The Thanksgiving TSA Opt-Out Week!

By Hugh Farnham

It's that time of the year again.  Dragging your roll-around through terminals, the lines, the bad airline food and... getting a nude-ray photo of your body courtesy of the Federal Government. 

 

Most citizens don't know it is their right to "opt out" of going through the millimeter ray scanner.

 

These nude-ray scanners have a very salty past and there are many reasons to say "No":  

 

-   Potentially these scanners, especially the X-Ray backscatter units, could contribute to a higher risk of cancer

 

-  Having the Federal Government take a naked photo of you is a gross violation of your 4th Amendment rights (and no, I don't believe the machines immediately erase the photos)

 

-  The procurement of these machines is a scandal in itself, with Chertoff, the former head of DHS, working as a lobbyist to get these funded

 

- The TSA is more about getting compliance and submission than actually finding terrorists.  After billions spent, how many real rabid terrorists have they found?  0.

As you go through the security screening line, if you are told to go through the scanner simply say "I exercise my right to Opt Out".  The TSA screener is then bound to honor your request and you will be sent through secondary screening.  Without the X-Rays.

In 2010, when the Opt Out Week first started, the TSA shut down the scanner machines rather than face confrontation over the use of them.  We will see what they do this year.  Please share your experiences here at Western Hero.

Travel safe and happy holidays to all our readers of Western Hero!

America Condemns Itself to Guantanamo

Today I offer you a few news snippets you can put in the handbasket our government is going to hell in...

Picture this...

Documents obtained by CBS News show that the federal government secretly encouraged angry bomb throwers to engage in irresponsible and incendiary language in the hope of using the ensuing violence to argue for controversial new speech restrictions.

That didn't really happen.  I made it up.  I wish someone had made this up, but it's all too true...

Documents obtained by CBS News show that the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) discussed using their covert operation "Fast and Furious" to argue for controversial new rules about gun sales. (CBS News)

The ATF is a rogue organization and should be disbanded, along with the entire Heimatlandsicherheit, and Janet Napoleaonitano should be exiled to the island of Elba, along the Minister of Injustice, Eric Holder.

Government actions to steal our 2nd Amendment rights are un-American because they are unconstitutional.   The people and the states promulgated the US Constitution to charge the federal government with protecting our natural rights.  It is now consciously doing the opposite.

Imagine if a government conspired to take away your 4th Amendment rights...  Wait, that's already happened...

You see, such plots and false flag operations (real or imagined) can only work if our constitutional rights are no longer held sacrosanct.  The fact that nefarious progressive forces see our rights as debatable and ripe for the snatching tells me we are already in danger.

CBS News - Government used Fast and Furious
IBD - Just as we suspected

New York Police State of Mind

A US Marine combat vet faces 15 Years in jail for bringing a gun to New York city. He thought he had the law straight, and freely surrendered it when entering a pubic building that had a sign posted stating no guns allowed. That's when he was busted. Since our law enforcement at all levels no longer cares about criminal intent, they are simply making the world safe from responsible gun owners who voluntarily surrender their weapons when asked.

Feel safer, you bed-wetting gun grabbers? Now, if cops could only figure out how to get criminals to give up their guns...

ICE Deports American Citizen

Customs officials deported a teenage girl, while MS-13 gang members here illegally roam free like they own the place. So how will more government fix this? The cheeky young lass gave false information to ICE agents, so they sent her to Colombia, even though that country has never in its history had anyone named Jakadrian... 

This is what an inept and dysfunctional government does when it can no longer catch real criminals: It turns on its own citizens.

Here’s a simple test: Does a law result in more liberty for citizens, or less?

There are two kinds of people in this world: Those who would expand and defend personal liberty, and those who would circumscribe it. Emperor Obama belongs in the latter category, but discussing Obama rolling up the constitution and smoking it is getting old...

HR 1540 gave us a clear view of who the liberty-lovers are, and who the stone-cold statists uber alles are. Posse Comitatus is out the window.

There was a time not too may years ago when I would look to certain politicians as a litmus test or shorthand for right and wrong. "If Allan West voted for it, it must be OK!" Well, not anymore.

Are our politicians really so intellectually bereft that this is all they can come up with?

Hundreds of billions spent on intelligence and national law enforcement agencies, and we have to resort to declaring the United States a war zone with US citizens as enemy combatants, subject to indefinite detention and military tribunals?

