In a March episode of Five Minutes Five Issues, I talked about some fuddy-duddies’ complaints about actors wearing Ku Klux Klan costumes in a South Dakota high school performance of The Foreigner. The complaints led to an apology from the school’s school district for the play having been performed.
Continue readingWhen police stop vehicles for purported driving rules infractions, police will often take advantage of the situation to inquire about other matters in a “fishing expedition” to establish suspicion of unrelated lawbreaking. They also may ask drivers for permission to search the stopped vehicles. This can end up badly for drivers and other vehicle occupants, especially those who do not adhere to the basic self-protections rules of saying as little as possible to cops and refusing permission for searches.
Continue readingState Departments of Motor Vehicles are notorious for slow or bad service. They are also becoming more well known for aiding in the invasion of individuals’ privacy.
Continue readingGeorge Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley is not impressed with the impeachment case being made against President Donald Trump. In a Wednesday editorial at The Hill, Turley contends that United States House of Representatives members arguing that Trump should be impeached for committing crimes of bribery, extortion, and obstruction are setting up for “the narrowest impeachment in history with the most dubious claims of criminal conduct.”
Continue readingSpeaking Wednesday evening with host Kennedy at Fox Business, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) predicted that the shenanigans this week to pass a continuing resolution providing short-term funding for the United States government and extra big-government goodies including authorization for mass surveillance, all without US House of Representatives members having time to adequately review the legislation, is not the end of the story.
Come December 20, Massie predicts congressional leadership “will come in a closed room” with Massie and other representatives “and they’ll say ‘OK now we’ve got the really big omnibus and, if you vote for this, you can go home for Christmas, but, if you don’t vote for it and it fails, we’re gonna make you stay here over Christmas and New Years.’”
Continue readingPeople say there is too little bipartisanship in Washington, DC. But, when it comes to protecting the United States government’s mass surveillance program, there is plenty of bipartisan action by Democratic and Republican leaders. This was on display Wednesday morning in the opening comments of US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Doug Collins (R-GA) during a hearing at which the committee debated and voted on the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act.
Continue readingNew Pew Research Center poll results indicate Americans’ support for marijuana legalization continues to grow, with support reaching two-thirds among those questioned and maintaining majorities among Democrats, Republicans, and independents. This state of popular opinion, along with marijuana law liberalization continuing to move forward at state and local levels, are among the factors suggesting the time is ripe for legalization on the national level.
However, the United States House of Representatives Judiciary Committee is not moving forward with a clean bill to repeal marijuana prohibition that would garner widespread public support and have a good chance of both passing in the Republican-controlled Senate and receiving President Donald Trump’s signature. Instead, the committee is scheduled to consider on Wednesday legislation that, in addition to national legalization, contains marijuana business subsidies and race-based provisions that likely mean the bill will have zero chance of passing in the Senate or receiving Trump’s support.
Continue readingLast week I wrote about an apparent contradiction between Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) talking up her 16-plus years in the United States Army and her criticizing certain US military interventions overseas in a recent interview at the ABC show The View. Since her criticism of such interventions is at the heart of her presidential campaign, I suggested that it would be helpful for Gabbard to offer an explanation to dispel the apparent contradiction.
Also in her The View interview, Gabbard brought up being a “woman of color” in challenging people saying she is an unwitting asset of the Russian government, as she put it, “working against the interests of our people and our country, the country that I am willing to lay my life down for.” Said Gabbard:
So, if you’re saying it’s not deliberately, then you are implying that I am too stupid and too naïve and lack the intelligence to know what I am doing. That is extremely offensive to me and to every woman of color.
Come again?
Continue readingOver the last few years, Americans entering and leaving the United States encountered US government officials increasingly accessing private information on the travelers’ electronic devices on demand. The situation is an affront to the constitutional restraint on searches contained in the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution.
Continue readingAfter completing six terms in the United States House of Representatives as a Democrat from Georgia, Cynthia McKinney was the 2008 Green Party nominee for president of the United States. In a Friday letter, McKinney announced her endorsement of Adam Kokesh for the 2020 Libertarian Party presidential nomination.
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