Category Archives: Constitution

04.28.13
by

Los Angeles Times: Response to TSA Lawsuit, Public gets chance to comment on TSA’s full-body scanners

TSA agents operate a full-body scanner at San Diego's Lindbergh Field.

Airline passengers have been walking through full-body scanners for nearly five years, but only now are fliers getting a chance to officially tell the federal government what they think about the screening machines.

In response to a lawsuit, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia circuit ruled that the Transportation Security Administration could continue to use the scanners as a primary method of screening passengers. But the court ordered the TSA to give the public a 90-day comment period, which the agency did not do when it launched the scanning program.

The TSA began the comment period online in March, and so far it has been getting an average of 26 comments a day — nearly all of which blast the TSA and the scanners for a variety of reasons.

The most common objection is that the scanners violate the Constitution’s 4th Amendment, which guards against unreasonable search and seizure.

“Screening without probable cause is a violation of the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” wrote Russell Yates of Los Angeles.

But in the 2011 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals rejected that argument, saying that “screening passengers at an airport is an ‘administrative search’ because the primary goal is not to determine whether any passenger has committed a crime but rather to protect the public from a terrorist attack.”

Other common objections to the scanners say they expose passengers to unsafe levels of radiation and are not effective at stopping terrorists.

“It is scientifically indefensible to irradiate the vast majority of passengers,” wrote Richard Layton of Terre Haute, Ind. The TSA says several studies show the scans pose no significant hazard to passengers.

Finally, several dozen critics said the government doesn’t have the right to take “naked” or “nude” pictures of them to look for hidden weapons.

That may be a moot point. In response to a new federal law, the TSA is expected to remove all scanners that generate what look like naked images of passengers from airports by summer.

Most of those scanners will be replaced by a type of scanner that shows hidden objects projected onto a generic avatar image on a screen — not on a nude-like image of a passenger.

—

Click below for the full article.

http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-comment-on-tsas-fullbody-scanners-20130419,0,7454861.story

04.28.13
by

Huffington Post: On the TSA, Could Your Son be Next?

It’s every parent’s worst nightmare. You arrive at the airport to fly home from your family vacation, and something goes wrong — terribly wrong — at the TSA screening area.

It happened to Susan Bruce recently when she flew from Phoenix to Dallas with her husband, teenage son and daughter.

“When we got to security, my son went first in line through the X-ray machine and TSA flagged him for the hand swab test,” she remembers. “While the rest of the family was stuck on the other side of the X-ray machine, my son was pulled aside for supposedly having a positive result for explosives.”

Bruce, who lives in Dallas and is a mathematician by training and a homemaker, is certain it was a misunderstanding. Her son is no terrorist, she says. He’s a clean-cut honor student.

“The air in Phoenix is very dry and we all had put some lotion on our hands that morning — maybe the cause of the result,” she speculates. “Or it may have been fertilizer from the grass he touched. After all, he’s 15.”

But the TSA treated him like Richard Reid’s son.

“All eyes were focused on my son as the rude agents threw accusations at him,” she recalls. “One agent asked him if there was anything sharp in the luggage. His response was, ‘What?’ Keep in mind he is 15, so his Mom packed the luggage. He had no idea what was in each bag.”

The agents were impolite and accusatory. They ordered him to stay away from the luggage while they tested it. He felt as if he’d failed some kind of test.

“He just stood there in shock,” says Bruce.

And that wasn’t the worst of it.

The TSA’s teen problem

The TSA may have figured out what to do with kids under 12 and passengers over 75, allowing those low-risk passengers to go through the screening area without removing their jackets or shoes. But something happens when that 12-year-old turns 13. He or she becomes a high-risk air traveler who’s scanned, prodded and interrogated at the checkpoint. His only crime is coming of age, and from one day to the next becoming part of the feared “terrorist” demographic.

Bruce’s incident is hardly an isolated one. The TSA reportedly botched the pat-down of a 17-year-old girl in 2010, who also happened to be the niece of a U.S. congressman. During the exam, the girl’s sundress slipped, revealing her breasts in public. An internal investigation released late last year concluded the whole thing was an “unfortunate” accident.

Agents also recently gave another girl such a rigorous once-over that they broke her insulin pump. Savannah Barry claims TSA agents in Salt Lake City were rude and abrupt, even though she tried to warn them that she was wearing the pump. Clearly, the agents thought she was up to no good. Diabetics are such a menace.

Some of the worst stories are the ones that don’t make the news. One concerned mother contacted me a few weeks ago after the entire family flew out of Washington’s Dulles airport. The rest of her family walked through the metal detectors and full-body scanners without incident, but when it was her teenage daughter’s turn, the male screener asked her to back up and walk through again. He said the scanner “needed to get a better look” at her.

