Shameful. Just shameful.

At a time when other states, including our neighbor South Carolina, are resisting the anti-American, anti-freedom REAL ID Act, North Carolina is actually bragging about being among the first to comply with it. Phillip Rhodes blogs about it here:

[T]here is no doubt that North Carolina and it’s people have a long history of embracing Freedom and Liberty as core values. Now however, we see that corruption and decay have reduced this once proud state to a level where state official are *bragging* about their compliance with a totalitarian National ID law passed by the Federal government in 2005.

He’s right. And to think, this is the state that was the first to stand up to the British oppression with the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence on 20 May 1775 (and even if you dispute that, there’s the Mecklenburg Resolves 11 days later), the Tryon Declaration on 14 August (I’m directly descended from one of the signers), and the Halifax Resolves on 12 April the following year. Also, our main delegate to Congress, Joseph Hewes, was one of the biggest driving forces behind the push for independence, despite his inaccurate portrayal in the otherwise excellent 1776.

We’ve been sinking into Socialism for a good number of years now. With REAL ID, we go into Communism and “papers, please.” It’s high time we woke up, remembered our legacy and heritage, and did something about it.

It looks like Congress is going to act to restore habeas corpus. The fact that I even had to write that sentence would make our founders, had they the ability, moan so loudly from beyond the grave it would shatter every window in the country. How much worse is it that some Republicans say they’ll vote against restoring it? Without habeas corpus, you have no other rights.

Here’s a very good news report explaining why:

I just had to share this entry from the Downsize DC blog:

Picture this: A Mexican migrant worker sits down to read the new 700+ page Senate immigration bill.

He doesn’t know a lick of English, but he’s giving it a go anyway. He wants to obey the law, so he has to know the difference between a Z-visa and an a, b, c, d or whatever visa.

Can’t imagine it happening? Well how about this . . .

This Mexican worker earns a whopping $15 a week working in Mexico, but he really does want to obey the law, so he spends a month’s salary for a lawyer to tell him how to work in the U.S. legally.

Still can’t picture it? Well how about this . . .

The Mexican just ignores the whole thing and walks across the border.

This last scenario makes the Mexican look pretty smart, and Congress, and huge chunks of the American public, pretty stupid.

Can we really expect a Mexican to read and understand our laws, when not even Congress does?

And see, that’s the problem: it’s easy to get here illegally, and too difficult to get here legally. They come here illegally because it’s easier to swim the Rio Grande than it is to climb the mountain of bureaucracy.

This new immigration law will expand federal control over law abiding U.S. citizens.

Businesses that comply with this law will feel the heavy hand of the state as they strive to do background checks on every person they hire. Law abiding businesses will suffer, while those that participate in the black market for cheap labor will thrive.

Law abiding workers will also suffer. You will be subject to background checks, but those working in the black market will not.

All prohibition schemes of all types share several crucial features. They all ignore the law of supply and demand. And they all succeed in punishing only a few of the guilty, while making all of the innocent suffer from the negative consequences that flow from a black market.

The truth is that this so-called immigration reform is really about the REAL ID Act. The electronic verification aspects of this bill (which is just code for the REAL ID Act), are the only parts of this bill that will have any real impact. And the impact will be on YOU, the legal worker, or you, the legal business operator.

And that’s the big problem. Government whips up all this anti-immigration fervor–by complaining about a problem it caused–and uses it to take away your rights.

It’s high time we all woke up.

New Hampshire Public Radio interviewed Ron Paul today for almost an hour. Listen to it, and I think you’ll see why I think he’s so awesome.

Ron Paul gives Rudy Giuliani a “summer reading list.” Brilliant! If Giuliani doesn’t understand “blowback,” he has no business being President.

And despite the fact that his name “barely makes a blip in the early polling,” his Alexa web rankings are higher than that of the three so-called “front-runners,” in reach, rank, and page views. Go, Ron, go!

First of all, Fox News obviously stacked the audience and had biased moderators. They should have said, “We ask you to hold your applause, unless a candidate says something we agree with.” They also talked one-on-one with Giuliani after the debates so he could take more shots at Ron Paul, without giving Paul a chance to respond.

“Fair and balanced”…yeah, right!

Folks, Ron Paul is exactly right. If you go messing with a hornet’s nest, you’re going to get stung. Press members from different sources have actually gone over there and interviewed people, asking what their beef with the US is. Not a single one of them mention our wealth and freedom, as Giuliani and the neo-cons so desperately cling to. They all talk about our foreign policy, and our troops over there in their country.

Paul was 100% correct: How would we feel if China came and did the same thing to us? Giuliani completely avoided answering that. He kept saying that he couldn’t believe another Republican was saying we “had it coming.”

