In case you haven’t heard, UK skeptic blogger “Tallbloke” has had his computers seized by Norfolk police looking for evidence of the intrepid “FOIA” leaker. Josh at Cartoons by Josh can always see humor, even when things look dark. He’s also provided a handy safety notice placard for posting in appropriate places.
Post wherever needed:
Steve says:
December 15, 2011 at 1:00 pm
I appreciate the response and I understand where you’re coming from, but unless you’re packing significant heat at the time, a knock on the door could leave you as defenseless as showering with soap in your eyes. 😉
I thought CG2 would provoke a response and they’ve went straight for the throat; shut down the skeptic bloggers and you shut down FOIA’s delivery channel. Not going to succeed though.
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2011/12/15/skeptic-blogger-raided-by-the-police-because-he-was-sent-a-link-to-the-climategate-2-release/
Pointman
Whoops, hoist once again by the perils of self-editing on the fly. Ended up with double “almost”s. When reading delete whichever one that gives a result closest to your preferred literary style.
The president just needs to declare you to be a “climate terrorist” and they can drag you off to Gitmo without trial and throw away the key.
Any bets as to how long until we see the T word being applied to climate skeptics?
A columnist in NZ’s largest newspaper says global warming’s a goner
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/environment/news/article.cfm?c_id=39&objectid=10773421
Don’t fret, global warming’s a goner
By Jim Hopkins
5:30 AM Friday Dec 16, 2011
…
Journalists never admit they’re wrong (see phone hacking). They just stop being wrong. When caught with their sceptical pants down and the spotty globes of their credulity exposed, they simply drop the story and move to something else.
Which is precisely what’s happened. Global warming has left the building.
Where once there were hundreds of horror stories, a daily dose of frightening features, a nightly stack of belching chimneys on the telly (mainly belching steam, in truth, but they still looked really scary) we’ve now got, well, (nervous cough, awkward shuffle) ummm, sweet Fanny Adams, to be frank. There has been a trickle of terror but, by and large, the whole calamitous narrative is a goneburger.
Oh, great. Now the cops are really gonna confiscate Josh’s pencilbox.
Well, they’ll clone it and return it to him in a couple of weeks.
At 1:21 PM on 15 December (Happy Bill of Rights Day! What were we supposed to be celebrating again?) Dave Wendt complains about getting caught in the WordPress Screw:
Don’t apologize, don’t correct (unless it’s a matter of substantive fact, not a typo). Unlike a lot of blog sites, WordPress doesn’t enable any sort of “Preview” or “Edit” function, and every time you use this “Leave a Reply” box, it’s a crapshoot.
Anybody qualified to have an opinion worth respecting knows this, and if you catch a snerk over fumblefingers in “on the fly” composition, you can congratulate yourself as having henceforth identified the snerker as a perfect bloody idiot.
I want to wish one of the nicest blokes on the blogosphere good luck.
I hope the coppers don’t tax your time, health and well being too much.
Good luck Tally, you height of nonsense you.
RockyRoad says:
December 15, 2011 at 1:16 pm
Steve says:
December 15, 2011 at 1:00 pm
@RockRoad,
“Not in the US. 2nd Amendment. Bust in and try to take my things without a warrant, and your picture will be on the news.”
I appreciate the response and I understand where you’re coming from, but unless you’re packing significant heat at the time, a knock on the door could leave you as defenseless as showering with soap in your eyes. 😉
Well in the US I was asked questions during a deposition concerning emails from me on a computer which had been ‘arrested’, with a warrant of course. The 2nd amendment wouldn’t help you much under those circumstances except to get the owner killed!
“The 2nd amendment wouldn’t help you much under those circumstances except to get the owner killed!”
…says the serf.