Yeah, I bet it did.

Is my son a terrorist?

While most of the incidents that capture the public’s attention involve teenage girls, probably because the cliche of the lecherous male screener preying on an innocent virgin is just too irresistible, the boys may have it worse. Bear in mind that young men do indeed fit the terrorist profile; all of the 9/11 bombers were young men, which means any TSA agent worth his training will be extra vigilant when it comes to anything young and male.

“It took every fiber in my son not to burst into tears,” remembers Bruce. “The agent continued to badger him until they whisked him away for a private pat-down, where they brought my husband to witness them groping him, including his genitals.”

Nearly half an hour after they approached the security screening area in Phoenix, it was all over. The Bruce family had been cleared for takeoff.

“We led our shaken son and sobbing daughter to the gate where boarding was already under way,” she says.

Bruce blames herself for allowing this to happen.

“I’m so upset,” she says. “I’m mad at myself because I feel like I failed my son by not protecting him. But I was totally unprepared for this.”

We are all unprepared for this. My oldest son turns 11 this year, but he’s taller than many 13-year-olds. What will the TSA do to him the next time we go through security? What will they do to your son or daughter?

Do we really have to trade our dignity for security? I don’t think so. The agents who barked orders at the Bruce family, who disrobed the congressman’s niece and broke Barry’s insulin pump would have benefitted from some basic customer-service training. Instead, they’re traumatizing an entire generation of air travelers.

We deserve better.

—

Is it acceptable to compromise your freedom and liberty for the sake of security?  Click below for a link to the article by Christopher Elliot on the Huffington Post.

http://www.thelibertyreport.org/wp-admin/post.php?post=397&action=edit&message=6

 

 

04.28.13
by

Reuters: Republicans, U.S. lawmakers press Obama to take action on Syria

U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) answers questions during a news conference following their tour of the Arizona-Mexico border in Nogales, Arizona March 27, 2013. REUTERS/Samantha Sais

Republican senators on Sunday pressed U.S. President Barack Obama to intervene in Syria’s civil war, saying America could attack Syrian air bases with missiles but should not send in ground troops.

Pressure is mounting on the White House to do more to help Syrian rebels fighting against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, which the Obama administration last week said had probably used chemical arms in the conflict.

Neutralizing the government forces’ air advantage over the rebels “could turn the tide of battle pretty quickly,” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“One way you can stop the Syrian air force from flying is to bomb the Syrian air bases with cruise missiles,” the South Carolina senator said.

Graham said international action was needed to bring the conflict to a close but “You don’t need boots on the ground from the U.S. point of view.”

More than 70,000 people have died in Syria’s two-year-old civil war. So far, the United States has limited its involvement to providing non-lethal aid to rebels.

Obama said on Friday the use of chemical weapons in Syria would be a “game changer” for the United States, but made clear he was in no rush to intervene on the basis of evidence he said was still preliminary.

The U.S. fears anti-Assad Islamist rebels affiliated to al Qaeda could seize the chemical weapons, and Washington and its allies have discussed scenarios where tens of thousands of ground troops go into Syria if Assad’s government falls.

INTERNATIONAL FORCE

Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate in 2008, said the United States should step up its support for Syrian rebels even if it turns out that Assad’s forces have not used poison gas in the conflict.

“We could use Patriot (missile) batteries and cruise missiles,” the Arizona lawmaker, an influential voice on military issues in the U.S. Senate, told NBC’s Meet The Press.

McCain said an “international force” should also be readied to go into Syria to secure stocks of chemical weapons.

“There are number of caches of these chemical weapons. They cannot fall into the hands of the jihadists,” he said.

—-

So the Republicans, or specifically the GOP Establishment, still believe that it is the obligation of the United States to police the world.  What do you think?  Click below for the full article.

http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/04/28/usa-syria-idINDEE93R05220130428

 

04.27.13
by

Forbes: GOP’s Dave Camp: Why Not Put All Federal Employees Onto Obamacare’s Exchanges?

WASHINGTON, DC - DECEMBER 20: U.S. Rep. Dave ...

In response to this week’s brouhaha regarding attempts by members of Congress to avoid having to enroll themselves and their staff members in Obamacare’s health insurance exchanges, Michigan Republican Dave Camp, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has offered a new proposal: Why not put all federal employees on the exchanges? It’s an attractive idea, but it has some downside: it would dismantle a popular model of market-based health reform.

