Op-Ed: How to end overcriminalization | WashingtonExaminer.com

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Take Eddie Leroy Anderson, a retired logger from Idaho whose only crime was loaning his son “some tools to dig for arrowheads near a favorite campground of theirs,” according to the Wall Street Journal. Anderson and his son found no arrowheads, but because they were unknowingly on federal land at the time they were judged to be in violation of an obscure Carter-era law called the Archaeological Resources Protection Act.

The government showed no mercy. Wendy Olson, the Obama appointee prosecuting the case, saw to it that father and son were fined $1,500 apiece and each sentenced to a year’s probation. “Folks do need to pay attention to where they are,” she said.

Statutory law in America has expanded to the point that government’s primary activity is no longer to protect, preserve and defend our lives, liberty and property, but rather to stalk and entrap normal American citizens doing everyday things.

After identifying three federal offenses in the U.S. Constitution — treason, piracy and counterfeiting — the federal government left most matters of law enforcement to the states. By the time President Obama took office in 2009, however, there were more than 4,500 federal criminal statutes on the books.

“Too many people in Washington seem to think that the more laws Congress enacts, the better the job performance of the policymakers,” Lynch notes. “That’s twisted.”

via Op-Ed: How to end overcriminalization | WashingtonExaminer.com.

Hell Holes: Torture, starvation and murder the norm at world’s worst gulags | Fox News

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The imprisonment of American Christian Pastor Saeed Abedini in Iran’s infamous Evin prison has sparked an international outcry and shined a spotlight on one of the world’s cruelest gulags.

But Evin is just one of many prisons where conditions exist that would shock medieval jailers, and where the level of human misery is incalculable. Prisoners brazenly carrying guns and machetes, guards rousting inmates in the night for mock executions and captives forced to stand in water up to their noses for 24 hours when they’re not being worked literally to death are common at the world’s most draconian dungeons. Most operate in rogue nations, beyond the influence of human rights organizations or appeals from Western nations. The few who have escaped or been freed carry the scars from their imprisonment for the rest of their lives.

via Hell Holes: Torture, starvation and murder the norm at world’s worst gulags | Fox News.

FDA Crushing Pharmaceutical Growth | Via Meadia

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Government regulation is stifling America’s vibrant pharmaceutical industry. A recent report by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology estimates that it costs an average of $1.2 billion to win FDA approval and bring a new drug to market. Given that biopharmaceuticals account for roughly two percent of the economy, this is no small matter.

The chief problem is the complex process of clinical trials, in particular “Phase 3,” in which a drug is tested and retested to prove its its effectiveness in treating conditions across a broad population. These trials have a strong track record, but they are poorly suited to new biopharmaceuticals, which are often very effective in smaller, targeted groups despite a lower success rate in the public at large. Under the current system, many of these drugs may fail their trials despite their effectiveness when prescribed correctly.

via FDA Crushing Pharmaceutical Growth | Via Meadia.

Kathleen Parker: The Obama White House ‘threat’ to Bob Woodward matters – The Washington Post

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Woodward, almost 70, is Washington’s Reporter Emeritus. His facts stand up to scrutiny. His motivations withstand the test of objectivity. Sperling obviously assumed that Woodward wouldn’t take offense at the suggestion that he not only was wrong but was also endangering his valuable proximity to power.

He assumed, in other words, that Woodward would not do his job. This was an oversight.

This is no tempest in a teapot but rather the leak in the dike. Drip by drip, the Obama administration has demonstrated its intolerance for dissent and its contempt for any who stray from the White House script. Yes, all administrations are sensitive to criticism, and all push back when such criticism is deemed unfair or inaccurate. But no president since Richard Nixon has demonstrated such overt contempt for the messenger. And, thanks to technological advances in social media, Obama has been able to bypass traditional watchdogs as no other president has.

via Kathleen Parker: The Obama White House ‘threat’ to Bob Woodward matters – The Washington Post.

