Read an interesting editorial on the current argument over net neutrality over on CNN.  The writers are certainly biased in favor of the corporate interests, but their point about the First Amendment and government censorship is very valid.  They don’t really address the issue I have with giving up on net neutrality, or allowing corporations who provide content and/or access to the ‘net, to determine who gets the bandwidth (usually based on who’s paying the ISPs for preferred speeds).  That gives them far too much power to dictate the conversation (and when I say “conversation”, I mean all forms of traffic) online.

Of course, people have been up in arms the last couple of days over allegations that Google and Verizon have been working together on same back room deal regarding net neutrality.  Of course, Google and Verizon have been working together on net neutrality for a while now, so the fact that they’re talking again now shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.  What people were getting worked up about was the rumor that these companies were hashing out a deal that would allow for traffic on Verizon’s pipes to get precedence for a fee (one assumes Google’s traffic).  Both companies deny that’s what they were doing.  Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, insists that he’s trying to work to find a new solution that will give the FCC some real power and still allow companies to keep their networks free of massive congestion (from things like BitTorrent and P2P programs).

Of course, Google has been on the side of net neutrality for years, and once asked users to fight FOR net neutrality.  Are they trying to do an end-run around net neutrality by forging some kind of deal with Verizon?  I don’t know.  Schmidt claims that people don’t understand the issue.   Google is trying to present it’s case for seemingly changing positions, but insists that they only want to define restrictions based on the type of file being sent (a video, bittorrent traffic, gaming, etc.), not who’s sending/receiving the file.  Is that reasonable and acceptable?  I urge you to read all about it and make up your own minds.

It is always entertaining (in the “so funny I want to punch someone” vein) to watch a bad idea be continually proven to be a bad idea, but yet everyone keeps plodding forward with said bad idea.

After celebrating the landmark win the McDonald case, two years after the landmark win in the Heller case, I started reading some sober commentary regarding the dissenting opinion. The Wall Street Journal posted an opinion piece taking a look at the decision and some of the logic. What’s scary is that the dissenting opinion attacks the validity of the the McDonald ruling, despite it being a logical next step after the Heller ruling, which in effect means that they would prefer to, in the words of Justice Alito:

“…treat the right recognized in Heller as a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees that we have held to be incorporated into the Due Process Clause.”

So how do the dissenting Justices get to this logic? They question the validity of the Heller decision. As the WSJ editorial states:

“All of this suggests that the liberals have decided to bide their time and wait for a fifth vote so they can overturn both Heller and McDonald.”

As the Washington Times reported in an article on their site:

“The Breyer-Sotomayor-Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissent urged that Heller be overruled and declared, “In sum, the Framers did not write the Second Amendment in order to protect a private right of armed self defense.”

But wait a second, Justice Sotomayor supports this? Wasn’t she only recently nominated, like right after the Heller decision? What did she say then? The same article reminds us that Sotomayor testified to the Senate that:

“I understand the individual right fully that the Supreme Court recognized in Heller.” And, “I understand how important the right to bear arms is to many, many Americans.”

She also referred to Heller as “settled law” multiple times in her confirmation hearings, but she is now questioning it as settled law, looking to overturn the Heller decision? So she basically lied in her confirmation hearing, as evidenced by her actions and opinions in the McDonald case. Yeah, that’s what we want in our SCOTUS Justices…liars. This is what happens when you tarnish the Supreme Court by appointing not the absolute best, most impartial Judges and Constitutional Scholars in the land, but instead appoint politically-motivated activists with little or no Constitutional Law experience. I don’t care if the Liberals or the Conservatives do it, and they both do, it’s just plain wrong and a perversion of the mission of the SCOTUS.

Sadly, these Justices are hoping to treat the Second Amendment as a second-class right. They are checking their impartiality at the door and trying to treat one amendment differently that all the others because of personal feelings and opinions. They don’t want to afford it the same privilege that other amendments to the Bill of Rights have. As the WSJ article states:

“Over nearly a century of cases, the High Court has extended to the states most of the rest of the Bill of Rights including part or all of the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments. It would be passing strange for the Second Amendment to be the lone outlier.”

And I agree, it would be odd. A decision like that would be a decision prompted not by precedent, or an understanding of Constitutional Law, but by personal motivations. And that is, or should be, anathema to a SCOTUS Justice.

In their recent ruling (what I assume will be called the McDonald decision, but who knows), the previous being the Heller decision, the Supreme Court has made it clear that the right to keep and bear arms is a civil right that is protected by the 14th Amendment to the Bill of Rights, thereby insuring that States can no longer ban law abiding citizens from owning firearms. It’s a great step forward, though it will have little impact on states like mine and their insane gun-grabbing laws that only strengthen criminals and weaken law-abiding citizens, but it’s a battle worth fighting.

I’ve posted before about how I felt the TSA’s implementation of full-body scanners was ripe for abuse. I even posted a link to an article about an incident with a Heathrow employee who scanned one of his female coworkers and commented on how he “loves those gigantic tits” to prove the point. But now the TSA has their own incident. A male who was scanned a year ago as part of TSA training has been made fun of ever since about the size of his genitalia. By his TSA coworkers. The one’s who will be scanning us. He finally snapped and beat the crap out of a coworker who was picking on him (still…a year later) in a parking lot. So. Do you really think that these scanners (which can store and transmit images) won’t be abused? Even CNN is reporting that it might be a bad idea now (thanks for catching up).