This sickens and horrifies me, moreso because it does not sicken and horrify good conservatives like Allen West and others. The enemies of the people who voted for this police state nightmare should be shipped off to Guantanamo. Or better yet, put them on Castro's side of the fence so they can see the result of such laws.

And I am pissed that I find myself in agreement with Al Franken.

Al Franken – Why I voted Against NDAA
CATO – NDAA Still Troubled
Emperor Obama Trashes the Constitution
NDAA House Vote
NDAA Senate Vote

Finally, on the lighter side...

Chevy Dolt: It's Not a Recall, It's a Reunion!

Artistry of Chicago Ray

Government Motors (GM) is launching a customer service campaign, which is similar to a recall, on all 8 of the Chevrolet Volts it has sold in an effort to address possible battery fire issues.

We don’t like the word, “recall,” said a GM Spokesman. "We prefer to think of it as a reunion. Come back to the place where you took your financially foolish but morally superior stand! Relive the excitement while we perform some minor enhancements that could keep you from dying in a car fire!"

Ron Paul's popularity with young people is legend…

...If they would only put down the bong and go vote he might have a chance…

The NDAA and You

by Hugh Farnham

The National Defense Authorization Act. A seemingly innocent enough defense funding bill, until Obama and his henchmen had their way with it.

Buried deep within this bill is the authority for the military to declare anyone as a domestic enemy who engages in "hostilities" and can be arrested without trial, a lawyer, or the right of Habeas Corpus. The bill was passed 220 years to the day of the adoption of our Bill of Rights.

This language, found in Sections 1031 and 1032 of the bill, has a sordid and salty history worthy of an Ian Fleming novel.

While this bill was slithering through Congress the Obama Administration was distancing itself from the detention language - but as admitted by Senator Carl Levin it was Obama who demanded the detention wording be included in the bill - with no provision for exemption for citizens. That's you and me, folks. But don't worry, children, Obama has signed a signing statement he won't abuse his authority.

There was evidence of an Internet psychological operation regarding these sections. I recognized this as I am trained in similar arts in the military. When the issue was first brought to light, suddenly several different erroneous wordings of the bill were being posted - within minutes of the expose. Somebody was watching, ready with disinfo at hand. Even my own Senator was deceived about the language and what it meant when I contacted him about it. Now legal scholars are beginning to agree on the destructive nature of these sections on our liberty.

I wish to make it quite clear that as a member of the military, I will not obey any order that is unconsititutional. Indeed, I will work to actively subvert any such order and will encourage the junior officers and senior NCOs who report to me to do the same.

Odd that the bill was supported by a company that makes police night raid equipment...

It gets only better. Now a Congressman from Pennsylvania has introduced a bill to strip people of their citizenship for engaging in "hostilities". Please, define hostilities? Could it eventually be what I'm doing now, Charles Dent, you tyrant?

I encourage you to read Jonathan Turley's excellent expose of this. Meanwhile, be entertained with a cartoon about your (now) lack of human rights by Ruben Bolling (click to embiggen):

Tryannies are Toppling across the Middle East--Could the US be Next?

Egypt has thrown off a tyrannical regime.  When will we topple ours?

I'm not talking about President Obama; He's just a cog in the machine.  I'm referring to this large bureaucratic regime, this clanking soul-draining monster, this federal, state and municipal steamroller that is built, fed and operated by the statists of all parties.

Egypt's situation is fundamentally different than ours, for we do not suffer under a military dictatorship, but read this excerpt and broadly replace references to "military" with "bureaucracy," and you'll see what I'm talking about...

The democratic wave that has finally struck the Arab world is, among other things, a civilian protest movement against the militarization of Middle Eastern life. Old Oriental despotisms, for all their unpleasantness, did not fundamentally assault the civilian nature of Muslim societies, where men of the cloth, letters, the bazaar, and small-town aristocracies defined the “good and noble.”

Robbed of ideology and military purpose (defeating Israel became a millenarian dream, like the ancient Arab aspiration to conquer Constantinople), Arab armies became instruments of political oppression and private enrichment. (Reuel Marc Gerecht - Weekly Standard)

The tyranny we groan and strain under is a bureaucratic one
FDR built a civilian statist army back in the 1930's and put it on war footing.  Government was supposed to wage war on poverty, ignorance and those on the outside attacking us and our way of life.  Instead, it now fosters poverty and ignorance and joins in the  multicultural jihad against our borders, language and culture (Yes, I got that from Doc Savage).

