A Bivens Action?

One of my readers asked me specifically about something in yesterday’s sources.  One of the sources mentioned filing a Bivens Action every time one of the TSA gorillas pawed through your things without a warrant.  And, since this blog is Stuff BQ Knows, not stuff BQ wonders about, I went off in search of the history of a Bivens Action to let you all know just what exactly it is.

The name a Bivens Action comes from the Supreme Court case Webster Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.  It seems sometimes in the lat 60’s or so some federal agents busted into Webster Bivens home, searched his home and arrested him without a warrant.  Bivens of course filed a lawsuit claiming his 4th Amendment rights had been violated.

Now eventually the case gets to the Supreme Court in 1971.  They overturn lower courts who had dismissed his suit for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction (as defined by Article III section 2 of the Constitution) because the government claimed he could only file against the state for their transgression against him.

What does that all mean to you.  It means that now, Federal agents who come jack booted to your door or person and violate your 4th Amendment rights can now face a Bivens Action which will result in monetary damages against said federal employees as opposed to attempting to sue the head of the agency, such as the Attorney General.

Source Here.

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Brownshirts down in Texas

Well, I didn’t think I’d see it this soon, but I guess it wasn’t going to wait forever.  Do you all remember Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-Tex)? No, well let me remind you.  She is the brainless moron down in Tex district 18 that said hurricanes were racist because they all had “lily-white” names and there should be some multiculturalism represented in regards to naming hurricanes.  She also advocated selling F-16 parts to Hugo Chavez and attempted to hijack a hearing on radicalized Muslims comparing them to Christian “militants” that want to end reproductive freedom for women.  She opens her mouth at any opportunity to cry racism and in her own words, “…am a queen and demand to be treated as one.”  In other words, yeah she is an elected official, but she is not a real smart one.  Now we get to her latest blunder, which could end up affecting all of us.

Jackson-Lee has partnered with the Dept of Homeland Security, the TSA, the Metro Police, and the Harris County Constables opening a national pilot program known as Bus Safe. The program is designed “to detect, prevent and address latent criminal activity or behavior.”  How are they going to do this? They are going to violate the 4th Amendment rights of every Houstonian through the forced submission of random bag searches, K-9 sweeps, the presence of uniformed and plainclothes police officers at transit centers and rail platforms, and oh yes, the biggie, Randomly stopping passengers and questioning them about their destinations and their reasons for taking transit that day. (heavy German accent) Gif me your paperz! Schnell!!  Holy crapballs Batman, this sounds like something right out of Nazi Freakin’ Germany.  It sure does Robin, and guess what, it is.

Jackson-Lee was at the unveiling of the program and was calling for expanded police presence and more security.  This is no surprise seeing as how she has used fear and propaganda to push the police state agenda under the guise that any back down from expanded measures would lead directly to another 9/11 situation.  Um, just as an aside, TSA hasn’t stopped diddly-squat.  How many times have you heard or read about someone who slipped a knife, razor, bottle of water, gun, or nail file past dozing TSA agents at the airport security, or waited until the perv agents were busy groping some poor soul as the others drooled and looked on.  Yeah, TSA is garbage, but now you want to give them some kind of Orwellian authority and let them intimidate regular citizens.  This read readers is a slippery slope, if it takes hold in Texas, it will be able to be enacted anywhere.  I know of no group, okay maybe some militia men in Michigan or Idaho, so enamored of their freedom and firearms.

Benjamin Franklin has often been quoted as having said something to the effect of, Those who would trade temporary safety for some essential liberties deserve neither and will lose both.  I guess we’re about to find out just what that means.

Source Here.
Source Here.

Tolerance for Whom?

So there was this anti-bullying speaker doing what he does at a national journalism conference for high school students. The speaker in question was a man by the name of Dan Savage, journalist, author, activist, and founder of the “it gets better project” an anti-bullying movement.  So here is this guy, who goes on a bit of a rant at this conference, something off topic those at the conference were not expecting.  Not a couple one liners, but a full-out tirade.  Some students get up to leave as they felt offended by the remarks of the speaker and his tone.  They were under the impression that the speech was going to be something else entirely.  So, okay, they leave no big deal.  Oh, wait, here is the big deal.  As the roughly hundred students left the auditorium the anti-bullying speaker called them names like “pansy asses” and become openly hostile to those who no longer wanted to listen to him.  The anti-bullying speaker engaged in bullying behavior during an anti-bullying speech in front of over one thousand youth.  Are you kidding me?  Do you know why they left and what he was talking about?  Does it matter?  The answer to both questions is the same, No.

