Loss of Freedom Archives - Page 5 of 33

US Attorney General Orders Department of Justice to Ignore US Law Again

Pittsburgh Post Gazette: “On Monday, Attorney General Eric Holder, a liberal in a hurry, ordered all U.S. attorneys to simply stop charging nonviolent, non-gang-related drug defendants with crimes that, while fitting the offense, carry mandatory sentences. Find some lesser, non-triggering charge. How might you do that? Withhold evidence — e.g., about the amount of dope involved. . . . In other words, evade the law, by deceiving the court if necessary. “If the companies that I represent in federal criminal cases” did that, said former Deputy Attorney General George Terwilliger, “they could be charged with a felony.”

What We Lose if We Give Up Privacy

Wall St. Journal: “An entrenched surveillance state will change and distort the balance that allows free government to function successfully. Broad and intrusive surveillance will, definitively, put government in charge. But a republic only works . . . if public officials know that they—and the government itself—answer to the citizens. It doesn’t work, and is distorted, if the citizens must answer to the government. And that will happen more and more if the government knows—and you know—that the government has something, or some things, on you. ‘The bad thing is you no longer have the one thing we’re supposed to have as Americans living in a self-governing republic,’ . . . . ‘The people we elect are not your bosses, they are responsible to us.’ They must answer to us. But if they increasingly control our privacy, ‘suddenly they’re in charge if they know what you’re thinking‘.”

White House’s ObamaCare Delay Confirms Law Is A Mess

Investors Business Daily: “Confirming again that its reform is a disaster, the White House has stopped yet another provision of the law before it can take effect. This time it’s caps placed on patients’ out-of-pocket expenses. . . . So, like a monarch who exercises absolute power, the administration, which has no constitutional authority to write or change laws, delayed the deadline. Because it felt like it.”

Texas Farm Police Raid Organic Farm

Huffington Post: “A small organic farm in Arlington, Texas, was the target of a massive police action last week that included aerial surveillance, a SWAT raid and a 10-hour search. . . . the real reason for the law enforcement exercise appears to have been code enforcement. The police seized “17 blackberry bushes, 15 okra plants, 14 tomatillo plants … native grasses and sunflowers,” after holding residents inside at gunpoint for at least a half-hour, property owner Shellie Smith said in a statement. The raid lasted about 10 hours”

Legalized Theft by the Government

The government needs and wants your property and is using civil forfeiture laws to turn citizens property into money to fund more government.

The New Yorker: “you needn’t be found guilty to have your assets claimed by law enforcement; in some states, suspicion on a par with “probable cause” is sufficient. Nor must you be charged with a crime, or even be accused of one. Unlike criminal forfeiture, which requires that a person be convicted of an offense before his or her property is confiscated, civil forfeiture amounts to a lawsuit filed directly against a possession, regardless of its owner’s guilt or innocence. . . . But a system that proved successful at wringing profits from drug cartels and white-collar fraudsters has also given rise to corruption and violations of civil liberties. Over the past year, I spoke with more than a hundred police officers, defense attorneys, prosecutors, judges, and forfeiture plaintiffs from across the country. Many expressed concern that state laws designed to go after high-flying crime lords are routinely targeting the workaday homes, cars, cash savings, and other belongings of innocent people who are never charged with a crime.”

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