The Short Form of Impeachment

It’s nothing new. In most third-world countries impeachment comes at the end of a gun barrel. It’s quite efficient, actually – no prolonged discussion or trial over the wrongdoing of a leader – the military just shows up one day, and presto, a new government is formed.

No, I’m not advocating coup de’etat as always the best way to change government leadership. I do, however, marvel at the efficiency of the process.

President Bill Clinton’s philandering and lying during his administration got him into hot water resulting in impeachment proceedings against him. The House of Representatives had no problem voting for impeachment but the democrats and RINOs in the Senate just couldn’t get the job done. As a result, we were constantly bombarded with new revelations of sexual escapades and cover-ups in the news for most of his term in office.

By contrast, in Egypt, democratically elected president Mohammed Morsi provoked the ire of the Egyptian public by not making good on campaign promises and using his close association with the radical Muslim Brotherhood to inch closer to increasing Sharia law. As the numbers of protesters demanding Morsi step down climbed to hundreds of thousands, Army leaders gave the president fair warning then stepped in to replace him.

This was a real and incorruptible vote of the public – no inked fingers, no stuffed ballot boxes or hanging chads, no vote from graveyards, and no political shenanigans. The number of Egyptians protesting in the streets against Mohamed Morsi outnumbered those in support of him – mainly those in the radical Muslim Brotherhood. Someone had to listen to the voice of the people and do something else risk a civil war, ala Syria. It is unfortunate that the army had to be that someone, but they got the job done and without a lot of bloodshed.

By contrast, this style of impeachment voting has had a negative effect in Syria. Despite the departure of many high-ranking figures in the Syrian Army, they have turned against the people of Syria in unwarranted defense of the despot in charge, president Bashar Assad.

Government overthrows are nothing new. They were old-hat when Brutus and his Senate comrades hacked Caesar to death in Rome. But what I find interesting in the Egyptian process is the rejection of a leader once elected  -- albeit in a questionably free election by a mostly Islamic influenced vote -- then rejected for moving ever closer to Sharia law.

Radical Islam take note! Once a people have tasted freedom, even in a highly Islamic country as Egypt, they are not likely to be shackled under the oppression of strict Sharia rule.

Our own beloved third President and author of the US Declaration of Independence once advocated the short form of impeachment when he said, “The tree of liberty must from time to time be nourished by the blood of tyrants.” The situation in Egypt should serve as a reminder to all tyrannical despots of Jefferson’s words.

Creatures From Another Dimension

In Texas, they call them “aints”. Here, I call them a huge pain. I’m talking about those humble, tiny, indefatigable, pestilent creatures that appear in mega-force during summer anywhere they like in your house to devour anything edible – ants.

No, they aren’t just for picnics any more. These things are everywhere.

I tried checking the web to identify them, but the little buggers are so tiny you can’t just grab one to check it out. Identification seems to hinge on characteristics like the petiole nodes, thorax, head, smell, size, and other esoteric stuff. By the time I’m able to pick one up, there isn’t much left of it to identify. I can’t smell anything from the dead ant. Near as I can tell, the ones assailing my house – yes, we are under siege -- are probably the ubiquitous Argentine ants.

It’s an annual event in most households of the southwest. As the days get longer and warmer, the little suckers get bolder. The web sites seem unanimous on what they’re looking for, sweets. I can tell you with absolute confidence these pests will devour any organic material – including live human flesh. Yes, the critters bite!

We check the toilet thoroughly before having a seat. Getting bit in unmentionable places may sound funny to anyone listening, but to the victim, I assure you, it’s not.

They love lasagna. The other day my wife took the time to bake one of our favorite dishes, lasagna. After baking it for the appropriate time  -- I don’t cook, so I have no idea how long that is – she sat it on the counter to cool. Bad move. It didn’t take long for the little monsters to find this delicacy and invite the whole ant empire for the feast.

