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David Blunkett may be blind, but even he can see that Jacqui Smith’s national ID card scheme for the UK is a bad idea. But still, the brave Home Secretary — a woman who wants to replace Margaret Thatcher as the most hated women in the UK and who was once called “pocket dictator”_[1]– presses on, rolling out the much hated National ID cards in Manchester.

Why is Ms. Smith in favor of bringing about an authoritarian Creeping Socialist Nighmare Regime of Orwellian proportions? Normally, I’d tie this to Ms. Smith’s membership in Labour before it was “New Labour, when it was still apart of the Socialist Labor party — except the socialists and Marxists want nothing to do with a woman who is being investigated for alleged fraud. So no, it can’t be about fulfilling Marx’s manifesto. In fact, if you look at civil libertarians and socialist complaints, these two polar political opposites seem to believe this is a power grab, a totalitarian, a little Napolian in heels if you wish.

But that’s not what it’s all about, Ms. Smith insists. It’s all about YOU! It’s for your own good, for the good of the country! It will have real benefits, in real terms, for every man, woman, and child in Britain. Just look at how this benefits you:

ID cards will deliver real benefits to everyone, including increased protection against criminals, illegal immigrants and terrorists.

Because when terrorists hijack a plane, a chipped piece of plastic with your demographic details will keep you safe — or at least help identify your corpse later.

This is not the first of Ms. Smith’s creepy, Big Brotherish moves. Earlier last week, Ms. Smith’s proposed plan to create a national database of every phone call, text message, and email sent by every person in Britain — to fight the terrorists, you see — was rejected. Instead, telcoms will be asked to keep that information themselves — so every call you make, every letter you text, every breath you take … the telcoms will be watching you.

Kinda makes me want to go and hug Maggie Thatcher. Kinda, but not really. But almost.

Cites:

• My farewell plea to MPs: defend liberty
• Jacqui Smith to announce email and internet tracking plans
• 
  Jacqui Smith says DNA database profiles of 800,000 innocent people will be axed
• Manchester will be the first city where people can voluntarily sign up for an ID card, ministers are set to confirm.

Oh, fuck you, you Socialist prick.

From the New York Times:

A federal judge in Scranton issued a temporary order preventing the Wyoming County district attorney
from filing criminal charges against three teenage girls accused of sending nude or semi-nude photos on a
cellphone, or “sexting.” Last week the girls and their mothers, represented by the American Civil
Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, sued the district attorney, George P. Skumanick, arguing that by
threatening to prosecute the girls for being in photos he considered “provocative” he was violating their
constitutional rights. The judge, James M. Munley of Federal District Court, found that the girls and their
mothers “are reasonably likely to succeed on the merits” in their lawsuit. He ruled that his order would
be in effect at least until a June 2 hearing that could make the order permanent until the girls’ federal
civil lawsuit is resolved.

Thank God I’m not a teenager today. I’d have a criminal record and be a registered sex offender, as I don’t think there’s a guy I dated out there who doesn’t have nude photos of me.

Creeping Socialist Nightmare UK continues: the Ministry of Justice plan to set up new laws governing acceptability of depiction of children in cartoons.
The law is intended to make it a criminal offence to possess cartoons depicting child abuse, which is well-intentioned but ultimately wrongheaded. This largely because the definition is being left so open that it lets legitimate art fall under its umbrella. The Independent elaborates:

If the Coroners and Justice Bill remains unaltered it will make it illegal to own any picture of children participating in sexual activities, or present whilst sexual activity took place.

