I come to this post late, having spent the day engaged in hand to hand combat with the garden. Having a source of food may come in handy in these interesting times. I am shifting to production of staple crops in case it gets hungry out. But I am not young anymore and it took a lot out of me. And it is late. This may not be expressed as elegantly or precisely as I would like. I would ask that Wretchard review this post to see if he wants it up in what is, after all, his house.

There was some mention of parts of what I am putting up here, but the thoughts were not taken farther and connected. The thoughts are such that Wretchard may decide to make this comment disappear. If he does so, it will be understood, because I am running along the razor’s edge.

# 76 David Joslin

Really, the question is what counts as community. Is it religion? Is it class? Is it a shared self-interest in certain market arrangements or bureaucratic structures? If it is not clear how people relate to each other, then the temptation to resolve the uncertainty through violence is inevitable. At the bottom there is one language everyone speaks: the language of the body, the compulsion of pain and death.

In US -v- Verdugo-Urquidez the Supreme court had to try to define the concept of “National Community” in a case that turned on how far the rights guaranteed under the Constitution reached. It is not a decision that anyone on the Left likes to cite, and in fact Democrats and other TWANLOC would like to pretend that it does not exist; because they do not agree with one of the main points. When parsing the meaning of the Constitution, the first definition that they all agreed on was that anywhere the words “the People” were used, it was a term of art specifically referring to a right that was inherent in the individual, inalienable, and not subject to removal by the State. This is fundamental.

One of the defining characteristics of those I refer to as TWANLOC [and I admit, the title I give is chasing the tail of what I am saying now] is that they are unrelenting and consistent in their efforts to alienate and remove just those rights enumerated in the Constitution and replace them with qualifications determined by them that determine if rights can be exercised. Democrats by their nature would love the old Soviet Constitution that promised all sorts of rights granted by the State, and in practice took them away via the all powerful Party; especially something like Article 58 of the RSFSR Penal Code. An example of this type of person is Buraq Hussein’s latest nominee to the Supreme Court, one Elena Kagen.

First let me say, since TWANLOC are trying to invent a bogus claim of Conservative homophobia when Kagen’s sexual orientation is at worst uncertain; that I do not care who or what she sleeps with, in whatever numbers, combinations, or complicated formations so long as certain caveats are not broken. All parties need to be mentally competent consenting adults, the ASPCA does not need to get involved, and they don’t do it in the streets and scare the horses, cause traffic jams, or require an emergency call out of the Department of Sanitation.

What does concern me is her political intentions. No one nominated by Buraq Hussein Obama is going to be an impartial jurist seeking to preserve the Constitution and the rule of law. Neither is a concern of the current regime. So far [and it is early days] I would want to know if she believes that the Constitution’s Commerce Clause is so all encompassing that it can be used to force all individuals to purchase a specific product as dictated by the government as the price of breathing, and I would like to have a detailed explanation, with follow up questions as needed, of her 1996 article in the University of Chicago Law Review entitled, “Private Speech, Public Purpose: The Role of Governmental Motive in First Amendment Doctrine”. Specifically, there is the matter of her interpretation of the First Amendment. She argued that government can restrict speech if it believes that speech might cause harm, either directly or by inciting others to do harm.

Laws that only incidentally affect speech are constitutional, Kagan said, because the government’s motive in enacting them is not the restriction of First Amendment freedom but the prohibition of some other – unprotected – activity. One assumes, given the last year and a half, that opposing the will of the government would be considered subject to restriction on both basis’ of “harm”. And that her arguments for the government reining in all that inconvenient Free Speech was a factor in her being named Solicitor General and appointed to the Supreme Court.

She cannot run away from that article, by claiming that her views have changed over time; because last September she testified as Solicitor General before the very Supreme Court that she would sit on, that the government has the right and power to ban political pamphlets. Video at the link below:

http://cnsnews.com/cnsnewstv/v/Xd6USU2G2G

“Congress shall make no law” is so 18th Century. Especially since now the perfect regime is in power.

While Kagen is but the latest example, can one rationally conclude that she, and those who appoint her, and those who support her are really of the same Community as the rest of us? And after pondering that, look back at Mr. Joslin’s most edifying paragraph.