Let’s starve! Kids forced to go hungry for hours during Michelle Obama media event | The Daily Caller

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A very courageous fifth teacher in the Chicago Public Schools has written a scathing critique of the almost comical misery she and her students endured when they participated in a massive February 28 event kicking off Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! Active Schools campaign.

The First Lady’s campaign is an effort to improve (and in some cases, bring back) physical education in American schools. White House officials called the event “a groundbreaking, earth-shattering, awesomely-inspiring day.”

Lisa Putnam and her fifth grades most certainly did not experience the event the same way, however. According to Putnam, the event at Chicago’s McCormick Place (the largest convention center in North America) was an unmitigated catastrophe.

via Let’s starve! Kids forced to go hungry for hours during Michelle Obama media event | The Daily Caller.

Articles: Dangerous Times: How Euro-socialism Set off a Fascist Bomb

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I think this paints a pretty stark picture of the problem in Europe.

To understand the new upsurge of European fascism, you have to imagine what it’s like to live in Rome.

Imagine the US government being sunk in red ink. The United Nations suspends the US Constitution and compels us to adopt a new UN currency called the UNO, designed to favor other countries. The United States no longer runs its own currency. Our economy tanks and our deficit keeps getting worse.

Therefore the UN unilaterally appoints a caretaker president for the US named Monti, who imposes radical budget cuts on our dependent welfare state.

1. Social Security is cut by half. People have to live on 700 euros per month.

2. ObamaCare is cut by half. Two hospitals in Rome do not pay their medical staffs for six months.

3. Taxes on income and sales are raised to an average of 50%.

4. Small business taxes are increased — but big businesses taxes are lowered, “because big business is more efficient.” (Meaning it has bigger unions).

5. Politicians and bureaucrats get major pay raises. The figurehead President of the US doubles his salary.

Government at all levels is corrupt. It’s the only way people can survive. Everybody is playing double games. People are doing two jobs and running their own businesses out of government offices. Everybody cheats on taxes. The mafia controls half the country. Survival depends on the black market, the black economy. The currency is kept artificially high, so exports crash.

It’s happened to Italy under the European Union. Don’t think it can’t happen here. Obama is a Euro socialist, representing faculty lounge socialism in America, so completely arrogant and cocksure that Paul Krugman just knows how to run the trillion-dollar US economy. Nobody else can figure it out, but Krugman knows that he knows. Our new rulers are control freaks, just as free market economists have said since Adam Smith. They are six year olds steering the family car and thinking they are in control until…

… until it all blows up.

via Articles: Dangerous Times: How Euro-socialism Set off a Fascist Bomb.

What Sort of Leader Was Lincoln? – NYTimes.com

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The more I learn about Lincoln, the more I admire him. My libertarian friends may disagree, of course, but all evidence is that his humility, faith, and vision increased while he was in office. While he occasionally used questionable presidential powers, in general he did so for the right reasons. He was the right man at the right time.

There is no one whose statecraft more vividly illustrates the style of constitutional leadership better than Abraham Lincoln. He stated the problem of constitutional leadership with uncommon clarity in his Special Message to Congress of July 4, 1861. “Must a government, of necessity,” he asked, “be too strong for the liberties of its own people or too weak to maintain its own existence?”

As Lincoln understood, the most essential feature of constitutional leadership is self-restraint. Constitutional government is, by definition, limited government. Governments may be limited either with respect to their means or with respect to their ends. Constitutional government is both. It deliberately leaves some things outside the parameters of political control. Our government, for example, respects the individual’s right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These belong to the discretion of the individual, and it is the task of government to fulfill the function of protecting the exercise of each person’s right to use or misuse their freedom as he sees fit. A government that seeks to supervise every aspect of its citizens’ private lives is on the way to the destruction of constitutionalism.