Look at it this way: if there’s a criminal gang, really nasty people, ready to resort to violence, and you run over there and start poking them with a stick, and then run away, they might very well chase you down and kill you. Would it be murder for them to do so? Absolutely. Should they be tried and imprisoned for their actions? Absolutely! Were you completely and utterly stupid for poking them with a stick in the first place? Absolutely!!!

All of the rhetoric that came out of the other Republicans was straight out of the cold war propaganda I grew up with; just do a search-and-replace and change “communist” to “terrorist.” It’s the same story, the same propaganda, the same lies.

If Republicans have even an ounce of integrity left, they’ll ditch the propaganda, the pandering, the jingoism, and the lies, and support Ron Paul 100%.

And the Democrats and Libertarians would do well to do the same.

EDIT: You can watch the relevant bit of video from the debate here.

EDIT AGAIN: I see on YouTube they did talk briefly with Paul afterwards. They just didn’t put that video up on their site. You can watch it here.

They were also perplexed by Ron Paul leading and then placing second in their poll. Hannity and the others were trying to spin, spin, spin, saying that the 30% of the 40,000 people who voted were the few Paul supporters just getting the word out. Yeah, that’s right, the very few 12,000 people who voted for Paul…basic math, anyone? Hey, Hannity, you ever thought that maybe, just maybe, not very many people agree with you? Watch them try to figure out some reason other than Paul being right and his message resonating with people here.

One more bit of news: Lots of Republican Party high-fliers are circulating petitions to try and ban Ron Paul from future debates. Put it all together, and they’re not acting like people who are dealing with a nutcase who doesn’t know what he’s talking about; they’re acting like people scared to death that there’s actually someone exposing their propaganda for what it is.

RON PAUL IN 2008!

The thing is, I just don’t like the looks of any of the Libertarian candidates thus far. Fortunately, Ron Paul, who’s a libertarian but has been elected to the House over and over again as a Republican, is seeking the Republican nomination for President. Barring some dream candidate coming in and taking the Libertarian nomination, I’m 100% behind Dr. Paul. If you want to know why, here’s a short video I made with his comments from the recent debate as well as some facts from his record in Congress:

North Carolina’s an amazing place. As corrupt as our government is, as ridiculously huge as our taxes are, and as blatantly rigged as our electoral system is, even among all of this some people in government actually manage to do the right thing. From our state Attorney General Roy Cooper:

The result of our review and investigation shows clearly that there is insufficient evidence to proceed on any of the charges. Today we are filing notices of dismissal for all charges against Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and David Evans.

The result is that these cases are over, and no more criminal proceedings will occur.

We believe that these cases were the result of a tragic rush to accuse and a failure to verify serious allegations. Based on the significant inconsistencies between the evidence and the various accounts given by the accusing witness, we believe these three individuals are innocent of these charges.

We approached this case with the understanding that rape and sexual assault victims often have some inconsistencies in their accounts of a traumatic event. However, in this case, the inconsistencies were so significant and so contrary to the evidence that we have no credible evidence that an attack occurred in that house that night.

Yes! I was hoping the charges would be dropped, and why DA Nifong kept the case going for so long just boggled my mind…but now the state AG has done the right thing. Not only has he dropped the charges, he has stated quite clearly and unequivocally that the students are absolutely innocent, and that no attack occured. He goes on to say:

The eyewitness identification procedures were faulty and unreliable. No DNA confirms the accuser’s story. No other witness confirms her story. Other evidence contradicts her story. She contradicts herself. Next week, we’ll be providing a written summary of the important factual findings and some of the specific contradictions that have led us to the conclusion that no attack occurred.

One of the big problems I have with our society is that you’re basically guilty until proven innocent. No matter how lacking the evidence is, some people just have to believe that a person is guilty of at least something, otherwise there would have been no accusation. Maybe they just don’t want to admit to themselves that it can happen to them. It’s very scary to think of yourself being in court accused of a crime you didn’t commit. But it does happen. Hopefully this statement will allow these boys to go on with their lives without this hanging over their heads.

One more thing:

This case shows the enormous consequences of overreaching by a prosecutor. What has been learned here is that the internal checks on a criminal charge—sworn statements, reasonable grounds, proper suspect photo lineups, accurate and fair discovery—all are critically important.

Therefore, I propose a law that the North Carolina Supreme Court have the authority to remove a case from a prosecutor in limited circumstances. This would give the courts a new tool to deal with a prosecutor who needs to step away from a case where justice demands.

