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Via Campaign for Liberty

Via Campaign for Liberty

Please tell Congress to repeal REAL ID and reject the PASS ID.

This is what I wrote in my letter…

REAL ID has proved to be unworkable and unwanted.

* 36 states will not be in compliance with REAL ID by the January 1 deadline
* Fifteen states have passed statutes prohibiting it, and another ten have passed resolutions denouncing it. http://realnightmare.org/news/105/

If REAL ID is not repealed,

* Countless numbers of Americans will not be able to fly without a passport – even for domestic flights!
* Or they will be forced to go through secondary screenings http://www.allamericanpatriots.com/48756954-bingaman-udall-on-real-id-pass-id

I insist that you take immediate steps to repeal the REAL ID Act.

* Don’t rely on the Homeland Security Secretary to issue extensions or waivers for the states
* Don’t replace REAL ID with the PASS ID.

The proposed PASS ID relieves states of some costs and burdens, but in some ways it’s even worse than REAL ID. As the Electronic Privacy Information Center notes… http://epic.org/privacy/pass_id/

• The data collection requirements of PASS ID are virtually identical to those of REAL ID.
• PASS ID requires a digital facial image, which can then be used to scan individuals through close-circuit television systems to “pick a face out of a crowd.”
• PASS ID requires the retention of digital copies of personal records for indefinite periods of time – this invades the privacy of innocent Americans and increases the risk of identity theft
• PASS ID would allow the use of RFID technology in identification documents. This is even worse than REAL ID, and could lead to government tracking of our movements, bringing the supposed “land of the free and home of the brave” one step closer to a police state.

The American people do not want to be monitored and tracked by the government. We do not want a national ID card, whether it’s called REAL ID or PASS ID. A national ID card will only make us more vulnerable to terrorists and other criminals who can hack into government databases. Moreover, increased government monitoring and data-collecting will invite more errors and more abuse.

A NATIONAL ID CARD WILL MAKE US LESS SAFE.

I therefore insist that you completely repeal REAL ID immediately and reject the PASS ID Act too.

Via DownsizeDC.org

If you want the Supreme Court to hear this argument please make a tax-deductible contribution for this purpose to the Downsize DC Foundation.

Why this is important

Statism is the belief that politicians and bureaucrats should have broad powers to use force against citizens. In its most virulent forms Statism killed more people in the 20th Century alone than all of the individual non-governmental murderers in the history of the world, COMBINED!

Professor R.J. Rummel estimates the total murderous death-toll of Statism at about 170 million people!

Not even the Black Death of the Middle Ages, or the Flu epidemic of 1918, can approach these numbers, even if you combine the totals from those two epidemics and reduce the estimate for the total number of murders committed by governments.

But the terrible statistics for Statist murder still only tell part of the story. We must add to them the statistics for the mass theft, imprisonment, and torture committed by governments against innocent people. These measurements of State criminality are even more vast, so much so that they are literally incalculable.

The State, and the belief-system that fosters its criminality — Statism — are the great scourges of human existence, against which no other source of death and destruction can remotely compare.

Of course, in reaction to all of these blood-curdling facts the fool argues that such things could never happen in this country. The same foolish belief was held by people in Russia, Germany, China, Cambodia, and a hundred other places, before such things DID happen in those countries. But such naivety is also exposed by one other crucial fact…

Murderous and violent crimes by the State have already been committed by our government, on a massive scale. A partial list would include…

• Our government’s eviction of the law-abiding Cherokees from the South Eastern U.S., the confiscation of their property, and the “Trail of Tears” Death March to Oklahoma that followed
• Repeated massacres of Indian women and children by U.S. Army death squads throughout the 19th Century
• Two hundred years of State-enforced, multi-generational captivity for Africans, and the continual rape and torture that accompanied this enslavement
• One hundred years of State-enforced segregation of Africans over broad stretches of the United States, including the unofficial collaboration by police in lynchings and beatings against unarmed African-Americans
• The mass murder of Filipinos in a campaign of colonial subjugation following the Spanish-American war (which was supposedly fought against colonialism!)
• The internment of innocent Japanese-Americans in concentration camps during World War II