The self-restraint imposed by the doctrine of consent was the opposite of the doctrine of “popular sovereignty” proclaimed by Lincoln’s great rival, Stephen A. Douglas. Douglas had argued that it was the right of every state or territory to decide for itself whether or not to permit slavery — a case of simple majority rule. What the majority of people wanted within a designated territory was sufficient to decide the problem. Thus Douglas could declare that it was a matter of “indifference” to him whether slavery was voted up or down.

For Lincoln, however, the doctrine of unlimited majority rule violated the principle of constitutional government. Constitutions are devices for restraining power, whether this be the power of a king or a popular majority. If slavery is a good, Lincoln enjoyed chiding his audiences, then it is a good that no man has ever chosen for himself. It is consent that forms the essence of constitutional government.

via What Sort of Leader Was Lincoln? – NYTimes.com.

Bob Woodward: Obama’s sequester deal-changer – The Washington Post

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The finger-pointing began during the third presidential debate last fall, on Oct. 22, when President Obama blamed Congress. “The sequester is not something that I’ve proposed,” Obama said. “It is something that Congress has proposed.”The White House chief of staff at the time, Jack Lew, who had been budget director during the negotiations that set up the sequester in 2011, backed up the president two days later.“There was an insistence on the part of Republicans in Congress for there to be some automatic trigger,” Lew said while campaigning in Florida. It “was very much rooted in the Republican congressional insistence that there be an automatic measure.”The president and Lew had this wrong. My extensive reporting for my book “The Price of Politics” shows that the automatic spending cuts were initiated by the White House and were the brainchild of Lew and White House congressional relations chief Rob Nabors — probably the foremost experts on budget issues in the senior ranks of the federal government.Obama personally approved of the plan for Lew and Nabors to propose the sequester to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid D-Nev.. They did so at 2:30 p.m. July 27, 2011, according to interviews with two senior White House aides who were directly involved.Nabors has told others that they checked with the president before going to see Reid. A mandatory sequester was the only action-forcing mechanism they could devise. Nabors has said, “We didn’t actually think it would be that hard to convince them” — Reid and the Republicans — to adopt the sequester. “It really was the only thing we had. There was not a lot of other options left on the table.”A majority of Republicans did vote for the Budget Control Act that summer, which included the sequester. Key Republican staffers said they didn’t even initially know what a sequester was — because the concept stemmed from the budget wars of the 1980s, when they were not in government.

via Bob Woodward: Obama’s sequester deal-changer – The Washington Post.

York Arms – NY deliveries (Screw you, NY)

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Based on the recent legislation in New York, we are prohibited from selling rifles and receivers to residents of New York. We have chosen to extend that prohibition to all governmental agencies associated with or located within New York. As a result we have halted sales of rifles, short barreled rifles, short barreled shotguns, machine guns, and silencers to New York governmental agencies.

For “civilian” customers residing in New York:

At your choice, we will:

complete your order and ship to a dealer of your choice outside of NY

refund your payment in full

hold your items here for up to 6 months, at no charge – if you are in the process of leaving NY and taking residence in another state.

For LE/Govt customers in New York:

Your orders have been cancelled.

via York Arms – NY deliveries.

LEFT IN THE DARK: Secret U.S. military flights carried officials, equipment to N. Korea

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Senior U.S. administration officials held secret talks in North Korea on at least three occasions in 2011 and 2012, The Asahi Shimbun has learned.

Although the visits had potential implications for Japan, Washington did not inform its security partner at the time and only informally confirmed one of them when the Japanese side pressed, government and other sources in Japan, South Korea and the United States said.

The U.S. State Department even warned the Foreign Ministry against making further inquiries, saying they would harm bilateral relations, the sources said.

U.S. military planes flew from an air base in Guam to Pyongyang and back on April 7, 2012, and again on a longer visit lasting from Aug. 18-20, the sources said.

via LEFT IN THE DARK: Secret U.S. military flights carried officials, equipment to N. Korea – AJW by The Asahi Shimbun.