The Ministry of Justice is here defining ‘picture’ as broadly as possible to include paintings, graphic art and cartoons — down to something as insignificant as doodles on a scrap of paper, if they really feel like it. They are also defining ‘children’ as broadly as possible, to include anything that might be perceived as a child.
The problem of this is that it makes no distinction between The Erotic Adventures of Captain NAMBLA and serious art. Intent doesn’t matter: whether it’s a collection of drawings of child rape designed for pederasts to whack off over or an in-context depiction of child abuse in a comic book about someone who endures child abuse and goes on to cope with the aftermath of the same (for example, The Tale of One Bad Rat). Part of this problem is that maybe we have to argue that as reprehensible as we might find it, and unpopular as the choice might be, then so long as no-one is actually being directly affected by these images the possession of them shouldn’t be criminalised. It’s a ridiculous argument to say that child abuse is being committed by the people making the images in the first place: I can’t remember the last time I read about a comic book creator dressing as a rodent and fighting crime to get into the mindset of making a Batman comic. Clearly, if anyone is fucking kids in order to draw comics about it afterwards, the fault lies with the individual and not with the act of making the comic. If you choose to argue that possessing cartoons of children engaged in sexual acts makes one more likely to commit child abuse or more likely to seek out actual child porn, then you’re stupid and wrong for four reasons: Saw, Saw II, Saw III, and Saw IV. The Saw movies are about people being tortured and killed in a host of different gruesome ways. Possession of the Saw movies does not make a person more likely to torture and kill someone, and if somebody that tortured and killed a person was found to own the Saw movies, any reasonable person would place the blame on the individual’s disposition rather than on the influence of the movies. As Neil Gaiman points out, freedom of speech is sometimes about defending the indefensible. If no other crimes are being committed then it seems incredibly foolish to criminalise something based on the bad feeling it gives us when we think about it. Freedom of speech says we can make movies about accidentally killing someone and being haunted by it or we can make movies about serial killers with no redeeming characteristics who are still the hero of the piece. You just can’t kill someone to make that movie, because that’s the point when speech becomes action, and actions can be criminalised.

The worst part of this whole proposed bill for me is the statement the Ministry of Justice put out to combat criticisms that the bill might be misapplied to target legitimate art:

The clauses in the Bill are to tackle pornographic and obscene images of child sexual abuse which have no place in our society. It is not our intention to criminalise the possession of material that does not fall foul of the Obscene Publications Act or to criminalise the legal entertainment industry, the art industry or pornographic cartoons.

This is a very carefully worded statement that addresses the concerns without ever really taking action on them. It says ‘don’t worry, we promise we won’t misuse the wide definitions we set as our parameters’ without even addressing the idea of making the parameters more specific or setting in place exemptions from the bill. It says ‘it’s not our intention to criminalise other areas, but we’re keeping our options open’.

If you’re still not convinced, here’s the final word:

The Bill currently going through Parliament is closely modelled on a similar piece of Australian legislation which has caused numerous controversies since it became law. Earlier this month an Australian man was convicted of possessing child pornography because he downloaded six images of characters from The Simpsons performing sex acts on each other.

In order to give valid support to this bill, you must describe how anyone in this case beside the convicted man (as wrongful victim) and Fox (as copyright holders) were directly affected. Please show all work and cite sources where applicable.

Yet again, the British government shows that they regard 1984 as an instruction manual.

See, in the name of stopping terrorism, it’s very important that the government require social networking sites to retain all information created by British users so they can monitor it. For, I don’t know, potentially deadly image macros, or something.
This is on top of something that’s already in the works that says the government gets to store all e-mails sent in the UK as well as monitor all phone calls from landlines and mobiles. This database is planned to monitor for chatter that could give advance warning about terrorist attacks, like that day the trains got bombed in London four years ago, or… um… well, that’s pretty much the only major non-IRA attack in recent memory. Appending on this new idea about social networking sites is because the increasing popularity of these sites over the past few years has “left a loophole for terrorists and criminal gangs to exploit.”
Which just goes to prove, really, the government just aren’t taking this threat seriously. Sure, it’s all well and good to monitor social networking sites, blogs, phone calls, e-mails, your financial transactions and your vehicle’s movements, but doesn’t that leave the alarming loophole of everyday conversation? We need above all else to implant some kind of chip in people, something that will track their movements, monitor their body chemistry for poor diet and drug use, and crucially, record every word they say. Doesn’t it terrify you that right now, outside your window, two people are having a conversation and the government have no way of knowing what they’re saying? What if they’re plotting a terrorist attack? What if they plan to abduct a photogenic child? What if they plan to give cancers to our most beloved reality TV stars?
It could be happening right now and we’d have no way to stop them. That’s why we need to protest this ridiculous, short-sighted proposal that doesn’t begin to consider the real criminals getting away with speaking freely right now.

