We Don’t Have “Star Chamber” Courts In This Country… Except We Do

“star–cham·ber adjective \ˈstär-ˈchām-bər\ : characterized by secrecy and often being irresponsibly arbitrary and oppressive.”   http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/star-chamber

The original Star Chamber was an English court that operated from the 14^th into the 17^th Centuries, until 1641. Its original goal was to assure that even the privileged met justice in a fair manner. It operated in secret, didn’t require indictments, allowed no witnesses, and all “evidence” was presented in writing. It devolved into a political weapon wielded by the monarchy against their enemies, and was ultimately abolished by Parliament with the enactment of the Habeas Corpus Act.

Those of you who are familiar with my scribbling know I hold the Oval Office’s current resident, Liar-In-Chief Obama, in utter and indescribable contempt. Recently we’ve been subjected to an absolute avalanche of scandals, piling up so quickly that you couldn’t stay above them if you sprouted wings.

The latest, at least as of my writing this, is that the National Security Agency (NSA) – also known as No Such Agency (an insider joke based on its secrecy) – has been monitoring the emails and phone calls of Americans on a massive scale. The full breadth of this Big Brother activity is still unfolding; almost hourly, it seems. Obama and his minions are in full damage control mode. Though it’s certainly tempting to lay this whole debacle at his feet – and the current intrusive scale probably is his responsibility – he’s right in one thing he says in his defense: that the program is “overseen by federal judges”.

The problem is this: under FISA (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978), particularly as amended under Bush by the Patriot Act of 2001 and extended by Obama, these courts function in complete secrecy, their records are not accessible by the public in any way, their proceedings are all classified, their power is extremely wide-reaching and broadly defined, and they almost never deny any application for a warrant.

As far as I’m concerned, this meets the definition of a “star chamber”. Throw in the near-universal spying on the activities of law-abiding citizens and you have the “arbitrary and oppressive” abuse thrown in for good measure.

Our system of government is based on several fundamental principles, one of which is that our courts function in public, ensuring their fairness, which can be verified by the citizenry using their own eyes and ears. There are certain narrowly-defined exceptions that occasionally justify in camera sessions, such as the protection of the identities of minors, but those exceptions are rare. Though our Grand Juries use secret proceedings, they’re composed of citizen members, not government-employed judges. The FISA courts operate in complete secrecy, and are a corruption of our liberty; we’re supposed to “trust” the government itself to oversee its own operations in a manner that doesn’t threaten that liberty.

Please. That doesn’t even pass the snigger test. We’ve recently seen how well that’s been working out. IRS abuses, anyone? Fast & Furious? Benghazi? … Bueller?

The Founders must be rolling over in their graves.

© Brian Baker 2013

“Politicization”?… Well, Duh!

Obama and his minions are mired up to their eyeballs in scandals, what with Benghazigate, the IRS targeting of conservative groups for harassment, and the Justice Department’s secret grab of Associated Press phone records, not to mention the lingering Operation Fast & Furious debacle.

I’ve been watching the so-called “testimony” of outgoing IRS Commissioner Steven Miller (that’s him sweating in the picture) as he tries to weasel his way around actually having to answer very pointed questions directed to him by the congressional committee investigating the IRS’s malfeasance. Highly entertaining.

Even more entertaining are the howls of protest from Obama’s apologists who bleat that these investigations are merely some kind of “politicization” and that those pursuing these issues are simply trying to “score political points against Obama”.

Well… what’s wrong with that? Obama was elected to office – a “political” process – and I’d think it’s certainly a perfectly valid and rational question to ask whether or not that political process ended up putting into that office a man who is corrupt, or at the very least allows and even encourages corruption to permeate the ranks of government, all to achieve his own “political” purposes.

Isn’t that what the “political” process is about? Giving the people the information they need to make “political” decisions about the people they’re electing to public office? Is a person in office somehow magically immunized from having any further “political” responsibilities for his actions anymore? Really? Is that the same standard the leftists applied when Bush was in office? Not to mention Reagan, when they spent eight years setting their hair on fire?

