“Presumably, Chuck Schumer would not submit that those on a terror watch list should be deprived of their right to speak? Presumably, Harry Reid would not contend that they must be kept away from their mosques? Presumably, Diane Feinstein would not argue that they should be subjected to warrantless searches and seizures? Such proposals would properly be considered disgraceful — perhaps, even, as an overture to American fascism. Alas, there is something about guns that causes otherwise reasonable people to lose their minds.” – Charles C.W. Cooke in Anyone Who Would Use Terror as an Excuse to Subvert the Second Amendment Should Be Tarred & Feathered [at nationalreview.com]
Personally, I’m not too sure his presumptions about Messers. Schumer and Reid, and Ms. Feinstein, are correct.
No, Progressives will fiercely defend every other culture, alternative life style and religion, that isn’t a traditional american value, religion or right.
Progressives hate christians, they hate the traditional family of one man and one woman, they hate our second amendment, they hate that we are still the premier military and economic power in the world, they hate our traditional culture of self-reliance and personal responsibility, they hate our constitution that has protected individual rights, property and they hate the american culture that says the government is a servant to the people and not it’s master.
Progressive will attack and show utter contempt for every thing that has made america the greatest country in the world.
You don’t have to look far either when it comes to progressive values. The Supreme Court even bows to progressive liberalism. I can concede that perhaps gay marriage is a 9th or 10th Amendment issue however how does this have more prominence over 2nd Amendment issues?
Think about this, the Supreme Court has given us gay marriage across America yet there is only a patchwork of right to carry open or concealed of firearms. And it’s certainly not the law of the land in all 50 states and territories as it should be, and doesn’t have to be honored in all states.
This is the crux of the problem: they will throw a government clerk or bureaucrat in jail for denying gay marriage or dragging their feet on it, mere days after the black cloaked thugs handed it down, but let that be a CCW or affirming gun rights, like constitutional carry and somehow nothing happens to the person who is denying it be it judge or a clerk or sheriff, attorney, police chief, or some other law enforcement body.
I have a feeling that someone is going to come out of the woodwork and tell me, oh strict scrutiny and all that jazz, but SS is just nonsense a legal invention to artifical make second amendment, a second class right.
I call them the tyrants in black robes. They make up law as they go; defending as a “right” what was once considered murder, (abortion) and ignoring the clear violations of “shall not be infringed”.
I really believe that the reason the USSC is ignoring the various clear violations of the second amendment in different states is because they want to leave a window of opportunity for the congress to pass an AWB, at the next major “national crisis”.
They can’t easily do that if they rule that the various patchwork state gun laws are a violation of the constitution.
In other words, they hate everything that teaches the people that they are free and mature adults that are responsible for their own lives. That teaches the people that there are no victims, that they are the ones responsible for what ever level of success, or failure, that they might have in their life.
That the government is only responsible to help provide a level playing field for people to freely compete upon,and not as an “Uncle Sugar” that makes special laws and privileges for certain groups at the expense of others.
Yep, Progressives want serfs, they are so much easier to rule.
And the fools actually believe they will be rewarded with life and death power over us. Does the term “useful idiots” still mean anything to them?
(Rhetorical question)
“It’s not ‘Progressive’ as in ‘Progress’ but ‘Progressive’ as in ‘Cancer’.”
~SteveInCO
@Thomas R: I don’t think that all “Progressives” are quite as radical or conspiring as you state in your post. Most of them do want all religions to have equal rights, including those that have no religion. Which is what The Bill of Rights Guarantees. However, I do think that we all need to look at the Muslim religion and realize that it is not only a religion but also a political group. This is especially true for any group of Muslims that supports the idea of Sharia Law, which is at odds with our Bill of Rights and our way of life. Progressives also support the right of anyone, regardless of sex, to be able to marry and enjoy all the legal protections that marriage enjoys. I see that as a direct result of the guarantees in our Bill of Rights and not counter to them. I also think that some, but not all, Progressives see themselves as smarter than the rest of us and therefore better at making decisions than the general population. While that may be true in some cases it is certainly not true in all cases as we see on here with the articles where some Progressives seem quite brain dead. This seems to be especially true regarding their understanding of the Second Amendment. And as a group I do think that the Progressive Movement is moving further away from individual freedoms and towards more State Controls. And I really don’t like that trend and it is something that needs to be stopped. So, I will likely vote for candidates that honor the second amendment even if I don’t agree with some of their other views. It is time for this country to elect someone that stands for freedom and individual rights rather than State control. I also fear that if a Progressive gets elected as President the next time we could really be in trouble on the Supreme Court bench in the future.
he makes good points. i had said yesterday that i didn’t have a problem with restricting firearm access of those on terrorists watchlist. it’s really hard to make a concrete decision on this, for me anyways.