I don’t believe they even waited for it to cool. Within minutes there was a dark covering over the dish. And it was moving! An animated black line that looked like the 405 freeway at rush hour extended from the dish to a corner of the counter where it literally disappeared at the wall. I haven’t a clue how they managed to get through the solid wall. I couldn’t find a hole.

With tears in the corner of her eyes, my dear wife muttered a few unprintable words under her breath and gingerly transported our now spoiled dinner outside to the patio table. She spent the next few minutes brushing ants from her arms and other parts of her anatomy. For the next hour, we sprayed and washed down the counter and all around the still hot oven. Those little devils seem impervious to the heat.

Yes, I sprayed insecticide. In early spring, we buy it by the case. I know it’s poison. That’s the point, isn’t it – kill the things, not give them a stern lecture and ask them to leave and not come back. Over the years we tried all the “green” methods to get rid of them, Windex, soapy water, baits…you name it. Maybe it’s a matter of instant gratification, but insecticide spray works immediately. It takes a while to clean the spray residue and little dead ant bodies away, but it’s well worth the effort. Apparently, any fugitives tell their comrades stories of the ant massacre since they don’t usually return to that spot for a while. The rest of the house seems to be fair game, though.

We learned to keep our food in sealed containers. You need to make sure they are sealed tight, though. If there is even the slightest room, the ants will find it and squeeze through. The refrigerator is a good place to keep the ants out, although, one year I found them climbing through the Ice dispenser hole. They must have found a place to get ant overcoats and crampons, because I know they don’t like the cold.

I have a theory about the ants that invade our homes. Don’t laugh. I think they come from another dimension. Try this experiment: Say, you find an ant in the middle of your dining room table. Kill it and make sure there are no more on top of the table. Wait just a split second and another will appear. I know they’re fast, but there is no way they can get from the edge of the table to the middle in that amount of time. They have found a way to shift between dimensions. They’re aliens, and they are out to take over our world.

If that sounds crazy, it’s just because the ants are making me that way.

Spies All

Okay, here’s a trick question: What do traitors Edward Snowden and Patrick Manning have in common, besides being blabbermouth spies? The answer is they are both poster-boys for failings in the screening process of those entrusted with information critical to national security.

"There is an alarmingly insufficient level of oversight of the federal investigative services program" that conducts background checks for security clearances, said Patrick McFarland, the inspector general at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) during a recent congressional hearing. The most alarming revelation is that OPM is the agency that conducts 90 percent of the clearance investigations according to McFarland.

Maybe it’s no coincidence that the people that do investigations for our nation’s security are located in an area of Washington D.C. called “Foggy Bottom.” There must be so much fog there that even the inspector general can’t see what’s going on.

Snowden and Manning aren’t the first Americans to turn on their country and provide foreign countries with classified information. However, they may be the first to make sensitive information available to the global public via the Internet.

CIA counter –intelligence officer Aldrich Ames, FBI agent Richard Miller, United States Navy Chief Warrant Officer John Anthony Walker, and civilian intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard are but a few of the recent high-profile turncoats to spy on the US. They did it for money or sex, though. Snowden and Manning, it seems, are only interested in the infamy associated with betraying their country. I have not heard reports of either being monetarily rewarded for their despicable acts of treason.

Reports have indicated that both Snowden and Manning have character issues that probably should have been more closely investigated before granting access to sensitive information. Snowden admits he intentionally sought out employment at the NSA to obtain classified information. Manning was a homosexual disgruntled with the Army’s attitude toward gays at the time of his foul deed.

There is a mountain of official guidelines, regulations, and directive s specifying everything pertaining to securing sensitive information and issuing clearance to individuals with a need to know this information. The 187 pages of DOD 5200.2-R, Personnel Security Program detail items investigators must look for in a candidate for each of the five levels of clearance. Apparently, the inordinate desire for fame at any cost must not be specifically called out as a disqualifying characteristic.

This is the same cowardly desire that drives mad men to shoot up schools, movie theaters, and other public venues, then commit suicide rather than face the consequences of their actions.

