The funnier side of supply and demand: Norway, Butter, and Stephen Colbert

An acute butter shortage in Norway, one of the world's richest countries, has left people worrying how to bake their Christmas goodies with store shelves emptied and prices through the roof.


The shortfall, expected to last into January, amounts to between 500 and 1,000 tonnes, said Tine, Norway's main dairy company, while online sellers have offered 500-gramme packs for up to 350 euros ($465).


The shortfall has been blamed on a rainy summer that cut into feed production and therefore dairy output, but also the ballooning popularity of a low-carbohydrate, fat-rich diet that has sent demand for butter soaring.


"Compared to 2010, demand has grown by as much as 30 percent," Tine spokesman Lars Galtung told AFP.


Last Friday, customs officers stopped a Russian at the Norwegian-Swedish border and seized 90 kilos of butter stashed in his car.

Link


This was hysterical:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Norway's Butter Shortage
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

Non-Arabic speaking troops massing on Jordanian-Syrian border, foreign invasion of Syria afoot?

I smell plotting of the Western powers against the Iranian/Syrian axis. The latest "humanitarian" mission to save the people through regime change may be about to begin.


The USS George W Bush carrier group has been off the coast of Syria since middle to end of November. At least two major explosions at the Iranian nuclear site at Isfahan, of unknown origin. The British embassy attacked in Tehran, and the ambassadors are withdrawn. The Iranian Navy practicing today to close the Straits of Hormuz.  


It's August 1914 again, folks.


It's 2 minutes to economic midnight in America and Europe. 


 War, anyone?  Time to use up ordinance so that someone can be employed to make more, and clean up the rubble...


Sheeple, tonight War will be on TV right after Dancing with the Stars!  Tell your unemployed 20 year old to pack up his troubles in the old kit-bag, smile, and head off to the induction center.  He's employed now!


Here is video via economicpolicyjournal.com, from corbettreport.com

Be warned: Imperium praeparet bellum

Imperium praeparet bellum via google translate: 


The government is preparing for war.  Against the people of the United States.  I hope I am wrong, but the evidence continues to accumulate.

"We will use food as a weapon"





Summary of information points made in these two videos:


-Federal agents demand customer list from Mormon Food Storage facility in Tennessee, and were upset to find out the place was "cash and carry"


-Local TN officials going door to door asking residents about their preparations for disasters, including food stores.


-Military getting units to fill our questionnaires about use of lethal force against American citizens (as yet unconfirmed)


-Gun confiscation drills by military units in Iowa 2 years ago


-FEMA camps have been activated, and contracts to outfit the camps by Halliburton and KBR have started


-GPS coordinates of people's homes and who lives there provided to law enforcement from the Census bureau


-Operation Fast and Furious/Gunrunner/Gunwalker is a "false flag" money laundering operation where guns are sold to Mexican drug gangs, and drugs are imported to the US, with a goal of undermining the 2nd Amendment


-We face a situation faced by the Revolutionary Generation:
     -denial of trial by Jury
     -Americans spirited away from jurisdiction to places like Gitmo, Bright Light, or other black sites


(As per the recent 93-7 vote for the NDAA, including the provisions of the indefinite detention of American citizens declared enemy combatants by the government, and the ability of that government to remove its accused citizen to a place away from the country.)


------------------------------
This bring us to the concept of true treason:


Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.
--Article 3, Section 3, US Constitution


“United States” means the several States of the United States, the District of Columbia, and the commonwealths, territories, and possessions of the United States.


Preamble to the US Constitution: 


 We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.


It follows logically, that if a body of men, even those that constitute the Federal government of the United States, levys war against the People of the United States, while at the same time giving aid and comfort to the Enemies of the United States (at the expense of the taxpayer and purchasing power of the currency of the United States), that that body of men is a Treasonous body of men, and should be dealt with accordingly.


UPDATE:


Oathkeepers has pulled the story of the federal agents visiting a Mormon cannery in TN.  Apologies to anyone alarmed by unverified information/rumor. I will endeavor not to pass on such information in the future.