“If the ObamaCare exchanges are good enough for the hardworking Americans and small businesses the law claims to help, then they should be good enough for the president, vice president, Congress, and federal employees,” said Camp’s spokeswoman in a statement.

The political principle is straightforward, but it would come at a price. Putting all federal employees on the exchanges would obliterate the most market-oriented insurance program run by the government, the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program, or FEHBP. Indeed, the FEHBP has long been considered a model for market-based reform of the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

In the FEHBP, employees get to choose amongst a wide variety of plans offered by private insurers. The employer–the government–then subsidizes about three-fourths of the cost to the employee. The employee can choose a more generous or expensive plan if he wants, but he has to pay for a portion of the difference in price, and vice versa. As a result of this approach, FEHBP plans have organically evolved to contain the benefits and financial features that consumers want. By contrast, any minor change to Medicare requires an act of Congress.

Obamacare’s exchanges are closer in concept to FEHBP than traditional Medicare, but the exchanges heavily constrain the ability of plans to alter their design as consumers’ preferences evolve.

—

Click below for the full article.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2013/04/26/gops-dave-camp-why-not-put-all-federal-employees-onto-obamacares-exchanges/

 

04.27.13
by

NBC: Marijuana tax debate stalls in Colorado

Marijuana taxation brought the Colorado Legislature to a standstill early Saturday, with the House giving up and heading home without voting after the pot debate stretched past midnight.

The standstill was not exactly caused by the bill to tax pot more than 30 percent, though Republicans were in the middle of trying to lower the tax rate when the House stopped work. Instead, the breakdown came as a result of frayed nerves after long, divisive debates on unrelated measures, from a renewable energy bill to and education funding debate.

—

Click below for the full article.

http://www.nbc11news.com/home/headlines/Marijuana-tax-debate-stalls-in-Colorado-205005591.html

04.27.13
by

Motley Fool: These 7 States Tax Homeowners the Hardest

Paying income tax is hard enough for those struggling to make ends meet. But with property taxes, even those who have no income end up having to bear their share of the overall tax burden.

Property taxes are typically imposed and collected by local tax authorities rather than state revenue departments, but property tax revenues have a big impact on the decisions that state governments make on where to apply their financial resources. Still, you can get a sense of how much of a property tax burden state residents bear by looking at the average tax paid per person. Using figures from the most recently available data from the Tax Foundation and land and home values from the Lincoln Institute, let’s look at seven states that impose the highest average property taxes on their residents.

7. Rhode Island Property taxes in Rhode Island average $2,083 per person. With average home values of $241,000 just barely putting Rhode Island in the top third of the nation, high tax rates and a high density of urban land help push the state’s overall property tax burden higher. Moreover, with just over 1 million people, Rhode Island doesn’t have many people over which split the fixed costs of state government.

6. Vermont In Vermont, the average property tax bill is $2,166. Vermont’s land values come in just below Rhode Island’s at $239,000, and the state has a much more rural character than Rhode Island’s small size and coastal proximity. As with Rhode Island, Vermont’s small population of around 625,000 provides only a limited base on which to tax.

5. New York New York imposes an average of $2,280 in property taxes per person. Average home values come in at $316,000, putting the state in the top 10. Yet given the huge disparities in real-estate prices throughout the state, that burden is very unevenly spread. Rural tax rates in upstate New York can be relatively reasonable, but in New York City, you’ll see tax burdens that are more in line with those of neighboring states that are dominated more by the city’s metropolitan area.

—

Click below for the full article.

http://www.fool.com/how-to-invest/personal-finance/taxes/2013/04/27/these-7-states-tax-homeowners-the-hardest.aspx

04.26.13
by

Business Insider: CISPA ‘Dead For Now’: ‘Privacy Killer’ Bill Hits A Wall In The Senate

Sen. Jay Rockefeller

 

The controversial Cyber Information Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) is likely  to die in the Senate, according to US  News.

The bill, which has stirred up internet privacy watchdogs and sites like Reddit,  followed closely in the footsteps of the last unsuccessfully proposed privacy  bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect I.P. Act (PIPA). SOPA and  PIPA met their end last year after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid canceled debate following pressure and protests from Internet companies such as Wikipedia, Google, and  Reddit.

The heat  on CISPA hasn’t been as hot as the pressure put on SOPA and PIPA last year,  but Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) who is the Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee  on Commerce, Science and Transportation says that CISPA’s privacy protections  are “insufficient” and a committee aid confirmed to CNET that “Rockefeller believes the Senate will not take up  CISPA.”

Coupled with President Barack Obama’s threatened veto, CISPA as it is now  could be all but dead, at least according to Michelle Richardson, legislative  council with the American Civil Liberties Union.