The United States is indeed special, but not as special as blind, adolescent patriotism wants to believe. And what remains of our specialness is under relentless and increasing pressure. We have argued elsewhere that…

• President George W. Bush laid the basic infrastructure for a future police state, and that .
• President Obama has retained, and in some cases expanded, all the Bush-era policies — the PATRIOT Act, warrantless spying, REAL ID, imprisonment without due process, extraordinary rendition, etc.
• Some future crisis, or series of calamities, could deploy this infrastructure in a freedom-crushing, and perhaps even murderous way

What has made America special are the controls that our Founders erected against the kind of Statist thuggery so-loved by President Bush, President Obama, and nearly all politicians. It is true that these controls have always been incomplete, and have failed repeatedly, as in the examples cited above. But it is also true that…

They have worked better than any other system yet devised by mortal man.

To remain special, and to become more special, we must preserve and even enhance every protection we have against State criminality. Some of these protections could be thought of as a series of boxes…

• The ballot box
• The jury box
• The mail box (which DownsizeDC.org is using in its modern electronic forms because the ballot and jury boxes have become so corrupted)
• And finally, as a last resort, the cartridge (ammo) box

Cartridge boxes are what…

• Jews, Gypsies, Poles and Russians needed against the Nazi Statists
• Russians, Chinese, Cambodians, and countless others needed against the Communist Statists
• Filipinos and many other peoples needed against American and other colonial Statists

Cartridge boxes may also be what Americans need someday, against their own government, if current trends explode into the kind of mass Statist gangsterism that so many other societies have suffered.

Our Founders gave us the Second Amendment for exactly this purpose. They were not thinking of self-defense against individual criminals when they wrote the Second Amendment the way they wrote it, though they did not exclude that purpose. Instead, they were thinking about Statist thugs…

The American people were to be armed as a final defense against Statist aggression, both foreign AND DOMESTIC. There is a mountain of evidence to support this view, and we want to see the Supreme Court exposed to this evidence. Do you?

The Downsize DC Foundation is joining with Gun Owners of America and several other organizations in the MacDonald case, which challenges the handgun ban in Chicago — also being called by some, “Heller II.” With your help we will be the ONLY GROUP submitting an amicus curiae brief making the argument that the Second Amendment is much more than permission to have a handgun in your home.

Via DownsizeDC.org

Just 45 days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, with virtually no debate, Congress passed the Patriot Act. Many sections of this sweeping law need proper checks and balances to protect our constitutional freedoms. With three sections of that law expiring on December 31, 2009, now is the time for Congress to conduct a comprehensive review of all our surveillance laws and put them in line with the constitution and our values.