Quote of the Day 12/11/2011

I am not a trained economist, but it is not obvious to me that the United States of America is crying out for more wind turbines, and, if it is, I’m sure many of those colleges’ tenured Race and Social Justice Studies professors could be redeployed to serve as such.

--Mark Steyn

Good article of Steyn bashing statism; follow the link.

Ron Paul uses the government "N" word feds aren't supposed to say: "Nullification"

Bob Fanning and Chuck Baldwin for Montana Gubernatorial race--Free market, 10th Amendment + Nullification, 2nd Amendment

Capitalism
America became the strongest nation in the world in short order because of its economic model of Capitalism. Allow people to use their ingenuity, skills, knowledge, and creativity to produce products, services, and wealth. When we get back to this formula, Montana will acquire more money than we have ever seen.


2nd Amendment
The individual’s and the State’s right to defend life and property is one of the most fundamental rights of mankind. This will be held as inviolable by Fanning-Baldwin.


US Constitution
Our union is governed by the U.S. Constitution. It is the Supreme Law of the Land. It must be faithfully protected and supported by every officer–especially governors.




The Economy Problem
How did we get into the real estate meltdown? How did we get into the financial and economic recession–and some say, depression?


The Economy Answer
So, what is the answer to our economic and financial catastrophe? How is Bob going to lead Montana to it?


The Economy Solution: Bob Fanning
Bob Fanning is the only candidate with the knowledge, experience, and ability to put Montana on a path of economic and financial success. There is NO competition and only one choice – Bob Fanning for Governor.


Medical Marijuana
Montana has the right to govern itself involving the use of medical marijuana. The people have spoken more than once about this and have provided for its medical use. I will faithfully execute and defend all State laws, including the medical marijuana laws.


Self-Government
Individuals and families should be left with, as much as possible, the sovereignty they inherently possess for the general welfare of Montana. To protect life, liberty, and property is the purpose of government and Montana’s constitution.


Tenth Amendment Plan
Montana has the natural and constitutional right to govern itself. I will do more than say I believe in Montana’s right to govern itself. I will stand for Montana’s rights. Our future requires this kind of governor with the economic and political turmoil pervasive amongst us.

Constitutional Sheriff in Indiana stares down the feds; the feds blink

Heroic interposition of County Sheriff in Elkhart IN between upstanding citizen running a dairy farm and the FDA officials who are intent to stop him from selling his milk, claiming illnesses were traced back to his dairy. There is no objective evidence to support the FDA claim, according to the source of this story. The feds just pulled their subpoena on the farm owner, Mr. Hochstetler:

"...While it's not clear exactly what kind of maneuvering led to the federal pullback, one factor working for Hochstetler may have been the efforts of his county sheriff, Brad Rogers of Elkhart County. He wrote two letters to the Justice Department warning it not to conduct inspections of Hochstetler's farm without a warrant from a local judge. In the process, he got into a debate over the limits of federal power and the U.S. Constitution with the Justice Department's Goldstein.


Earlier this month, Rogers emailed Goldstein that there had been "a number of inspections and attempted inspections on (Hochstetler's) farm..." He warned that "any further attempts to inspect this farm without a warrant signed by a local judge, based on probable cause, will result in Federal inspectors' removal or arrest for trespassing by my officers or I."


That prompted Goldstein to cite the U.S. Constitution's "Supremacy Clause," which he said "has been interpreted since the earliest days of this nation to mean that federal law trumps state law whenever the two conflict."


Goldstein argued further that the Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act allowed federal agents "to enter Mr. Hochstetler's property...without a warrant at all--pursuant to a long line of federal cases..." Moreover, he warned the sheriff that federal agents could arrest him-- "that the 'refusal to permit entry or inspection as authorized by section 374' is in itself a federal criminal offense, which under certain circumstances is a felony punishable by imprisonment for up to three years..."


The Goldstein letter prompted Rogers to reply, in a letter just being sent today, "When you assert that federal law trumps state law, it is a distortion of the intent, content and extent of the supreme law of the land--the U.S. Constitution-seen through a myopic and misunderstood view of Article VI, section 2 (The Supremacy Clause)."


