Please State

Has the United States become a police state? It seems rather ironic to me that as we have the continual assaults on our Second Amendment rights, an increasing number of agencies, bureaus and task forces at all levels of government are armed and wield police powers. Pick any three-letter agency within the federal bureaucracy, and you will find a division or department that holds an investigative portfolio and is armed. If you watch any of the cop shows on television, you’ll note that a common theme is the jurisdictional tension between various police agencies when they encounter a crime. Perhaps, that little tidbit may be suggesting that there are too many police agencies stumbling over one another in their aggressive attempts to hold the American people in line.

Tuesday the Patriot Act came to the House of Representative’s floor for a short-term renewal and failed. It didn’t fall because Members of the Congress had a change of heart about the invasive nature of some of the more onerous portions of that legislation. No, it failed because the Republican Whip team cannot count. The historic tension between security and liberty, safety and freedom, is starkly represented in the Patriot Act. The powers in the Act are considered above and beyond necessary tools for traditional police work during “normal” times. The difficulty arises when defining or identifying extraordinary conditions that demand excessive power for all the enforcement agencies. As long as government has the power to declare emergencies and define when additional police action is necessary, the people’s liberty will be at risk.

Section 215 of the Patriot Act authorizes the government to secure “any tangible thing” that may be relevant to an investigation of terrorism. They are allowed to do so even if there is no link between the “tangible” object and potential terrorists or terrorist actions. Do you own a firearm? Are you contemplating an act of terrorism? Doesn’t matter. Theoretically they can seize your weapon under the pretense that you may consider becoming a terrorist at some point in the future. This section is ripe for abuse.

There are several other provisions of the Act that can be interpreted as threats to citizens’ rights. The fact that there is not an overwhelming collection of data that suggests those provisions have been corrupted does not prevent the potential for abuse. Power does not respect a vacuum, and people who hold power will be tempted to use it…for good purposes, they believe. Perhaps you share my concern about the political class and the bureaucracy that they have created: I may like them, I may even admire them, but no way in hell do I trust them to do what is right for my family and me. I do not trust their motives, their instincts or their judgments. We all know someone who when placed in a position of power, feels compelled to “lord” it over everyone in his sphere of operation. Multiply that attitude by the thousands and you have the bureaucrats and politicians running throughout the nation trying to protect us from ourselves. Who, pray tell, will protect us from them?

Republican inefficiency has given us an opportunity to preserve some small element of freedom. If they continue to insist that the Patriot Act is necessary for protecting the nation from terrorism, then we have been given a second bite of the apple to minimize its most odious abuses. No government agency at any level should be given carte blanche to harass the citizens of our country. No agency should be awarded unlimited powers to arbitrarily redefine what constitutes a threat. No agency should have the unconstitutional authority to confiscate my “tangible thing.”

This column was titled “Please State” because at the present time our law enforcement agencies sometimes get a warrant before their actions. In some cases the agents will knock on your door before crashing through it. The issues become more problematic when you’re driving, however, because the rules that allow for you to be stopped are less concrete. Just hang on to your “tangible thing.”

Comment:  cearlwriting@hotmail.com   or  www.littlestuff-minoosha.blogspot.com

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Littlestuff Weekender-1-22-2011

How many are enough? During the past year I have visited many liberty, patriot or tea party type groups. The attendance varied from roughly a half-dozen to nearly 200 people. John Adams wrote:

“Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people.”

How many patriots learning about limited constitutional government will it take to restore our Republic to its foundation? How many patriots after acquiring the knowledge will have the courage to battle in the political fields to rebuild the nation? How many patriots when thwarted at every turn by aggressive progressives and chicken-hearted politicians will have the will to carry on? How many patriots will go to the streets to demand that government leave them alone? How many patriots will continue to fight when the effort appears to be lost? How many? How about you?

Only 16 months until May 21^st, 2012. Does anyone here speak Mayan? My 66^th birthday is on 6/6/2012. Hmmm.

I read somewhere that this is the coldest winter in 86 years. Fine, but articles or statements like that make me wonder…colder in Tahiti? In Atlanta? In Antarctica?

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The 19-0 Buckeye Men’s Basketball team has a BIG game with Illinois today at noon on CBS.

I certainly don’t want to seem like an alarmist, but I would encourage every one of you to plant a vegetable garden. When I look at what’s happening in the financial sector and with government spending plus a new downslide in real estate, it is hard for me to foresee a soft landing. There must be some turmoil and disruption, and food, water and energy appear to be our most vulnerable areas.

 Three words for why politicians should save their money: Cash for bail.

