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Really?

Snaggletiger

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Really?
« on: June 07, 2012, 11:29:57 AM »
Where is the outrage?
 

By Judge Andrew P. Napolitano
 
Published June 07, 2012
 
FoxNews.com

For the past few weeks, I have been writing in this column about the government's use of drones and challenging their constitutionality on Fox News Channel where I work. I once asked on air what Thomas Jefferson would have done if -- had drones existed at the time -- King George III had sent drones to peer inside the bedroom windows of Monticello. I suspect that Jefferson and his household would have trained their muskets on the drones and taken them down. I offer this historical anachronism as a hypothetical only, not as one who is urging the use of violence against the government.
 
Nevertheless, what Jeffersonians are among us today? When drones take pictures of us on our private property and in our homes, and the government uses the photos as it wishes, what will we do about it? Jefferson understood that when the government assaults our privacy and dignity, it is the moral equivalent of violence against us. The folks who hear about this, who either laugh or groan, cannot find it humorous or boring that their every move will be monitored and photographed by the government.
 
Don't believe me that this is coming? The photos that the drones will take may be retained and used or even distributed to others in the government so long as the "recipient is reasonably perceived to have a specific, lawful governmental function” in requiring them. And for the first time since the Civil War, the federal government will deploy military personnel inside the United States and publicly acknowledge that it is deploying them "to collect information about U.S. persons.”
 



Did you consent to the American military spying on Americans in America? I don’t know a single person who has, but I know only a few who are complaining.
 
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It gets worse. If the military personnel see something of interest from a drone, they may apply to a military judge or "military commander” for permission to conduct a physical search of the private property that intrigues them. And, any "incidentally acquired information” can be retained or turned over to local law enforcement. What's next? Prosecutions before military tribunals in the U.S.?
 
The quoted phrases above are extracted from a now-public 30-page memorandum issued by President Obama's Secretary of the Air Force on April 23, 2012. The purpose of the memorandum is stated as "balancing … obtaining intelligence information … and protecting individual rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution…” Note the primacy of intelligence gathering over freedom protection, and note the peculiar use of the word "balancing.”
 
When liberty and safety clash, do we really expect the government to balance those values? Of course not. The government cannot be trusted to restrain itself in the face of individual choices to pursue happiness. That's why we have a Constitution and a life-tenured judiciary: to protect the minority from the liberty-stealing impulses of the majority. And that's why the Air Force memo has its priorities reversed -- intelligence gathering first, protecting freedom second -- and the mechanism of reconciling the two -- balancing them -- constitutionally incorrect.
 
Everyone who works for the government swears to uphold the Constitution. It was written to define and restrain the government. According to the Declaration of Independence, the government's powers come from the consent of the governed. The government in America was not created by a powerful king reluctantly granting liberty to his subjects. It was created by free people willingly granting limited power to their government -- and retaining that which they did not delegate.
 
The Declaration also defines our liberties as coming from our Creator, as integral to our humanity and as inseparable from us, unless we give them up by violating someone else's liberties. Hence the Jeffersonian and constitutional beef with the word "balancing” when it comes to government power versus individual liberty.
 
The Judeo-Christian and constitutionally mandated relationship between government power and individual liberty is not balance. It is bias -- a bias in favor of liberty. All presumptions should favor the natural rights of individuals, not the delegated and seized powers of the government. Individual liberty, not government power, is the default position because persons are immortal and created in God's image, and governments are temporary and based on force.
 
Hence my outrage at the coming use of drones -- some as small as golf balls -- to watch us, to listen to us and to record us. Did you consent to the government having that power? Did you consent to the American military spying on Americans in America? I don't know a single person who has, but I know only a few who are complaining.
 
If we remain silent when our popularly elected government violates the laws it has sworn to uphold and steals the freedoms we elected it to protect, we will have only ourselves to blame when Big Brother is everywhere. Somehow, I doubt my father's generation fought the Nazis in World War II only to permit a totalitarian government to flourish here.
 
Is President Obama prepared to defend this? Is Gov. Romney prepared to challenge it? Are you prepared for its consequences?
 
COPYRIGHT 2012 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO. DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/06/07/where-is-outrage/#ixzz1x7bvU0xT
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My doctor told me I needed to stop masturbating.  I asked him why, and he said, "because I'm trying to examine you."

