Mark and Debra Kuhn of Asheville, North Carolina were arrested and charged with assault on a government employee, obstruction and flag desecration.

The Kuhns were flying a flag upside down on their own property with signs pinned to it explaining why it was being flown in that manner: being upside down represents a sign of distress. A picture of George W. Bush was also pinned to the flag with the text “Out Now” printed underneath. The Kuhns apparently desecrated the flag by pinning signs to it, not by flying it upside down.

According to the Sheriff’s office, deputy Scarborough informed the couple that they were illegally displaying the flag and attempted to issue Mr. Kuhn with a citation. Kuhn allegedly refused to show I.D. and slammed the door on Scarborough’s hand causing a glass pane to break, which cut the deputy’s hand.

The Kuhns have a different story to tell. They claim that they shut and locked the door and that Scarborough intentionally broke the glass with his fist in order to reach in and unlock the door. He then proceeded to enter their home, without a warrant or permission, and placed them under arrest.

Flag desecration is protected under the First Amendment of the constitution as free speech; a fact that is supported by two U.S. Supreme Court cases. Any law prohibiting it is blatantly unconstitutional.

Mark Radford, the National Guardsman who issued the complaint about the flag, does not seem to care about the Supreme Court or the constitution he swore to uphold.

“The law is the law, and if we don’t follow the rule of the law as a society, where does it go from here?” he asked.

Ever heard of civil disobedience Mr. Radford? A principle employed by Samuel Adams and many others in the founding of our country. A principle exploited by Martin Luther King Jr. in his quest for civil rights. Have you learned about the Boston Tea Party? How about the Revolutionary War? Does any of this mean anything to you?

When there are bad laws, they need to be broken and any law — whether constitutional or not — that restricts free speech is a bad law. Civil Disobedience and Jury Nullification are the last strings for citizens to grab at if they wish to change the laws that oppress them. That is, after all, how the prohibition of alcohol was essentially ended.

I would like to personally thank the Kuhns for standing up for their rights and subsequently the rights of every citizen of this country. If we lose the right to free speech, unpopular being the most difficult to protect, then we really have no rights at all. Expression is the most essential human freedom.

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On May 24 Brian D. Kelly of Carlisle, Pennsylvania was arrested for violating a state wiretapping law. Kelly, 18, videotaped police officers during a routine traffic stop. His camera was immediately confiscated and he was taken to jail. He spent 26 hours in county prison until his mother posted her house as collateral for his $2,500 bail.

What act was Mr. Kelly perpetrating in which the ‘great’ state of Pennsylvania saw as wiretapping?

Well, it turns out that there is an obscure state law that bars the intentional interception or recording of anyone’s oral conversation without their consent.  The arrest apparently relates to the sound that Kelly’s camera picked up, not the video.

Some people would claim that ‘ignorance of the law is no excuse’, but I would have to whole-heartedly disagree.  How could someone possibly know that it is illegal to record an on-duty officer while on public property?  It is not a law that one would assume exists based on common sense, such as murder or theft. 

The only way that Kelly could have possibly known about this law would be if he actually read it.  But lets be realistic, it could not honestly be expected that every citizen reads the tomes of laws that are passed, on state, local, and federal levels, every year,  a process which would likely take an entire lifetime.

Kelly said that if he knew about this law before the incident occurred he would not have recorded the officers. What he does not seem to understand is that this is a law that does not make any sense and is blatantly unconstitutional.  And bad laws, quite frankly, are meant to be broken.

Let me remind you of the text of the fourth amendment.  It reads, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated…”  The word unreasonable allows for some gray area, but I am sure that most people (a jury of our peers, perhaps) would agree that it was unreasonable for the police to take his camera. 

The only ‘crime’ Kelly is guilty of is recording the officers doing their jobs, an act that should never be illegal in a free society.  Is it not our duty as citizens to make sure that the police — and all other government employees for that matter — are doing their jobs properly?  If not, then whose responsibility is it?  And who watches them?

This law is an enemy of Liberty and needs to be repealed.  It may have been passed with good intentions, i.e. prevention of blackmail, but we all know how to pave the road to hell.  Only Police Officers — and others who seek to abuse their powers — truly benefit from laws like this one.

Realize this: Any protest that ever takes place in Pennsylvania can not legally be recorded by bystanders. This allows the police, who can potentially abuse their power, to confiscate the cameras of anyone who records them, essentially eliminating evidence of any possible wrong doing.

We are losing civil liberties in this country everyday and — I don’t know about you — but I’m getting sick and tired of it.

If you still do not believe that the country we live in resembles a police state, I have a simple question for you: What will it take for you to open your eyes?

Yesterday they stole away habeas corpus. Today we can not record the police. Tomorrow they remove our right to a trial by jury. Then they take away our guns. What will we have then? Only a hollow shell of the republic that our Founders once envisioned.
 

