Big Lie

Four Centuries of Surveillance: From Privy Councils to FISA Courts

"Letters to or from England were carried by private ship captains, who often hung a bag in the local coffeehouse to receive letters for shipment. The price was generally a penny for a single letter and two pence for a double letter or parcel. In 1591 the Crown had issued a proclamation granting itself the monopoly of all foreign mail, and in 1609 the Crown’s proclamation extended its own monopoly to all mail foreign or domestic. The purpose of this postal monopoly was quite simple: to enable governmental officials to read the letters of private citizens in order to discover and suppress 'treason' and 'sedition.'" Continue reading →

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Andrew Napolitano: Domestic Spying Is Dangerous to Freedom

"How is it that the government can charge Edward Snowden with espionage for telling a journalist that the feds have been spying on all Americans and many of our allies, but the NSA itself can reveal secrets and do so with impunity? All of this happened in the dark, with the permission of President Obama, with the knowledge and consent of fewer than 20 members of Congress who were forbidden from doing anything about it by the laws they themselves had written, and based on secret legal arguments accepted by a secret court that keeps its records secret even from the judges who sit on the court." Continue reading →

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Fantasy Dream: Easy Retirement (If You Have $1 Million).

"MarketWatch is a conventional website. It runs financial news. It also runs articles on investing. This one caught my eye. 'How to make your nest egg last over 40 years.' That sounds good! I read it. The article says you can achieve this goal. But you will need at least $2 million. A million won’t get the job done. The point is this: a journalist in a major financial magazine shows that there is no easy retirement, even if you have $1 million at 65. But hardly anyone does. Then how will people afford retirement? They can’t. Do most people understand this? They will move in with their kids. Are the kids ready for this? No. Are the kids in debt? Yes." Continue reading →

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Army won’t suspend contracts with Al Qaeda-tied companies, citing ‘due process rights’

"The U.S. Army is refusing to suspend contracts with dozens of companies and individuals tied to Al Qaeda and other extremist groups out of concern for their 'due process rights,' despite repeated pleas from the chief watchdog for Afghanistan reconstruction. In a scathing passage of his latest report to Congress, Special Inspector General John Sopko said his office has urged the Army to suspend or debar 43 contractors over concerns about ties to the Afghanistan insurgency, 'including supporters of the Taliban, the Haqqani network and al Qaeda.' Sopko wrote that the Army 'rejected' every single case." Continue reading →

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How Martial Law In America Will Affect You

"The lock-down of the Boston area is not an isolated incident. It is part of a well-funded, coordinated federal program called Operation Urban Shield. Law enforcement is being trained to impose martial law. Americans are being trained to obey without question. People sometimes marvel over how a civilized populace like the pre-Nazi Germans were blind to the approach of totalitarianism. How could they miss the signs? Most Americans are missing the hint presented by armored personnel vehicles rolling into a peaceful community. The best way to avoid martial law in America is not to be here when it occurs." Continue reading →

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Obama Denies Domestic Spying But He’s Wrong

"Obama on the Jay Leno show said 'We don’t have a domestic spying program.' He said 'What we do have are some mechanisms where we can track a phone number or an e-mail address that we know is connected to some sort of terrorist threat.' Obama is incorrect. The XKeyscore program of the NSA spies on everyone. 'A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden.' It’s not the only program of the government." Continue reading →

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Obama: ‘We don’t have a domestic spying program’

"Obama said the programs were critical to counterterrorism work. But he said more needed to be done to assure Americans they were not being spied on themselves. 'We don’t have a domestic spying program,' he said. 'What we do have are some mechanisms where we can track a phone number or an email address that we know is connected to some sort of terrorist threat.'" Continue reading →

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Monday Morning Skeptic: Questioning Authority in the Sprawling Boston Bombing Case

"Mistakes were made. Lots of them—and on more than a few significant aspects of the story. But do such details really matter? If you believe in the infallibility of the FBI, probably not. But the Boston Marathon bombing investigation has bloomed into a complex filigree of related inquiries—from the unsolved triple murder in 2011 in drowsy Waltham, Mass., to the rare 'shelter-in-place' order and live-TV posse search for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on April 19, to the puzzling FBI-agent shooting death in Florida of an unarmed friend of the Tsarnaevs who might have been able to answer crucial questions–had he lived." Continue reading →

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What’s in the Vault?

"The request represented less than 5% of all the gold that the Fed officially holds in its New York vaults. (Interestingly, an earlier request by Germany to inspect its assets was denied by the Fed). Despite the relatively small request (relative to the total holdings), repatriation is expected by 2020. Perhaps for fear that she may be 'persuaded' to accept being 'cash-settled' with U.S. dollars in lieu of gold, Germany dared not complain. The letter issued on April 1, 2013 by Dutch State-owned ABN-AMRO bank to holders of paper claims to gold and silver held in its vaults advised that any physical metal custodied at the bank would in the future be 'cash-settled'." Continue reading →

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Obama’s False History of Public ‘Infrastructure’ Investment

"The makers of autos, tires and headlights began building roads privately long before any state or the federal government got involved. The Lincoln Highway, the first transcontinental highway for cars, pieced together from new and existing roads in 1913, was conceived and partly built by entrepreneurs. Railroads are another example of the infrastructure-follows-entrepreneurship rule. Before the 1860s, almost all railroads were privately financed and built. Airplanes became a major industry and started carrying passengers by the early 1920s. During that period, nearly all airports were privately funded." Continue reading →

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