GH2001

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Re: Really?
« Reply #1 on: June 07, 2012, 11:33:29 AM »
I like the Judge. I think he means well and is right most of the time, but he's a little too libertarian for my taste.
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WDE

Re: Really?
« Reply #2 on: June 07, 2012, 11:37:15 AM »
Oddly enough, you posted his article about drones spying on Americans on a website which could easily be monitored by the government or better yet, monitored by government-supporting citizens who can report your behavior to other websites or programs like attackwatch.org. 

I don't think the government is going to use drones to spy on you and me.  I really don't think it will ever happen; however, it is rather scary to think that our government's military practices are far beyond the average citizen's ability to defend himself. 

What are you going to do if the government decides to use drones to spy on or kill people?  Yell about it?  Shoot a rifle at it?  Hide?  Move? 
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The Guy That Knows Nothing of Hyperbole

CCTAU

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Re: Really?
« Reply #3 on: June 07, 2012, 12:13:34 PM »
What are you going to do if the government decides to use drones to spy on or kill people?  Yell about it?  Shoot a rifle at it?  Hide?  Move?

I'm gonna blow that bitch right out of the air.........

12 ga with 7 shot ought to do it. Accidental discharge while checking weapon. Sorry officer.
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Five statements of WISDOM
1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity, by legislating the wealth out of prosperity.
2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.
3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.
5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friends, is the beginning of the end of any nation.

AUTailgatingRules

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Re: Really?
« Reply #4 on: June 07, 2012, 01:03:38 PM »
I'm gonna blow that bitch right out of the air.........

12 ga with 7 shot ought to do it. Accidental discharge while checking weapon. Sorry officer.

Only if that 12 gauge has a firing range of 20,000 feet up
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Vandy Vol

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Re: Really?
« Reply #5 on: June 07, 2012, 01:53:49 PM »
Only if that 12 gauge has a firing range of 20,000 feet up

I couldn't help but chortle audibly.
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"You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on." - Dean Martin

CCTAU

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Re: Really?
« Reply #6 on: June 07, 2012, 03:04:37 PM »
Only if that 12 gauge has a firing range of 20,000 feet up

So we are talking about a different kind of drone? I thought we were talking about the smaller ones that are operated locally and can hover a low altitude. If the drone is at 20,000 feet, then it cannot see into my windows anyway. 
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Five statements of WISDOM
1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity, by legislating the wealth out of prosperity.
2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.
3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.
5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friends, is the beginning of the end of any nation.

AUTailgatingRules

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Re: Really?
« Reply #7 on: June 07, 2012, 06:05:10 PM »
So we are talking about a different kind of drone? I thought we were talking about the smaller ones that are operated locally and can hover a low altitude. If the drone is at 20,000 feet, then it cannot see into my windows anyway.

Wanna bet?

http://www.prisonplanet.com/phantom-eye-pentagon-builds-gigantic-mega-drone.html
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CCTAU

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Re: Really?
« Reply #8 on: June 08, 2012, 12:45:00 AM »
Damn! I gotta get a bigger shotgun!
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Five statements of WISDOM
1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity, by legislating the wealth out of prosperity.
2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.
3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.
5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friends, is the beginning of the end of any nation.

GH2001

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Re: Really?
« Reply #9 on: June 08, 2012, 10:05:04 AM »
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WDE

AUTailgatingRules

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Re: Really?
« Reply #10 on: June 08, 2012, 12:15:48 PM »
That site has about as much credibility as Seth Rogan as an actor.



Agree about that site.  I was just linking the first story I found about Boeings new Mega Drone.  They were talking about this on Sirius radio the other day when I was travelling. 

Boeing is building this drone without any government contract, in hopes of developing the technology to make this thing viable.  Once they do, and they will, it will be snatched up by the DOD in a second.
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GH2001

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Re: Really?
« Reply #11 on: June 08, 2012, 12:56:07 PM »
Agree about that site.  I was just linking the first story I found about Boeings new Mega Drone.  They were talking about this on Sirius radio the other day when I was travelling. 

Boeing is building this drone without any government contract, in hopes of developing the technology to make this thing viable.  Once they do, and they will, it will be snatched up by the DOD in a second.

The govt will def gets its grubby little hands on it.
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WDE