U.S. Citizens Have No Obligation To Answer Questions

I am really glad to see this.  I will remember this next time I cross a border.

KNIFE TRICKS: I Am Detained By The Feds For Not Answering Questions

Sherman Oaks, California

I was detained last night by
federal authorities at San Francisco International Airport for refusing
to answer questions about why I had travelled outside the United States.

The
end result is that, after waiting for about half an hour and refusing
to answer further questions, I was released – because U.S. citizens who
have produced proof of citizenship and a written customs declaration are
not obligated to answer questions.

[snip]

Principal Take-Aways

1. Cops Really Don’t Like It When You Refuse To Answer Their Questions.
The passport control officer was aghast when I told her that my visit
to China was none of her business. This must not happen often, because
several of the officers involved seemed thrown by my refusal to meekly
bend to their whim.

2. They’re Keeping Records. A federal, computer-searchable file exists on my refusal to answer questions.

3. This Is About Power, Not Security.
The CBP goons want U.S. citizens to answer their questions as a
ritualistic bow to their power. Well, CBP has no power over me. I am a
law-abiding citizen, and, as such, I am the master, and the federal cops
are my servants. They would do well to remember that.

4. U.S. Citizens Have No Obligation To Answer Questions.
Ultimately, the cops let me go, because there was nothing they could
do. A returning U.S. citizen has an obligation to provide proof of
citizenship, and the officer has legitimate reasons to investigate if
she suspects the veracity of the citizenship claim. A U.S. citizen
returning with goods also has an obligation to complete a written
customs declaration. But that’s it. You don’t have to answer questions
about where you went, why you went, who you saw, etc.

Of course, if you don’t, you get hassled.

But that’s a small price to pay to remind these thugs that their powers are limited and restricted.

Seriously disgusting abuse of government power

Back to blogging ... been "AFK" for a while. Will try to post links and more a little more often.

Morning Links | The Agitator

Department of Transportation fines non-profit air ambulance service $30,000 for using the wrong pronoun.

Global Cooling Is Coming -- and Beware the Big Chill, Scientist Warns

FOXNews.com - Global Cooling Is Coming -- and Beware the Big Chill, Scientist Warns

Contrary to the commonly held scientific conclusion that the Earth is getting warmer, a scientist who has written more than 150 peer-reviewed papers has unveiled evidence for his prediction that global cooling is coming soon.

Like a drunken sailor?

Here's a really short, right-on-the-money comment on Congress's spending "like a drunken sailor".

» One Sailor’s View of Obama & Congress
Dvorak Uncensored: General interest observations and true web-log.

It's a sad day in America when this is good advice

Unfortunately America is becoming more and more like AmeriKa ... "papers please" is becoming the norm, and the Obamination that is our current "leader" isn't making it any better ....

The Liberty Papers »Blog Archive » Flex Your Rights Presents: 10 Rules for Dealing with Police

The Bill of Rights provides citizens basic protections against unlawful searches and seizures via the Fourth Amendment, protections against self incrimination via the Fifth Amendment, and the right to an attorney via the Sixth Amendment. On a theoretical level, most people probably know this but what does this mean on a practical level?

If the police pull you over, are you required to answer the officer’s questions if he hasn’t informed you of your right to remain silent? What does “probable cause” and “reasonable suspicion” mean when a police officer wants to search your vehicle and do you have a right to refuse the search? Should you consent to the search if you know you have nothing to hide? If the police knock on your front door, are you legally required to let them in if they don’t have a warrant? Are the police legally required to tell the truth or can they make false promises or otherwise trick you into waiving your constitutionally protected civil rights?

If you are unsure about the answers to these questions, don’t feel bad; I wasn’t too sure myself. The 4 part video series 10 Rules for Dealing with Police from the group that calls itself Flex Your Rights answers these questions and more in terms a lay person like myself can easily understand. Some of the advice is common sense (see rules 1, 7, & 8 below) while others are more legal in nature.

