planning to lay over 1,000 wreaths, which will account for every veteran currently laid to rest in that cemetery.

The goal of Wreaths Across America is to:

Remember the fallen,

Honor those who serve,

Teach our children the value of freedom.

Being a combat veteran myself, I was allowed to participate in the ceremony by assisting other veterans place several wreaths on a memorial dedicated to fallen World War 2, Korean, and Vietnam veterans. After the ceremony was officially over, the attendees were allowed to assist veterans and the Civil Air Patrol in laying the 200 wreaths that were donated to the cause.

To view pictures of the event feel free to visit our Facebook site here.

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The Unconstitutionality of Government Healthcare

Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution delineates what the Congress of the United States can do in a legal sense. No where in this area, or in any area of the Constitution is health care mentioned as a right.

However, Article 1, Section 8.1 of the Constitution of the United States reads as follows:

"The Congress shall have the power... to provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States...."

This clause known as the general welfare clause, is the clause that the leftist in Washington hang their hat on whenever they feel the need to pass laws that by nature are unconstitutional. However, James Madison, in writing The Federalist #41, said the following:

"It has been urged and echoed, that the power 'to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States,' amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare."

Madison goes on to say that that very idea that congress can legislate whatever it wants is a "misconstruction" that:

"Had no other enumeration or definition of the powers of the Congress been found in the Constitution, than the general expressions just cited, the authors of the objection might have had some color for it; though it would have been difficult to find a reason for so awkward a form of describing an authority to legislate in all possible cases."

The "no other enumeration or definition of powers of Congress" Madison was writing about is the rest of Article 1, Section 8, which tells us exactly what the Congress can do. There was no need to put into the constitution what the Congress couldn't do, all that needed to be present was what it could do, every thing else was to be off limits to the Congress.

Further explaining himself Madison, defends his idea by stating:

"Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars."

So, he is saying it is a natural thing to make a general statement and then to further define it by adding specifics. Which means that if anything falls outside of those specifics, that it should not be considered part of the broader, previously made statement.

The two points to consider are that:

1. The constitution does not specifically allow the Congress to legislate health care.
2. Just because it isn't an enumerated power granted to Congress by the constitution does not mean that Congress can legislate healthcare under the general welfare clause.
   

So how does one then legally legislate health care? This is a good question to be asking your representatives in the House of Representatives and the Senators in Washington D.C. Rasmussen polls suggest a majority of Americans do not want anything to do with the House's or Senate's version of healthcare reform. Why don't they listen to us? Why do they insist on fundamentally changing the best heathcare system in the world?

Because our president told us:

And that my friends is EXACTLY what they intend to do, unless we as Americans unite against these socialist that are now in power and vote them out of office starting in November 2010, and cleaning up the rest of the mess in November 2012.

Manbearpig vs. Sooners

Manbearpig cultists and profiteers who've made their academic careers based on grants they receive by issuing chicken little warnings, and the Al Goreans who are already investing in the "carbon credit" market of artificial currency are busily assaulting those who've called East Anglia on their bogus non-science.

Even (Un)Scientific American is getting in on the advocacy journalism:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=scientists-respond-to-climategate-controversy

With all the "hot air" surrounding climate change discussions, none has been hotter in recent weeks than that spewed over a trove of stolen e-mails and computer code from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in England. Longstanding contrarians, such as Sen. James Inhofe (R–Okla.), who famously dubbed climate change a "hoax" in a 2003 speech, has pointed to the stolen e-mails as information that overturns the scientific evidence for global warming and called on U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson to halt any development of regulation of greenhouse gases pending his investigation into the e-mails.

Now, there's something hidden in there that most folks outside of the central United States won't notice. Senator James Inhofe is from Oklahoma. A coworker from Oklahoma pointed out to me some time ago that global warming is simply ignored there. Anyone going on about global warming is treated much the same as someone who insists the moon is made of green cheese or that Lord of the Rings is real. They're simply dismissed as harmless, deluded, and as though they are "slow" children.

Why?

The Dust Bowl.

People in Oklahoma have, within living memory of their elders, seen their state obliterated by heat and turned into a desert overrun with locusts and jackrabbits. A major climactic shift took place there. The same holds true for parts of Kansas, Nebraska, and a few other swaths of the great plains.

They've seen natural climate change. While some types of farming practices contributed to the Dust Bowl, its existence didn't come solely from a relatively tiny population of farmers (relative to the landmass) with mules and plows, or even the few tractors, scarring the landscape.

It came from devastating drought.

There are such things as climactic shifts. They exist. Using better farming techniques and greater irrigation can and has lessened the impact of the smaller droughts since the Dust Bowl. But those whose state heritage is one of having lived through such a climactic shift are a lot more difficult to fool, especially when the statist/liberal fascist who knows what's best for us all is willing to lie to us and trick us in order to get their way.

Nor has the fundamental physics of the greenhouse effect changed: CO2 in the atmosphere continues to trap heat that would otherwise slip into space, as was established by Irish scientist John Tyndall in 1859. "There is a natural greenhouse effect, that's what keeps the planet livable," noted climate modeler Gavin Schmidt of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) during a Friday conference call with reporters organized by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. "Without it, we'd be 33 degrees Celsius colder than we are. That's been known for hundreds of years."

It's a good thing that the leftist advocacy groups haven't seized on medical science from the Civil War era, like they have on climate science. Well, except for rationing and triage for soldiers. But I digress...

Were it not for the natural greenhouse gases, the earth would be a lifeless ball of rock, according to the chosen scientists in a conference call with the Center for American Progress...