He also asserted that "the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act could be deemed unconstitutional if and when challenged vis-a-vis the Tenth Amendment juxtaposed with The Commerce Clause."


He added that "our form of government was based on the principle that all officials exist to secure 'Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.'...Your 'cosmetic' regulations will never 'trump' those principles. The citizen in question is a good man and has committed no crime. He is an upstanding member of this community. He does not have to allow you access to his property for the FDA to conduct random inspections."

Sheriff Brad Rogers, Elkhart IN

Heroic stand.  Sheriff Rogers deserves our praise and support. 


Sheriff Mack is right, Constitutional Sheriffs and the Tenth Amendment are the path back to the republic.


Original article here


via Oathkeepers facebook page

Why Constitutional conservatives, Jews and Christians, should support Ron Paul

In Ron Paul's own words.


Zionists, Evangelicals, Jews and Christians alike, anyone who believes in limited Federal government and original intent of the US Constitution, this is for you:

----------------------------------------
In an exclusive Newsmax interview, Congressman and Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul confirmed his support for Israel, but cautioned that while the United States should be a “friend” of the Jewish state, America should not be the “master” of Israel.


Paul also says the United States should not dictate Israel’s borders or try to “buy her allegiance” with massive amounts of foreign aid. He argued that foreign aid has actually hurt – not helped – the Jewish state.


The interview was conducted by Newsmax contributor Doug Wead, a presidential historian and New York Times best-selling author.


Paul has recently come under fire from some Jewish groups in America. The Republican Jewish Coalition banned Paul from a debate on Jewish issues in Washington this week because of his “misguided and extreme views,” according to the group’s executive director, Matt Brooks.


Newsmax chatted with Paul to get his side of the issue as the Texas Republican is surging in some presidential polls.


A new Washington Post-ABC News survey in Iowa shows him threatening Mitt Romney as the second-leading candidate behind Newt Gingrich. Paul is now tied with Romney in the early caucus state with 18 percent of the vote, behind Gingrich’s 33 percent.


Rep. Paul’s interview with Newsmax follows:


Newsmax: What should our relationship be with Israel?


Ron Paul: We should be their friend and their trading partner. They are a democracy and we share many values with them. But we should not be their master. We should not dictate where their borders will be nor should we have veto power over their foreign policy.


This is not just about Israel, by the way, this is about how we should conduct ourselves with other countries around the world.


Newsmax: But Israel is not like other countries. We have a large Jewish population in America. What do you say to those who criticize your policy toward Israel?


Ron Paul: I think that some not only misunderstand the American Constitution and the role we should have in the world, they also misunderstand Zionism. Part of the original idea of Zionism, as I understand it, was that there should be Jewish independence and Jewish self-reliance. Today, America doesn’t want anyone to be self-reliant. We want to rule the world and be the saviors of the world and we are going broke in the process.


Newsmax: Some object to your policy of cutting foreign aid to Israel.


Ron Paul: I have objected to all foreign aid. I define foreign aid as taking money from poor people in rich countries and giving it to rich people in poor countries. We just can’t keep doing this. We don’t have the money anymore.


Stop and consider America’s policy: We give $3 billion a year to Israel in loans; and we give $12 billion or more in assistance to Israel’s self-declared enemies. Some of these are countries that say they will drive Israel into the sea.


Newsmax: What do you say to evangelical Christians who want that aid to continue?


Ron Paul: I say to them that our aid in the region is out of balance and it is wrong. Foreign aid does not help Israel. It is a net disadvantage. I say to them that “the borrower is servant to the lender” and America should never be the master of Israel and its fate. We should be her friend.


In October, 1981, most of the world and most of the Congress voiced outrage over Israel’s attack on Iraq and their nuclear development. I was one of the few who defended her right to make her own decisions on foreign policy and to act in her own self-interest.


Newsmax: What then, if anything, should we do for Israel?


Ron Paul: We should share intelligence for mutually agreed-upon goals. We should honor our pledge to refuse any arms sales that would undermine Israel’s qualitative military edge in the region.