Looks like one of the concerns about the Health Care Reform act might actually come true. CNN and Fortune are reporting several large companies (AT&T, Verizon Caterpillar, John Deere) are actively considering dropping health care coverage for all their employees. They are discovering that it’s cheaper to simply pay the government penalty than to provide subsidized coverage.

Amusingly when several of these companies declared big write downs due to fiscal changes in the bill, the House Energy and Commerce Committee, chaired by Democrat Representative Henry Waxman, demanded documents and scheduled meetings with the top executives to prove the write-downs were legit. Upon reviewing the documents, which included the information that the companies were considering dropping health care coverage altogether, the meetings were abruptly canceled. They simply released a 5 page report that said, in effect, everything looked fine and that the companies could find beneficial results from the reform. They never mentioned the part about companies considering ditching coverage altogether.

So if these companies do dump their coverage, guess who will be providing their health care insurance? The federal government, thanks to the health care reform bill. Of course, they didn’t really plan on paying for all those extra people:

By Fortune’s reckoning, each person who’s dropped would cost the government an average of around $2,100 after deducting the extra taxes collected on their additional pay. So if 50% of people covered by company plans get dumped, federal health care costs will rise by $160 billion a year in 2016, in addition to the $93 billion in subsidies already forecast by the CBO.

Yeah, let’s continue to keep increasing government spending on poorly-designed social programs and ineffective wars. Maybe, if we’re lucky, we’ll only end up as bad off as Greece. Hell, we’ve got the corruption, the rampant spending increases by both political parties, and a populace who honestly believes that they are entitled to have every want and need filled by their government as opposed to taking responsibility for themselves. Yep. Should be a fun ride down.

Because apparently the city councilors of Boston have nothing better to do, they are voting on a resolution to boycott Arizona over their passing of their own immigration reform. Now while I’ve already said I think the legislation they passed is poorly written and gives too much power to the police, I fully support the effort that they are making (and I hope that they take the time to reform the bill). The overwhelming majority of citizens voted for this law, and since none of us here in the Northeast are anywhere near the US/Mexico border, I hardly think we can say we understand what its like to live there. We can’t understand the pressures they are under due to illegal immigration. It’s incredibly arrogant of us to denounce them when they are only trying to take action, since their federal government has refused. Walk a mile in their shoes.

Much has been written about Arizona’s recent legislation to fight illegal immigration and to grant state authorities power to detain and deport. I will simply add this: beyond the arrogance of second-guessing the citizens of Arizona that overwhelmingly voted for this bill, all those people who are up in arms about the issue would do well to take a look at how Mexico treats their own illegal immigrants with their policies. I find it mighty ironic that so many people are wringing their hands here in the U.S. when Mexico itself is far stricter and harsher on its own immigrants.

FYI: I agree with the sentiment behind the Arizona bill, but I don’t support it’s current structure. It’s much too vague and gives too much power to the police. However I also think its idiotic to second guess Arizona citizens who feel under siege from the influx of illegal immigrants (and all the burdens placed upon a society by illegal immigration) and abandoned by the Federal Government, which is too busy screaming at itself to actually enact any meaningful legislation on anything. I’m on-board with suggestions from places like the CATO Institute when they suggest reintroducing temporary worker programs to provide avenues for legal immigration and allow us to continue to grow as a country. We’re a country based on immigration and should continue to welcome immigrants. That doesn’t mean that we throw out all the rules. Nor does demanding rules or accountability make one a racist.

Remember when I blogged about what a bad idea these new Full Body Scanners in airports are? I believe I was concerned about the privacy and underpaid/under-trained employees taking advantage of the systems (especially since the TSA was erroneously claiming that the scanners couldn’t store/transmit images). Well, we have a wonderful example of abuse of the scanners already and it wasn’t even directed at the public, but from employee to employee. I especially liked the justification of the employee who snapped the pic of his female coworker: “I love those gigantic tits.” I urge you to read this and imagine it every time you’re forced to go through one of these scanners while the people behind the screen stare at you. I do like the fact that people are now calling the body scanners, “perv scanners.”

This story on Reason is frightening on so many levels. Not only are the police staging an assault on a man’s home without a warrant or judicial oversight, they actually tackle and arrest the guy, submit him to mental health screening, even enter his home and confiscate his property (several firearms). Again, NO WARRANT! Why? The police were participating in something akin to “Pre-Crime” as envisioned by Philip K. Dick and put on the big screen in the movie “Minority Report”, although the Oregon police probably didn’t have the benefit of psychics. The guy being arrested had recently been placed on administrative leave from his job and had been in the process of filing grievances, as per his union contract. All on the up-and-up. He hadn’t threatened anyone. He wasn’t disgruntled. He was following the rules. But he got his tax refund and, being a shooting enthusiast, went out a bought a few new weapons. The police decided that he might be on track to carry out an assault on his old workplace. They had no proof, no complaints and no evidence, but that didn’t stop them from preemptively detaining this man (after tackling and handcuffing him), forcing him to undergo psychiatric evaluation (he was released later that day with a clean bill of mental health), searching his home, confiscating his guns (returned 4 days later)…without a warrant. And the man had done nothing illegal…not even a little bit. If that doesn’t cause everyone in this country, gun owner or not, to feel a knot of fear form in their stomach, then I don’t know what will. The government is detaining citizens based on the idea that something bad MIGHT happen. Doesn’t that seem a bit intrusive and abusive? Makes me nervous, makes me wonder what happened to our constitutional rights…like the 4th amendment and such.