Tuesday links
Tuesday, January 15th, 2013- In 2009, her young husband was killed in an accident. After the shock of coping with the planning he and she had left undone, Chanel Reynolds started a website whose name the New York Times is too proper even to print. It’ll help you Get Your Shit Together.
- We have met the 1% and he is us. (H/T S)
- Some people have doubted that the White House can give an interesting answer to one of those WhiteHouse.gov petitions. Think again. (Via several people including S, who offers to build a Death Star for a mere $450,000,000,000,000,000.)
- Stealth wear anti-surveillance fashion. Shades of RebelFire. (Tip o’ hat to DHY.)
- Another sheriff pledges to resist any fed gun grab.
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January 15th, 2013
Claire, thanks for that link to GYST website. A friend is currently in a position to need all those docs. Her common law husband(of 20+ years) is in the hospital and neither of them have wills or POAs or living wills or medical poas. As if hospitalization isn’t scarey and frustrating and dangerous enough, she’s getting a third layer of hell runaround from the medical folks, trying to be included in the treatment and planning for his care. GET THOSE DOCUMENTS FOLKS!
January 15th, 2013
I don’t have much faith in the Whitehouse.gov responses. I did sign the petitions to allow states to peacefully secede from the union. I just got a response on Sat. (many states including Tx, Tn, and FL got way more than the 25K required for a response):
Petition Response: Our States Remain United
By Jon Carson, Director of the Office of Public Engagement
Thank you for using the White House’s online petitions platform to participate in your government.
In a nation of 300 million people — each with their own set of deeply-held beliefs — democracy can be noisy and controversial. And that’s a good thing. Free and open debate is what makes this country work, and many people around the world risk their lives every day for the liberties we often take for granted.
But as much as we value a healthy debate, we don’t let that debate tear us apart.
Our founding fathers established the Constitution of the United States “in order to form a more perfect union” through the hard and frustrating but necessary work of self-government. They enshrined in that document the right to change our national government through the power of the ballot — a right that generations of Americans have fought to secure for all. But they did not provide a right to walk away from it. As President Abraham Lincoln explained in his first inaugural address in 1861, “in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual.” In the years that followed, more than 600,000 Americans died in a long and bloody civil war that vindicated the principle that the Constitution establishes a permanent union between the States. And shortly after the Civil War ended, the Supreme Court confirmed that “[t]he Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union composed of indestructible States.”
Although the founders established a perpetual union, they also provided for a government that is, as President Lincoln would later describe it, “of the people, by the people, and for the people” — all of the people. Participation in, and engagement with, government is the cornerstone of our democracy. And because every American who wants to participate deserves a government that is accessible and responsive, the Obama Administration has created a host of new tools and channels to connect concerned citizens with White House. In fact, one of the most exciting aspects of the We the People platform is a chance to engage directly with our most outspoken critics.
So let’s be clear: No one disputes that our country faces big challenges, and the recent election followed a vigorous debate about how they should be addressed. As President Obama said the night he won re-election, “We may have battled fiercely, but it’s only because we love this country deeply and we care so strongly about its future.”
January 15th, 2013
of the people, by the people, and for the people” — all of the people.
Seems different when you add a few missing words:
A total caste-slavery and domination system, of the people, by the people, and for the people” — all of the people.
Also,
If a Person uses things such as TOR to get around the internet while simply reading, is that another way of saying the shield of the First Amendment stopped working?
If you cannot read it with ease and in the open, how could it be that with writing?
Just something I was thinking about on the fly.
January 15th, 2013
G.W.F. — For the record, I wouldn’t have any faith in WH responses nor expect anybody here to have any. However, I do think the eventual response to the petition to make the president safer by creating a gun-free zone around him could bring an unintentionally revealing response, and perhaps even one that we could use to make a point.
I agree the response to the secession petitions was insipid — and pretty much what you’d expect.
January 15th, 2013
Good luck to your friend, Karen. Their situation must be hell.
