Government

Is the government monitoring me?

The other day half jokingly I noted on Facebook I didn’t want to leave my truck parked in the city with the stuff I needed for camp on a ninety degree day – with the propane tank, fireworks, ammunition and even the second battery sitting in the heat potentially posing a fire or explosion risk. I apparently watch too many cartoons or take the printed propane and battery warnings too seriously but I’d be unhappy if my truck burned. That said I was even more concerned about the heat decimating the ice I had to keep food prematurely.

Some random person that follows my personal Facebook feed commented that, that’s the kind of thing that gets you put on the government’s terrorists watch list. About the same time, reading the news for work, I saw this article about the Buffalo FBI surveillance of domestic terrorists and mass shooting threats. They mentioned that they had a unit that surveilled people of interest. That said, I was pretty bemused by the whole thing, noting that at least I’m creating good paying government jobs and the federal government has some of the best paid jobs in the Capital Region.

I’m really not that worried about government surveillance. If there is somebody in the government who sits around reading my blog posts and tries to psychoanalysis them, I’m glad I’m helping to keep them employed. I hope they enjoy watching my camping videos, stories about Big Red, my maps, photos and other content I provide. That said, more likely, they’re just read by an automatic spider run by the government like a Google, processed into some kind of intelligence like millions of other pages but ultimately not that useful. With 325 million Americans to keep an eye on plus six billion other foreign actors I’m sure I’m not that much of a priority or interest.

Sure as a staunchly independent individual, a single guy, who likes spending weekends in the wilderness, owns a few guns, are part of several pepper and off grid Facebook groups, plead to a misdemeanor a decade and a half ago, who has some conservative and some liberal views, I’m probably not the lowest of priorities by law enforcement monitoring. But I’m also not the highest either, and there are a lot more dangerous people out there like White Nationalists, religious extremists, racists and other hate groups. I’m certainly none of those things and there is a lot bigger fish to go after then me.

I also am aware that law enforcement has a lot of restrictions on monitoring citizens. Most monitoring when it occurs is probably broad-based and occurs on a lot swath of population and is fully automated. They have to have reasonable suspension that a crime is likely to occur in the near future and can only monitor people in public places or public utterances without a court order obtained by a judge after showing probable cause of a crime. Because of the cost and time involved, only when they have compelling evidence are law enforcement likely to investigate.

I think the Supreme Court decision is wonderful news for the second amendment and gun rights in our country

I think the Supreme Court decision is wonderful news for the second amendment and gun rights in our country βš–

While the court decision is unlikely to have of an immediate impact on day to day life, it further expands upon the law of the second amendment. I’m heartened by the warm embrace by most Republicans and how many potential ways it could lead to a furtherance of rights with future court cases and state and federal legislation. It may prove in a few years to be just as revolutionary as many of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights cases, as the case law is implemented and promulgated by lower courts and agencies in the coming years. While so many of new laws proposed, especially in blue states are going the wrong way, we may be in the middle of a judicial rights revolution.

NPR

Criminal defense lawyers sound the alarm about mass incarceration if Roe falls : NPR

Picture a court of law, jury in place, set to determine the fate of a woman who has had a miscarriage. And she's been charged with murder.

This hypothetical is part of how the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) is training its members to prepare for a wave of criminal charges if, as expected, the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade.

Only it's not a hypothetical — this happened in 2019. After a California woman delivered a stillborn baby at 8 months, she tested positive for meth at the hospital and the staff called the police. The Kings County prosecutor charged her with the "murder of a human fetus" and she spent 16 months in jail before the charges were dismissed.

I have very mixed feelings about Chris Jacobs getting booted out of Congress over his position on gun control πŸ”«

I have very mixed feelings about Chris Jacobs getting booted out of Congress over his position on gun control πŸ”«

For one, I think it’s good that the Republican base and the good hard-working conservative country folk in the Southern Tier are holding their elected officials accountable, and are standing up for their rights. For too long, many of the leftists have thought they can trample on our constitutional rights, allowing the state to seize firearms and personal property with little due cause or recourse, leaving ordinary citizens in fear of their government. Too often Republicans and conservatives have had cowardice, unwilling to stand up to media and jackals on the left, rolling over much like too many did in era of McCarthyism.

At same time, I am no fan of moral purity tests — or how the Republican Party has become a party of arbitrary and capricious restrictions on abortion, while the Democrats have become a party calling for arbitrary and capricious on gun owners. It seems like increasingly that the Republican Party is all about arresting and jailing Democrats, while the Democratic Party is about arresting and jailing Republicans by creating laws to target them. The hell of it all is most politicians aren’t likely to go jail, but the police will be using their new found powers from Republicans and Democrats to attack and imprison the colored and poor.

I agree with the many Republicans activists that Chris Jacob had to go. Any politician that threatens fundamental rights should be kicked out of their party, be it Democrat or Republican. People should vote the gun-grabbers out of the Democratic Party and the abortion-banners out of the Republican Parties. And they shouldn’t make their whole office about kowtowing to jackals of the press and popular culture. Politicians don’t have to be at the public-trough, writing laws that hurt ordinary people, they can get jobs in the private sector where they can do things for their community without hurting the American people at large.

Chris Jacobs Drops Re-Election Bid After Bucking His Party on Guns – The New York Times

Chris Jacobs Drops Re-Election Bid After Bucking His Party on Guns – The New York Times

On Friday, facing intense backlash from party leaders, a potential primary from the state party chairman and a forceful dressing down from Donald Trump Jr., Mr. Jacobs announced that he would abandon his re-election campaign.

The episode, which played out as President Biden pleaded with lawmakers in Washington to pass a raft of new laws to address gun violence, may be a portent for proponents of gun control, who had welcomed Mr. Jacobs’s evolution on the issue as a sign that the nation’s latest mass tragedies might break a decades-old logjam in Washington.

Just last week, Mr. Jacobs, who is the scion of one of Buffalo’s richest families and was endorsed by the National Rifle Association in 2020, had been an easy favorite to win re-election, even after a court-appointed mapmaker redrew his Western New York district to include some of the state’s reddest rural counties, areas he does not currently represent.

But by Friday, after local gun rights groups had posted his office phone number on the internet and local party leaders had started pulling their support one by one, political analysts predicted he may well lose a primary challenge based solely on his embrace of firearm restrictions.