Tucci78 says:
December 15, 2011 at 1:48 pm
Unfortunately I can’t in all honestly lay the blame for this boot on WordPress. The error was right there in the comment box for me to catch. Sadly the eye often sees what the brain expects to see and I slid right past my error while doing my prepost quickscan. My problems with the lack of preview usually arise when trying to C&P a quote into a comment, when my efforts to edit out the discontinuities aren’t reflected when the post comes up.
Smokey says:
December 15, 2011 at 2:04 pm
Better to temporarily acquiesce and live to fight (and vote) another day. Only if you’re a resilient Liberal does death NOT remove your voting rights (especially if you’re in a state that doesn’t require a photo ID). Besides, such instances of jackboot thuggery merely serve as poignant examples that accelerate the establishment’s downfall; guns just complicate the confrontation.
Rocky,
It’s the serf attitude I was objecting to. Sorry I wasn’t clearer. I’m not recommnding or advising the use of guns. But Americans need to stand up to the mindset that our Constitutional rights are negotiable.
Congress just this week passed a law allowing the President to waive habeus corpus and indefinitely detain American citizens, simply on the suspicion of having a connection with [undefined] “terrorists”. The connection does not have to be proven; it could simply be conversation at a cocktail party. The government does not have to disclose the basis for the detention, and the detainee does not have a right to counsel, and no judge may intervene.
Besides being totally unconstitutional, the attitude that our rights can be waived to fight some nebulous ‘terrorist’ threat should rightly scare the crap out of every American citizen. And make no mistake, sooner or later this arbitrary, unchecked power will be used to detain political opponents – and even those who have a scientific point of view contrary to the “consensus”.
History is full of similar examples. In the late 1930’s anyone who criticized tha German National Socialists was likely to be detained, and a young woman and man were sent to the guillotine for simply leaving some leaflets advocating non-violence on a park bench.
Americans have become complacent after two centuries of fighting only external enemies. Most of us don’t believe that people in power here could possibly be like the Nazis. They are very mistaken.
This was a purposeful distraction–whilst in the dead of night the US Senate in a vote of 93-7, has apparently revoked the BILL OF RIGHTS. Now even if you are cleared in a US Court of fictitious charges, the gendarms can hold you indefinetly.
I guess that is why Home Land Security is building detention centers across the country under the guise of emergency shelters—they say. Nice stimulus Aye!
Smokey says:
December 15, 2011 at 5:09 pm
Points well taken, Smokey. I couldn’t agree more. And the erosion of our freedoms and constitutional guarantees are simply shocking, especially in recent developments. This next election should be critical, but I’m not seeing the degree of pushback from a lot of very well-placed conservatives–indeed, some are actually assisting in the erosion. Will the US survive as a constitutional republic? I have serious doubts…
The following serves as evidence:
John M. Chenosky, PE says:
December 15, 2011 at 5:20 pm
Again, very serious doubts…
Smokey says:
December 15, 2011 at 5:09 pm
Rocky,
It’s the serf attitude I was objecting to. Sorry I wasn’t clearer. I’m not recommnding or advising the use of guns. But Americans need to stand up to the mindset that our Constitutional rights are negotiable.
Congress just this week passed a law allowing the President to waive habeus corpus and indefinitely detain American citizens, simply on the suspicion of having a connection with [undefined] “terrorists”. The connection does not have to be proven; it could simply be conversation at a cocktail party. The government does not have to disclose the basis for the detention, and the detainee does not have a right to counsel, and no judge may intervene.
Besides being totally unconstitutional, the attitude that our rights can be waived to fight some nebulous ‘terrorist’ threat should rightly scare the crap out of every American citizen. And make no mistake, sooner or later this arbitrary, unchecked power will be used to detain political opponents – and even those who have a scientific point of view contrary to the “consensus”.
History is full of similar examples.
It is indeed, the suspension of habeus corpus by Lincoln in 1861 and 1862 being a case in point. Resisting a lawful action by police with firearms is not a constitutional right however.
Phil.:
Stick to physics, your history is weak.