There are those who would term Snowden and Manning “whistleblowers” in the same category as Daniel Elsberg. They are not. Some would even say they are heroes for their disclosures. They are not.

Edward Snowden and Patrick Manning are cowardly traitors whose infamous actions have harmed our country’s security and may even cost American lives. They deserve the same fate as 20^th Century spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

The fate of those responsible for the failings in the Office of Personnel Management should probably be a little less severe, but heads should roll until they get their act together in Foggy Bottom.

The Mythical Age of Secrecy

Our government finally admits what everyone believed all along, they are spying on us. When I was little, the church told us, “God sees everything you do.” As young adults, we had spy movies and books that had us believe the governments of the world could track our every action. Enter the Information Age. Today you can find out just about anything on anyone with the click of a mouse (and credit card number). So why are we surprised to learn that the government actually is collecting data on us? They have been reading our emails via the FBI's carnivore software since 1997.

Spying can be beneficial and at the same time intrusive. Imagine if you will, what might have happened had computers been around in the 1770s.

“King George, we have intercepted email traffic from America. Many of your subjects there are not happy about our Stamp Tax. We believe a rebellion is forming, and they are planning to dump our tea into the bay in Boston”, says Prime Minister North. “We must kill this rebellion immediately”, replies the King. “Send troops at once.”

As you can see, had the Britts had timely knowledge of the rebellion fomenting here, we might all be driving on the wrong side of the road and singing Hail To the Queen today. Even though, they would still have difficulty forcing kidney pie and Yorkshire pudding down this throat.

On the other hand, let’s look at the beginning of the prohibition era. “Mr. Ness, we have intercepted emails that a Chicagoan named Capone is dealing in illegal booze.” Elliot Ness replies, “Take him down now. We can convict him with his emails as evidence.”

We might all be partying with tea today had there been email at that time.

Or how about 1941? “Mr. President, The Japanese Emperor is sending emails about ordering a fleet with aircraft carriers to Hawaii. Tojo sent a call out for enough Sake to get several thousand kamikaze pilots looped enough to bomb Pearl Harbor.” FDR replies, “what those people need is a good public works program to keep them busy.” We still get bombed, but what can you expect from Democrats.

There is an old saying, “knowledge is power.” We know the government is the official seat of power in this and most other countries. Why is it such a shock that the government is gathering information on people? Assuming our government functions to the benefit of its citizens, gathering information on them would seem a good way to protect them.

Privacy is something we all expect when sitting on the can. I’m sure the doomsday preppers would prefer complete privacy everywhere. Then too, so would rebels and terrorists. Just where to draw the line on privacy is a difficult conundrum. I suppose it all comes down to a matter of trusting those gathering your information to do the right thing with that data. There’s not a lot of trust in our government today, which could be the reason for the outcry against gathering data on phone records and Internet communications.

I don’t think it has happened here – at least I pray it hasn’t -- but in some countries mere suspicion, let alone solid information, is enough to make people simply disappear. In our country, there seems to be three options when dangerous and illegal activity is detected: apprehend those responsible, pay them to become informants, or simply ignore the data and leave them to their devices. Even after apprehension, they get a fair but lengthy trial and probably short sentence in a cushy custom resort at taxpayer expense.

The bottom line is we are never going to stop spying by government or private entities. If you have something that absolutely must be kept private, it is incumbent upon you to secure it. You and I have no god-given right to universal privacy, and remember “anything you say (or do) can and will be used against you.” This is especially true of information you place on the Internet, airwaves, or telephone.

No Nuke No More

News Flash: They are closing the San Onofre nuclear power plant for good.

While those farther that 50 miles from the plant have probably read the headline and passed on to more interesting articles in the newspaper, our left-of-left Senator, Barbara Boxer is doing a victory dance that would put most players in the NFL to shame. She is joined by most of those living in San Clemente -- especially those within earshot of the alarms that were going off at the San Onofre power plant. These would be the people whose already pricey home values just rolled up faster than the meter on a California gas pump.