“I think it’s dead for now,” she told US News. “CISPA  is too controversial, it’s too expansive, it’s just not the same sort of program  contemplated by the Senate last year. We’re pleased to hear the Senate will  probably pick up where it left off last year.”

Why the uproar over CISPA?  The bill allows companies to pass along what the government calls “cyber threat”  data which includes personal information like user data to the United Sates  Government. If the bill passed, they could legally give data over to law  enforcement and not face legal repercussions.

——

Click below for the full article.

http://www.businessinsider.com/cispa-hits-a-brick-wall-in-the-senate-2013-4#ixzz2RcN2BNqS

04.25.13
by

Forbes: Congress Seeks to Opt Out of Participating in Obamacare’s Exchanges

As Obamacare was winding its way through the Senate in 2009, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) slipped in an amendment requiring that members of Congress, and their staff, enroll in Obamacare’s health insurance exchanges. The idea was simple: that if Congress was going to impose Obamacare upon the country, it should have to experience what it is imposing firsthand. But now, word comes that Congress is quietly seeking to rescind that provision of the law, because members fear that staffers who face higher insurance costs will leave the Hill. The news has sparked outrage from the right and left. Here’s the back story, and why this debate is crucial to the future of market-based health reform.

Sen. Grassley’s original idea was to require all federal employees to enroll in the exchanges, instead of in the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program, where most gain coverage today. Indeed, a previous Senate Finance Committee amendment proposed putting members and staffers on Medicaid. But “fierce opposition from federal employee unions” sank Grassley’s effort, and he had to water his amendment down to only apply to Congress and congressional staff.

Staffers grumble about being stuck on the exchanges

Ever since Obamacare became law, this has been a source of grumbling among the congressional staffers I talk to. One aspect of the Grassley amendment is that it originally appeared to exempt staffers who worked for congressional committees, and congressional leadership, because those staffers didn’t work for specific Members of Congress. (My understanding is that the Office of Personnel Management has since clarified the regulations to include all staff, including committee and leadership.)

—

It is always fascinating when politicians pass unconstitutional laws that are supposedly good enough for the people but not good enough for them.  Click below for the full article.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2013/04/25/congress-fearing-brain-drain-seeks-to-opt-out-of-participating-in-obamacares-exchanges/?partner=yahootix

04.25.13
by

National Consitution Center: Six things you may not know about the killer drone controversy

The Obama administration’s use of weaponized drones to kill suspected terrorists overseas was under a Senate microscope this week, as six different witnesses revealed some interesting facts about the controversial policy.

Predator_droneSenator Richard Durbin, an Obama supporter (on issues other than drones), chaired the subcommittee hearing on Tuesday.

Durbin was openly disappointed that the Obama administration didn’t send a witness to talk about the secretive program.

“I do want to note for the record, my disappointment that the administration declined to provide a witness to testify at today’s hearings. I hope that in future hearings we’ll have an opportunity to work with the administration more closely,” he said.

Durbin also said he hoped the administration understood its newfound technological killing power “is still grounded in words written more than 200 years ago.”

Political opponents Ted Cruz and Al Franken agreed with Durbin that the scope of the executive branch’s power was under question.

The administration says it has the power to undertake the drone tactics per a 2001 congressional resolution in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

The Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights has released the official testimony of the six witnesses, which show a cross-section of concerns and justifications about the program. here’s a brief look at what they said.

General James Cartwright

The retired general, a former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, explained that drones are cheap, at an average cost of $4 million to $5 million, compared with a conventional jet fighter, at $150 million. They are also cheap to fly and have advanced optics.

“[They’re] not hard to see why military operations are significantly improved by this technology. Drones offer many advantages over other conventional forces in counterterrorism,” he said.

“Legitimate questions remain about the use, authorities, and oversight of armed drone activities outside an area of declared hostility,” he acknowledged. “While I believe based on my experience all parties involved in this activity have acted in the best interests of the country, as with other new technologies, adaptation of policy and law tends to lag implementation of the capability.”

Farea Al-Muslimi

Al-Muslimi, a Yemini activist who was partly educated in the United States,  told the committee how drone attacks hurt the reputation of the United States in his country.

“Just six days ago, my village was struck by a drone, in an attack that terrified thousands of simple poor farmers. The drone strike and its impact tore my heart much as the tragic bombings in Boston last week tore your hearts and also mine,” he said.

Al-Muslimi said the drone attacks, especially those that killed innocent civilians, made his job as an advocate for America in Yemen “almost impossible.”

—

Click below for the full article.

http://blog.constitutioncenter.org/2013/04/six-things-you-may-not-know-about-killer-drone-controversy/