Or are we simply watching another exercise of standard leftist hypocrisy?

I know where I place my money on that question…

© Brian Baker 2013

SODDI: Some Other Dude Did It

I hold a valid Private Investigator license out here in the great state of Commiefornia. I qualified for it as a result of my experience as an Army Military Intelligence agent. But in my varied work career there was a time period of a couple of years when I worked as an in-house Case Manager for a criminal defense law firm here in Lost Angels. That meant I did the original screening and preliminary investigations on cases involving our new or prospective clients, a varied assortment of scumbags.

As an aside: yeah, yeah… I know… I was working on the Dark Side. It’s true. But it did give me some great stories with which to regale friends and family. You’d actually be surprised at how creative some of these idiots could be in formulating their laughable “defense”. You wouldn’t think they had it in them.

But the most-used defense they most often came up with is what we laughingly called the SODDI Defense. Some Other Dude Did It. No matter what evidence the cops had, it was always our new client who somehow had failed to perceive that he was being framed by Some Other Dude, or he was the hapless victim of actions taken by Some Other Dude.

Dope in your pants pocket? Not MY pants! I borrowed them from Some Other Dude.

Gun in your car? I don’t know how that got there! Some Other Dude was sitting in the car and must have left it!

Girlfriend dead in your bed? I didn’t hear a thing! Some Other Dude must have snuck in and did her!

I have to tell you, from what I’ve seen Some Other Dude is one busy guy. All we have to do is catch him and we’ll have solved any crime problem we have in this country.

Which brings us to the ObaMessiah and his minions. Has anyone other than me noticed a pattern here?

Operation Fast And Furious, the gunrunning scheme to ship “assault weapons” to the Mexican drug cartels, resulting in several hundred deaths of Mexican citizens and one US Border Patrol Agent. Per the Administration, it was all due to decisions made by low-ranking local personnel. “We didn’t know a thing about it!” SODDI!

BenghaziGate: Ditto! SODDI!

The latest revelation of governmental misprision, that the IRS targeted conservative organizations for audits and other forms of harassment. Per the Administration, it was all due to decisions made by low-ranking local personnel. “We didn’t know a thing about it!” SODDI! Again. Yeah, right…

Apparently in this administration made up of the “Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight”, no one commands anything. Certainly no one ever takes responsibility. It always seems to be “low-level” employees running around making all kinds of policy decisions to the complete surprise of the bosses once they bungle the job and get caught.

We see it here in BenghaziGate. Same deal with Fast & Furious. Same deal with the IRS targeting conservative PACs for tax audits.

Now we have the latest scandal du jour, the Justice Department illegally obtaining the phone records of Associated Press bureaus and reporters. Obama’s response? “I know nothing!” SODDI, no doubt.

Are we seriously supposed to believe that no one takes charge? NONE of these political hacks have any responsibility? They let junior people run around making policy decisions for the COUNTRY?

How come they could all manage to be “on the ground” in their war room, posing for the pictures all tense and tough and alert while watching Seal Team Six waste bin Laden, but no one was available while our ambassador was being slaughtered over several HOURS?

How come they couldn’t control their own shipments of guns to Mexico that were supposed to result in the decimation of the drug cartels, but we’re supposed to believe that further gun control laws will do anything at all to reduce domestic crime?

Why are “low-level IRS agents at a local facility” allowed to make policy and screening decisions about which applications and returns to audit without ANY supervision at all, according to the Administration’s SODDI defense? Why is the Justice Department running around illegally grabbing phone records without any supervision by anybody, with no accountability or responsibility?

Whatever happened to “The Buck Stops Here”? When did it turn into “Buck? What Buck? Some Other Dude stole the Buck!”?

Or are they full of baloney and trying to duck taking their medicine?

There’s only one answer that makes any sense at all… You be the judge.