Innocent until proven guilty man.
If you’re an American citizen, yes. This does not mean we should allow jihadis to cross our border while we wait and see if they’ll commit a terrorist crime.
That’s what terrorists DO.
Exactly. This goes hand in hand with the illegal immigration issue. Non-citizens who cross the border without going through the proper channels are already committing a crime. Turning someone away at the border is not accusing them of being a criminal, it’s simply saying “Sorry, you can’t come in.” It’d be no different than if you didn’t let someone into your house purely because you didn’t want to.
All men are created equal. Arbitrary “citizenship” have nothing to do with it.
Doesn’t mean people, including cops, can’t be extra vigilant around those who bear traits strongly correlated with endangering others. Like, for example heading straight from listening to a fiery Mullah speak of jihad, to the fertilizer shop. But you don’t restrict people from exercising their most basic rights, simply on account of what some bureaucrat may “feel” about him one day.
Besides, Jihadis pose virtually no proven threat to Americans. While government overreach is the single greatest threat facing us since at least the Cuban crisis. It’s so lopsided it’s not even funny.
If you’re in American jurisdiction, regardless of whether you’re a citizen or not. Natural rights are just that – natural. They’re not a gift bestowed on you by the government of the USA along with citizenship, at birth or otherwise.
If they made this a law then within seconds the ‘terrorist watch list’ would suddenly become the state ‘no gun allowed list’. Not only would they be able to arbitrarily decide who is allowed to keep and bear arms, we then lose any real value that the terrorist watch list is currently providing us.
“…we then lose any real value that the terrorist watch list is currently providing us.”
The watch list is currently providing value to us? How?
More than you think. Just because it doesn’t make the news, doesn’t mean it’s not working.
I agree, the real value may be dubious, but at least that’s what it’s supposed to be for.
Red:
Exactly. I see a lot of “intelligence and/or security measure X has never caught anybody or prevented an attack.”
“How would you know.”
“I read on [insert blog name here.]
Cardinal rule of intelligence “You don’t know what you don’t know.” And that is for people in the business
Wow! Red in Texas and tdiinva, spoken like a true feds. If you you both aren’t feds, you might be missing your calling.
Remember though, once the “useful idiots” are no longer needed., they are the first tossed under the bus.
TR has his narrative and he is sticking to it
— just like the Moms.
I have a magic rock that keeps tigers away. Since I haven’t seen any tigers since I acquired it, it must be working!
I have a hard time believing the notion that the government is stopping all kinds of imminent terrorist attacks and not trumpeting it 24/7 at maximum volume. Look at how much they pat themselves on the back whenever they bust a “terrorist cell” that’s just a bunch of low-IQ dupes being prodded along by a planted FBI informant.
“..Just because it doesn’t make the news, doesn’t mean it’s not working.”
Bull.
The TSA says crap like this all the time. If some alphabet agency actually had a success story that started (or ended) with the Terrorist Watch List they would shout it from the highest rooftop. They would hold up that success story for everyone to see, would remind everyone every day about it, and use that success story as the ‘perfect example’ of why they need to do it more, to expand the list or the authority or both.
The fact that no one can point to any good coming from the Terrorist Watch List just shows how horrible it actually is to have our rights violated for zero benefit.
Whether they say it all the time or not is irrelevant. You have no proof that such a list hasn’t done anything.
“…You have no proof that such a list hasn’t done anything.”
No, Ben. You don’t prove the absence of something, you don’t prove the negative. We are innocent until proven otherwise and being on the list is in direct violation of that simple concept. I don’t prove my innocence of crimes I haven’t committed to maybe get taken off the list at some time in the future.
“The List” is a gross violation of the Fifth Amendment and needs to be eliminated immediately! Trying to justify it’s use for anything other than birdcage liners or firestarters puts you in the same category that needs to be tarred and feathered and dropped in the harbor.
Of course you must prove absence. Absence of evidence does not equate to evidence of absence, else bacteria did not exist until the invention of the microscope. You’re basing your assertion on nothing more than an assumption.with no support past “lol I haven’t seen anything”.
OK Ben, while that may be true for bacteria, it is not true when it comes to guilt. I am innocent until you prove otherwise. It is not my responsibility to prove my innocence. My being innocent is the default position, it is up to you to prove the positive outcome, to prove the positive condition of my guilt.