Under this sweeping legislation, the government can…

1. SEARCH YOUR HOME AND NOT EVEN TELL YOU. The USA PATRIOT Act allows the law enforcement to conduct secret “sneak and peek” searches of your home. Investigators can enter your home or office, take pictures and seize items without informing you that a warrant was issued for a very long time – if ever.  (SECTION 213)
2. COLLECT INFORMATION ABOUT WHAT BOOKS YOU READ, WHAT YOU STUDY, YOUR PURCHASES, YOUR MEDICAL HISTORY AND YOUR PERSONAL FINANCES. The USA PATRIOT Act gives law enforcement broad access to any types of records – educational, medical, financial, sales, library, etc. – without probable cause of a crime. It also prohibits the holders of this information, like librarians, from disclosing that they have produced such records, under the threat of jail time. While a court order is required to obtain the information, the Act requires that a judge rubber stamp such orders.  (SECTION 215)
3. LABEL YOU A “TERRORIST” IF YOU BELONG TO AN ACTIVIST GROUP. The USA PATRIOT Act broadly expands the official definition of terrorism, so many domestic groups that engage in certain types of civil disobedience could very well find themselves labeled as terrorists.  (SECTIONS 411, 802)
4. MONITOR YOUR E-MAILS AND WATCH WHAT INTERNET SITES YOU VISIT. The USA PATRIOT Act permits the government to monitor Internet traffic and e-mail communications on any Internet service provider without probable cause by obtaining detailed “routing” information like a web address. While this provision is supposedly aimed at lawbreakers, it sweeps broadly because e-mails and Internet traffic information of innocent individuals cannot be separated from the activity of targeted individuals.  (SECTION 216)
5. TAKE AWAY YOUR PROPERTY WITHOUT A HEARING. The USA PATRIOT Act allows the government to seize the assets of an individual or organization without prior notice or hearing if the government says that they have engaged in or are planning an act of “domestic terrorism.” Under this law, the government could effectively bankrupt an organization with which it disagrees.  (SECTION 806)
6. SPY ON INNOCENT AMERICANS. The USA PATRIOT Act permits a vast array of information gathering on U.S. citizens to be collected and shared with the CIA (and other non-law enforcement officials) without proper judicial oversight or other safeguards. This law effectively puts the CIA back in the business of spying on Americans.  (SECTIONS 203 AND 901)
7. PUT IMMIGRANTS IN JAIL INDEFINITELY. The USA PATRIOT Act permits indefinite incarceration of immigrants and other non-citizens without the government having to show that they are, in fact, terrorists.  (SECTION 412)
8. WIRETAP YOU UNDER A WARRANT THAT DOESN’T EVEN HAVE YOUR NAME ON IT. The USA PATRIOT Act changes the nature of warrants for wiretaps by requiring judges to approve a wiretap without knowing who is to be tapped nor where it is to be placed.  (SECTION 216)

A special thanks to ReformThePatriotAct.org & LibertyMaven.com for sharing these 8 excellent reasons why the Patriot Act needs to be abolished rather than expanded upon!

• Retained, and in some cases expanded, all the Bush-era policies — the wars, the PATRIOT Act, warrantless spying, REAL ID, imprisonment without due process, extraordinary rendition, etc.
• Begun to extend the already existing foundations for a future socialist state with things like direct government ownership of businesses, the health care bill, cap and trade, and a host of other measures big and small

Put the Bush and Obama policies together, sprinkle in a couple more terrorist attacks, and one or two more state-caused financial calamities, and you have a recipe for…

• The destruction of American liberty
• The blossoming of a Leviathan State

Read the signs…

We are living through a Statist revolution.

Statism is a mindset that prefers coercion to cooperation. Statists love the State because they are blind to its fundamental nature…

• The State is a monopoly that you cannot easily fire, replace, or even control
  Everything the State does relies on coercion

If you decide that…

• You don’t want to pay for, or be subject to, the new health care plan, or that…
• You prefer to buy and sell using gold and silver instead of Federal Reserve Notes, or that…
• You want to do, or not do, a host of other things that the politicians either require or prohibit,
• Then eventually a policeman will come to your door and threaten you with a gun, to make you submit

People who advocate expansive State action are really saying, “I think you should be threatened with, or actually suffer violence, if you don’t fund my pet schemes, or live the way I think you should.”

Such people would never go door to door pointing a gun at their neighbors, but the second-hand mechanism of the State allows them to hide their eyes from the violence implicit in what they profess.

Our government was founded to limit this kind of coercion. The American State was given two main functions…

• To punish coercion committed by one citizen against another
• To deter coercion by foreign States

Beyond that, nearly the entire Constitution is devoted to prohibiting State violence. This was the purpose of the divisions of power, the checks and balances, and the Bill of Rights. But now those protections lie in tatters.