Continuing:

# 64 Peter Boston

I would bet anything that the same technology used to track the Taliban in Waziristan is being used to track potential “enemies” of the administration within the USA. We can use the words of the Congress critters and the POTUS himself to define who would be likely to fall within the meaning of enemy.

I wonder what the over-under is for the first use? 2016?

That bet is already outdated, because it is already being done. Keeping in mind that the one consistency in this regime is their disregard of the law and the Constitution, it is indulging in fantasy of the first order to believe that a mere statute, Posse Comitatus, would limit the actions of a Federal government led by ‘Teh Won’. We recently had proof, and it was done slickly enough that we can be sure that it was not the first time.

CBSTV, Channel 2 had a story, which we commented on here at BC, on May 4 claiming that military planes circling New York City and waiting for the Times Square Bomber Faisal Shahzad to use his cell phone were instrumental in his rapid capture. Within a few hours, that paragraph was removed from all CBS news reports. It is without doubt that any such capability is at the interface between military and NSA. Neither are allowed by law to operate within the United States as law enforcement.

Despite the belated censorship, a number of sources pinned it down to the use of RC-12 Guardrail Signals Intelligence platform, which is described here:

http://tinyurl.com/2g5e56x

The ground-based Guardrail system uses airborne receivers to collect signals intelligence (SIGINT) and geolocate enemy communications and radar emitters in near real-time. Linked by satellite to an Integrated Processing Facility at Fort Hood, Texas, the antenna-spiked turboprops of the 15th Military Intelligence Battalion (Aerial Exploitation) were the first manned intelligence collection platforms to fly combat missions over Iraq in 2003. Guardrail intelligence has been credited with saving coalition lives in Afghanistan as well.

Now, does this sound like part of what Wretchard described

According to this view the challenge comes from the grassroots. To some extent the challenge of distributed warfare has been accepted, and war in the grassroots it is. One example of a America’s counter is the so-called “pattern of life” of life targeting, which tracks individuals, such that if a person looks persistently guilty, then he is ‘engaged’.

applied domestically?

In my small mountain town, our TEA Party gatherings have been photographed by obvious strangers in town. Who are they from? I have seen people who do not look like media taking pictures from a distance with very big lenses at larger demonstrations. Who are they working for? Every organ of the State and its controlled media are insistent that disagreeing with the Democrats in DC is the same as terrorism. Are the tactics being used by the military against “distributed warfare” overseas being used by the government against Americans at home whose legal political opposition is considered a threat analogous to terrorist activity abroad? It is a question with many implications no matter how it is answered.

Aside from the immediate intentions of the regime, there is the fact that if all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. How long before the domestic system evolves to parallel the overseas “pattern of life” template?

We opened with a discussion of Community. If our political class [and I do not exempt a goodly part of the Republican Party from being willing to go along with this] is engaging and possibly preparing to further engage the American people with the same tactics used against the Taliban and Al Quada, are they really part of the same Community that we are part of? Where do they stand when we are defining “us” and “them”? I originated TWANLOC as a form of shorthand some time ago. That shorthand may become a hard definition soon.

If the government is using the tactics it uses against “distributed warfare” against us now, what is the appropriate response once people are “engaged” at whatever level? What rational preparations should each Patriot be making, mentally and otherwise?

I will add another thought expressed by one of the other commenters:

#33. Foont

If I lived in a country where a foreign power was keeping my fellow citizens under surveillance
(and very likely me as well) and, based upon patterns of behavior determined to be sufficiently
threatening by agents of that power, blowing up said fellow citizens (along with “collateral” damage
to anyone unfortunate enough to the immediate vicinity) I would take up arms against the power. It really wouldn’t make much
difference to me what the competing ideologies were.

If the government is no longer of our Community, is indeed TWANLOC, and acting as Foont describes, are they not a “foreign power” in fact, if not in name?

Which may lead to the questions offered by #6 Mike Anderson and #25 Michael acquiring some urgency.

I opened by mentioning that this comment is running along the razor’s edge. The government acts setting up this situation are also running along a similar edge. The consequences of slipping are non-trivial.

Subotai Bahadur