Tolerance is a street that is supposed to go both ways, not simply one group accepting the beliefs and dictates of another group. Being intolerant of someone you don’t think is listening to you isn’t showing tolerance.  Too often tolerance is treated as a one way path of communication for the “enlightened” to tell the “unenlightened” what they should think about certain things and how they should become accepting.  I don’t care whether the group is for, multiculturalism, LGBT, abortion, gun control, hunting, abstinence, christianity, global warming, global cooling, wind energy, fossil fuels, teachers, condoms, euthanasia, marriage, divorce, or partially hydrogenated soybean oil. (by the way, I love that stuff, everything that has it tastes soooo good).  A position you firmly believe in is not something to be pushed on others, the way exists for open communication and frank discussion and at the end of the day civilized people should be allowed to respectfully disagree.  I disagree with positions people take all the time, that doesn’t mean I name call and heckle when I get the chance.  That is not what tolerance is about and too many extremists to the left and to the right of the issues mistake tolerance for acceptance and mistake disagreement for intolerance.

You see there are those who define tolerance as the act of listening to something someone better than you tells you how you should feel about something and then you change your whole outlook on that thing and whole heartedly embrace it, spreading the good word to others and lamenting to your everlasting shame for having thought about something the wrong way.  Again this is topic independent.  However, that is not tolerance, that is acceptance or more likely conversion.  If someone wants to say, you need to be accepting of what I say, I could live with that over the tolerance thing.  Because tolerance is just the opposite.  Tolerance means I have listened to the crap that has come out of your mouth and even though I want to punch you in the face or set something random on fire I don’t because that wouldn’t be tolerant.  I will disagree with you, but I will not attack you for it.  You know what I mean, there is always that person you have sat next to and you thought, I am going to kill this person if they say one more thing, that would be intolerance.  But you don’t, congratulations you’ve just tolerated someone even if you disagree or dislike them.  tah-dah.

The funny thing is the last time I made an argument like this I was called intolerant. HAHAHAHAHA, okay whatever.  Look it up, you don’t work for tolerance if you’re seeking acceptance just like you don’t advocate an anti-bullying stance when you bully a bunch of children.

Source Here.

Twain would be Ticked.

The House of Representin’ passed, at least in theory, a bill that would honor Mark Twain with his own commemorative coin in H.R. 2453: Mark Twain Commemorative Coin Act.  Basically, this would force the secretary of the treasury to mint gold and silver coins honoring Mark Twain sometime in the future.  I say sometime in the future because most of you don’t understand or know about the intricacies of commemorative coins.  Needless to say it boils down to no more than two issues for various things each year and the next three years have been spoken for with a bunch of crap, the only one of which I care about is the War of 1812 which instead of being produced this year has been pushed off until 2013.  Anyways back to Twain.  It is ironic that he would be honored by a class of people he loathed in life.  He once said that Congress was “the only distinctly native American criminal class.”  Would any of us argue with him?  I think not.

The point is, here was a man who while being a fine writer and a first class citizen was also a great critic of government and rightly so.  The man who does not question the actions of his government from time to time will be content to be ruled at some later point, at least that is my opinion.  Twain was often found jabbing spears in the sides of the government as he roasted them in spirit in his books and novels. And here they are patting themselves on the back for recognizing his work.  Uh, Congress, a word if you will. (in a whisper) You do realize that quite a bit of his work is still in print and being read over 100 years after his death right?  We recognize his greatness already by continuing to pass on the legacy he left in print. Oh and he didn’t like you all because you suck.  He was just better with words than we are (end whisper).  Hmm, they didn’t listen. Well, I guess Congress is going to do whatever they feel like.

Oh, by the way.  The government already recognized Twain in 1981 when they issued a one ounce gold medal with his likeness on it as part of the American Arts Gold Medallion series which lasted all of five years.  So maybe Congress should spend some time fixing the budget problem instead of issuing a coin for something we as Americans already know.
Source Here.

The Importance of Losing

Do you remember being on the wrong side of a sports game you were playing as a child or a teen? Can you remember the feeling that loss, what it did to you, how it motivated you? Well guess what, kids often don’t get to have that feeling anymore.  Too many children are growing up today in a world where no one is allowed to lose and that is a shame. Winning all the time gives them a sense of a permanent importance and that meaning starts to fade since they are rarely allowed to feel anything else. Not being allowed is a disservice to our young ones. You know what I mean. In today’s everyone is special, we all win, and everyone gets a trophy and ice cream world, no child is allowed to experience failure. How can you ever learn if you don’t fail? What will motivate you to get better? Why would you ever try any harder than anyone else if you know that at the end of the day you are going to get the same reward as the other people who do succeed. Where is the challenge?
Here it is in a nutshell. If you don’t allow children to fail on occasion (no I don’t mean all the time, that would just be mean) you teach them valuable lessons in life they can carry on to the future with them. I work with people who haven’t been allowed to lose in life. They suck. No, really, they suck at everything, and when they screw something up they expect someone else to clean it up or everyone to ignore it. They go through life losing and not caring, they look at me and say I tried hard or I worked hard or I did my best why can’t you accept that? Well boo hoo but that isn’t going to cut it. You know why, because sometimes your best doesn’t meet the minimum standard, and if you can’t figure out that you failed and have to do better you can’t rectify your actions then we kind find someone who will try to succeed rather than expecting success.
Coach Jim Valvano (an NCAA basketball coach) once said, hard work doesn’t win you anything, hard work and a good work ethic put you in a position to be successful.  You have to figure out what it is going to take to achieve that success.  You can’t learn that if you can’t learn the difference between winning and losing.
My kid played in a baseball game last night and lost. In the car on the way home he said, now I know what I need to work on for next game. He is going to put himself in a position to win in baseball. He will also be able to translate those skills to school, work, and life when he gets older. I am happy he lost if only for this reason.