Smokey says:
December 15, 2011 at 5:09 pm
“Congress just this week passed a law allowing the President to waive habeus corpus and indefinitely detain American citizens, simply on the suspicion of having a connection with [undefined] “terrorists”. The connection does not have to be proven; it could simply be conversation at a cocktail party. The government does not have to disclose the basis for the detention, and the detainee does not have a right to counsel, and no judge may intervene.”
After 8 straight years of a daily leftist drone about how “BushHitler” was ravaging our “rights” under the Constitution, it has been wonderfully revealing to watch their chirping crickets reaction to the Obama administration’s almost daily efforts to make these supposed crimes, which under Bush were mostly fantastic exaggerations, into all to present realities.
If Bush had attempted even a minuscule fraction of the actions taken by our Constitutional scholar President to destroy our protected liberties, you would have had a hard time booking a hotel room in the Capitol for the duration because they would have all been occupied by ACLU lawyers filing lawsuits to block them. Meanwhile we’ve had almost three years of almost daily assaults on the checks and balances limits on federal authority without even a whimper of dissent from the usual suspects on the left or in the MSM.
If the upcoming election should succeed in limiting Obama to a one term presidency, there is still a possibility that some of this can be reversed. But, if he gains another four years, he will certainly be the most “transformational” President in the history of the country. Unfortunately the only ones hailing that transformation will be he and his Socialist cadre. Those of us who value the great opportunity offered by our Founders, to live in a nation where the government serves at the will of the people, will be left to dwell in everlasting shame that we failed to exercise the “eternal vigilance” required to preserve that gift.
AT 6:24 PM on 15 December (Happy Bill of Rights Day; what is it we’re supposed to be celebrating?) Dave Wendt addresses the comment of Smokey at 5:09 PM
…to observe that
I don’t see why we should settle for “limiting [Barry Soebarkah or “Harrison J. Bounel” or whatever in hell alias he’s using at the moment] to a one-term presidency” when we have the opportunity to make this POTUS-With-an-Asterisk go away altogether, possibly to take up work as a prison librarian in the Leavenworth federal penitentiary.
Just the right place for the Obama Presidential Library, don’tcha think?
We definitely need to get ourselves “the most ‘transformational’ President in the history of the country,” and fortunately we’ve got just such a candidate rising in the competition among the Red Faction contestants for a change.
And, yes, I’m speaking about Ron Paul, who will roll over our Mombasa Messiah like an avalanche, who regards individual human rights as the standard by which civil government must be judged, whose foreign policy positions have made him the overwhelming favorite among serving U.S. military personnel (the guys who’ve been at the sharp end of U.S. foreign policy for the past decade and more), and whose hard-core “lawful money” position on the endless inflationary monetization of “sovereign debt” is really the only solution to the Eurozone debacle and our bankster-raddled “MF Global” domestic financial sector’s continuing subsidence into slag.
“Neoconservative” imperialists hate his guts, corporate welfare clients would like to have him assassinated, federal and state bureaucrats quiver in terror of his ascent to the White House, and the old, legacy, dying “mainstream” media have agreed that if Dr. Paul wins in the Iowa caucuses or the early primary elections, they’ll simply declare those contests irrelevant and impose a “do-over” until their beloved Mitt “the Massachusetts Medical Marxist” Romney is declared the top-of-the-ticket name for the Republicans’ worthless campaign against their beloved Kenyan Keynesian.
So what’s not to like about Ron Paul? That he’s an obstetrician? Hell, if I can put up with that after more than thirty years of dealing with the Department of Surgery in hospital medical staff meetings, what the hell has anybody else got to object about?
Besides, I’ve met the guy. At a medical convention, where we talked HCFA (now CMS) and economics and prenatal care.
He really is the smartest guy in the room, no damned doubt about it.