The Compact Fluorescent Lights have become the fiasco many of us predicted. They’re toxic when broken, their lighting life is much shorter than the proponents claimed, and they are dim. Repeal, repeal, repeal. At least allow us the choice of choosing between somewhat higher energy costs for Mr. Edison’s bulb and the toxic waste inefficiency of the CFL. Maybe those Obamacare Death Panels implemented the CFL mandate.

At least Frosty, my beloved canine, is housebroken because whenever a career politician walks in the room, I smell crap.

I’ve asked this before. Would you give your child over to a complete stranger? Of course, you wouldn’t. So why do we allow career self-serving politicians and indifferent bureaucrats to control our lives and our children’s futures? Some of the decisions we make in the world of government do not make any sense.

As you read these 6 xs per week Littlestuff-minoosha ramblings, I pray that you find them useful and occasionally entertaining. I truly enjoy writing them. They represent a measure of therapy for me, and I avoid the desire to scream incoherently…at the moon.

Liberty…getting it and keeping it… is a lot like swimming. You must keep stroking, or you’ll sink. I sense that we have sunk, but we haven’t drowned. We must begin swimming again as we gasp for air and fight fatigue, but swim we must.

It’s so cold that tears become icicles. My dog is nervous about doing his “business.” I love Frosty, but if his stream freezes while relieving himself, he’s on his own.

Have a wonderful and blessed weekend. Back on Monday.

Comment:  cearlwriting@hotmail.com    or   www.littlestuff-minoosha.blogspot.com

Safety first.

Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution of the United States lists many of the duties of the federal government. Among them is the requirement for protecting and defending the nation. This latest little fiasco in Detroit featuring flight 253 reveals that the feds are failing miserably in the fulfillment of their assigned Constitutional duties. While aggressively seeking to expand the reach and power of the federal government, they come up short in doing what they have been mandated to do. With the passage of the ill conceived and misnamed “Patriot Act,” Congress and the previous administration broadly and intrusively increased federal interference into our personal lives and liberty.


Remember back to the halcyon days when the Patriot Act was being promoted, and one of the critical provisions was the nationalization of the airport security apparatus. Formerly, each airline provided its own gate side security force, but Big Nanny desired to take this woefully inadequate gaggle and transform it overnight into a civil service protected inadequate gaggle. I’ve done quite a bit of air travel over the years, and I suspect that many of those TSA security “professionals” couldn’t qualify as a greeter at my local Wal-Mart.

So we have this Nigerian, Abdulmutallab, flying one way—Amsterdam to Detroit—RED FLAG. He pays cash for his $2800.00 fare. RED FLAG. He has no luggage to stow. RED FLAG. He had no valid passport. RED FLAG. He was on the “terror watch list.” SUPER, DUPER, RED FLAG. His father had reported his concern about his son’s activities some weeks earlier. TRIPLE DECKER RED FLAG. He carried incendiary material in his underwear. EXPLOSIVELY SCARY RED FLAG. Who is watching the security gate? Mr. Magoo and Stevie Wonder? How’s that Patriot Act working out for you, huh? This entire FUBAR would alarm me, but my concern has been heightened by the fact that my wife had traveled on that same flight several days earlier. She had been to Dubai on a business trip and had changed planes in Amsterdam for her last leg home.

Fortunately, an alert and resourceful Dutch engineer subdued the Nigerian nihilist. Plus, he must have pee’d on his fuse in the restroom because it failed to ignite properly. If either of those factors had not occurred, we would be discussing more than 280 dead on the plane and who knows how many on the ground. What was the initial response from Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano? “The system worked.” She later backtracked and admitted there were some flaws in security procedures. You can’t get anything past her: she’s way too smart. She’s so smart that I wish she would explain to me how the civil-service protected goobers at our gates are protecting and defending us.

The HS-TSA bifecta has already implemented some radical new measures to ensure event-free flights. For the last hour of a given flight, passengers will not be allowed to visit the restroom or to have anything on their laps. Travelers will be required to sit in the upright position with their hands placed on their laps. I bet that’ll work. Bennie the bomber has already begun to circumvent the rule makers’ latest inane restrictions. It hasn’t yet been mentioned, but given that Abdulmutallab stowed the explosive in his “Fruit of the Looms,” each of us will have to endure an undergarment check. You mother was right. Always wear clean underwear…skid marks could be mistaken for an explosive substance. Get used to the idea that you may hear the following as you check in at the airport: “O.K., drop your drawers, bend over and grab your ankles.” Of course, Big Government has been telling us that for years. Nothing new there.

As always your comments are welcome or email:  cnpearl@woh.rr.com