I admit I’ve been terrible about documentation, myself. I have a will and a living will. But I let them get out of date.
January 15th, 2013
Just one question for the KY (and other) sheriffs now proudly proclaiming that they will not enforce the gun bans:
What other immoral, unconstitutional and downright stupid “laws” do you enforce every day? Do you put people in cages for other reasons not invoving actual aggression against real victims?
Did you know it is “illegal” to dance in some places in that enlightened KY?
Jumping on the bandwagon of a popular movement doesn’t make one a member of the band.
January 15th, 2013
Kentucky has more guns than people. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.
January 15th, 2013
So, will the KY sheriff stop enforcing the unconstitutional 1934 NFA, and stop allowing the kidnapping of machine gun owners and those who use “silencers” in his county?
Will he help disarm “felons” who have done their time?
Will he insist on “permits” for carrying concealed?
What about gun bans in his courthouse?
And, if he doesn’t want a “bloodbath”, but wants it to be decided in court, does that mean that when the government’s own court decides a gun ban is OK, he’ll cooperate?
I sense a mealy-mouthed coward in this sheriff. You can’t have it both ways. Either you respect the right to own and to carry weapons, or you don’t.
January 15th, 2013
The states joined the union and the states have a RIGHT to unjoin the union anything else is saying that now that you have joined no matter how bad it gets you can’t leave, kinda like telling an abused spouse that divorce is not an option, just take your beatings and be quiet.
January 15th, 2013
Any time the government (any level of government) tells you how you can or can not exercise your rights, you have already been infringed. Tyrants telling you that freedom of speech is okay, but only x-much, is not freedom of speech.
January 15th, 2013
Actually according to case law it is unconstitutional (not my opinion, but it went to the Supreme Court in 1869) for a state to secede from the union (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_v._White). I was interested on the petition because they were seeking the right to PEACEFULLY withdraw. It would still take at least a majority of resident wanting to secede, and I think I saw polls in TX that showed support at about 18%. The White House response basically says peaceful withdraw is not an option, so I guess they are willing to fight to keep a state from withdrawing.
January 15th, 2013
Of course I am not really sure we really follow the Constitution any longer, that that whole argument may not mean anything :-)
January 15th, 2013
“If we can save just one child…”
What do those deep thinkers imagine might happen were the feds to forcefully oppose a state choosing to peacefully secede?
January 15th, 2013
And you know, GWF, according to case law black people are property.* And separate but equal education is okay**.
Relying on the federal government to determine the right to secession is like allowing the abusive spouse to determine the right to divorce.
A document called “The Declaration Of Independence” – you may have heard of it? – predates the Constitution and any federal court rulings by a good chunk of time. I’ve not heard that the universal human truths therein are abrogated by the will and verbiage of tyrants. Any more than they were in 1776.
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott_v._Sandford
**http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plessy_v._Ferguson
January 15th, 2013
I don’t agree with the idea that joining a union is “indissoluble”, I was just pointing out that if you want to go that route the position the government is going to take and the fight that will be required. When I read “Whenever government becomes destructive to life, liberty, or property [i.e., the pursuit of happiness], it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it… It is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.” all I can think is what the hell are we waiting for people?
January 15th, 2013
The state of New York just passed this piece of legislation: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/01/15/nyregion/20130115nygun-document.html
On page 22, it says
Ҥ 41-a. The penal law is amended by adding a new section 265.01-b to 5 read as follows:
6 § 265.01-b Criminal possession of a firearm.
7 A person is guilty of criminal possession of a firearm when he or she:
8 (1) possesses any firearm or; (2) lawfully possesses a firearm prior to
9 the effective date of the chapter of the laws of two thousand thirteen
10 which added this section subject to the registration requirements of
11 subdivision sixteen-a of section 400.00 of this chapter and knowingly
12 fails to register such firearm pursuant to such subdivision.
13 Criminal possession of a firearm is a class E felony.”
Time for those oathkeepers to put their money where their mouth is.