Phil. says:
December 15, 2011 at 5:55 pm
Obeying a non-constitutional law in a police state (I wasn’t aware we are currently in a declared state of war like Lincoln was) eventually leads to promulgation of one non-constitutional law after non-constitutional law. These deviations are eventually recognized the electorate that something is horribly amiss and once a sufficient number decide to unseat a government that has become so authoritarian it may only be possible by reliance on firearms.
Smokey says:
December 15, 2011 at 5:09 pm
….Americans have become complacent after two centuries of fighting only external enemies. Most of us don’t believe that people in power here could possibly be like the Nazis. They are very mistaken.
_____________________________________
Very true.
People do not realize the “police state” in the USA is escalating because our tame media make sure we never see the rot below the service. It used to be thieves and murders were the targets of multiple police/swat team raids in the middle of the night, now it is ordinary citizens including kids selling lemonade! Just do a search for [Cops lemonade stands]
There is something really wrong in a society where kids selling lemonade and 88 year old grannies selling pies are treated like thieves and murderers…. Bye, Bye Miss America Pie…
Also see my comment here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/14/uk-police-seize-computers-of-skeptic-in-england/#comment-831854
[ http://jmyarlott.com/Articles/Mad%20Sheep/Default.asp seems to be http://jmyarlott.com/Articles/Mad Sheep/Default.asp There may or may not be a space between Mad and Sheep. The article is a very good illustration of the bureaucratic criminality]
Smokey, my Hubby just came up with this and I thought you might find it interesting.
Ain’t the history of ideas interesting.
At 7:54 PM on 15 December (Bill of Rights Day, let’s remember), Gail Combs had discussed Meir Ben Baruch of Rothenberg</a. (ca. 1215-93).
I have never wondered why so many Jews – Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, Walter Block, et-interminable-cetera – have been libertarians, the "classic liberals" of whom Friedrich von Hayek spoke in the closing essay of his Constitution of Liberty (1960), titled “Why I am Not a Conservative.”
Their intellectual heritage – as the citation of Meir ben Baruch demonstrates – is very much a matter of “No Truce With Kings.”
Gail Combs says:
December 15, 2011 at 7:54 pm
That might provide some explanation of why, despite receiving almost universal support in the Jewish community, leftists have been so resolutely anti-semitic over the years. Our Founders arrived at the necessity of individual liberty as a bedrock principle of their plan for a constitutional republic in large part from their shared Judeo-Christian ethos. The statists on the left have borne obsessive enmity to both notions from nearly the beginning. With Obama in the White House they are dangerously close to achieving their long sought annihilation of these ideas.
Tucci78: “He really is the smartest guy in the room, no damned doubt about it.”
Got to agree.
Gail Combs says:
December 15, 2011 at 7:54 pm
… Ain’t the history of ideas interesting.
“ I was unable to devote myself to the learning of this algebra and the continued concentration upon it, because of obstacles in the vagaries of time which hindered me; for we have been deprived of all the people of knowledge save for a group, small in number, with many troubles, whose concern in life is to snatch the opportunity, when time is asleep, to devote themselves meanwhile to the investigation and perfection of a science; for the majority of people who imitate philosophers confuse the true with the false, and they do nothing but deceive and pretend knowledge, and they do not use what they know of the sciences except for base and material purposes; and if they see a certain person seeking for the right and preferring the truth, doing his best to refute the false and untrue and leaving aside hypocrisy and deceit, they make a fool of him and mock him. “
Omar Khayyám (1048-1131)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Khayy%C3%A1m
V.
Tucci78 says:
December 15, 2011 at 11:01 pm
AT 6:24 PM on 15 December (Happy Bill of Rights Day; what is it we’re supposed to be celebrating?) Dave Wendt addresses the comment of Smokey at 5:09 PM…
__________________
Agreed.
The smear campaign against Herman Cain (BS in math & MS in Computer science Purdue) makes me think Cain might be a good choice for the V.P. slot. He has hands on business experience, knows the FED is pro-small business and is very smart too.