Between the new Intelligence Authorization Act, Cromnibus, the new NLRB rules issued yesterday, and a few other gems, it seems our Founders can’t spin in their graves fast enough to keep up with the pace of the march toward statism. Join us during tonight’s show to discuss and vent a bit. See Program Notes, below, for all the stories, etc., we plan to discuss.
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Program Notes
Check out Bosch’s Christmas Sale!
Congress ‘Endorses’ Warrantless Collection, Storage of U.S. Communications
Breaking: Congress Passes Bill Giving Police Unlimited Access to Citizens’ Private Communications
Senate Leaders Press for Quick Passage of Spending Bill
Big Labor Gets Early Christmas Present from NLRB
Trey Gowdy GRILLS Jonathan Gruber. Did You Apologize Because You Said It Or Meant It?
300 Former Obama Staffers Urge Elizabeth Warren to Run for President
J.L. Granatstein: Low oil prices are part of a Saudi long game HT Brian Tinker
Greenpeace apologises to people of Peru over Nazca lines stunt HT Rob Abiera
A Flawed Report’s Important Lesson
Atheists Face Persecution Worldwide, Report Says
Shimer College: the worst school in America? HT Brian Yoder
Nation’s Largest Eminent Domain Land Grab Defeated
Preet’s overreach: Insider-trading-case slapdown HT Yaron Brook
Don't Let It Go 
Rep. Massie Questions Obamacare Architect Jonathan Gruber at OGR Hearing
Obamacare Chief Architect Is a Sneaky Imbecile
Gruber openly violates oath, refuses to disclose Obamacare income, then lies
In total, from the Clinton years, Bush years, and through the Obama years to date, the records available show that Gruber was paid $2,216,000 in taxpayer money from the federal government.
Clinton: $516,000
Bush: $1,248,000
Obama: $452,600
Thank you for these, Craig. Definitely one of the many outrages to be discussed this evening, along with the GOP patting itself on the back for merely putting on a show in the hearings.
The Forecaster – Official Trailer HD
Líneas de Nasca:
Activistas de Greenpeace recibirían hasta 8 años de cárcel
—————————————————————————
Nazca Lines:
Greenpeace activists could get up to 8 years in jail
http://peru21.pe/actualidad/lineas-nasca-ministerio-cultura-rechazo-disculpas-greenpeace-2206239?href=nota_rel
[Video]
[translated excerpts]
The Vice Minister of Cultural Heritage of the Ministry of Culture, Luis Jaime Castillo, …
recounted that said activists visited his office to offer their apologies for placing a message together with the Colibri [Hummingbird] of the Nazca Lines, but they “were not accepted.”
“They offered apologies but did not acknowledge the damage they did, that has been confirmed by an examination made by the archaeological experts of the Ministry (of Culture), the Attorney General and the Police,” said Castillo on Channel N..
…
Showing his disgust at what happened, Castillo recognized that it would be impossible to fix the damage and that he would only accept the apologies of Greenpeace “the day in which they return the Nazca Lines to us in the way they found them.”
…
Dr. Peikoff, The following OpEd from the Washington Post gives the conventional argument against use of torture in interrogating prisoners. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-cia-torturers-should-be-prosecuted/2014/12/12/f034acae-8159-11e4-9f38-95a187e4c1f7_story.html?wpisrc=nl-headlines&wpmm=1 The CIA torturers should be prosecuted And these arguments are not without merit. But there is a more fundamental rationale in opposing use of torture in interrogating prisoners. A prisoner is not a convict. The prisoner has not received a trial under due process of law, resulting in a conviction for a crime and the award of a penalty prescribed by law. Agents of the CIA or any other agents of government are not omniscient. In fact, the Senate Intelligence Committee report that prompted the article indicates that 26 of 119 CIA prisoners in the war with fundamentalist Islam were eventually judged to be innocent. Moreover, there have been news reports of prisoners released from custody that were later discovered to be fighting with the enemy in the war with fundamentalist Islam. So both false positive and false negative mistakes have been made in evaluating prisoners. Of course, trials under due process of law can result in error, also. But the rules for conducting such trials are designed to minimize the risk, and the risk of error should certainly be significantly smaller than when the accuser, the judge, the jury, and the executioner of the penalty are all the same person or agency—whose conduct is not subject to review by an outside arbiter. There is a reason why the judiciary is separate from the executive in our government. That our current system of criminal trial may be highly inefficient and far too long in duration, especially when the appeal process from the trial is considered—this is no excuse for an end-run around due process of law. Rather, it is grounds for amending the faulty system. Moreover, there is no reason why the prisoners in the war with fundamentalist Islam can’t be tried under special courts with appropriate rules of procedure. Congress has the power to authorize this. A final point to consider is the issue of “cruel and unusual punishment.” If interrogation under torture were awarded as a penalty to a convict, would the Supreme Court accept this? Would the people and their representatives in Congress accept this? If not, then how is it that it should be accepted for application to a prisoner that has not been tried and convicted of a crime? Terry D. Brown
Those who have ends they wish government to pursue always assume that state officials will be omniscient and infallible in doing so. The intended end is all that matters and the means and actual results need not be considered. Therefore, it is not necessary to limit state power nor is it desirable to do so when that might interfere with the ability to accomplish those ends. This applies to Objectivists as much as it does to socialists.
Full Constitutional protections do not apply to foreigners, nor should they, except by treaty. To argue otherwise is not merely moral relativism, but ultimately an attack on the concept of the nation-state system itself, i.e., anti-Westernism.
If the foreign populations from which these detainees come were basically rational and deserving of full U.S. Constitutional protections, why don’t their countries have treaties with us? Because they are not, that’s why.