“It is not an easy task to unring a bell, nor to remove from the mind an impression once firmly imprinted there*”

“I’m not anti-government …. I’m just pro Freedom”.

-Ladar Levison, (the founder of secure email provider Lavabit, facing a court case because he closed his company rather than hand over encryption keys) interviewed in the interactive UK Guardian piece published November, 2013

Whether or not you think Snowden was a traitor or a hero; the fact remains that “the bell can not be unrung”.

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Jacob Appelbaum is a US citizen and core member of TOR project (funded originally to provide internet communication security).  He writes open source software, is an independent security software developer, activist hacker and passionate resister to tyranny.
He has stated in past interviews that he believes “personal privacy and institutional transparency are complementary ideas that help to create a free and open society …..Tor is part of an ecosystem of software that helps people regain and reclaim their autonomy. It helps to enable people to have agency of all kinds; it helps others to help each other and it helps you to help yourself. It runs, it is open and it is supported by a large community spread across all walks of life.”
Appelbaum eloquently discusses warrantless or “open writ” dragnet surveillance as “turnkey tyranny” and posits that the black budget agencies that engage in such surveillance are violating the 3rd Amendment Rights of US Citizens, likening the actions of the NSA to de facto “digital soldiers” being quartered in our homes without our knowledge or permission. (more…)

A well known and generous doctor, father to twelve children (three of the twelve are adopted), is devastated over the violent murder of his adopted daughter, by a younger adopted sibling.  The young woman was stabbed to death multiple times in front of other siblings in the kitchen of the family’s Washington Township, New Jersey home.
The alleged murderer, 17, is in police custody, charged with murder with a determination to be made by prosecutors within 30 days on whether or not to charge him as an adult.
The family is naturally – devastated – and grapples to understand what went so terribly wrong in what they describe as their “loving, close-knit family…..”
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RUSH LIMBAUGH […]  Now, last year, before HealthCare.gov opened for business, the Regime said they needed seven million before the end of the year, before this day. They needed seven million, and over the weekend they were doing hoops and making dances and having parties because they claimed that the corner had been turned and 2.1 million people had signed up.
So somebody said, “Well, wait, you said you needed seven million,” and they’re saying, “No, we didn’t,” but they did.  It’s on tape, it’s in print, but they’re just denying it.  “We didn’t say seven million! Nobody ever said seven million,” and in a political sense, the Republicans don’t know what to do with this.  Do you know how to deal with a liar?  It is a challenging thing to deal with a liar. But these people, this is a political party that just lies as a matter of course.
The problem with it is that the impressionable low-information people who vote for them believe all these lies, and then they create lives, circumstances, based on a series of lies.  And then standards begin to crumble, and then promises mean nothing, and then honor and integrity come to mean nothing, and then standards don’t exist.  And then there’s nothing accountable and nothing anybody can depend on.  So there aren’t any guardrails — and that’s where we are, in many ways, in our culture.  (more…)

The progressive mantra of modern liberalism is flailing miserably everywhere you look and the media protestations of a “Do Nothing Congress” are flares shooting up from their encampments identifying exactly where they reside.

All around us are signs the various liberalist causes are visibly in the minority.   The odd thing is how willing the progressives are to out their failing positions.    Against the liberal yard-stick of emotional legislative advancement, which is diametrically antithetical to freedom, the media are proclaiming congress as failed.
However, when you consider that stopping intrusion by government into your life is a central tenant of freedom this congress is the most successful in a decade.
Coast to coast people are showing their pushback against the nanny state.    People are rising up, or using their TV remotes, or tuning their car radios, or expressing their voice, to reflect an ideology of freedom in opposition to the current federal administration and the beliefs they visibly represent. (more…)

The Washington Times reports on the filing of federal Hate Crimes charges in connection with a “Knock Out Assault” that was videotaped:

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“Suspected crimes of this nature will simply not be tolerated,” said Kenneth Magidson the U.S. attorney for the southern district of Texas. “Evidence of hate crimes will be vigorously investigated and prosecuted with the assistance of all our partners to the fullest extent of the law.”

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Venezuela, in a squeeze for hard currency, devalued its currency for foreigners another 44%, following an initial devaluation of 32% by Chavez in February.  The move is seen as a necessity to keep Venezuela from defaulting on sovereign debt when reliance on excessively high levels of public spending has been the tool of Chavez and his successor, Maduro, to maintain their grip on power.  It is the 6th such major devaluation in a decade.
The move is essentially a bookkeeping sleight-of-hand – it allows the Venezuelan central bank to balance its books by “earning” more Bolivars for its oil export sales, at a time when overall sales volume has decreased dramatically.

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No, this is not a spoof – it’s an actual news story.   There are many people in Iceland who take their belief in Elves very seriously.
Very seriously.

The Nordic island’s “Huldufolk” or “hidden folk” affect construction plans so regularly that the road and coastal administration has come up with a stock media response for elf inquiries.
It reads: “Issues have been settled by delaying the construction project at a certain point while the elves living there have supposedly moved on.”
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https://www.facebook.com/chickphiladay
You can expect a lot of this from the crew at Em-Ess-En-Bee-Cee:
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Scott Gurney was the executive director of the Duck Dynasty 2012/13 season (10 episodes), and listed as current executive producer.   Given his background and gay lifestyle  the recent controversy begins to make sense.  It does not take a deep thinker to see how Mr. Gurney would be ideologically torn between being gay himself and yet producing a show where the family beliefs are in diametric opposition to his own.

One of the common denominators with gay militancy is their willingness to advance their demands of acceptance at any cost.      

(Via Raw Story) The producer and creator of the A&E show “Duck Dynasty” once starred in a dark, homoerotic indie film about the gay porn industry called “The Fluffer.”
BuzzFeed reported Friday that in 2001, Scott Gurney played a “gay-for-pay” meth addict who acts in erotic videos. The film premiered that year at the Toronto Film Festival.
“The Fluffer” revolved around the destructive relationship between Gurney’s character and a gay college student — played by Michael Cunio — employed to keep Gurney aroused on set during filming. For now, noted BuzzFeed reporter Kate Arthur, the film remains proudly displayed on Gurney’s IMDB page.
The revelation provides an interesting — and some would say amusing — counterpoint to the media flap that has swept up around remarks by “Duck Dynasty” Phil Robertson.  (read more)