By Nathan Barton

Good morning!

The latest abuse by cops comes when a two men (driver and passenger) caught in a DUI checkpoint (and found to be sober) have had their computers and other possessions searched (with a warrant, thanks to a clueless Nazgul) after they refused (in accordance with court decisions) to show their identification to the jack-booted thugs manning the checkpoint.  I guess they should consider themselves “lucky” that the thugs didn’t just pull out their pistols and gun the driver and passenger down. If available in your area, find and install an app on your phone that tells you about such things so that you can avoid them.  They are no good for real people.

I don’t yet know just what to make of this: at the application OF a humanist organization, a federal court says that “secular humanism” IS indeed a religion: something that many christians, Jews, and Muslims have claimed for years and which has usually been denied by the humanists.  What impact will this have?  The one thing that will NOT happen, I know, is that government-run, tax-funded schools will NOT stop teaching basic tenants of secular humanism: evolution, non-existence of a Creator (or any “gods”), “man is just another animal,” and the rest.  If humanism IS a religion as this Nazgul says, then its teaching – and any reference to its tenants and documents – should be banned just as much as Bible stories in public parks or Bible verses on statues in “public” schools.  So just WHY did these humanists file this court suit?  Do you know? The explanations in the stories don’t make much sense (I know, “so what’s new?”)

Mama’s Note: The bottom line here seems very clear to me… NOTHING is appropriate to teach in government “schools.” I don’t find “humanism” any more threatening or inappropriate than any other religion, myself. The “one size” fits nobody approach of “public schools” is the problem, not what’s being taught there. The only rational answer is for parents to arrange for education for their own children, teaching what they believe and want their children to learn, not trying to force others to agree with them or pay for it.

In Catalonia, the regional regime vows to defy the regime in Madrid and will hold a secession vote.  They vowed Tuesday to defy both the central government and the country’s highest court and proceed with a much-disputed weekend vote on whether to secede from Spain. Hours earlier, Spain’s Constitutional Court ordered Catalonia to freeze its plans for an independence vote, scheduled for Sunday. It was the second time the court issued an order siding with Madrid, which considers any Catalan independence vote illegal. But Catalan leaders said they would not back down.”

Any lover of liberty will support secession anywhere, even though we realize that the Catalan people will STILL be under the thumb of two or more governments (the EU and their own, at a minimum) and that liberty will not be reclaimed in any significant degree.  Not yet, at least, but it IS a move in the right direction.  These various maneuverings by Madrid just increase the likelihood that the Catalans will vote for secession.  More than 500 years ago, before Leon Y Castile merged Spain into a single unified (but not united) nation in the last years of the 700-year-long Reconquista to free Iberia from Muslim domination, Catalonia was a relatively republican and fairly free nation of merchants and shippers who dominated the Mediterranean trade and had alliances with ports for thousands of miles.  Indeed, Spain in the late 1500s and early 1600s had more liberty than England according to many historians, then lost it as they succumbed to the lure of the “free gold” of the Aztec and Inca, destroying their own economy, and wasting it in massive wars of conquest and intervention in the rest of Europe.  Many Catalans are saying, enough is enough.

Readers know that I believe firmly that many problems can be solved with the right application of technology – even if it is NOT a panacea for all ills and can make things worse some times.  This is one of those problems solved:  A couple of years ago, Colorado passed a series of stupid laws, one of which limited the sale of magazines to those with no more than 15 round capacity.  Now, at least two simple and “legal” methods are popular, and make the foolish ban toothless as well.  One involves selling a kit that can be assembled easily in a couple of minutes; the second is a modified 30-round mag that can be “modified back” within a few seconds.  Way to go, people.  So all the gun-hating majority in the legislature (together with a truly pitiful governor who none the less was apparently able to win reelection with a margin of 27,000 votes) does is cost thousands of Coloradoans a bit of time, and probably makes more and more of them more capable at maintaining their weapons.  I suppose State Patrol and National Guard troops (assuming that any would respond to mobilization to go out and kill fellow Coloradoans at the behest of this governor or some future tyrant) can be properly grateful for their opportunity to face better-armed defenders.  Remember, this is the 100th anniversary (20 APRIL 1914) of the Ludlow Massacre, in which Colorado National Guard troops attacked and killed striking coal miners and their families, to force them back to work, near Walsenburg, Colorado.  It is also the 150th anniversary (29 NOV 1864) of the Sand Creek Massacre, where a regiment of Colorado Volunteers (militia on active duty: forerunners of the ARNG) killed men, women, and children of a Southern Cheyenne camp under flag of truce.  (I don’t know what the CO ARNG or ANG did in 1964.) The State of Colorado seems to hate its own people, and treat them like disposable toys.  Unfortunately some of the people in the state LIKE that.

Why elections are worthless:  Just hours after the polls closed on the biggest GOP victory in a decade, with them gaining control of the US Senate and most governor’s mansions and legislatures, that piece-of-work McConnell (who skinned through his election and is probably the next Senate Majority Leader) was already busy selling his party (and probably the nation) down the river to Dingy Harry Reid, the imitation LDS piece-of-work that is already crowing about how the election “proves” that the people of the United States (or at least the voters: only 42 million votes were cast in the 2014 Senate elections nationwide) want the Republicans and Democrats in Congress to play nice with each other and the White House and “get things done.” Some – SOME – conservatives are protesting that saying that they didn’t elect GOP members to WORK with Democrats, but to FIGHT and DEFEAT THEM and the squatter in 1600 PA, but I don’t think the GOP bosses will hear a word.  And their followers will come back for seconds on the Kool-Aid. People talk about this attitude of the GOP (combined with that of the Democrats) as “poisoning the republic,” but frankly, you can’t poison a corpse, can you?  And you can’t teach most Republicans that government is not just wrong but BAD. A friend today told me this story: “I had once started a Send a Republican to College Fund, mostly collecting aluminum cans, but one day I had an epiphany! There are Republicans in my family who have been to college and nothing stuck, so… it does not make any sense to be collecting cans… at least for that purpose.”  You are better off giving a wino booze than electing a Republican to office, 95 out of a hundred times.

To that, of course, we can add every GOP governor who will compromise with DC to get all that lovely FedGov money. Supposedly the Fuehrer has no friends left in DC: the GOP hates him and the Dems blame him (rightly much of the time) for this beating they got.  But it is not true: the bureaucrats love him, and all the political appointments he got through the Senate also love him: and so we will see more strings, even if the money is actually cut a bit (and don’t think that the GOP is going to cut a significant amount of ANY part of the budget.)  So we just spent billions on what? A cruel joke – another form of circuses to keep the masses happy – or at least quiet.