Lifted from The Wall Street Journal Online

The government lost its final attempt to revive a federal law intended to protect children from sexual material and other objectionable content on the Internet.

The court, in an order Wednesday, said it won’t consider reviving the Child Online Protection Act, which lower federal courts struck down as unconstitutional. The law has been embroiled in court challenges since it passed in 1998 and never took effect.

The law would have barred Web sites from making harmful content available to minors over the Internet.

A federal appeals court in Philadelphia ruled that would violate the First Amendment, because filtering technologies and other parental control tools are a less restrictive way to protect children from inappropriate content online.

Today I witnessed something strange; for the first time in more than a year, those who opposed Obama shuddered, moving in the darkness of their lairs. Some stirred enough to speak, to voice a quiet, timid dissent before returning to the safety of silence.

I will not be one of those people. I will speak in the light.

You know, I never disliked Barack Obama. Really. Even as a libertarian, even though I basically feel that he’s a socialist in progressive clothing, I never had a negative word about him as a person. Hell, I was crossing my fingers for the man to win against Hillary Clinton, after Mike Gravel dropped out of course, because he seems like more of a uniter, where as Ms. Clinton seems much more divisive, even among her party members, let alone among others. Mr. Obama never gave me hope — the soon-to-be President, in fact, has always made me uneasy with the easy in which he can ensnare a crowd with a turn of phrase. People have used the term “drunk from the Obama Kool Ade” to describe some of his strongest advocates, and you know, I can see those similarities, I can even find both humor and discomfort in them, but I still liked him as a person. He seemed like a nice guy, a good human being, someone who wasn’t going to be a dick. Sure, nice guys who are just doing what they think is right will cause unjust wars and some of the worst fiscal damage to a nation in a century, but this nice guy also seemed to be intelligent, and nice and intelligent were a consolation for me, after the last eight years.

But these stunts — these constant reminders that he is from Illinois and is progressive and, for lack of a better word, Lincolnish — are really driving me toward disdain for our now and future President.

On the eve of his inauguration, he hosts a party at the Lincoln memorial. Before that, he took a short train ride to Washington, traveling the paty that Lincoln did. He’s a young senator from Illinois, like Lincoln. He is intelligent, as I’ve already mentioned, and rose from humble beginnings, like Lincoln.

And you know, I’m sick of the way he’s pointing to these similarities, as though he does not feel he is a strong enough personality to carve his own path through history, so he must ride the coat tails and follow the well-marked journey of one who’s successfully come before.

Well, not the exact same path, hopefully.

But, while this can be interpreted as an awkward, wavering faith in his own ability to lead, I see this as potentially something much more serious: hubris. Bravado. Showboating. It’s the kind of boastful displays that are called “excessive celebration” in football. Dallas Cowboys wide receiver T.O. is often penalized for bragging about his touchdowns in the endzone — this year, after a particularly spectacular touchdown, my favorite player in the league crouched down in a runner’s stance before taking off, ostensibly in honor of the Olympic victory of Usain Bolt. “Look at me, I’m as fast as the fastest man on earth,” he seemed to say. “Unsportsmanlike,” the refs called it and penalized the Cowboys by 15 yards.

Same situation applies.

You cannot compare yourself to someone of such stature yourself — to draw such comparisons on your own makes you look like a braggart. Let others do so — and many have called the comparison between the two junior senators from Illinois — and your detractors may come around to see the similarities and transpose one’s success to the other. Do it yourself, and it is excessive celebration, it is bragging, it is a disgusting display and makes me wonder exactly how badly I’ve misjudged this “nice” guy who seemed relatively harmless until his socialist-leaning liberal friends became a major power in congress and until he let his ego show.

Which, I add without hesitation, is something very un-Lincolnish indeed.

There’s a new disease sweeping this country, and I have given it a name: anti-private-sector-itis. What is this horrible affliction affecting 60% of Americans? It is this strange, wrong-headed belief that everything should be publically funded, that all private industry is intrinsically bad, and that if you give the government control, things will get better.