But we should stop interfering with them. We should not announce bargaining positions even before she begins her negotiations. We should not dictate what she can and cannot do. We should stop trying to buy her allegiance. And Israel should stop sacrificing their sovereignty as an independent state to us or anybody else, no matter how well-intentioned.


via Lew Rockwell's Political Theatre

Ludwig von Mises on Government Jobs

Government jobs offer no opportunity for the display of personal talents and gifts. Regimentation spells the doom of initiative. The young man has no illusions about his future. He knows what is in store for him. He will get a job with one of the innumerable bureaus, he will be but a cog in a huge machine the working of which is more or less mechanical. The routine of a bureaucratic technique will cripple his mind and tie his hands. He will enjoy security. But this security will be rather of the kind that the convict enjoys within the prison walls. He will never be free to make decisions and to shape his own fate. He will forever be a man taken care of by other people. He will never be a real man relying on his own strength. He shudders at the sight of the huge office buildings in which he will bury himself.  --Ludwig von Mises

Homeland security theatre cartoon

http://homelandsecuritytheater.com/  Lots of good cartoons by former TSA agent who worked at LAX. He works in the comic book industry and had to take the TSA work to make ends meet...


Link for recent story on 3 elderly women in the NY area complaining of strip searches by the Blue Shirts.

Ron Paul should be the next President of the United States

You want peace and prosperity for this country?


There is only one candidate that will keep us out of unnecessary unconstitutional wars, and shrink the sovereign debt and size of the federal behemoth in the District of Confiscation.


Watch, please. Give to his campaign if you can afford to.

The Fed and the US government are bleeding you dry (of your wealth) BY DESIGN

About a month before I wrote my commentary, my old friend Richard Rahn had, without my noticing, written on the same issue in a commentary article published in the Washington Times, but he had gone beyond the simple point I made. Rahn notes that besides suffering the loss of wealth occasioned by the negative real yield on such investments, the investor has to pay tax on the nominal yield—truly a case of the government’s adding insult to injury. He notes that given the currently prevailing rates of interest, rate of inflation, and tax rates, a small investor who earns a nominal yield of 1% and pays a 20% marginal tax rate, while the rate of inflation is 3.5 %, actually ends up paying a real tax rate of 370%. For example, an investor buys a $100,000 CD, earns $1,000 in annual interest, pays a tax of $200, and incurs a loss of $3,500 in purchasing power on the invested principal. Total (nominal) income is $1,000; total real tax (nominal tax plus inflation tax) is $3,700.


This expropriation of private wealth is not accidental.


It is the joint product of the Fed’s near-zero interest-rate policies, the Fed’s money supply increases that underlie the current rate of inflation, and the tax rates established by Congress and administered by the IRS, including the taxation of nominal interest earnings even when they amount to real losses of capital, rather than genuine earnings. The government clearly aims to expropriate private wealth on a massive scale. The only plausible alternative interpretation of these policies requires us to believe that the government officials who set these policies are complete idiots about basic economics.


"...complete idiots about basic economics..."


Yes. I do believe you've hit the nail on the head there.


Angry yet?

Read the rest here

Third American Revolution, reasons to fight: The burgeoning Police State

The Great Eye of Mordor-on-the-Potomac is upon you:

"...wall upon wall, battlement upon battlement, black, immeasurably strong, mountain of iron, gate of steel, tower of adamant... Barad-dûr, fortress of Sauron."

– Vision of Frodo Baggins

[This is what is built when we give up our liberty]

------------------------------------------
 IF WE look beneath the surface of our public affairs, we can discern one fundamental fact, namely: a great redistribution of power between society [Society = you and me, the taxpayers--HM] and the State...

It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own. All the power it has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another; there is no other source from which State power can be drawn. Therefore every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves society with so much less power. There is never, nor can there be, any strengthening of State power without a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power.

--Alfred Jay Nock, Our Enemy, the State, 1935



-----------------------------
From yesterday's foxnews.com:


Cherie Anderson runs a travel company in southern California, and she’s convinced the federal government is reading her emails. But she’s all right with that.
“I assume it's part of the Patriot Act and I really don't mind,” she says. “I figure I'm probably boring them to death."

