My son just asked for the definition of a “Sisyphean task“, as he is studying Greek myths in school.
My answer: Trying to address the most liberty-crushing item from the Obama Administration.
For example, I caught a Twitter hashtag that highlights a new concern about this administration’s policies: #sendinthedrones.
During the confirmation hearings being held for John Brennan, who hopes to be Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, a intriguing memo from the Justice Department was released. The document claims there is legal justification for drone strikes against U.S. citizens without due process procedures, even if there is no evidence that they are engaged in an active plot to attack the country.
Given the fact that Congress has been unable to derail unpopular programs like Obamacare, or even come up with a budget, citizens are beginning to respond to this threat to their unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness at the local level.
One city has fired the opening salvo against the drone program:
Virginia city passes legislation banning drones
Charlottesville, Virginia has become the first city in the U.S. to put a two-year ban on drone flights within city limits, reported NBC29 Wednesday.
The decision comes two days after a Justice Department memo on the Obama administration’s criteria for determining the targeting and drone assassination of foreign enemies — including American citizens — was leaked to the public. (RELATED: White paper authorizes targeted killing of U.S. citizens)
And it seems it’s just not the country’s conservatives who are uncomfortable with the ill-defined requirements for initiating air strikes on Americans. Via Prof. Glenn Reynolds is a story that indicates progressives are unhappy with this policy as well.
“You watch and see — the left wing of the party will start targeting Obama over this,” said Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia. “It’s inevitable. The drumbeat will increase as time goes on, especially with each passing drone strike.”
Obama late Wednesday decided to share with Congress’ intelligence committees the government’s legal reasoning for conducting drones strikes against suspected American terrorists abroad, the Associated Press reported. Lawmakers have long demanded to see the full document, accusing the Obama administration of stonewalling oversight efforts.
Earlier in the day, one Democrat even hinted at a possible filibuster of Brennan if given unsatisfactory answers about the drone program.
Using spy technology against citizens is hardly a new development. For example, the FBI’s interest in Martin Luther King Jr.’s private life is well known.
But the Obama Administration has taken it to a whole new level in the pursuit of their goals. Last year, Gateway Pundit shared the story of Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency using surveillance planes to determine if Iowa farmers were violating clean water policies.
Midwest farmers were outraged to hear that the Obama EPA was spying on ranches in surveillance planes. Rep. Tom Latham sent a letter to the EPA demanding answers,
“No federal agency has the right to treat the American farmer like the Taliban.”
To the Obama EPA – Iowa farmers are the enemy.
And it turns out it’s just not Iowa farmers who are potential targets, either. It may be time for other communities to follow Charlottesville’s lead.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
We’ll just shoot ’em down. We don’t need no stinkin’ badges.
The drone that is the most dangerous, the least controllable and easiest to manipulate for maximum destructive effect is Joe Biden’s stream of (un)conscious coupled with his oral cavity.
Seriously, on the subject of remotely piloted vehicles that are armed for either surveillance or attack, the American People are once again roundly and soundly calling bullsh!t on Teh Chosen One’s vision for America.
Let’s play the “just imagine” game for a moment.
Just imagine if John Ashcroft had said that killing Americans overseas with RPVs is a good idea, much less legal.
Just imagine if G.W. Bush had suggested using them domestically to fight crime.
What would’ve been the reaction in the MSM, in Congress, at the DNC and elsewhere that Leftists congregate?
Yet we hear nary a chirp from the Left when Obama, Holder, Panetta and Napolitano does these things.
Members of Congress should be warned before the SOTUS.
No “droning on” comments….
Droning is a teenage girls’s dream machine. They lay awake at night plotting revenge on all who have crossed them that day.
I am surprised there is not an app where they can do just that .
Like everything – when they wake up & see Mum dead , they have to catch the bus to school . When they get there , no friends a re there because she. Droned them also .
It is a long wait for the bus home .
One of my best friends is a game designer in Austin. I’m so sending him this idea, right now!
Call it, “Like, Drones An’ Stuff”.