© Brian Baker 2013

Marco Rubio: Judas Goat

For a couple of years now we’ve been hearing how Marco Rubio is the “new face of conservatism” that the GOP seems to be pinning its hopes on for a resurgence in electoral victories at the national level.

He’s a “person of color” (to use the socialists’ terminology) with truly “conservative” chops, we’re told.

Then why is he the GOP point man on yet another round of amnesty for illegal aliens?

We’ve been down this road before. This is just a rerun of the 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli debacle in which we were promised all kinds of things — “border security”, employment checks, etc. — in return for a “one time, never to be repeated” amnesty. It was going to cure ALL our illegal alien problems.

Well, the only thing we EVER got was the amnesty for over 3 MILLION illegal aliens. And here we are, once again, 27 years later with over THREE TIMES AS MANY illegal aliens as we had then.

Reagan later regretted signing it into law as one of the biggest mistakes of his presidency.

Are we going to be stupid enough to repeat history? “Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it” – Santayana.

Yet here we are, once again, hearing the same old same old. SSDD. Rubio is standing there as the face of the “Gang of Eight” – yet another “gang” that nobody elected to anything – supposedly “negotiating” a gargantuan public policy without any public input or debate. Who elected these eight guys to decide how the entire country is going to treat the problem of our invasion by illegal aliens?

According to Rubio, the illegal aliens will have to face some minor bureaucratic requirements and pay a $2000 “penalty”, after which they can be “legalized”, get green cards, and ultimately apply for full citizenship. Which means voting rights.

Oh, brother… $2000 in “penalties”?… That’s IT????????

Hell, here in Commiefornia you can get fined more than that for a traffic offense. This is total bullpuckey. And, of course, the same old empty promises about the “border security” that not only never happens, but can’t even be defined by any measurable standard anymore, thanks to the amnesty apologists from both parties currently (and previously) in office.

The Republicans who keep trying to foist this nonsense upon us keep claiming that this horde of under-skilled uneducated people is somehow going to magically turn into future conservative/GOP voters if we simply show some sympathy and “understanding” and let them “come out of the shadows”. What planet are these fools living on?

This group is EXACTLY the demographic of future Democrat/socialist voters by a HUGE margin: scofflaws, unskilled, uneducated, high crime rate, high illegitimate birth rate, low income, many (if not most) of them from ethnic minorities. Prime Democrat subjects. Please… THESE are future conservatives?

Which brings us back to our title, “Marco Rubio, Judas Goat”. Any self-professed “conservative” who stands for amnesty – under whatever guise or alias – is a Judas Goat, frankly, for exactly the reasons I’ve delineated above. Just like the animal Judas Goat who leads his fellow goats into the abattoir to slaughter, Rubio and fellow “conservatives” who promote amnesty for illegal aliens are leading this entire country to destruction.

As far as Rubio ever getting elected President: fuggeddaboudit. His career as a “conservative” is over. That’s proved to be a complete lie. He’s no more “conservative” than that turncoat “maverick” McCain.

ANYTHING that “legalizes” illegal aliens is amnesty. Period. And any purported “conservative” who supports it is no true conservative at all.

© Brian Baker 2013

Gun Control Killed; Obama’s Head Explodes

Well, the Senate effort to curtail Second Amendment rights failed today in the Senate, and in his typical fashion, the empty suit currently occupying the Oval Office placed the majority of the “blame” (“credit”, in my opinion) on the Republicans.

As most readers of my scribbling know, I’m no big fan of the GOP. But they’re not the issue here; the Blamer-in-Chief’s post-defeat presser statement is.

Hey, Obummer, YOUR OWN PARTY CONTROLS THE SENATE, you doofus, and that’s where it failed. You didn’t need a single GOP vote, as we saw with your jamdown of Obamacare, if YOUR OWN PARTY had supported this nonsense.

What a flaming cretin.

© Brian Baker 2013

Loony Aunt Diane Joins Crazy Uncle Joe

Just when you thought the socialist gun haters couldn’t get any crazier…

In my last two essays we explored Crazy Uncle Joe Biden’s loony advice on self defense: firing your double-barreled shotgun blindly in the air or through your front door.