This out of control government that cannot manage its own finances nonetheless lectures us on what we should eat and how we should live.  It incompetently stumbles and bumbles its way through international diplomacy and blows hundreds of billions on intelligence, only to be surprised when a friendly dictator is toppled.  Meanwhile, domestic surveillance of innocent citizens increases.

Fighting Citizens is Easier than Fighting Criminals
Governments across the spectrum have found fighting crime and improving the lives of its citizens too challenging, so it now turns on them, spies on them, regulates and scolds them.  America's army of bureaucrats long ago turned on the people it was supposed to serve, and like the Egyptian Army, enjoys its perks and will not give them up willingly.

Real criminals with real guns are robbing and killing in Denver, but the Jefferson County DA goes after a kid with an airsoft gun.  This is just one story in an avalanche of government-sponsored outrages and abuse.  The EPA demanding dairy farmers treat milk spills as hazardous waste, and calling the dust they kick up "pollution" adds to the bonfire of regulatory stupidities now raging against the job-providers in this country. Our unemployment is government-induced.

Fighting criminals and protecting borders is hard; it's so much easier and satisfying to turn the power of the state against the people.  Government is everywhere.  They have robbed us of the private nature of our lives and our societies.

The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
-Plato

FCC: Fascists Controlling Communication

Inside Every Progressive is a Tyrant Struggling to be Free... And Oppress Others

When liberals like Al Crapton (he calls Limbaugh "Lumbar," so I call Sharpton, "Crapton") shout about conservatives having no right to talk on public airwaves, it means liberal talk radio is getting its ass kicked by conservatives.

When irrelevant nobodies like the Reverend or any MSNBC ranter talks like this, no one even takes notice anymore. Their audience can fit in a port-o-potty.

But when a government official proposes such dangerous and un-American absurdities, it's time to sit up and take notice.

FCC Commissioner Michael Copps is proposing all radio and TV stations that broadcast over public airwaves submit to a "public values test."

Copps had suggested that the test would make a broadcaster's license renewal contingent upon proof that they meet a prospective set of federal criteria. (Hillicon Valley – FCC Push)

Local boards packed with angry, agenda-driven liberals would sit in judgment on radio and tv stations, using government-approved criteria such as "Diversity Compliance."  Gotta have the government recommended daily amount of one legged lesbian church bishops, gay soldiers, peace-loving Muslims and of course the stupidest species in America:  The White Male Father and Husband!

Progressives cannot win in the free marketplace of ideas so they propose to use the coercive power of the state to shut it all down.

Media outlets would be required to submit to the Ministry of Truth disclosure reports and programming plans proving their worthiness and "meaningful commitment to public affairs and news programming."  Progressive toadies and bullhorn-wielding activists at the local level will be the foot soldiers in this Obama-approved Hush Rush campaign.  

And make no mistake, Copps and his fellow statists want to expand their purview to all communications outlets, including cable and internet.  Here is Der Kommissar in his own words:

"What we've had in recent years is an aberration where we have had no oversight of the media.

It's a pretty serious situation that we're in. I think American media has a bad case of substance abuse right now. We are not producing the body of news and information that democracy needs to conduct its civic dialogue [...] we have to reverse that trend." (Copps quoted at NewsBusters)

Is this guy crazy? We've got news coming out our ears. Yes, much of it is sports and celebrity-driven frivolity, but serious news and analysis is as close as your computer keyboard or local library periodicals section.

All Palin, All the Time
Maybe he has in mind a press that flocked to Alaska for synchronized Sara Palin dumpster dives?  This same press corps spent more time investigating an Ohio plumber than they did the Democratic nominee for president. Is this the news media dereliction the FCC Kommissar seeks to stamp out?  I doubt it.

The IBD editors ask the most important question:

Who is Copps to make such demands? And why does a man who thinks like a tyrant hold such a high-ranking position in the U.S. government?

It's reasonable to ask, as Republican Rep. Joe Barton of Texas did in a letter to Copps this week, if the commissioner means to give the federal government the power to determine what content is available for Americans to consume. (IBD)

Indeed.  The federal government and its batwinged gargoyles like Copps are not neutral.  They are biased and are therefore unfit to be the arbiters of what free men and women can or cannot read, see and hear.  We're smart enough to figure it out on our own without a paternalistic statist holding our hand.  MSNBC's ratings are in the toilet; America knows crap when they see it.