The reason why we don’t know for sure is because a lot of this shit is classified, in many cases for no reason other than to not let the public know just how useless it is. Similarly, they have secret courts for wiretaps, but because they’re secret, in many cases we don’t even know how many approvals they issue, much less whether the reasons are good enough. It’s a parody of checks and balances, where the same people who violate your rights appoint courts to “check” them on said violations, and even then do so in secret, such that the only thing that actually gets to the public is some government official saying that everything is a-okay – the secret court has said so! (the irony is that in some cases it wasn’t even true, like only recently we’ve found out that even those sham courts were complaining a lot about blatant executive overreach, but were not allowed to do so publicly).
If you’re for things like terrorist watchlists that actually strip people of rights like freedom of movement and freedom to defend themselves, you’re enabling fascism. Not some vague abstract “bad guy” fascism, but literal fascism.
Wow I stand corrected if stinkeye has trouble believing it then I guess I should to! /sarc
I think the Internet has dropped my IQ by 20 points and I didn’t have much to start with.
Believe whatever you want. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was on several watch lists and he still managed to blow up a bunch of people in Boston. The “underwear bomber” back in 2009 was on our watch lists, but still managed to get a bomb on a plane (the only reason that plane wasn’t blown up was because the bomb didn’t work).
So there’s a couple high-profile failures just off the top of my head. Got any success stories to compare?
Innocent until proven guilty. Derp.
The watch list is far too arbitrary and without oversight to ever allow such a thing to be used to restrict constitutionally protected rights.
You should be slapped for even considering such a thing.
What is your stance on civil forfeiture? If one owns guns already and ends up on that list, that would be grounds for them losing their property with no conviction or other due process.
Secondly, there are quite a few people, as I recall, who wrongly ended up on that list or simply had the same name as someone on the list and were denied air travel for literally no reason. Would you subject a basic human right to the same bureaucratic ineptitude?
I don’t have a problem denying or curtailing rights. I have a problem dishing out punishment without probable cause, a thorough investigation, and due process. A man has the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
However, I consider those rights to apply most closely to legitimate citizens of this nation. Illegal immigrants and Syrian refugees – which I don’t wish to import into our nation – are cause for legitimate concern. My immigration policy is simple: respect and assimilate into American culture, have a background free of violent felonies and fraud, and a demonstrated willingness to support and defend our Constitution.
I’m with you to a point since the preamble to the constitution pretty much covers it:
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.
Ourselves and Our posterity doesn’t cover squatters, religious, ethnic, cultural or otherwise If you are not a citizen, your rights are not protected by the Constitution regardless of how you came here, legally or not.
However denying or curtailing rights to a US citizen sort of makes the whole thorough investigation improbable if not impossible. It implies guilty until proven innocent.
>> Ourselves and Our posterity doesn’t cover squatters, religious, ethnic, cultural or otherwise If you are not a citizen, your rights are not protected by the Constitution regardless of how you came here, legally or not.
“The right of People to …”
Doesn’t say citizens there.
And the courts have consistently held that all constitutional rights apply to everybody under US jurisdiction, ever since slavery was abolished.
As it should be, if you believe that these are natural rights. If they’re tied to citizenship, and given that citizenship is itself not a natural right (as it can be granted and stripped), then rights are also granted and stripped subject only to the whim of the Federal government (as it has the sole authority on citizenship).
This!
“I don’t have a problem denying or curtailing rights.”
The problem with THAT statement is that it usurps your other statement.
“A man has the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Burden of proof is often the FIRST right to go. Round them up and keep them “temporarily detained” as long as you like comerade, we’re under martial law!
Or try them in the court of Popular Opinion as mediated by the Mainstream Press.
We have little-to-no due process anymore. If you doubt that, ask Kevin Clash. Or, the former president of University of Missouri.
I recall from time to time reading were many have called the New Black Panthers a “Terrorist Group”. (I personally don’t agree)
Does Reid, Feinstein and Shumer want to go on record as saying they want to prevent them from obtaining a legal firearm and violate their 2nd amendment rights?
Now…………..replace the name “New Black Panthers” with any group/company/organization that does not have the same ideology as the political party in power at a given time and you can see where this can lead.
They’re mostly harmless – other than in front of polling places in Philadelphia.
One of the organizations behind the EU gun ban is smallarmssurvey.org
Here: http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/L-External-publications/2003/2003%20BtB%20Regulation%20civ%20possession.pdf
They have this to say about the second amendment:
“Even within the United States, where constitutional claims of the civilian right to bear arms are often invoked, courts repeatedly and unanimously have maintained that the US Constitution does not guarantee individuals the right to possess or carry guns. The Second Amendment only protects “the right to form militias under the control of state authorities” (independent of national/federal authorities). It does not impede local, state, or national legislatures from enacting or enforcing gun control laws.”
