REPUBLIC REBORN

Kelley Vlahos on “How Wartime Washington Lives in Luxury”

Relevant chunks: “Consider this: From 2009 to 2015, Virginia received $295 billion in federal contracting dollars. That’s more than the annual budgets of entire countries, including Saudi Arabia, Belgium, and Sweden. This has resulted in not only an exploding real estate market, but the wealthiest counties in the country, year over year.

Meanwhile, the spirit of competition has created a lifestyle of high-end consumption, helicopter parenting, over-achieving and stressed out kids, and a pampered millennial class pushing the poor out of entire neighborhoods in the DMV.”

Brits tell the likes of Hillary, Obama, et al., to butt out. The Guardian

By judge who first ruled them unconstitutional in 2013.  Tens of thousands of NSL’s are issued every year by Federal investigators to banks, doctors, car dealers, ISPs, etc., demanding personal information.  And it’s illegal to mention having received an NSL. Ars Technica

A veritable consensus has been formed regarding the Libya intervention: it went very, very badly.  The civilized of that country fled long ago, running from the chaos that followed US-led airstrikes.  Hillary, along with Obama, is rightly being blamed for her hand in instigating the entire debacle, yet some are giving her a pass for at least trying.  Daniel Larison of The American Conservative discusses one such writer who thinks everyone is just coming down too hard on poor Hillary because, god, she at least tried to do something!  Larison rightly exposes the illogic of such a sentiment:

“As far as the U.S. and its allies are concerned, there are almost always more risks in taking “action” (i.e., using force, arming rebels, etc.) than there is choosing not to do so. In almost every case, it is the smarter and safer play not to start an unnecessary war and not to send more weapons into a conflict, and one should be willing to court the dangers that come with those decisions very rarely. There usually aren’t “risks in both directions” for the U.S., and so the relevant questions are: is the risk worth taking, and if so why? The “get caught trying” mentality takes for granted that the greater danger is in avoiding unnecessary conflicts, and for that reason someone like Clinton always sees an excuse to intervene.”

But the chance to spend billions, ram through new legislation, and look good doing it in the eyes of the world (at least for awhile), prove to be far too great a temptation for the Hillarys of the world.  And, of course, the take-away for Obama was that he didn’t intervene enough.  Convenient, but an all-too-common moral learned from interventions, either abroad in the form of war, or domestically in the form of regulation, bail-outs, or “stimulus”.  The problem is the intervention that paves the way for greater intervention.  That initial intervention that creates the chaos that makes it far too easy to get the ball rolling for round two.  Iraq is a perfect example.  9/11 created a climate of opinion that paved the way for the 2003 invasion.  The ensuing chaos ensured the excuse would be there to grease the skids for an endless stream of weapons, soldiers, and trillions of dollars pouring into an interventionist black hole.

Interventionism begets chaos begets interventionism begets…

Deadly, unrefrigerated vaccines distributed across two-thirds of China since 2010.  Now parents are furious.  The great Jon Rappaport has the story.

Contrary to what the gullible LA Times claimed.  Guardian

The Pentagon says only 20 civilian deaths have occurred due to their strikes against ISIS since September, after initially claiming no civilian deaths.  Rights groups are calling BS on that number, claiming instead that over 500 innocent have died from the Pentagon’s air war against the terrorist group. Antiwar

Legalize the former, and perhaps ban the latter, according to him. Reason

The DEA has green-lit research into smoked marijuana for PTSD treatment

How Israel misled the U.S. about its nuclear program

FBI thinks it was “worth it” to cough up $1.3 million to hack a worthless iPhone

Now here’s a Tubman $20 I could get behind.  Seriously, portray her in her prime as the rebel she was.

FEMA trains Texas cops on how to deal with riots, how to make mass arrests

Court tell cops to give back the $276,000 they took from two brothers on a hunch it might be drug-related.  Cops were relying on the bogus “alerts” from their drug dogs.

An elk scream is truly terrifying

Colombia is rightly recognizing that the War on Drugs has been nothing more than an engine for the creation of criminals, violence, impoverishment, and a vast police state.  It’s also given the excuse for a DEA invasion of the country, as the agency pours taxpayer billions into the South American Drug War and supplies the Colombian military with training and weapons.  The only solution for the citizens of Colombia, who bear the brunt of the failed experiment in coca prohibition, is complete legalization of cocaine production.  It’s the same solution for Mexico and the rest of Central and South America: legalize drugs and violence and oppressive police state tactics will end.  But they shouldn’t wait around for the approval of the world.  They should act on their own, and ignore the empty threats from the US Prohibition State.  The quality of life of the poorest, most vulnerable citizens is at stake.