Well, it turns out his grip on reality is pretty firm compared to Loony Aunt Diane Feinstein. In a meeting last Thursday of the Senate Judiciary Committee, she made the following profoundly amazing claim:

“We have federal regulations and state laws that prohibit hunting ducks with more than three rounds, and yet it’s legal to hunt humans with 15-round, 30-round, even 150-round magazines.”

It is??????

Is there a bag limit? Or can you just get as many as you like on any given day?

And here I was dumb enough to think it wasn’t ever legal to hunt humans, regardless of what kind of weaponry one was using. Silly me…

When it comes to guns, the loons on the Left seem to come completely unglued.

See Her Craziness in action here.

© Brian Baker 2013

Crazy Uncle Joe, Part Deux

Well, last week we discussed how Crazy Uncle Joe suggests that when you feel you may be in danger, you should take your loaded double-barrel shotgun with you out to your balcony, and fire both barrels into the air, thereby rendering yourself exposed, vulnerable, out of ammo and defenseless.

Plus, of course, that load of shot blasted into the sky has to come down somewhere. An umbrella sure won’t be much help. Oh, well… who says it has to make any sense when you’re trying to disarm the public, right?

Anyway, proving that Crazy Uncle Joe can only be outdone by himself, he unveiled another startling self-defense strategy in an interview conducted by Field and Stream magazine (here).

V.P. BIDEN: “I did one of these town-hall meetings on the Internet and one guy said, ‘Well, what happens when the end days come? What happens when there’s the earthquake? I live in California, and I have to protect myself.’

“I said, ‘Well, you know, my shotgun will do better for you than your AR-15, because you want to keep someone away from your house, just fire the shotgun through the door.’”

Whoa…….

I guess the pizza guy damned well better not hit Crazy Joe’s address by mistake…

Knock knock. BLAM! BLAM!

Where does he come up with this stuff? I have to wonder if he’s been drinking window cleaner or something.

If nothing else, he’s certainly convinced me that at the least we need to tighten up the reporting requirements of mental instability for gun ownership restrictions, if someone with these kinds of nutty ideas can legally own guns.

Goooood grief….

© Brian Baker 2013

Crazy Uncle Joe

On 19 February, our nation’s favorite Crazy Uncle Joe participated in an online Facebook “townhall” hosted by Parent’s Magazine.

Of course, he pontificated on how an AR-15 isn’t very useful for self-defense purposes, recommending one use a double-barreled shotgun instead. Have a look at the short clip below; the fun starts at the 0.55 mark.

Huh?… What?…

Instant replay, please…

“I said, ‘Jill, if there’s ever a problem, just walk out on the balcony here, walk out and put that double-barrel shotgun and fire two blasts outside the house.’”

So, let me see if I have this right. You load your double-barrel shotgun, walk outside the house in which you were safest, and fire both barrels into the air… leaving you exposed, defenseless, and out of ammo.

Sounds like a helluva plan to me.

I wonder if this is what he recommends to his Secret Service guardians. And if he does, how they manage to contain their gales of responding laughter…

© Brian Baker 2013

Confessions Of A Member Of The “Far-Right Fringe”

I confess.

I believe in God, and I’m a Christian. I believe in the Second Amendment as the Founders meant it, and that as a law-abiding citizen I’m a member of the “militia” as defined under the US Code Title 10. I love guns; I own guns, including “assault weapons”; I shoot my guns regularly. I’m a veteran. I’m against granting amnesty, under whatever name, to illegal aliens. I think abortion is wrong, and is not solely just “a woman’s right to choose”. I consider myself a member of the Tea Party.

STRAC in ’69

Guilty as charged. Mea culpa.

And because of my views and beliefs, I’ve been castigated and excoriated by Democrats and their fellow socialists in this country for decades. It’s reached the point where if I state my views and I don’t hear insults in return, I have to wonder if I’m actually speaking clearly, or have made some other mistake in communication. Did I garble my sentences? Speak in tongues? Have a “cerebral incident”? What?

