Big Dogs House

TSA Invokes Constitution When Convenient

May 15, 2011 Political

The great State of Texas has passed a law that makes it illegal for security screeners to touch people on certain parts of their bodies. This is in response to the invasion of privacy that takes place when TSA officers conduct enhanced pat downs of air travelers. The TSA has struck back in a posting at the TSA blog that lists its response to Texas as; you can’t do that because the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution says states can’t regulate the federal government.

That is very true but only in cases where the actions of the federal government are allowed by the Constitution. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that the federal government is responsible for the traveling public. Let us assume though, that the federal government would be allowed to regulate our travel under the Commerce Clause (it is stretched for so many things that this is not out of the question). That still would not allow the federal government to claim supremacy when the act involves the violation of our Constitutional rights. The actions by the TSA are a violation of our Fourth Amendment right against search and seizure without probable cause and without a warrant.

No matter how supreme the federal government is, it cannot invoke supremacy on issues where it is violating the Constitution or where it has no Constitutional authority in the matter. The Tenth Amendment gives the states or the people the supremacy over any item NOT listed in the Constitution.

If the TSA wants to drag out the dusty, seldom used copy of the Constitution that the agency has then it must be willing to accept the limits placed on the federal government by that very document. The federal government has no enumerated power to search people as the TSA agents are doing. NONE, period.

It is obvious that the TSA thinks it, as part of the federal government, has supremacy in this issue but the reality is Texas has exerted its Tenth Amendment right to supremacy over an issue not Constitutionally enumerated to the federal government.

Let us also not forget that Texas did not pass a law that interferes with airline travel so even if one can claim supremacy under Commerce, the law in question does not involve that. The Texas law simply says that if a screener touches certain areas of people’s bodies without probable cause or a warrant then they have committed a crime.

Setting off an alarm in the metal detector is not probable cause to touch people in areas that would have one arrested if done on the street. Being a baby or a child is not probable cause to molest a child in hopes of finding a bomb. Refusing to go through the X-Ray machine is no more probable cause for an invasive search than is refusing to allow a police officer to search your vehicle during a traffic stop. If police officers started pulling people who refused searches out of their cars and subjected them to the pat down performed by the TSA then every civil rights group would be up in arms and the people would be rebelling against such invasion. However, the TSA does the same thing and then has the nerve to claim it can do so and has supremacy over the states that try to stop it.

I am not sure the TSA wants to open the can of worms involved in citing the Constitution to rebuke a state because that would lead to closer scrutiny involving the Constitutionality of what the TSA is doing, the role of the federal government in the process and the violation of our Fourth and Tenth Amendment rights.

For those who say it is moot because we do not have a right to travel, the federal government has codified travel as a right that will not be impeded (if one agrees that government can regulate travel under Commerce then this law has to be allowed as part of that regulation).

TSA impedes us unnecessarily in the name of security. Remember folks, no terrorist has been caught by the TSA and the TSA routinely fails screening tests where “harmful” items are sneaked through security.

Not to worry though, the TSA does ensure our genitals are in place prior to boarding a plane…

Where our genitals are is not the issue here. The issue is where the TSA is keeping its collective heads…

Cave Canem!
Never surrender, never submit.

Tags: constitution, fourth amendment, lies, supremacy, tenth amendment, texas, tsa

Obama Ignores Disasters But Looks For The Money

May 10, 2011 Political

Barack Obama’s regime denied federal assistance to the state of Texas which has been hammered with wildfires. A cynic would say that this is because Texas is a red state and Obama has no chance to win the large pool of electoral votes in the next election. Obama has however, gone to Texas to raise money for the political campaign and I bet there are plenty of liberals there who will give it to him. He will ignore their pleas for help but they will not ignore his.

To get to Texas Obama flew over the Mississippi River and the devastation that it has caused through middle America. The water is at record levels and places are flooded all over and various accounts report that Obama did not even look out the window to get a look at the damage. He was too busy thinking about what to say to Hispanics in Texas regarding amnesty so that he can get their cash now and their votes in 2012.

George Bush was hammered by the press and the liberals when he was photographed looking out the window of Air Force One at the damage from Hurricane Katrina. He was said to be uncaring and Kanye West said that he hated black people.

Obama is only concerned with power and how to hold onto it. His gig in the White House gets him the best tee times on cleared golf courses and free flights to all the hot vacation spots in the world. He needs to hold onto the power he has so he can continue to improve his golf game while working on transforming America into a Socialist country.