Those on the political left and those on the right have historically taken opposite positions on the use of nuclear energy. As near as I can tell, the Left is populated with those who sleep with a night-light on in fear of monsters climbing from under their beds or out of their closets. They seem deathly afraid that nuclear plants are destined to one day shoot up giant mushroom clouds and irradiate or vaporize the neighborhood. The Right, on the other side of the coin, is all for essentially free energy.

While that is a simplified characterization of a deeply complicated subject, it is clear that both sides may have valid points. As of 16 January 2013, the IAEA report there were 439 nuclear power reactors in operation in 31 countries. Of these, there have been at least 99 (civilian and military) recorded nuclear power plant accidents from 1952 to 2009. The most prominent of these were Chernobyl, Ukraine in 1986; Three-mile Island, Pennsylvania in 1979; and Fukushima, Japan in 2011.

Although 99 out of 439 may not be terrible odds, the failures in these reactors can range from relatively benign, as in San Onofre, to catastrophic, as in Chernobyl, where human habitation may not be allowed for several millennia. That doesn’t necessarily mean all nuclear plants are fundamentally a potential disaster in the waiting. Since the first nuclear power plant went on-line on June 27, 1954, at Obninsk, USSR, there have been huge strides in scientific advancement of the technology of nuclear fission and the construction of safe power plants. Of the 99 failures, operator errors, shoddy materials, or faulty design of the plants caused most. Each failure resulted in advancing the design of safety features or procedures.

Apparently, San Onofre was the victim of shoddy material. Could replacing the defective and potentially defective parts have rectified the problem? The question is moot now. The plant’s owner, Southern California Edison grew tired of the approval delays and loss of revenue and decided to padlock the plant.

It’s not often that you will see me joining Barbara Boxer in celebrating any kind of victory in which she is involved, but I am anything but sad to see a nuclear plant shut down. No, I don’t sleep with a nightlight on. I am not even slightly concerned about the safety of the plants. My main concern is with the disposal of spent nuclear fuel.

When contained, nuclear energy appears to be “clean” and “free” energy. Folks, “free” energy ain’t exactly free, and it’s anything but clean. While most of the energy used on this planet comes either directly (Solar) or indirectly from the sun, nuclear and geothermal energy originate right here on Terra. Of these two forms, only nuclear fission produces waste that is seriously dangerous for thousands of years. It’s kind of like fly paper; once you touch, it you can’t get rid of it.

Although scientists and academics are hard at work on solving the waste problem, we still wind up burying the spent fuel in bunkers underground. And while some greedy operators make money shipping this deadly cargo to third-world countries, others put it right in our own back yards. As far as I’m concerned, this is totally unacceptable. Until they come up with a reasonable plan to dispose of nuclear waste, I will be joining Barbara Boxer in a victory dance every time they shut down another nuclear reactor.

Sovereignty be Damned!

Obama is at it again. This time he is illegally signing his name as President of the United States to a UN agreement that is not only not consented to by the Senate, but was twice rejected by that august body. I am referring to the United Nations Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty (otherwise referred to as ATT). An agreement that potentially could relinquish the rights of this sovereign nation as defined in the Second Amendment to the US Constitution to the whims and fancies of the United Nations.

I say this is illegal because Article II, Section 2 of the US Constitution states “He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur…”

According to reports http://www.infowars.com/obama-to-sign-u-n-firearms-treaty-rejected-by-senate/:

On March 23rd, Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.) introduced an amendment to prevent the U.S. from entering into the treaty. It passed by a vote of 53 to 46.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) introduced another amendment to ensure “that the United States will not negotiate or support treaties that violate Americans’ Second Amendment rights under the Constitution of the United States.” This amendment passed in the Senate by a voice vote.

