Just a reminder that I’ll only be writing the Morning Briefing through Wednesday of this week. And if you have any good tips of smoking turkeys, send ‘em my way. I’ll be throwing my first on the Big Green Egg at some point before sunrise on Thursday. — Erick
1. The U.S. Police State Outrages Continue: Why is the TSA strip searching little boys?
2. Your Voice is like Kryptonite to Bad Politicians
3. No more kicking the tax hike can.
4. Democrats already forgetting the midterms?
5. Overreaching Food “Safety” Modernization Act Would Destroy Family Farmers
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1. The U.S. Police State Outrages Continue: Why is the TSA strip searching little boys?
You may have heard about Janet Napolitano’s blue shirts forcing a cancer-surviving flight attendant to remove her prosthetic breast, or the woman whose pants the TSA’s hand went down.
You may have also heard about the woman who was singled out because she was wearing a skirt.
You may have also heard about the cancer survivor who, due to an “enhanced” TSA pat-down breaking the seal on his urastomy bag, was left humiliated, in tears, and covered in his own urine.
Now, meet a little boy who was randomly selected for an “enhanced” screening by the TSA.
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2. Your Voice is like Kryptonite to Bad Politicians
Until 2008 it was actually a crime in Texas under the state’s ethics rules for citizens to voice support or opposition for anybody running for Speaker of the House. This law, while longstanding, was blatantly un-constitutional. Thanks to the hard work of the great team at the Liberty Institute the situation was remedied (back then it was called Free Market Foundation.)
The Federal Court ruled that, “The election of the speaker is not, therefore, a matter of internal Housekeeping. It is an issue of great political importance and a legitimate subject for public debate.” (Free Market Foundation v. Reisman, 573 F.Supp.2d 952, 955 (W.D. Tex. 2008)
Since the decision in 2008 it has been legal for Texans to use their Constitutional right to free speech to voice their opinion regarding the election of one of Texas’ most powerful leaders. Still, some people don’t seem to like common folk like us speaking up.
A few weeks ago, Speaker Joe Straus (the liberal Republican speaker that is running for re-election) lashed out at “outside forces” that were trying to have an impact on the Speaker race. From that kind of label you might think that big corporate donors or crony lobbyists were slandering Straus and throwing big wads of money to fight his re-election. The reality is that the outcry for a conservative speaker is coming from you, the conservative resurgence.
As if the incumbent Speaker telling you to sit adown and shut-up isn’t enough, Chuck Hopson (Straus’ Democrat-recently-turned-Republican Chair of the House Ethics Committee) sent a letter to the legislature offering them a “word of caution.” In this letter Chairman Hopson points to anti-bribery statutes and insinuates that letting a constituent or organization influence your vote for Speaker is illegal.
Ok, so we’ve got the sitting Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives telling you to sit down and shut up and his Ethics Committee Chairman is telling you that it may be illegal to tell our Representatives to actually represent you. Could this get more crooked?
Sadly, yes.
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3. No more kicking the tax hike can.
The fascinating thing about the upcoming Obama tax hikes - and I imagine that the irony that if the Democrats had just made Bush’s tax cuts permanent in the first [place] then they wouldn’t be in this mess right now hasn’t been lost on the Democratic leadership* - is that they’re hardly inevitable. The current ratio is 255/180 Democrat/Republican in the House; 58/41 (Kirk needs to be seated, still) in the Senate. The Democrats can easily pass a bill that will ensure that people’s taxes will not automatically rise in January; and they can pass it whenever they like.
And, really, the Democrats know this.
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4. Democrats already forgetting the midterms?
After the election, it seemed like the White House might have gotten the message. Obama said “the overwhelming message that I hear from the voters is that we…want you to work harder to arrive at consensus. We want you to focus completely on jobs and the economy…” White House officials were reported to be “deeply concerned about winning back political independents”. The FCC also seemed to get it. Chairman Genachowski said “At the FCC, our primary focus is simple: the economy and jobs.”
Message received, right?
Apparently not.
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5. Overreaching Food “Safety” Modernization Act Would Destroy Family Farmers
The Senate has voted to take up consideration of S.510, the so-called Food Safety Modernization Act, which would grant the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) more control over our diets. The supposed intention behind the legislation is to protect consumers from food-borne illnesses. But will it really?
If passed, the misnamed Food Safety and Modernization Act would authorize the FDA to tell farmers how to grow their crops. Federal bureaucrats who likely know little to nothing about farming will set the guidelines on appropriate temperatures, what soil to use, how much water to use and what animals are allowed to be on certain fields.
A study by Senator Tom Coburn’s (R-OK) office states “on the whole this bill represents a weighty new regulatory structure on the food industry that will be particularly difficult for small producers and farms to comply with (with little evidence it will make food safer)”
Please click here for the rest of the post.
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