And don’t worry about missing anything. The government is working on a mandatory system that will allow it to text your cell phone in the event of an emergency. Of course, it will likely be a plan where those who pay for their cell phones continue to do so while the government uses their tax dollars to pay for phones for those who cannot afford them. It would not be fair, after all, for those poor folks not to get the same warnings as the people who pay for cell phones. Whatever happened to the Emergency Broadcast System?

At least the government will have a way to blast text messages to all of us from Dear Leader.

Wouldn’t want the masses to miss an Obama plea for campaign cash…

Cave Canem!
Never surrender, never submit.

Tags: Bush, campaign cash, disaster, flyover, katrina, mississippi river, Obama, texas

Texas Regains Its Senses

Feb 10, 2011 Political

Yesterday the news was out that a few schools in Texas were going to require children to learn the Arabic language and about Arabic culture. Let me be clear, this was not an elective offering, this was a mandatory class for children.

The school system imposed this requirement under a grant from The Department of Education which has deemed Arabic the language of the future. Parents of these children were caught off guard and said they knew nothing about this new requirement.

It looks as if, for now, the program is on hold. Seems the uproar has but the brakes on this whole mess.

As well it should.

I have no problem with children learning to speak Arabic as long as it is something they get to choose. Children are not forced to learn any other language and they should not be forced to learn Arabic. Most of the parents who objected did so based on this aspect of it.

If schools want to teach about Arabic culture then they can do so as part of a class that teaches about a multitude of cultures.

I have no idea why it is the federal government thinks that the Arabic language is the language of the future when the people who speak it are still living in the 7^th century.

What I also have a problem with is The Department of Education has decided that it will force our children to learn a foreign language when our own government will NOT force immigrants to learn English. If you want to make this a better place then FORCE immigrants to learn English. Then we will never hear “for Spanish, press 2.”

Besides, the way America is going some form of Chinese will be the language of our future…

Cave Canem!
Never surrender, never submit.

Tags: arabic, forced indoctrination, mandatory language, texas

Smartest POTUS Evah!

Aug 30, 2010 Political

The Far Side had a cartoon some years ago where a door to the school for the gifted had a sign that read “Pull” and a supposedly gifted kid pushing (here). Interestingly, we have some very gifted people occupying the White House. They just passed through a rainy New Orleans on their way home from their 8^th vacation this year and Barry and Michelle had a few problems.

Two things are troubling about the above picture. One is that Michelle is ducking as if she is tall enough to hit the top rail that is the focus of troubling thing number two. Barack Obama, the smartest POTUS evah, is holding the umbrella in such a fashion that he cannot get through the gate. Obama does not appear to be lowering the umbrella acting instead as if he can get it to pass through the metal crossbar. Well, they say he can walk on water…

Smartest Evah……

Environmentally Friendly Rally Attendees
The Restoring Honor Rally was Saturday. The people who attended that rally, the ones who were raised to take care of themselves and to respect the property of others, left no mess. They picked up their trash and left the place clean. This is a stark contrast to the Obama inauguration where those who believe in dependence on government and cradle to grave care left tons of trash lying about for someone else to clean up. This also begs the question about which group actually cares more about the environment.

I read that some lib websites were claiming the group cleaned up to deprive parks employees from getting work. Don’t they have jobs to do whether or not there is trash to pick up?

Not So Smart Congresswoman
Eddie Bernice Johnson is in a bit of hot water. She used money allocated to the black caucus to award scholarships to children in her family and to children of a top aide. This was not allowed according to the guidelines for awarding the money. The awards are invalid and the rules state the money must be repaid.

Johnson claims she did not do this deliberately and that names come across her desk and that others handle this blah, blah. Her two grandchildren were recipients and it is unlikely their names came across her desk and she did not recognize them. She was aware of the rules and should have investigated further (maybe it was kids with the same names). She did not do what she was supposed to and I find it very unlikely that she made a mistake.

I believe she is in a safe Congressional District that was drawn up to favor her party and she felt safe in an environment where the word racist flies as soon as someone has an issue with a black politician. She was using funds to help her family and the children of her aide.

This is wrong and should be fully investigated.

Already Enough Boobs In Politics
A Venezuelan politician is holding a raffle to raise campaign cash. He is raffling off a set of breast implants in order to raise money for his campaign. I wonder if he is running for an official office or a titular position…

I hope it does not come down to this in America. Our political system already has way too many boobs in it…

Cave Canem!
Never surrender, never submit.