From DiscoverTheNetworks.org:
The Center For American Progress

The Center for American Progress (CAP) describes itself as "a nonpartisan research and educational institute" aimed at "developing a long-term vision of a progressive America" and "providing a forum to generate new progressive ideas and policy proposals."

Robert Dreyfuss reports in the March 1, 2004 edition of The Nation: "The idea for the Center began with discussions in 2002 between [Morton] Halperin and George Soros, the billionaire investor. … Halperin, who heads the office of Soros' Open Society Institute, brought [former Clinton chief of staff John] Podesta into the discussion, and beginning in late 2002 Halperin and Podesta circulated a series of papers to funders."
...
An April 2009 CAP report stated that the United States had a moral obligation to spend massive amounts of money to help poorer nations deal with the effects of the "global warming" that allegedly was being caused by industrialized nations like the U.S.

Hmm.

Suppose their self-appointed position as a global moderator to push for redistribution of wealth has anything to do with this?

Or perhaps the impetus of global-warmers to stop American growth and natural resource development has other reasons?

One example maybe has something to do with the $10,000,000,000 of US taxpayer money sent to Brazil to fund offshore oil drilling in their coastal waters? Perhaps because grifter George Soros, who funded Center for American Progress, is getting that $10,000,000,000 into his pocket.

He and his leftist cronies force guilt on everyone, then they cash in when idiot leftist politicians start handing them money. They lie and tell us the world will die because of our cars and our prosperity, and they set themselves up as the recipients of the carbon indulgences we're forced to buy, and the payoffs for guilt that our politicians submit to.

Oklahomans can see it's bullshit. How about the rest of us open our eyes?

Or should we listen to Michael Mann and Scientific American explain to us how things like the trick to hide the decline is really scientific jargon that us stupid rubes from flyover states can't understand?


In fact, nothing in the stolen e-mails or computer code undermines in any way the scientific consensus—which exists among scientific publications as well as scientists—that climate change is happening and humans are the cause.

For example, the word "trick" in one message, which has been cited as evidence that a conspiracy is afoot, is actually being used to describe a mathematical approach to reconciling observed temperatures with stand-in data inferred from tree ring measurements.

Sea levels may or may not be rising, but the level of bullshit coming out of global warming advocates who pretend to be scientists sure is.

Media Blackouts

Climategate is being furiously hushed up by the big media to the point where typing it into google revealed no auto-populating suggestions. You could type in climateg and get "climate guard" and then all the way to climatega and still get "climate guard" and "climate guatemala". Typing in the entire word "climategate" resulted in a blank suggestion form.


Google's main page has changed this as of 12/04/09 @ 1631 EST. But their browser-integrated search engine still shows yesterday's hush-up.

Sounds almost conspiratorial, but as it registers some 6-20 million hits, it's a pretty big thing to disappear. Contrast the other suggested results, as well as the stories about it on various tech-savvy blogs.

http://talkingabouttheweather.wordpress.com/2009/12/02/google-gate/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/28/climategate-surpasses-global-warming-on-google-autosuggest-still-blocked/
http://rantingstan.blogspot.com/2009/12/curious-case-of-climategate-and-auto.html
And a parallel here:
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2009/11/googlegate.html

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Now on to the new blackout, this one from Washington:

Riehl World picked this up a couple days back, and HotAir mentioned it, but beyond that, I haven't heard this elsewhere. I certainly haven't seen it in any major media outlet. Perhaps that shouldn't be a surprise, since it's leftists trying to ensure that they control all that you see and hear.

http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2009/12/feinstein-durbin-seek-to-limit-citizen-journalism.html

http://hotair.com/archives/2009/12/03/democrats-criminalizing-dissent/

S.448 Title: A bill to maintain the free flow of information to the public by providing conditions for the federally compelled disclosure of information by certain persons connected with the news media. Sponsor: Sen Specter, Arlen [PA] (introduced 2/13/2009) Cosponsors (10) Latest Major Action: 12/3/2009 Senate committee/subcommittee actions. Status: Committee on the Judiciary. Date of scheduled consideration. SD-226. 10:00 a.m.

AMENDMENTS intended to be proposed by Mrs. FEINSTEIN (for herself and Mr. DURBIN )

Viz:

In section 10(2)(A), strike clause (iii) and insert the following:

(iii) obtains the information sought while working as a salaried employee of, or independent contractor for, an entity—

(I) that disseminates information by print, broadcast, cable, satellite, mechanical, photographic, electronic, 1or other means; and

(II) that—

(aa) publishes a newspaper, book, magazine, or other periodical;

(bb) operates a radio or television broadcast station, network, cable system, or satellite carrier, or a channel or programming service for any such station, network, system, or carrier;

(cc) operates a programming service; or

(dd) operates a news agency or wire service;

In section 10(2)(B), strike ‘‘and’’ at the end.

In section 10(2)(C), strike the period at the end and insert ‘‘; and’’.

In section 10(2), add at the end the following:

(D) does not include an individual who gathers or disseminates the protected information sought to be compelled anonymously or under a pseudonym.
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Short version - citizen journalists like O'Keefe & Giles, and anonymous bloggers who like to practice some degree of OPSEC - can find themselves targets.

Perhaps I should change my legal name to Format C:.

Their attempt at using the law to criminalize citizens' first amendment rights not only violates their oaths of office, will be rendered unconstitutional, and is making leftists do even more mental gymnastics than usual to assert that Feinstein and Durbin really aren't statist thugs - but this law, the attempt to make it, and the intent with it is a violation of 18 USC 242. (It just so happens to be my favorite statute.)