Why did you pay so much for an education?

So let me get this straight.  Someone goes out and chases down a $150,000 or more education over four years and takes out lots of student loans to get it, because in America we only deserve the best, we’re entitled to it. That is all fine and dandy.  If you can get a job that will help you pay that down, then go nuts. There are enough dumb kids and idiot parents that think racking up a six figure debt for a bachelor’s degree will automatically qualify their special child for a seven-figure salary and now face reality that it is sad.  The kid isn’t qualified but for maybe entry-level positions that pay peanuts, and most of what he learned is crap he could have taught himself if he tried hard enough.  Now he can’t pay the bill.  Guess what, we have this thing called personal responsibility, it is time for junior to buckle down and work off that poor decision he made when he took out all those loans.   But, and yes there always seems to be a but when it comes to someone else’s money, now Rep. Hansen Clarke (D-Mich.) has introduced H.R. 4170 (Student Loan Forgiveness Act of 2012) to forgive student loan debt for those who do this and that and yada yada yada.  I’m sure there are a hundred different stipulations that apply that will end up disqualifying 80% of those seeking the forgiveness because they don’t meet the requirements of the act .    However, with One Trillion dollars in student loan debt, footing the bill for even 20% of that as taxpayers doesn’t amount to chump change.  Also, since when is it our job now to pay for someone else’s college experience and education.

Yes, you want to go to a great institution.  I get that.  But at the same time you shouldn’t drive yourself into debt you can’t afford to do it.  Why not look at a scholarship, or work for a company that offers tuition assistance.  When I was 19 I worked for a fast food restaurant that offered TA…fast food, not a fortune 500 company.  Guess what?  There are also boatloads of scholarships out there, look around.  How about joining the military, hell, they’ll pay you to get a degree with tuition assistance and the G.I. Bill.  Maybe attend a community college, or take some classes there and transfer to your big school when you’re down to the last year.  Really, there are ways to avoid debt while getting a quality education.  I should know, I have an A.A., B.S., and am halfway to an M.A. and I have a debt of $245 for this semester and no lingering debt from the past haunting me.

You want to know what else?  Two of the most intelligent and successful people I know do not even have degrees.  One has a high-school diploma, the other has just an eighth grade education.  Yet, both are well-read, well-spoken, and most importantly are economically successful (i.e. they have some dough).  They learned those tricks through what they both called a “real” education and neither of them cares about a piece of paper that says, look I learned something. Just something to think about.

Source Here.

Golden History in the palm of your hand

There have been over twenty World’s Fairs and Expositions in the United States since the centennial.  Why the big deal you say?  Well here is the thing.  These fairs and expositions produced some really neat awards, medals, and tokens that are quite collectable in their own right.  The make up an arm of numismatics called exonumia.  These awards are also very beautiful and some of them were designed by the top artists and sculptors in the country during that time.  But wait you say, these medals can’t be important.  I’ve never heard of one.  Oh Really?  Do you like Jack Daniels?  Yes, the whiskey.  Jack Daniels proudly displays the fact they won a gold medal at the 1904 St. Louis Exposition on every single bottle of whiskey they sell.  It is that important to them.  If they are still bragging about it over one hundred years later, I’m positive other companies are doing the same.  You probably just have to look around to find the references.

I only mention this because in today’s culture a lot of neat and interesting tidbits of information get left in the dust because it isn’t digital or on youtube, etc.  Well, there really is something to be said for a simple bronze medal, intricate in design, with a high relief that takes up the palm of your hand when you hold it.  Just do a search on ebay for exposition medal and see the neat things you come up with or look at the source document.  You won’t be sorry you did.

Source Here.

Selling a home in Israel now Captial Crime

Former Palestinian intelligence official Muhammad Abu Shahala has reportedly been sentenced to death by the Palestinian Authority for selling a Hebron home to Jews. In response, Jewish officials from the community in Hebron are calling for international officials now to get involved—in order to save Abu Shahala’s life.