A recent study conducted by MAPS.org shows that there are more ER visits per year for cheerleading accidents than there are for Ecstasy use. To quote the study:

I focused on Emergency Room (ER) visit data, the most common indicator of cost to public health. For example, according to the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN), in 1994–nine years after MDMA was criminalized, but the first for which data is available from SAMHSA– there were 253 ER visits as a result of Ecstasy use in the US. Meanwhile, according to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (USCPSC), in 1994 there were 15,792 ER visits as a result of participation in organized cheerleading. By that measure, in 1994 cheerleading was 62 times more of a threat to our nation’s public health than Ecstasy use. Keep in mind that most users don’t know whether their Ecstasy is pure MDMA, so these statistics reflect the risks of using unregulated black-market Ecstasy, which often contains other substances and sometimes does not even contain MDMA.

To look at those numbers another way, in 2001, one out of every 152 organized cheerleading participants sought ER treatment, while only one of out of every 585 past-year Ecstasy users sought ER treatment.

There is also a graph comparing the two for each year from 1995 to 2004:

So I guess we all know what this means. It is time to start a prohibition on cheerleading. After all, the reason certain drugs are illegal is because the are ‘unsafe’ and this study clearly shows that cheerleading is far more dangerous to public health than MDMA. It seems that if the government is at all worried about the safety of its citizens then they should outlaw cheerleading. While they’re at it (since governments never seem to know when to stop), they might as well outlaw smoking and trans fat since these are also dangerous to public health.

Of course these are ludicrous claims. The government does not have the right to regulate what people can do with their bodies. They should not be allowed regulate cheerleading and they should not be allowed to regulate drug use. I just hope this study puts drug use into perspetive for those who think the government should have the right to regulate it. Just think about how you would feel if the government banned trans fats or cheerleading and you can see why the ‘war on drugs’ is the debacle that it is. People will get their fix (whether it be trans fat, cheerleading, or drugs) even if they have to go behind Big Brothers back to get it.

A Pittsburgh girl was recently arrested for taking nude photos of herself and sending them to people she met in chat rooms on the internet. Among her charges were possession of child porn (for having the pictures stored on her hard drive), sexual abuse of children (for taking the pictures of herself) and dissemination of child porn (for distributing the pictures).

In America, the Land of the Free, a minor is not allowed to take nude pictures of herself. Not only is it not allowed, but it is considered to be child porn, and the act of taking the pictures is considered child abuse. A minor can actually be charged for sexually abusing herself. Whats next? Is masturbation going to be considered child molestation for minors?

Also, don’t forget that a child porn charge makes her a sex offender at the ripe, old age of fifteen. That means that she faces the stigma of being put in sex offender databases for the rest of her life. Some places require that sex offenders live a certain distance from schools, parks, and churches. Will her parents have to move her if they live to close to any of those places? Or will the state just take her away?

Next thing you know, a 17-year-old is going to be arrested for receiving oral sex from a 15-year-old. Oh wait, that already happened.

I recently stumbled across a great article by Stefan Molyneux entitled, “The Gun in the Room“, over at LewRockwell.com. I highly suggest reading the whole thing. The first paragraph is as follows:

One of the most difficult – and essential – challenges faced by libertarians is the constant need to point out “the gun in the room.” In political debates, it can be very hard to cut through the endless windy abstractions that are used to cover up the basic fact that the government uses guns to force people to do what they do not want to do, or prevent them from doing what they do want to do. Listening to non-libertarians, I often wish I had a “euphemism umbrella” to ward off the continual oily drizzle of words and phrases designed to obscure the simple reality of state violence. We hear nonstop nonsense about the “social good,” the “redistribution of income,” the “education of children” and so on – endless attempts to bury the naked barrel of the state in a mountain of syrupy metaphors.

The article then goes on to explain how every political debate can be boiled down to pointing out the gun in the room. If someone supports taxes, point out the gun in the room. If someone supports the war on drugs, point out the gun in the room. The list goes on. Molyneux uses the public school system as a good example. The debate is not about whether or not public schools are a good thing, but rather, whether or not I am allowed to disagree with the idea of a public school system without the fear of being shot. This is not the case. If I do not believe that publicly funded schools should exist and, in turn, do not pay my property taxes I will be shot. Sure, that outcome may not be immediate, but it will happen when the government tries to take my house and I am prepared to defend it. So the next time you are in a political debate with someone who hates liberty, simply point out the gun in the room and urge them to take out all the bullets. Then, you might be able to get somewhere with them.

Wiretapping is now the least of your worries. According to Fox News, the FBI is now using cell phones to eavesdrop on conversations. They can now remotely connect to the phone, activate the mic and listen to what is being said in the area. The only way to absolutely avoid this is by removing the battery from your phone. It may also be possible to cover the mic with something when you are not using it. This is ridiculous. The government is becoming more invasive day by day. Big Brother here we come.