The Conscience of Abe’s Turn freedom of speech, defense, and life

Jacob Hornberger in a post on his blog examines the increased drug prohibition in Mexico.

Yet, what has been the result of Mexico’s attempt to ramp up its efforts to win the war on drugs?

Ever-increasing violence. Ever-increasing murders. Ever-increasing torture. Ever-increasing beheadings. Ever-increasing kidnappings. Ever-increasing military and police budgets. Ever-increasing governmental powers over the citizenry.

In other words, the more ferociously they have waged the war on drugs, the worse the situation has become.  read more »

Jacob Hornberger hit the nail on the head regarding the relationship between economic rights and civil rights, speaking about a talk James Bovard gave at the Future of Freedom Foundation’s Economic Liberty Lecture Series last month.

There is no question but that liberals have a blind spot when it comes to economic liberty. They honestly believe that socialistic and interventionist programs are necessary to help the poor and equalize wealth. They cannot see the fundamental immorality of using force to make people do the right thing. They cannot see that their methods actually end up harming the very people they purport to want to help [just like drug prohibition]…  read more »

As you may know, The Conscience of Abe’s Turn was inspired not by George W. Bush, but by civil-rights abuses during Bill Clinton’s administration, some as portrayed in James Bovard’s book Feeling Your Pain: The Explosion and Abuse of Government Power in the Clinton-Gore Years. In a thoughtful article at the Future of Freedom Foundation website, James Bovard looks back at the last Democratic president’s record on Fourth-Amendment civil rights.

The Clinton administration consistently championed the right of government employees to stick their noses almost anywhere — into people’s email, car, house, or personal effects. Clintonites set off one false alarm after another to justify extending government’s right to intrude. The administration consistently sought to exploit technological development in order to maximize government’s control over the citizenry…

The prohibition against unreasonable searches is the key to the Fourth Amendment.

As law professor Jeffrey Standen observed in an article he wrote for Legal Times, each extension of government power makes further extensions “reasonable” — since “reasonable” is defined on a sliding scale by however much intrusion people will tolerate from the government. The Clinton administration often sounded as if the only searches that were unreasonable were the ones that government officials did not care to do.

(Click here to read the whole article.)

The article gets specific on many of the ways the Clinton administration fomented fear and fought to redefine the Fourth Amendment to give government enforcers more power over citizens. True, George W. Bush presided over some of the worst civil-rights abuses today’s citizens have ever seen. But we shouldn’t just assume that Bush’s Democratic successor will be a civil-rights proponent, because Obama—as Clinton before him, as any president, being in charge of the enforcement branch of the federal government—has a vested interest in promoting government power over systematic protections of our civil rights. Be aware.

Always watching!
-TimK

P.S. Thanks to libertarian policy analyst Doug Bandow for the pointer.

Brian Wilson on his radio show at WSPD yesterday talked with Jim Bovard about a recent Washington Post article about sending U.S. troops to the U.S. “The U.S. military,” according to the Post, “expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe.”

Domestic emergency deployment may be “just the first example of a series of expansions in presidential and military authority,” or even an increase in domestic surveillance, said Anna Christensen of the ACLU’s National Security Project. And Cato Vice President Gene Healy warned of “a creeping militarization” of homeland security.  read more »

Jacob Hornberger writes about the case of Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, who has been locked up in South Carolina, in the same facility in which Jose Padilla (the American) was incarcerated and tortured.

Here at The Future of Freedom Foundation, we have long argued against the assumption and exercise of the “enemy combatant” power, even with the right of habeas corpus. We have pointed out that those who were arguing that President Bush could be trusted with such power were misguided and short-sighted. We have said that such dictatorial power is irreconcilable with the principles of a free society. We have emphasized that the issue wasn’t whether Bush should be trusted with such power but rather whether one’s worst enemy should be trusted with such power.

But conservatives never thought the day would arrive when they would lose power to a Democratic president…

Then, conservatives’ worst fear materialized — the election of a Democrat and, even worse from their perspective, one, they said, whose middle name was Hussein, whose father was a Muslim, who had ties to terrorists, and who associated with an extremist Christian preacher. He’s the man who now wields the omnipotent powers that, thanks to conservatives, were traded to the president and the military for the aura of “safety” from “the terrorists.”

(Click here to read the whole article.)

-TimK

P.S. He also continues on that theme in this post.

A speech James Bovard gave earlier this year at the Future of Freedom Foundation emphasizes just how barbaric our own government has become, and just how apathetic U.S. citizens have become regarding the American police state.