Of course, after 8 years of failing grades in a public school that failed me, I became an A student in the challenging world of private school, where the government didn’t dictate what I learned. After years as a diligent worker in the private industry, I’m frustrated by the “slack off or be the office work horse while the rest of us slack off” public sector job that I have. I hate watching my tax dollars go to people who don’t deserve them, which decreases my ability to make charitable contributions to organizations who help the truly needy!

I’m tired of congress being in debt and solving the debt problem by creating more debt.

Yes, the private sector — by which most people mean Wall Street and the housing market — crapped out on us. But it was overinflated. We should not have been getting 15 and 20% returns annually, but that’s what many people in the market were getting because it was all artificial. It was inflated because the government gave mortgage securities incentives to inflate the numbers by giving ridiculous mortgages to those who couldn’t afford them and by constantly drilling home the message that Everyone Deserves a House. If you ever subscribed to the David Bach podcast, you’d have heard the sponsor, Wells Fargo, talk about The Great American Homeowner Challenge — the goal to put all Americans in a house of their own.

But guess what — land ownership is not a right, it’s a privilege. Yes, I have the right to own the property I buy with the money I earn, which I have the right to keep and spend as I so see fit. No, I am not entitled, by virtue of being born in the United States, to a house. No, I’m not even entitled to a home. I’m entitled to work my ass off to get to where I need to in this lifetime.

Of course, that’s not a warm and fuzzy thing to say. It’s much easier — and allows most to sleep better at night — to say that it was private industry who failed the people. It wasn’t. It was your government and the people who thought “This bank is going to give me $300,000 when I only make 30,000 a year and give me thirty years to pay it off? How can I go wrong?” The government pushed, coerced, and outright bribed banks to make loans available to the lowest, most impoverished and undereducated people imaginable. People who couldn’t just leave public school for the greener pastures of private school, as I did, so that their lack of understanding about interest and how someone on $30k can’t buy $300K of house is a direct result of shitty government-funded, government-sanctioned education.

This crashed stock market has the government’s fingerprints all over it, and they’re using your hard-earned money to cover it up. And you’re letting them, people!

The private sector corrupted and failed not because the government is intrinsically good or that private industry is intrinsically bad. It wasn’t a lack of government oversight that caused us to implode but a lack of individual oversight and personal responsibility, because we expect the government to do all of our thinking for us. And yet, when the government does just that — as with the recent lead testing laws for toys — people balk and bitch that it’s not fair, that it’s poorly thought through.

Newsflash: EVERYTHING THE GOVERNMENT DOES IS POORLY THOUGHT THROUGH.

Americans have become lazy. They expect the government to run their affairs and police their lives in ways that make it easier to enroll Jr. in five different after school activities because now you have time. Why pay attention to your investments: the government has the SEC for that. Why stop shopping at Walmart due to unfair labor practices and defective merchandise: the government has the FTC for that. Read about the medicine you’re taking or get a second opinion? Why bother when the FDA will tell you what to put in your body? Ditto for paying attention to dieticians and personal trainers when there’s a US government approved food pyramid that tells you what is (ketchup) or isn’t a vegetable! And rather than explain to Jr. what a breast or nipple is (a food delivery system for newborns), just bitch to the FCC if one shows up for three seconds during the Super Bowl. After all, it’s the job of Hollywood and The Government to raise your kid, not yours.

In a the New York Times article:

In what industry analysts said was an example of the excessively cozy relations between high-flying subprime lenders and federal bank regulators, the Office of Thrift Supervision’s West Coast director allowed IndyMac’s parent company to backdate an $18 million contribution to preserve its status as a “well-capitalized” institution.

Yes, that’s right, the regulators were in bed with the people they were supposed to be regulating, figuratively speaking. But clearly, this is the work of rogue agents, right?

But, oh shit, SEC regulators are now being investigated for the way they failed to regulate Bernie Madoff.

It’s almost as if, oh I don’t know, government regulation is not the answer or something.