My political opponents on the Left have called me a “radical”, a reactionary, a fanatic, a zealot, an “extremist”… and that’s when they’re in a good mood and feeling polite. Early in his first term Commissar Obama’s Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano branded small-government gun-owning veterans who are pro-life (that would be me) “potential terrorists”.

All well and good. The sun is in the sky and things are right with the world.

But wait! What’s that I hear?

Why… the same criticisms coming at me from my other flank! Power players in the Republican Party seem to have gulped the Democrat Kool-Aid and decided that we people who believe in these principles actually are part of the political “fringe”! Hold on a sec… aren’t these the exact same principles the GOP claims to represent?

Well, according to Karl Rove, among others in the Establishment GOP, apparently not. It seems that actual principles are okay, as long as they don’t interfere with just winning elections, and those who actually believe that elections are about advancing actual principles really are members of the extremist “fringe”, an inconvenient group that must be ignored if not outright shunned.We saw it in practice after the 2010 election, when new House Speaker John Boehner completely marginalized the Tea Party-backed conservatives who were newly elected to their seats in the House, giving the GOP the majority status there. “Thank you, now go sit in the corner and shut up” was the message then.

Rove and his cohorts have formalized that message with the formation of a couple of PACs (Link) whose goal will be to influence elections, starting with the primary process, with the aim of having “the most electable” candidates win. The problem is, of course, what their definition of “electable” means.

Crist’s Commissar clinch

Rove and the others are the same people who backed Bush’s two attempts at amnesty for illegal aliens; who backed Bush’s TARP and “bailout”, as well as his expansion of Medicare; who are now talking about “sensible, common sense” gun control; who supported Charlie Crist (who later defected to the Democrats) over Marco Rubio; who backed Arlen Specter (who also later defected to the Dems) over Toomey; and who constantly and reliably disparage the Tea Party and other traditionally conservative factions of the electorate.

In other words, these are the self-anointed geniuses who regularly spit in the eyes of what would reasonably be considered their “base” – the very voters they actually need in order to win – and then turn around and scratch their heads and wonder why they end up losing elections, especially at the national level.

One of Rove’s group’s goals is to “… protect Senate incumbents from challenges by far-right conservatives and Tea Party enthusiasts who Republican leaders worry could complicate the party’s efforts to win control of the Senate.” In other words, party uber alles, principles be damned.

But what does that really mean? Abandoning core principles the GOP has traditionally claimed to represent, in the hopes of stealing some of the Democrats’ reliable base? Then what’s the point, if all they want to be is a modified form of Democrat, the Dem-Lite Party? Why would anyone vote for them at all? And why are they intent – whether by design or not – on redefining the political spectrum leftward? And how did the Tea Party – whose main issues are fiscal prudence and limited power in government – become defined as “far right”? Isn’t that a fundamental principle, and “centrist” by definition?

Rove, Boehner, and the rest of the Establishment GOP hacks are exactly the reason why in 2008, when the GOP nominated that idiot McCain, I quit my GOP registration of almost 40 years and re-registered as an Independent. I’d had a bellyful of that party of clowns who didn’t care one bit about principles. Their entire raison d’être is simply to “win” elections, though they’ve completely lost any sense of purpose as to WHY that win could actually be important as anything other than a simple power grab.

A  complete disconnect from any sense of real purpose or underlying ideology or philosophy, coupled with an uncanny ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, all wrapped in a cloak of sanctimony and hypocrisy.

© Brian Baker 2013

Now I Know How Alice Felt In Wonderland

Well, Hillary Clinton finally “recovered” from her head trauma injury or whatever, and deigned to appear in Congress to testify on BenghaziGate. She put on quite the show, too, with much wailing and tears and shouting and gnashing of teeth and table pounding.

It reminded me of the old law school adage that goes: “When the fact are on your side, pound on the facts. When the law is on your side, pound on the law. When neither the facts nor the law are on your side, pound on the table”.