Everyone is trying to use the State to live at the expense of everyone else, or to micro-manage their neighbors. Our traditional culture of individual liberty, personal responsibility, and peaceful, non-violent cooperation, is slowly dying. We are nearing a point where it may even die completely, suddenly, when we least expect it. As a result…

We live under the Chinese curse of interesting times. But we urge you to resist despair. We are even prepared to predict…

The End of Statism

Our reason is simple. Statism doesn’t work. The violence at its heart always…

• Destroys more than it creates
• Multiplies its victims, who become increasingly deperate enough to resist

Our purpose is to recruit and organize that resistance into an army. It’s…

• Why we do
• What we do
• The way we do it

We know that successful resistance will come slowly, before it comes suddenly. Victory will take time, but the time’s going to pass anyway, so why not use it wisely? This is why…

We reject all “get powerful quick” schemes as inherently unworkable. We know that societies and movements evolve slowly more often than they leap. History is littered with causes that failed because they couldn’t wait to succeed.

We neither need, nor expect, overnight success. Do you?

What we need instead is constant and consistent progress. And for that we need you, and for you to need us.

Remember where we’re going. We’re building toward the day when we can…

• Reach everyone, everywhere, every day, with the case for freedom and against Statism
• Build a big parade — a movement — in front of which opportunistic politicians will want to march. They’ll claim we’re following them, and we’ll let them think that!
• Deploy a huge army to exert relentless, resistance-numbing pressure on Congress, to make them submit

And remember how we’re going to get there…

• Slowly and steadily, but also surely
• One person at a time
• One dollar at a time
• One simple action at a time
• With each small step building toward the next larger step

The end of the month is here. We did more this month than we did last month. Now we need your financial support to do even more in November. Please…

• Start a monthly credit card pledge
• Or make a one-time donation
• You can do so here

Your support is our progress.
Via DownsizeDC.org

• Several safeguards found in the JUSTICE Act are not in the new bill
• The Committee defeated amendments requiring evidence that targets of business records requests and National Security Letters must have some connection to terrorism or espionage.

But hope is not lost…

• The Senate Judiciary’s bill (S. 1692) hasn’t yet passed the full Senate
• In 2006, almost two-thirds of House Democrats, including now-Speaker Pelosi, voted AGAINST the PATRIOT renewal
• The voters did not punish these Democrats for their votes; in fact, later that year Democrats won control of Congress

The Obama Administration generally wants the continuation of the Bush status quo on civil liberties. We must encourage Congress to listen to the people instead of the President. If House Democrats show some backbone, they could exercise leverage by…

• Introducing and passing the JUSTICE Act,
• Adding greater civil liberties protections to any PATRIOT renewal bill, or…
• Threatening to do NOTHING and allow three provisions of the PATRIOT Act to expire on December 31

Send your elected representatives a letter demanding that they roll back the Patriot Act.

This is what I said in my personal comments:

I was disappointed with the results of the Senate Judiciary hearings last week. We must have strong civil liberties protections in any PATRIOT Act renewal bill. I hope a better bill is produced on the Senate floor, and encourage the House to pass the JUSTICE Act. If Congress can’t provide better safeguards for my civil liberties, please oppose any PATRIOT Act renewal bill and work to repeal the PATRIOT Act outright.

You can send your letter here.

Via DownsizeDC.org

The Obama administration will largely preserve Bush-era procedures allowing the government to search — without suspicion of wrongdoing — the contents of a traveler’s laptop computer, cellphone or other electronic device, although officials said new policies would expand oversight of such inspections.

The policy, disclosed Thursday in a pair of Department of Homeland Security directives, describes more fully than did the Bush administration the procedures by which travelers’ laptops, iPods, cameras and other digital devices can be searched and seized when they cross a U.S. border. And it sets time limits for completing searches.

But representatives of civil liberties and travelers groups say they see little substantive difference between the Bush-era policy, which prompted controversy, and this one.

“It’s a disappointing ratification of the suspicionless search policy put in place by the Bush administration,” said Catherine Crump, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. “It provides a lot of procedural safeguards, but it doesn’t deal with the fundamental problem, which is that under the policy, government officials are free to search people’s laptops and cellphones for any reason whatsoever.”

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