Here are the members of the group responsible for the proposal:
http://ec.europa.eu/transparency/regexpert/index.cfm?do=groupDetail.groupDetail&groupID=2931
One of the culprits is Sarah Parker from the small arms survey group. Heavily involved in the UN with an agenda to ban firearms. Just google her.
Example: http://www.icip-perlapau.cat/e-review/issue-16-may-2013/relationship-between-un-programme-action-small-arms-and-arms-trade-treaty.htm
http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/Q-Handbooks/HB-02-Diplo-Guide/SAS-HB02-Diplomats-Guide-UN-Small-Arms-Process.pdf
This stinks.
There is no due process with the Terrorist watch list. There are many on the watch list who do not belong on it. It is arbitrary and up to the whim of the bureaucracy that created it.
Are we talking about the same Diane Feinstein? I think she’d be all for that. I don’t think there’s a single right held by the people that she doesn’t relish stomping on. She’d have her kitchen floor redone entirely in fundamental rights if she could.
war on terror, war on drugs, war on poverty, ect……have any of these ‘wars’ accomplished anything more than restricting the rights of the average law abiding American?
Of course not. The entire purpose of government is; always, everywhere and without exception; simply to grow government. At everyone and everything elses expense. There literally is nothing else.
Once the Federal Government is allowed to “decide” who can be declared a “terrorist” and denied due process, the gloves are off and no one is safe. Given the fact that the Obama-controlled Executive Branch has control of the Agencies who would make those decisions and enforce them, the “potential for abuse” becomes a certainty of abuse. The Obama Administration does not deal in opponents, but in enemies. The quote from Charles C. W. Cooke’s article accurately depicts where Reid, Schumer and Feinstein are trying to go.
Mr. Cooke does have a way with words. His ending:
“If, as the watch list’s proponents insist, there are people among us who are too dangerous to remain at liberty, then those people must be arrested, charged, and tried tout de suite. Until that happens, they must be left the hell alone, lest the pitchforks and smoothbores that subdued the last set of usurpers start to twitch and grow restless in their retirement.”
Yes, indeed! I thought Cooke’s last paragraph was dynamite!
To give you some perspective, my wife’s aunt is on the no fly list. She’s 65+ y/o. A retired elementary school teacher that never got more than a traffic ticket. She’s Lutheran, never politically active and mix of Northern European and Italian decent.
I am on ‘the list.’ So is my father, and my grandfather was before he passed.
You see, we all have the same name. Once all three of us tried to fly together and the system kicked out all three of our tickets. The airlines thought it was fraud, the TSA thought it was a terrorist plot, and to this day I still don’t know if any of our names have been removed.
So if Trump called for putting huge swaths of the population into some database to be tracked and denied gun rights suddenly the left would be huge Trump supporters?
I love how the only consistently bipartisan cause is the curtailment of liberty. Everybody wants a watch list just for different groups of people. Everybody wants to deny certain rights. They just differ on which ones and for whom though that gap is closing.
Government seems far less concerned with liberty for all and much more concerned with using selective marginalization to control everyone. The slaves don’t complain about their chains. They complain when their neighbors chains aren’t as tight as their own and demand government come tighten their neighbors chains.
We’ll said, divide and conquer, it’s effectiveness has increased exponentially with mass media propaganda tools.
Those data bases were already well established under the democrat party control of Congress during the early Obama administration. Both houses of Congress and the presidency controlled by progressive democrats.
The socialist, progressive democrats, and the socialist democrsts all agree. Foreign fighters have every right to travel to America unrestricted. They don’t like to enforce American borders. Murders and rapist have every right to travel to the USA.
You are late to the party. Nice try to blame Trump. Then again not really.
“Those data bases were already well established under the
democratRepubican party control of Congress during the earlyObamaBush administration.”Hey, look, it works both ways! Read Shire-Man’s comment again. He’s not blaming Trump, he’s pointing out that both parties want to curtail your rights and control people. The only thing that changes is the letter after their names and which rights they want to strip you of first. Neither party has any interest in upholding the Constitution, since that document is designed to limit their power, and unchecked power is what they’re after.
The lists were the creation of the Bush administration. Give blame where blame is due.
At the same time, my biggest problem with Obama, as a liberal, is that he did jack shit about all the police state BS that he inherited from Bush, and in many cases has actually expanded it significantly – despite all the promises of “change”.
We NEED this,
It WON’T be used as a tool
In any AGENDA.