[This is the attitude that is the death of Liberty, this is the great Lack of Eternal Vigilence that dooms the United States of America to police state "homeland" instead of the Land of the Free and the home of the Brave.  This is the abrogation of  the primary responsibility by the American citizen.--HM]


It's likely Anderson is not alone in her concerns that the government may be monitoring what Americans say, write, and read. And now there may be even more to worry about: a newly revealed security research project called PRODIGAL -- the Proactive Discovery of Insider Threats Using Graph Analysis and Learning -- which has been built to scan IMs, texts and emails . . . and can read approximately a quarter billion of them a day.


“Every time someone logs on or off, sends an email or text, touches a file or plugs in a USB key, these records are collected within the organization,” David Bader, a professor at the Georgia Tech School of Computational Science and Engineering and a principal investigator on the project, told FoxNews.com.


PRODIGAL scans those records for behavior -- emails to unusual recipients, certain words cropping up, files transferred from unexpected servers -- that changes over time as an employee "goes rogue." The system was developed at Georgia Tech in conjunction with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Army's secretive research arm that works on everything from flying cars to robotic exoskeletons.


Initially, PRODIGAL will scan only the communications of military volunteers and people who work in federal agencies. But the very existence of such a project is sure to unnerve citizens like Anderson. Is the government reading my emails? Are they already monitoring me?


"Some people say it's one step further toward a police state," said Anthony Howard, a book author and security expert who has consulted for the Department of Homeland Security.


Read more in Fox News

How Yankees twist the mind of the human being

Worry for the future when a kid (or a grown-up) has to think twice before responding appropriately to a threat to his person or propterty. There are innumerable examples of this type of BS in the MSM these days, the result of 20 years of politically correct indoctrination.  


Anyone who reads this blog knows I equate political correctness originating with liberal/progressives with Yankeeism.


This is how it is in Bean-town, via Drudge:

verbatim repost


BOSTON (CBS) – A 7-year-old boy is being investigated by his South Boston elementary school for possible sexual harassment after kicking another boy in the crotch.


The first grader’s mother, Tasha Lynch, says she was shocked by the school’s decision.


“He’s 7 years old. He doesn’t know anything about sexual harassment,” she said.


Lynch’s son, Mark Curran, said the boy that he kicked had been bullying him on the school bus ride home from Tynan Elementary last week.


“He just all of a sudden came up to him, choked him. He wanted to take his gloves, and my son said, ‘I couldn’t breathe, so I kicked him in the testicles,’” said his mother.


Lynch described a phone call she received from the school explaining that the case will be treated like sexual harassment, due to what it considers inappropriate touching.


“‘Your son kicked a little boy in the testicles. We call that sexual harassment,’” Lynch said the school told her.


She said she’s been asked to attend a disciplinary hearing at the school Monday.


A Boston Public Schools spokesperson said officials are investigating, but won’t comment further, since it’s a private matter.


Lynch wants an apology and better supervision on the school bus to prevent such fights among students.


“He couldn’t breathe. He was trying to defend himself,” she said. “I don’t find that sexual harassment. I find that defending himself.”

Sexual harassment points

Progressives, never fear!  


A few years in a political re-education camp (you know, an American University) is just the thing that this seven year old needs to come around.

Rand Paul on the recent National Defense Authorization Act S.1867

Editorial from Washington Times:


Verbatim:

James Madison, father of the Constitution, warned, “The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become instruments of tyranny at home.” Abraham Lincoln had similar thoughts, saying, “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter, and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”


During war, there has always been a struggle to preserve constitutional liberties. During the Civil War, the right of habeas corpus was suspended. Newspapers were closed. Fortunately, those actions were reversed after the war.


The discussion now to suspend certain rights to due process is especially worrisome, given that we are engaged in a war that appears to have no end. Rights given up now cannot be expected to be returned. So we do well to contemplate the diminishment of due process, knowing that the rights we lose now may never be restored.


My well-intentioned colleagues ignore these admonitions in defending provisions of the 2012 defense authorization bill pertaining to detaining suspected terrorists.