Whether you are a “law abiding citizen” who almost never has an encounter with the police or a “cop magnet,” this advice not only could keep you from being in serious legal trouble but also keep you from being beaten, tazered, or shot (if you follow these rules and these things still happen, you have more legal recourse against offending officers).

If you don’t have time to watch these videos right away, here are the 10 Rules for Dealing with Police in brief:

Read the article ... Flex Your Rights Presents: 10 Rules for Dealing with Police

Don't trust Wikipedia when it comes to climate issues

When you are researching on the Internet, Wikipedia has become the "place to go" for most research.  However, when it comes to climate issues, particularly those related to Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), Wikipedia can't be trusted.  This has been well documented by several researchers -- if you make a change to an AGW article which mentions climate skeptics favourably, the change will be reversed quickly.

Climategate: the corruption of Wikipedia – Telegraph Blogs

If you want to know the truth about Climategate, definitely don’t use Wikipedia. “Climatic Research Unit e-mail controversy”, is its preferred, mealy-mouthed euphemism to describe the greatest scientific scandal of the modern age. Not that you’d ever guess it was a scandal from the accompanying article. It reads more like a damage-limitation press release put out by concerned friends and sympathisers of the lying, cheating, data-rigging scientists

Which funnily enough, is pretty much what it is. Even Wikipedia’s own moderators acknowledge that the entry has been hijacked, as this commentary by an “uninvolved editor” makes clear.

Unfortunately, this naked bias and corruption has infected the supposedly neutral Wikipedia’s entire coverage of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) theory. And much of this, as Lawrence Solomon reports in the National Post, is the work of one man, a Cambridge-based scientist and Green Party activist named William Connolley.

The American Spectator : Wikipedia Meets Its Own Climategate

.... the use of Wikipedia itself to inflame the political debate by permitting activists to rewrite the contributions of others. All by itself, that surely is a contributor to online incivility.

The issue that I am particularly thinking about is "climate change" -- or global warming as it was once called (until the globe stopped warming, about a decade ago). Recently the Financial Post in Canada published an article by Lawrence Solomon, with this remarkable headline:

How Wikipedia's green doctor rewrote 5,428 climate articles.

Solomon draws attention to the online labors of one William M. Connolley, a Green Party activist and software engineer in Britain. Starting in February 2003, Connolley set to work on the Wikipedia site. I continue with a two-paragraph direct quote from Mr. Solomon's article:

[Connolley] rewrote Wikipedia's articles on global warming, on the greenhouse effect, on the instrumental temperature record, on the urban heat island, on climate models, on global cooling. On Feb. 14, he began to erase the Little Ice Age; on Aug. 11, the Medieval Warm Period. In October, he turned his attention to the hockey stick graph. He rewrote articles on the politics of global warming and on the scientists who were skeptical of the band [of climatologist activists]. Richard Lindzen and Fred Singer, two of the world's most distinguished climate scientists, were among his early targets, followed by others that the band [of activists] especially hated, such as Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, authorities on the Medieval Warm Period.

All told, Connolley created or rewrote 5,428 unique Wikipedia articles. His control over Wikipedia was greater still, however, through the role he obtained at Wikipedia as a website administrator, which allowed him to act with virtual impunity. When Connolley didn't like the subject of a certain article, he removed it -- more than 500 articles of various descriptions disappeared at his hand. When he disapproved of the arguments that others were making, he often had them barred -- over 2,000 Wikipedia contributors who ran afoul of him found themselves blocked from making further contributions. Acolytes whose writing conformed to Connolley's global warming views, in contrast, were rewarded with Wikipedia's blessings. In these ways, Connolley turned Wikipedia into the missionary wing of the global warming movement.

Lawrence Solomon: Climategate at Wikipedia - FP Comment

A perfect storm is brewing for the IPCC - Telegraph

VERY good article about why the IPCC is dead in the water.

A perfect storm is brewing for the IPCC - Telegraph