You can TRUST us
We KEEP our word
For the CHILDREN™……….
Oh geez, Dianne Feinstein hasn’t died yet What is that bitch on some kind of miracle drug? What she like 160 by now. You remember she was the one screaming I’ve seen the bodies I’ve seen the bodies. What freakin bodies is she talking about She wasn’t old enough to be in the Second World War And actually see what happens to populous is that are disarmed And rights taken away from them they get stuck in ovens member that bitch? So why is it that you want to take Firearms away from a free People freedom of religion freedom of speech freedom to keep and bear arms these are all freedoms that are very important to keep tyranny away from our country! You would think that Dianne Feinstein Doesn’t remember how Adolf Hitler in 1939 came in and took all of the Jewish peoples guns away Before making them wear arm patches that says hey look im a Jew Get me ready for an oven! Something is very wrong with the liberal progressives in this country they’re turning our country into a giant sheets too! Back off our Constitution! And our freedoms!And what is with this so-called Terrorist problem with law abiding gun owners, if that isn’t a big pile horse crap! Tell them to watch the movie die hard if they don’t know what a terrorist looks like I mean give me a freakin break Just so you know Diane, terrorists are people who take away freedoms rights and lives of other people because of religious Extremism Sound familiar!
Unless anyone on the “terrorist watch list” is also banned from purchasing gasoline, matches and motor vehicles, then not only is this a gross violation of rights, it’s also a completely ineffectual measure.
I can understand it’s worth having a list of people who are worthy of a little more scrutiny at the airport – and flying on privately owned commercial aircraft is not an enumerated right. That said, even the lower (than due process) Administrative Law standard of “Procedural Fairness” requires that folks who find themselves on the list have access to a rational process to have themselves removed if the circumstances warrant.
Wasn’t it the Republicans who used the fear of terrorism to institute illegal, warrant-less data gathering at the NSA and launched two pointless wars to benefit their political supporters in the defense industry?
Politicians of all stripes use fear to crush liberty, seize power and steal money.
Point out where the article, or anyone on this topic, denies that.
Also, all electronic devices are required by law to accept all interference. You know this when you buy and use an electronic device, so you consent to being picked up by other electronic devices. What happens after that is fair game, unless you want to attempt to make the case that, say, a police officer reading a sign in your yard constitutes unwarranted seizure of information.
>all electronic devices are required by law to accept all interference
Interference isn’t the same as eavesdropping. The legal requirement on broadcasting devices concerns frequency bands, not government snooping. Moreover, the current debate on government spying regards their wholesale collection of all signals data, as well as their attempts to compromise the very integrity of the internet for their own power. They would rather destroy the internet than let people communicate securely.
The 4th Amendment guarantees the right to be secure in your person, house, papers, and effects against unwarranted searches. It’s pretty hard to argue that warrantless spying on your phone conversations and e-mail is not a violation of that, regardless of the FCC’s stance on radio interference.
You simply stated “data gathering”, of which phone taps and e-mail phishing is only part of. A cell phone signal would most certainly be electronic interference, which is required by law to be intercepted by any electronic device that can receive airborne signals. That being said, if you (an electronic device that can transmit an airborne signal) put a sign up on your property with your bank account information on it (a signal), would it be illegal if a police officer (another electronic device capable of receiving signals) looked at your sign, since he obtained that information (interference) without a warrant? Would all cops in the vicinity have to plug their ears and close their eyes if I walked into a police station and simply started yelling out my personal information?
Also, the first surreptitious gathering of electronic data by our government was conducted by MI-8’s Black Chamber on Western Union’s (Western Union consented to their lines being tapped, those using them, obviously, did not) telegraph lines during the administration of Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat. Sure, the Patriot Act was signed into law by a Republican President (a fact that no one here, nor in the linked article, is denying), but it definitely wasn’t the first time public communications networks were tapped by our government in the name of “security”.
You realize cellphones don’t broadcast in the clear, right?
Why yes. Yes they should!
Remember, after the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, it was FDR by Executive Order 9066 that sent the Japanese Americans to the internment camps.
FDR was not the only one who was afraid of the American Japanese.
Even though FDR may have been well-intentioned I think he was wrong when he violated the constitution. He went beyond his granted executive power.
But no on stood up him.
The question is, does the current president think he has the power to use
Executive Orders to curtail the rights (any rights) of the people, regardless of his intentions, in order to respond to some perceived terrorist threat?
Is he willing to use a perceived terrorist threat as an excuse to achieve his political agenda?
Frankly, am more afraid of president that wields a tremendous amount of power to come out as a tyrannical dictator that any group terrorists.
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