😆
Instead of a huge stone, President Fudd’s Sisyphean task will be rolling Michelle Fudd up a hill for eternity.
There is no reason a college education should cost even remotely what it costs. Just like in public education, the money goes everywhere but to the students in the classroom.
Making a college degree the equivalent of on-line traffic school is a bad idea: the quality of the education will instruction will cheapened, cheating will be rampant, and people will get exactly the education they paid for: 10,000 dollars worth.
There also the element of struggle that will be absent: student sitting at home in their underwear, half-watching on-line class instruction while they’re watching tv out of the other eye and paying very little for the privilege would be much better off spending the time either learning a trade or entering the workforce and learning a skill there.
Again, the problem is the bloated, top-heavy educational system, rife with overpaid administrators, overpaid and under-qualified instructions, and an idiotic liberal arts curriculum designed more to politically indoctrinate young people than educate them. So we’ll have another generation of idiots, and likely more of them now there’s a garage sale on college educations.
This also reminds me of the comedy of making a law degree a two year program. We’ll have American attorneys about as qualified as foreign ‘engineers.’
Don’t ask me how I posted this here. It’s been a long day…
Obviously, we need to be prepared with anti-drone drones. Can’t shoot at them – illegal, waste of time, dangerous – but we can kamikaze them.
Now the government has two “legal” ways to kill Americans: Drone Attacks and Obamacare!!
From my website:
http://truthandcommonsense.com/2013/02/08/applying-the-fleeing-felon-rule-to-killing-terrorists-without-a-trial-and-failing-my-mensa-bright-buddy-hits-the-wall/
I have a very, very bright friend. Mensa bright. He and I talked about this and other issues. His problem with the policy shows up when he digs deeper than the obvious fact we can kill American citizen without a trial, IF they are a threat to others.
from the site:
He tried. We talked at length about a number of issues, of which I’ll be relating in writing here. One of those issues was using drones against people who were never convicted of a crime. He read the memo and said it appeared to him they were attempting to apply a legal standard to a non legal issue. In a sense, they were putting potential lethal terrorists (or kids or innocents if you want to know the truth of it) in the same boat as a fleeing felon who is risking the lives of others.
Here are the principle arguments:
1. The State does hold the authority to kill without conviction of a crime if the information provided to a reasonable person indicates the person who is going to be killed is a direct threat to others. For example, if I, as police officer, see a man waving a gun around in a parking lot pointing it at people or a group he has cornered, I have every legal right to kill him, and will. I may be criticized for not hitting him with a Taser or a bean bag, but if I say that I believed such actions would only further threaten innocents, then it is a good shoot.
If a sniper on the police team kills a suspect in order to save others, without a trial or a conviction, it is a good shoot. So the killing of people without a trial is an accepted process. But only under limited and specific threats and with a great deal of post shooting review by people in authority who have no political reason to cover it up or answer to anyone in the organization belonging to the shooter. (that’s the big difference so far)
2. If we believe, as experts in the field, terrorist “X” is about to commit or has committed a crime that would constitute the use of lethal force, we are authorized, under our beliefs, to take action up and including the use of lethal force. The issue isn’t citizenship, it is are they really a threat. As my friend pointed out, many Americans of German descent returned to Nazi Germany to fight for their home country. They were killed by US forces as though they were Germans, because they chose to be the enemy. No Constitutional rights applied.
However, as my friend worked through the memo he began to see where the thought process began to go “mushy”, as he put it. There are multiple issues with the theory as it is applied to the real world.
1. Who makes the decision and based on what information?
2. How do we know the person in charge of making that decision is qualified to do so? The President thinks it? The Congress? Other “experts”?
3. When dealing with intelligence reporting you are often dealing with a conglomeration of diverse and often unrelated material that has to be assembled by someone in a coherent manner. Those people are fallible, the information can be- and often is- fallible.
4. The decision to drone strike is one of political expedience but that does not mean once the order is given other means of execution cannot be carried out. If you are deemed a lethal threat, the method of your demise should be an open ended set of options. …..