Their legislation would arm the military with the authority to detain indefinitely - without due process or trial - suspected al Qaeda sympathizers, including American citizens apprehended on American soil.


I want to repeat that. We are talking about people who are merely suspected of a crime. We are talking about American citizens.


If these provisions pass, we could see American citizens being sent to Guantanamo Bay. This should be alarming to everyone because it puts every single American citizen at risk.


There is one thing and one thing only protecting innocent Americans from being detained at will by the hands of a too-powerful state: our Constitution and the checks it puts on government power. Should we err and remove some of the most important checks on state power in the name of fighting terrorism, well, then the terrorists will have won.


Detaining citizens without a court trial is un-American. In fact, this alarming arbitrary power is reminiscent of Egypt’s “permanent” emergency law authorizing indefinite preventive detention, a law that provoked ordinary Egyptians to tear their country apart last spring and risk their lives to fight.


Recently, Justice Antonin Scalia affirmed this idea in his dissent in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, saying, “Where the government accuses a citizen of waging war against it, our constitutional tradition has been to prosecute him in federal court for treason or some other crime.”


He concluded, “The very core of liberty secured by our Anglo-Saxon system of separated powers has been freedom from indefinite imprisonment at the will of the executive.”


Justice Scalia was, as he often does, following the wisdom of our Founding Fathers.


As Ben Franklin wisely warned, we should not attempt to trade liberty for security. If we do, we may end up with neither. And really, what security does this indefinite detention of Americans give us?


Michael Chertoff, then head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and later secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, testified shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, to the Senate Judiciary Committee. He underscored that “the history of this government in prosecuting terrorists in domestic courts has been one of unmitigated success and one in which the judges have done a superb job of managing the courtroom and not compromising our concerns about security and our concerns about classified information.”


Some say that to prevent another Sept. 11 attack we must fight terrorism with a war mentality and not treat potential attackers as criminals. For combatants captured on the battlefield, I tend to agree.


But Sept. 11 didn’t succeed because we granted the terrorists due process. The attacks did not succeed because al Qaeda was so formidable, but because of human error. The Department of Defense withheld intelligence from the FBI. No warrants were denied - the warrants weren’t requested. The FBI failed to act on repeated pleas from its field agents, agents who were in possession of a laptop with information that might have prevented Sept. 11.


These are not failures of laws. They are not failures of procedures. They are failures of imperfect men in bloated bureaucracies. No amount of liberty sacrificed on the altar of the state will ever change that.


We should not have to sacrifice our liberty to be safe. We cannot allow the rules to change to fit the whims of those in power. The rules, the binding chains of our Constitution, were written so that it didn’t matter who was in power. In fact, they were written to protect us and our rights from those who hold power without good intentions. We are not governed by saints or angels. Our Constitution allows for that. This bill does not.


Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky.

Jury Nullification: Threat to tyranny; ultimate trump card of the People against unjust laws

Today, the Federal government is sovereign over the States. The State and Local governments over the People. 


The Order of Sovereignty set by the American Revolution has flipped upside down.


And so the State will come down hard on any threat to it's sovereignty.  Any idea that might make the Sheeple "uppish" (uppish: Proud; arrogant; assuming; putting on airs of superiority.).  


Take a look at the Enemy of the State:

Julian P. Heicklen, a 79-year-old retired chemistry professor, has often stood on a plaza outside the United States Courthouse in Manhattan, holding a “Jury Info” sign and handing out brochures that advocate jury nullification, the controversial view that if jurors disagree with a law, they may ignore their oaths to follow it and may acquit a defendant who violated it.


Then, last year, federal prosecutors had Mr. Heicklen indicted, charging that his activity violated the law against jury tampering. Lawyers assisting him have sought dismissal of the case on First Amendment grounds.


But now prosecutors are offering their first detailed explanation for why they charged Mr. Heicklen, arguing in a brief that his “advocacy of jury nullification, directed as it is to jurors, would be both criminal and without Constitutional protections no matter where it occurred.”


“His speech is not protected by the First Amendment,” prosecutors wrote.


