It’s a sad day for liberty and freedom. The House voted last night to extend or make permanent the most controversial provisions of the Patriot Act. House Republicans mentioned the recent London attacks as evidence that the act is necessary.

In a classic case of doublespeak, Representative Sensenbrenner (R-Wis) said:

“The Patriot Act has proven itself over the past three and a half years as an invaluable tool against terrorists while remaining true to our strong civil liberty protections.”

Funny. Has the Patriot Act helped at all in capturing terrorists? From what I can find, there have only been 39 terrorism related arrests due to the Patriot Act, and most of those were for crimes such as passport violations, fraud, false statements, and conspiracy.

Can you believe the nerve of this guy to actually imply that this legislation offers civil liberty protections?? Maybe someone should tell him that the Patriot Act actually allows law enforcement to demand the production of financial records, credit reports, telephone, internet, and other communications or transactional records — all without a true warrant.

The good news is that, so far, it looks like the Senate is headed towards a much better version of the bill. This version actually requires that you be notified within 7 days if you were subject to a secret search, and tightens some other requirements. Let’s hope the final bill is closer to the Senate version.

Michael Badnarik, 2004 Libertarian presidential candiate, has posted a re-print of a great article by Thomas M. Sipos on his blog. Mr. Sipos provides an interesting perspective on the recent Supreme Court decision regarding eminent domain. I recommend you check it out.

In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court decided that local governments can seize people’s homes or businesses, against their will, for private development. This means that if city officials prefer to see, for example, an office building where your home is located, they can force you to sell your property to a developer at what they determine to be a fair market price.

This officially drives the stake through the heart of any remaining property rights that we may have thought we had. The government now has full consent to take anyone’s property, as long as they determine it will be ‘upgraded’.

Read the rest of this entry…

The House passed a resolution today proposing an amendment that would exclude flag burning from our first amendment rights. If passed, Congress would be permitted to make laws punishing anyone caught burning a flag in protest.

If this weren’t so sad, it would be funny. Our politicians have had our Constitution up in flames for years now, what’s wrong with me burning a flag? This is supposed to be America!! Freedom of speech capital of the world! Geesh, what has happened to this country?

What I don’t understand is, it seems that most people actually support this. Sure, the flag is a symbol of our country’s government, and I guess that most folks have a warm spot in their hearts for the country and the flag. But do we really want to head down the path of making speech against government symbols a crime? I certainly don’t.

Like most things in goverment, if this ever passed it would have the opposite of the intended effect. More flags would be burned in protest of this amendment than have been burned in the last 20 years on US soil.

The reality is, symbol or not, a flag is the property of its owner. If a property owner chooses to destroy his property, that is his choice and his right. Let’s hope it remains his right.