Does this sound like consent to you? Maybe he doesn’t think this applies to him as spelled out in Article II, Section 1, Paragraph 4 of the Constitution. “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.” There is still a huge question of his eligibility under this clause. (Until this has been completely settled, you will not see me refer to Mr. Obama as President of the United States. I generally call him the imposter-in-chief. Yeah, I’m a “birther.”)

I am writing this column on the 1^st of June. Mr. Obama said he intends to sign the treaty on Monday the 3^rd of June. If he does sign the treaty, he could easily be removed from office under impeachment for violation of Article II, Section 1, Paragraph 6. “Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:--‘I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.’.” He will have clearly violated the oath of office – which he took twice  -- by not defending the Constitution as well as illegally signing the United States to a treaty without the consent of the US Senate.

There are those who will say I’m just biased. True, I not only don’t like the guy, I even campaigned against him. But the law is the law, and it is unequivocally spelled out in the Constitution. It remains to be seen, though, if the Senate will now have enough guts to take impeachment proceedings against Obama. The guy is slippery as taking a fresh caught Bullhead catfish off the line and just as dangerous to handle.

The Nonsense State of California

If anyone doubts that Democrats are knee-jerk reactionaries, they need only look at California for assurances. Our Democrat super-majority passed no fewer than ten Senate bills and five Assembly bills to chip away major portions of the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution. Does anyone doubt that the head Democrat, Gerry Brown will sign these into law? If you voted for these people, shame on you.

Not one of these bills will make even the slightest difference in gun related crime. On the contrary, these bills will make criminals of those already legally in possession of weapons intended for self-protection, home protection, hunting, and sport shooting.

There is not a single bill related to curbing the violent tendencies of those with the mindset to create carnage. Recently in England -- a country with incredible gun control -- a Muslim radical hacked to death a decorated soldier in the streets of London and proudly made a video of it. There was not a gun in sight, only kitchen knives, and a meat cleaver.

On April 11, Dylan Quick allegedly stabbed more than a dozen people at a Houston-area college. He told investigators that he had fantasized about cannibalism and necrophilia and about cutting off people’s faces and wearing them as masks, according to a court document made public. Quick also told an investigator that he had researched mass stabbings on his home computer about a week before the attack at Lone Star College in Cypress, Texas, according to a search warrant affidavit. Again, there were no guns used in this attack.

If you bother to Google “Knife Attacks”, you will come up with page, upon page of hits for reported carnage perpetrated by people who can only be described as criminally insane. Yet their weapon of choice was not a firearm, it was a knife. You can find similar results for just about any other potential weapon, from baseball bats to golf clubs to hammers.

Are these attacks less heinous than those involving firearms? No, they are just not sensational enough to be as widely reported. Democrats, always hungry for anything to control, seem to inevitably glom onto sensational news reports with instant legislation, often without much forethought other than to make a name for themselves as being concerned. They seldom seem to take into account the overwhelming mass of people who would never even think of committing a crime or act of aggression with any type of weapon.

With fifteen anti-gun bills on the Governor’s desk, it is obvious that this is not about public safety. It is about legislators making a name within their party for creating legislation – any kind of legislation – related to a sensational news event. Will this legislation prevent or even hinder criminal action? Not very likely. Is this even well thought out legislation? Definitely not! Not a single piece of this legislation addresses the mental state of a person likely to commit a grievous act of violence. Does any of this legislation provide additional security at venues where a mentally deranged shooter might visit? No on that account too.

What these fifteen pieces of thoughtless legislation will do is make instant criminals of those of us who now own firearms or gun components named in the bills. There are no provisions for “Grandfathering”. You can either turn in your possessions without compensation or risk going to jail. Of course, before our Democrat Governor signs the bills into law, you can always find a “gun buy-back location” and get a chit for something at the supermarket. Maybe you could use it to buy a six-pack of beer to ease the pain of trashing a weapon you paid hundreds for.

To those who voted for this super-majority, don’t complain when they do to you rather than for you. You voted for them; now reap what you have sown. As for me, I will be looking for property in a state where reason prevails.