This is an example of what is not protected by the First Amendment:


...“I’m not telling you to find anybody not guilty,” she quoted Mr. Heicklen telling the agent in a secretly recorded conversation.


“But,” he added, “if there is a law you think is wrong then you should do that.”

Whoa.  What unmitigated gall Mr Heicklen has!


And, of course:

Mr. Heicklen, who could face a six-month sentence if convicted, has asked for a jury trial. Ms. Mermelstein, opposing that demand, cited as one reason Mr. Heicklen’s ardent stance that juries should nullify. He would probably “urge a jury to do so in a case against him,” she wrote.


Well, duh.


New York Times article


-------------------------------------------
Learn more here:


Fully Informed Jury Association

International Society for Individual Liberty History of Jury Nullification

"Most transparent administration in history": Seals records on Brian Terry's murder, related to Operation Gunwalker

From 2009 post on whitehouse.gov:


Transparency -- President Obama has committed to making his administration the most open and transparent in history, and WhiteHouse.gov will play a major role in delivering on that promise. The President's executive orders and proclamations will be published for everyone to review, and that’s just the beginning of our efforts to provide a window for all Americans into the business of the government.

Please excuse me while I LMFAO:

--------------------------

Verbatim:

And to think that Attorney General Eric Holder is getting testy about congressional calls for his resignation. After all, the Justice Department has nothing to hide, right?


The Obama Administration has abruptly sealed court records containing alarming details of how Mexican drug smugglers murdered a U.S. Border patrol agent with a gun connected to a failed federal experiment that allowed firearms to be smuggled into Mexico.


This means information will now be kept from the public as well as the media. Could this be a cover-up on the part of the “most transparent” administration in history? After all, the rifle used to kill the federal agent (Brian Terry) last December in Arizona’s Peck Canyon was part of the now infamous Operation Fast and Furious. Conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the disastrous scheme allowed guns to be smuggled into Mexico so they could eventually be traced to drug cartels.


The murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent is related to the Justice Department willingly turning over thousands of guns to Mexican criminal gangs, and Obama administration is hiding information about his death from the public. Amazing.


Link to the Weekly Standard

I am Paddy McCoy ;-)

Paddy McCoy, an elderly Irish farmer, received a letter from the Department for Work and Pensions stating that they suspected he was not paying his employees the statutory minimum wage, and they would send an inspector to interview them.

On the appointed day, the inspector turned up.
"Tell me about your staff," he asked Paddy.

"Well," said Paddy, "there's the farm hand, I pay him £240 a week, and he has a free cottage.

Then there's the housekeeper. She gets £190 a week, along with free board and lodging.

There's also the half-wit. He works a 16 hour day, does 90% of the work, earns about £25 a week along with a bottle of whisky - and, as a special treat, occasionally gets to sleep with my wife."
"That's disgraceful" said the inspector, "I need to interview the half-wit."

"That'll be me then," said Paddy.

The Economist: High risk for disintegration of the Euro within weeks

The crisis in the euro area is turning into a panic and dragging the zone into recession. The risk that the currency disintegrates within weeks is alarmingly high

FIRST Greece; then Ireland and Portugal; then Italy and Spain. Month by month, the crisis in the euro area has crept from the vulnerable periphery of the currency zone towards its core, helped by denial, misdiagnosis and procrastination by the euro-zone’s policymakers. Recently Belgian and French government bonds have been in the financial markets’ bad books. Investors are even sniffy about German bonds: an auction of ten-year Bunds on November 23rd shifted only €3.6 billion-worth ($4.8 billion) of the €6 billion-worth on offer.


Worse, there are signs that the euro zone’s economy is heading for recession, if it is not there already. Industrial orders in the euro zone fell by 6.4% in September, the steepest decline since the dark days of December 2008. A closely watched index of euro-zone sentiment, based on surveys of purchasing managers in manufacturing and services, is also signalling contraction, with a reading of 47.2: anything below 50 suggests activity is shrinking. The European Commission’s index of consumer confidence fell in November for the fifth month in a row.