Now that’s a law I can get behind! One of the big problems with government at all levels is the lack of accountability. There need to be consequences when things like this happen. Hopefully Nifong will be disbarred as justice demands, but a law like this would help reign in at least some of the problems.

Not that I don’t expect them to botch it up, but at least they’re trying.

You can read the entire article here.

Great news for Minnesotans–their Supreme Court has just struck down the red light scameras!

The Minnesota Supreme Court today delivered the highest-level court rebuke to photo enforcement to date with a unanimous decision against the Minneapolis red light camera program. The high court upheld last September’s Court of Appeals decision that found the city’s program had violated state law.

The supreme court found that Minneapolis had disregarded a state law imposing uniformity of traffic laws across the state. The city’s photo ticket program offered the accused fewer due process protections than available to motorists prosecuted for the same offense in the conventional way after having been pulled over by a policeman. The court argued that Minneapolis had, in effect, created a new type of crime: “owner liability for red-light violations where the owner neither required nor knowingly permitted the violation.”

Gee, you mean if you want to charge someone with breaking the law, you have to charge the person who actually broke the law??? Radical!

You can read the entire article here, and the court’s opinion here.

It’s interesting the transparency you see often with these scameras. Here’s an article showing the Mayor of Albuquerque’s attitude regarding the scameras (emphasis mine):

Richardson also signed legislation yesterday, SB 861 (bill text), mandating warning signs in advance of red light camera locations along with either rumble strips in the pavement or a warning beacon that flashes a yellow light in advance of the signal light changing to red. The measure, opposed by the Albuquerque mayor, is designed to provide extra notice to motorists so that they are not trapped by short yellow times at intersections.

Oh, no! We can’t have people actually being aware that the light’s about to turn red! What would happen to our boondoggle then?

It becomes even more transparent when you look at the findings of the National Motorists Association:

The answer to the “rash” of red-light violations is relatively simple. Increase yellow light duration. Almost 80 percent of red light entries occur within the first second of the red light indication. Studies in Arizona, Georgia, Virginia, and Maryland have shown a reduction of 73 percent to nearly 100 percent in red light entries after an increase in yellow light duration. Several cities have dropped their red-light camera programs after adding only one second to yellow light durations at intersections because infractions were “virtually eliminated.”

Man, only government could scam people this outright and get away with it. Okay, well, maybe Sylvia Browne, but even then it’s a tough call…

Edit: Solitaire over on the JREF Forum posted a link to this study (PDF format):

The results do not support the conventional wisdom expressed in recent literature and popular press that red light cameras reduce accidents…there has been no demonstrable benefit from the RLC program in terms of safety. In many ways, the evidence points toward the installation of RLCs as a detriment to safety…We had expected that upon seeing the signs for red light cameras, drivers may panic and try to stop, thus increasing rear-end collisions. The failure of a reduction in severe or angle accidents comes as somewhat of a surprise.

“What? You mean they don’t?”

Nope. Sorry to break it to you, but most members of Congress do not read a bill before passing it! I recently received a response from my Congressman, Patrick McHenry, complaining about a part of a bill that he didn’t know about when he voted for it. I just read Sue Myrick in today’s Charlotte Observer complaining about the same thing. These mammoth bills are amended and then rushed to a vote, without the representatives aware of what is in them, and even without enough time for a proper public debate. You can read about a good example of that here.

DownsizeDC.org has drafted the Read The Bills Act, which, if passed, will fix all of this. It requires that:

• Each bill, and every amendment, must be read in its entirety before a quorum in both the House and Senate.
• Every member of the House and Senate must sign a sworn affidavit, under penalty of perjury, that he or she has attentively either personally read, or heard read, the complete bill to be voted on.
• Every old law coming up for renewal under the sunset provisions must also be read according to the same rules that apply to new bills.
• Every bill to be voted on must be published on the Internet at least 7 days before a vote, and Congress must give public notice of the date when a vote will be held on that bill.
• Passage of a bill that does not abide by these provisions will render the measure null and void, and establish grounds for the law to be challenged in court.
• Congress cannot waive these requirements.

Now, in case you’re thinking, “What if they just say, ‘Move to suspend the rules’ like we see them do on C-SPAN all the time?” Because this wouldn’t just be the rules; this would be the law It would be in the US Code. Congress can’t suspend it; they must abide by it, and if they don’t, the law they pass would be null and void.

If you think this is a great idea (and if you think it’s not, comment below–I really want to talk to you!), then you can urge your Congresscritter to support the Read The Bills Act by using DownsizeDC’s lobbying interface. It actually works–they read and respond to it! I’ve gotten responses from McHenry and both of my Senators on various issues using this interface.