“According to various news agencies, Mr. Muhammad Abu Shahala, a former intelligence agent for the Palestinian Authority, has been sentenced to death, following a hurried trial. His crime: selling property to Jews in Hebron,” David Wilder and Noam Arnon, of the Jewish community in Hebron, write in a letter addressed to Ban Ki-moon, Hillary Clinton, Benjamin Netanyahu, and other high ranking officials.

Surely you’ve got to be kidding me.  This would be the equivalent of selling your home to Hindus in Montana and being sentenced to the firing squad for it.  Even in the religion of Islam I don’t know that trading in real estate warrants a death sentence.  Could this be any more barbaric?  The guy was trying to make a buck on his home and now he may forfeit his life because the people he sold it to were of the wrong religion.  Peaceful religion my butt.

Source here.

Earth Day, Carbon Footprints, Limitless Energy, and a $60 Light Bulb

Yes, indeed yesterday was earth day, what did you do to celebrate?  Did you go out and buy the new LED light bulb from Phillips the light bulb that won the US Dept. of Energy’s “Bright Tomorrow Lighting Prize.”;  A contest held to award a prize to the creator of an affordable LED light.  Did I mention that Phillips was the only entrant and the light bulb costs $60.  Affordable for whom?  But the light bulb will last for twenty years…if you only use it for four hours or less a day.  Right, so what did you do with your earth day?

Perhaps like some, you did nothing, okay make that most did nothing, some did something, and others did something to impact those people attempting to save mother earth here.  I am one of the latter, the person who leaves the light on and runs the car on Earth day, just to increase my carbon footprint.  In fact, I would someday like to expand my carbon footprint to the size of Al Gore’s, but really that is wishful thinking.  Not everyone of us can have a carbon footprint so large as to wipe out entire species when it hits the ground.  But, again I digress.

What this is really all about is conservation.  The government wants us to conserve energy.  But like from the author below points out, energy is what drives this economy.  We have moved from a goods based economy to a service based economy over the last seventy years and the main service that everyone needs is energy.  It doesn’t matter if the energy powers your home, car, lawn mower, etc.  When we use energy it stimulates the service economy of the United States.  The more you use, the more needs to be produced, the more drilling is done the more oil and gas come out of the earth, the more we use, the cheaper it gets and so on and so forth.  Conservation of energy in the US is just a quick way to go broke in the long run. “This is probably the biggest stimulus we have going,” Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy and Economic Research told the WSJ.

According to the Journal “$145 billion will be spent drilling and completing wells this year, up from $13 billion in 2000.” And it’s not costing taxpayers anything.

Five years ago, many labored under the false assumption that the world was quickly running out of carbon-based fuels. But today we know that that’s not true.

While it’s estimated that Canada may have as much as 2 trillion barrels of oil in reserves, “the U.S. Geological Survey estimates the [US] has 4.3 trillion barrels of in-place oil shale resources centered in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming,” said Helen Hankins, Colorado director for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management” according to the Associated Press.

4.3 trillion barrels is 16 times the reserves of Saudi Arabia, or enough oil to supply the US for 600 years.

Building out the infrastructure to drill and transport that oil just from the Rocky Mountains in the US could supply literally ten million jobs for American workers, while supplying literally millions of barrels of oil per day, repairing our energy security for the next century. The end result would be the creation of about $15 trillion in wealth over the next ten years, with almost $4 trillion in revenues net to the federal government all without raising taxes.

So use all the energy you can, it is the American way.

Source here.

Rare Cent sells for $1.15 Million

Really quickly before I get too deep into this a short lesson in the usage of penny versus cent.  The United States of America does not have a penny as a measure of money.  The penny is the measure use to describe a hundredth of a British pound.  The only countries to use that measurement are on the pound.  The cent is the measurement for the dollar and the United States uses the dollar, thus all the coins we have worth one hundredth of a dollar are cents.  Now this isn’t a big deal in everyday conversation, but when you are a major news source you ought to be getting the nomenclature correct. Okay, that is all done on to the coin.

In 1792, when the mint was first setting up operations they did some trial minting of pieces to show how they could produce coins and the quality of production they could achieve for those in the government.  They were also producing different experimental pieces to show what could be done with the materials they had available. The law at the time stipulated a cent contain one cent worth of copper, which would be 11 pennyweights (or half an ounce) which would make the coin larger than a Kennedy half today.  To keep the size down the chief coiner also made cents with a silver plug in the center worth 1/4 of a cent.  These coins were then delivered to President Washington for his consideration along with the full size cents.  Very few of these were made, making them important historically and numismatically.  That is why they trade for so much when they appear at auction.  You can read more extensively about the history of these coins at http://www.ha.com.

Source here.

Watch Auction here.