Now an even bigger calamity is looking likelier. The intensifying financial pressure raises the chances of a disorderly default by a government, a run of retail deposits on banks short of cash, or a revolt against austerity that would mark the start of the break-up of the euro zone.


Link to the rest


Perhaps the Eurozone hacks should've read von Mises...

Ron Paul: Monetary freedom and the gold standard

Update on Iceland: Laissez faire approach = faster recovery

I had previously  (here and here) pointed to Iceland's approach to their debt crisis as an example of what the Austrian School of Economics (see Mises.org) recommends: Do nothing.  


In Iceland, the government let insolvent banks fail, people lost jobs, there was a liquidation of bad investments, ... BUT then there was a rapid recovery.
  Contrast that with the European and American approach: keep sapping the economic strength (i.e. looting) of the productive sector of their constituents, and move that money around, print money, obfuscate, etc. 


Kick the can down the road, let it be someone else's problem.


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The OECD has come very close to predicting a depression for Europe unless EU leaders conjure up a lender-of-last resort very quickly, and somehow manage to make the world believe that the EFSF bail-out fund really exists.


Even if disaster is avoided, the eurozone growth forecast is dreadful. Italy, Portugal, Greece will all contract through 2012, while Spain, France, Netherlands, and Germany will bounce along the bottom.


Unemployment will reach 18.5pc in Greece, 22.9pc in Spain, 14.1pc in Ireland, 13.8pc in Portugal.


Yet Iceland stands out, with 2.4pc growth and unemployment tumbling to 6.1. Well, well.



Ambrose Evans Pritchard at the Telegraph

Uh-oh, .gov wants to cross a red line...OFFICIAL de jure repeal of posse commitatus, and establishment of police state powers---Next week

From the ACLU


The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president—and every future president — the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world. Even Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) raised his concerns about the NDAA detention provisions during last night’s Republican debate. The power is so broad that even U.S. citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself.


The worldwide indefinite detention without charge or trial provision is in S. 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act bill, which will be on the Senate floor on Monday. The bill was drafted in secret by Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) and passed in a closed-door committee meeting, without even a single hearing.


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From: globalresearch.ca


As many Americans know, for over a decade there have been dozens of pieces of legislation and executive orders that have chipped away at the US Constitution, specifically at its Bill of Rights.


The “war on terror” was originally to be waged against foreigners in far-away lands, but Rep. Ron Paul was right, the anti-terror infrastructure is swinging around to be used against American citizens.


This was the design all along.


The intention was always to immobilize the American public with a police-state control grid, now backed by the regular military, so that the process of economic extraction and political subjection could be completed.


The NDAA for 2012 represents a significant step, on the part of the government, towards a “final takedown.”



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This absolutely crosses a red line for me, if enacted.


Please re-read this post for my analysis.

State Sovereignty: America's [First and] Final Solution to Tyranny

At the end of this article is a copy of the proposed state sovereignty amendment that Ron and Donnie Kennedy are promoting as the final solution to federal abuse. They believe that anything less will only continue the course of federal supremacy and the ultimate destruction of real American liberty. I sadly agree with them.


Just following Congress, the 2012 presidential campaign and the inability of citizens to influence government policy makes it clear to every American how broken the US political system has become. A few powerful interests run the entire show and the American people are being forced down a dark road to economic destruction. History shows us that Washington is immune to conventional national political action under the present system. What can freedom loving Americans do?


...There is only one effective, democratic and peaceful tool left to Americans to defend their liberties and restore the original republic of our founding fathers. It is the right of state sovereignty and nullification, so effectively explained by Tom Woods in his book Nullification: How To Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century. http://www.tomwoods.com/books/nullification


Many other freedom advocates have proposed nullification and state sovereignty, including the Kennedy Brothers who have developed a State Sovereignty Amendment strategy that should be launched in all 50 states. Although the elites ruling our nation have total control over the federal government and the two-party system nationally, they have neglected to extend this top-down control to the state level. This is because over the last 50 years states have become mere powerless appendages of Washington without influence – and this is an opportunity for the Freedom movement.

Read the rest at The Daily Bell


Proposed State Sovereignty Amendment to the Constitution at the end of the article.