A new law is being proposed to make sharing TSA body scanner images a crime, AOL reports.

Those found guilty of violating the Security Screening Confidential Data Privacy Act, legislation being co-sponsored by Democratic Sens. Charles Schumer of New York and Ben Nelson of Nebraska, could spend up to a year in prison and be fined up to $100,000.

The disconnect here is just jaw-dropping. They are still searching us without probable cause; treating us as guilty before proven innocent. Privacy violated is privacy violated regardless of whether it is shared or not. We need to abolish the Dept. of Homeland Security and the TSA. Anything short of that is a cocktease, or rather, the audacity of grope.

As I completely expected, an element of the failure of Prop 19 was due to the impact of vicious rumors and propaganda spread by growers and dealers who want to protect their monopoly.

…most of the growers from Northern California’s fertile Humboldt and Mendocino counties were against Prop. 19. … “People will want something faceless and easy,” one grower told me. “They want their fucking Big Mac. In order to make something of quality, you have to deal with a lot more labor and a lot more time. Just use machines, turn out crap, sell it cheap.”

Now the article also points out that the whole growing community amounted 65,000 ballots cast in the 2010 election, but the rumors they spread about how it will jeopardize medical marijuana patients’ legal status may have added to a lot more No votes than just the 65,000. That coupled with people who still believe the tired, old D.A.R.E. mantras lead to the death of Prop 19. A large number of conservatives and Tea Partiers supported Prop 19. Radio talk show host Roger Hedgecock, as well as one of his fill-ins, supported Prop 19. So it’s really a fault of party-line Republicans who don’t really want to open their mind to Tea Party, limited-government, and libertarian ideals and virtually people of all political ideologies who still see pot as the devil’s lettuce. Combine that with grower propaganda and you have the death of Prop 19 (though I’m no statistician, just an observer).

But whether it is a grower wanting to protect their monopoly or a family who is not willing to look outside the box on this issue, they fail to see the unintended consequence of their beliefs, which is that they are subjecting millions of otherwise law-abiding Americans to the criminal justice system. I don’t care what argument growers and social-conservatives throw at us. ‘It’ll shrink our market share,’ they will say, but they can always innovate out. If they refuse to meet the needs of their customers, then they shouldn’t be in the business in the first place. Americans don’t have a choice when a cop fines or jails them for smoking pot. They can’t innovate out of that. Non-violent behavior among consenting adults should not be subject to the will of the government or the votes of the majority, that’s why we are a republic and not a democracy, because we have certain liberties which are to be left untouched, even if the will of the majority says otherwise.

So let’s not just let Tim Lincecum smoke, or Willie Nelson, Miley Cyrus, Gary Johnson, or Michael Phelps. Let’s let America smoke.

Cost/benefit analysis FTW.

A 68-year-old grandfather was shot and killed during a drug raid by a SWAT team, as Reason reported recently. The man had no drug charges levied against him:

Eurie Stamps was not the target of the search warrant, according to the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office, and his death at the hands of police is under investigation.

Authorities said Stamps lived at the house with a woman whose son and another man were arrested in the raid on drug charges…

The War on Drugs is an atrocity. And that’s an understatement… Let’s end it already.

Yahoo/Drudge reports that the FCC is asking app developers to create apps that help users see if their internet service provider is blocking content:

“Our goal is to foster user-developed applications that shine light on any practice that might be inconsistent with the free and open Internet,” FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said.

The challenge also tries to boost useful research into ways to measure, preserve and track the openness of the Internet.

The FCC said apps could provide real-time data to an individual experiencing a slow Internet connection speed, test networks for Internet service providers and aggregate network data for academics and policymakers.

Now if only there was an app showing when the government blocks websites thanks to new FCC net neutrality regulations…

The FCC will vote on a measure to implement neutrality regulations, effectively bypassing Congress. Reason has reported extensively on this issue:

The Federal Communication Commission will vote today on a Net Neutrality system that it may not have the right to enforce. Champions of the new regs say the point is to make sure the Internet keeps functioning like it has.

Are such rules necessary? And do we want the same folks who fine wardrobe malfunctions and fleeting expletives on broadast TV defining how the most-transformative communications technology in our lifetimes calling any of these shots?

Knowing the FCC and the people in charge, this will probably pass and we will lose the last bastion of freedom left in the world today.

UPDATE: Senator Jim DeMint vows to reverse the FCC’s new regulations. Fingers crossed and knock on wood.

I’m writing up in the sky again to rant about the TSA.

This time, I went through the metal detector, got my stuff, and walked off. At first, I was relieved and certainly not as pissed off as when I went through the body scanners all those times. But then I thought about the arbitrary nature of putting people randomly through either one. If we were all equally likely to be terrorists, why not search us the same? The whole arbitrary nature reeks of facism (I think I use the term aptly, unlike certain conspiracy theorist individuals whom you all know I dislike).

But anyway, here are some oxymorons: “Liberty Tax” (name of an actual income tax preparations company) and “libertarian socialist.”

Yesterday on the radio show we were talking about how the government’s new power to shut down WikiLeaks without due process could expand to them being able to do the same to New York Times, Fox News, and yes, even Dueling Barstools. Otherwise known as mission creep- when something goes beyond its original intentions.

Well guardian.co.uk reports that Senator Lieberman is thinking about punishing New York Times for publishing cables shared by WikiLeaks:

Joe Lieberman, the chair of the Senate homeland security committee, told Fox News: “To me the New York Times has committed at least an act of, at best, bad citizenship, but whether they have committed a crime is a matter of discussion for the justice department.”

Lieberman also said that the department of justice should indict Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, under the 1917 Espionage Act and try to extradite him from the UK. Asked why this had not happened, Lieberman admitted there was probably an argument going on over how to charge Assange.

Not only is the power expanding, unlike certain people said wouldn’t happen because ‘WikiLeaks isn’t a news organization,’ but they are using the 1917 Espionage Act, a highly unconstitutional act put into place under the Woodrow Wilson administration. If you know anything about Wilson, he was a progressive and hated the Constitution. The Espionage Act locked up many Americans simply for speaking out against World War I.

Julian Assange is being treated like a terrorist, and it does not look like he will get proper due process, and Senator Lieberman can’t even think of how to charge him.

Say goodbye to the first amendment.

AOL reports that Playboy Playmate of the September 1995 issue Donna D’Errico was recently singled out for a full body scan:

“I said I was traveling with my son, motioning to him, and the agent said he was to come along with me as well,” D’Errico said. “I immediately asked why we were having to go through an extra search, and no one else was being made to do so, indicating the long line of other passengers in front of and behind where we had been in line. In a very sarcastic tone, and still holding me by the elbow, the agent responded, ‘Because you caught my eye, and they’ — pointing to the other passengers — ‘didn’t.’”

Need I say more? Abolish the TSA already.