Well, that she did. If we see her wearing an Ace bandage in upcoming pictures, we’ll all know why.

At one point in her histrionics, when asked about why she and others were busy blaming the slaughter on that silly video that no one had seen, she screamed: “What difference, at this point, does it make?”

Well… of course, THAT’S not the right question. The RIGHT question to ask is what difference it made at the time. At the time, Obama was trying to take the credit for killing bin Laden and solving all our problems in the Middle East with his dazzling diplomacy and military brilliance. The idea that BenghaziGate was due to al Quaida loyalists attacking our diplomatic mission would have destroyed that narrative, betrayed him as the incompetent fool he is, and endangered his chances at re-election. So we, the people, were lied to.

As to what difference it makes “at this point”: well, Nixon was undergoing impeachment proceedings NOT for the Watergate break-in… but for lying about it after the fact, Miss Self-Righteous Sanctimony. As was your own husband, Mr. Bill “I Never Had Sex With That Woman” Clinton, who was impeached NOT for “not having sex” with Monica Lewinsky, but for lying about it after the fact, and in fact committing perjury.

THAT’S why it matters “at this point”, Hillary, you nitwit.

*          *          *          *          *          *          *

In other news…. In my last essay I published an email exchange between my congressman and me highlighting his – and the GOP’s – failure on the issue of the debt ceiling.

Weeellll… the hits just keep on a’coming.

This last week or so, the GOP in all its continuing idiocy seems to have decided to really gulp the socialist’s Kool-Aid and not only jump on the scamnesty for illegal aliens bandwagon (known as “comprehensive immigration reform”), but hitch up the horses, polish the woodwork, play all the instruments, and lead the parade.

With Schumer… What does that tell you?

They’ve trotted out their pet “minority” apologist to sit in the driver’s seat: Marco Rubio, in the role of Judas goat. Of course, you have John McAmnesty riding shotgun, with Lindsay Graham on trombone, the Chamber of Commerce hitting the piano and drums, all while the socialist cheering section sits on the sidelines laughing their butts off.

These knuckleheads claim that we have to bring the 11 million (surely a ridiculously low estimate) illegal aliens “out of the shadows”. The first thing that popped into my mind was: are we planning on bringing all the child molesters “out of the shadows”, too, by legalizing kiddie sex? If not, why not, if that’s your big rationalization?

ANYhoooo… supposedly, we’ll get a “secured border” first, after which the illegals will get a “pathway to citizenship”. Then they’ll all magically turn into Republicans, apparently.

Really! I’m not kidding! That’s REALLY what these idiots believe!

First of all, I’m old enough to remember 1986, and the Simpson-Mazzoli amnesty which Reagan signed into law, promising amnesty to 3 million illegal aliens in return for… drum roll, please … a secured border, tighter controls, and employer sanctions for hiring illegals! Whoa! Déjà vu all over again! The same thing we’re hearing NOW!!!

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Reagan later regretted signing that bill into law, knowing he’d been bamboozled, because the only thing we ever got out of it was the amnesty. Now here we are, 27 years later, with THREE TIMES as many illegal aliens as we had before Simpson-Mazzoli, having the same damned discussion with the same damned rationalizations, excuses, and empty promises.

This is an absolutely IDIOTIC idea. Why does immigration reform have to be “comprehensive” at all? Secure the damned border FIRST. And only THEN do we even start talking about anything else.

These moronic GOPers are like a bunch of lemmings, running right over the cliff with the Dumbocrats steering the way in committing national suicide, with the deluded and stupid idea that they’re somehow going to win over minority voters. That ain’t NEVER gonna happen while the leftists can keep playing the “race card”. It just ultimately creates an even larger pool of voters dependant on government handouts. And guess who THEY’RE gonna vote for. This is just expanding that “47%” demographic that Romney was pilloried for correctly pointing out.

Stupid Republicans.

© Brian Baker 2013