Tags: environment, johnson, moron, Obama, restoring hope, scholarships, texas, umbrella

I Thought The Feds Handled The Border

May 27, 2010 Political

The Arizona law has a lot of people in a snit. The opponents of the law that allows police officers to check the immigration status of anyone who has some interaction with police (a traffic stop, etc) continually mischaracterize the law and spread fear that it might lead to racial profiling.

This is hogwash but it has not stopped groups who advocate illegal activity from spreading the lies and the fear anyway. The Attorney General of the US, Eric Holder, is looking into challenging the Arizona law in court on Constitutional grounds. Holder, who did not read the law before condemning it (a common trait in the Obama regime), believes that enforcement of immigration laws is a federal government job and that states do not have the authority to enforce federal laws. As an aside, Arizona’s laws is a state law that makes it a crime to be in the state illegally. The only way to establish that is to check and see if people are in the country illegally.

This position is somewhat ridiculous. State and local police officers enforce federal laws all the time. Bank robbery is a federal crime but if a bank in any state is robbed the local police respond and have the authority to arrest the bank robbers. Can you imagine what would happen if FBI agents showed up and were told that the criminals were there with the police but they had no authority to enforce federal laws by arresting them so they let them go?

Kidnapping is a federal crime but state and local police respond to that crime. The same holds true for a number of crimes and no one seems to care that local officers are involved. For some reason though, people get uptight when the law deals with securing our borders or illegal immigration.

Surprisingly, Barack Obama has ordered 1200 National Guard troops to the border in Arizona (looks like the law is working) but has ignored a similar request from Texas. I don’t understand why Obama needs to give the order. If he takes charge of them they are not allowed to perform police functions. The NG belongs to the states so the governor of the state is in charge of them. If Texas or Arizona need Guardsmen on the borders then they should just deploy them. States have the right to keep people from crossing their borders illegally and if the governors deployed the NG then the soldiers could perform law enforcement functions. They could detain illegal entrants.

The federal government has been bellowing about the federal functions and how the security of the border is their job blah, blah. But an interesting thing happened today.

Texas was warned about the possibility of terrorists trying to enter the country illegally across the Mexico-Texas border. If stopping these illegal entrants is a federal job and the feds are the ones who should be enforcing their laws, why alert the local police? Why not send federal agents to guard the border and look for the terrorists?

One could make the argument that the state has the right to stop people at the border but that once they are here illegally the states have no authority to check immigration status or to detain people for being here illegally. Immigration being a federal job and all.

So if one of these terrorists crosses the border unseen but two days later an officer recognizes him from a photo, is the officer allowed to confront the guy and ask for identification? Can the officer check the immigration status of the terrorist?

If the answer is no then why alert Texas law enforcement and ask them to be on the lookout? If the answer is yes then why is the Arizona law wrong?

I have been thinking about the Arizona law and even though I have no problem I have a solution that will guarantee that no one is profiled. It will not please the left or any of the illegal immigrant groups who are aiding and abetting the criminals but it will work.

They should have immigration checkpoints. These would be just like sobriety checkpoints, would be random, would move from place to place and would require all people in every car that passes through the checkpoint to provide proof that they are here legally. Children would be considered legal if the adults in the car are legal.

The police could have cruisers set up to look for people who turn around to avoid the checkpoint. That would be probable cause to check their status.

The people who do not like Arizona’s law will not like the checkpoints but the courts have ruled sobriety checkpoints legal so long as they are random or everyone is checked. Illegal immigrant checkpoints are a great way to go. The law says that to check for immigration status the people have to make contact with police for some other reason first. No problem, just say the checkpoints are sobriety checkpoints and then ask everyone, and that is the key, for proof of status.

This could obviously be tweaked to work without violating the law or the Constitution.

The stops could also serve another purpose. Police could hand out literature explaining that there are sanctuary cities not far from Arizona and include a list of those cities and directions to get to them.

Arizona would be happy to send its illegals to California. Hell, the federal government will probably not take any referrals to ICE so Arizona might as well send the illegals where they are wanted.

As for Texas. It should tell the federal government to come look for the terrorist so that the state does not run afoul of federal immigration laws…

Never surrender, never submit.

Tags: arizona, eric holder, illigal immigrants, lies, national guard, terrorists, texas