civil liberties Archives - Page 3 of 16

What If We Have Only Memories of Freedom?

What if Memorial Day reminds us of times when we had more freedom? What if freedom is dying right under our eyes? What if the memory of the past is more fulfilling than the reality of the present? What if the federal government could write any law, regulate any behavior, and tax any event, no … Continue reading

On Indefinite Detention: The Tyranny Continues

Listen to Rep. Paul deliver this address. The bad news from last week’s passage of the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act is that Americans can still be arrested on U.S. soil and detained indefinitely without trial. Some of my colleagues would like us to believe that they fixed last year’s infamous Sections 1021 and 1022 … Continue reading

War Inc. Shifts Homeward

It’s been said many times that the war is a self-sustaining industry that requires a constant threat overseas to keep the machine thriving at home. Looking at the millions if not billions of dollars spent on securing “national special security events” against its own citizens, it’s clear that protesters have become the threat that has … Continue reading

Obama or Anarchy?

Rahm Emanuel runs Chicago like he ran the Obama White House: with an iron fist and a foul mouth – and the NATO summit, being held in the Windy City, is the perfect occasion for him to demonstrate just how “tough” he can be. “Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean … Continue reading

Is There a Drone in Your Backyard?

Earlier this week, the federal government announced that the Air Force might be dispatching drones to a backyard near you. The stated purpose of these spies in the sky is to assist local police to find missing persons or kidnap victims, or to chase bad guys. If the drone operator sees you doing anything of … Continue reading

Bringing the ‘War on Terrorism’ Home

The Obama cult is revving up its motors for the reelection campaign, with Joe Biden declaiming “General Motors is alive and bin Laden is dead”: that’s the signature slogan MSNBC apparently intends to repeat endlessly until we get some relief on election day. It must be the concatenation of the stars in alignment with Mars, … Continue reading

The Empire Strikes Back: Attack of the Drones

“The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.” – James Madison Drones — unmanned aerial vehicles — come in all shapes and sizes, from nano-sized drones as small as a grain of sand that can do everything from conducting surveillance to detonating explosive charges, to massive “hunter/killer” … Continue reading

CISPA Is the New SOPA

Listen to Rep. Paul deliver this address. Earlier this year, strong public opposition led by several prominent websites forced congressional leaders to cancel votes on two bills known in Washington as SOPA and PIPA. Both of these bills threatened search engines and websites with possible shutdowns if the Justice Department deemed them insufficiently cooperative with … Continue reading

Is America a Free Country?

The “war on terrorism” has inaugurated a new era in the American polity, a sea-change that has not only threatened to overturn traditional limits on government power but also corrupted the political culture – and opened the way to the terminal crisis of the Constitution. In a revealing series of interviews on Amy Goodman’s “Democracy … Continue reading

The Freedom 7 and You

Bradley Manning Support Network member David House was returning to the country from a vacation last year when he was detained by agents from the Department of Homeland Security. They confiscated his laptop, camera and USB drive (all of which they kept for seven weeks), and questioned House about his political beliefs before sending him … Continue reading