Author: Redactor

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Accountability First Amendment rights general freedom social media

Facebook, the FBI’s Snitch

Facebook, FBI, spying

All we have is the word of Department of Justice whistleblowers.

They told the New York Post that over the last 19 months, Facebook has been cooperating with the FBI to spy on “private” messages of users “outside the legal process and without probable cause.”

The targets were gun enthusiasts and those who questioned 2020’s election results.

“They [Facebook and the FBI] were looking for conservative right-wing individuals. None were Antifa types.”

According to the whistleblowers, Facebook flagged allegedly subversive private messages and sent them to the FBI to be studied by agents specializing in domestic terrorism.

Facebook provided the FBI “with private conversations which are protected by the First Amendment without any subpoena.” Subpoenas were then issued to obtain the conversations that Facebook had already revealed to the FBI.

According to one DOJ source: “As soon as a subpoena was requested, within an hour, Facebook sent back gigabytes of data and photos. It was ready to go. They were just waiting for that legal process so they could send it.”

Facebook has issued a denial. The FBI has issued a non-denial denial.

The allegations might seem very implausible but for the fact that as the November election approaches, the DOJ has been openly targeting Trump allies for claiming “that the vice president and/or president of the Senate had the authority to reject or choose not to count presidential electors.”

In short, for talking out of turn.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Michael Polanyi

When order is achieved among human beings by allowing them to interact with each other on their own initiative — subject only to the laws which uniformly apply to all of them — we have a system of spontaneous order in society.

Michael Polanyi, The Logic of Liberty (1951).
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by Paul Jacob video

Watch: What Lao Tzu Said!

Tom@HK - http://www.flickr.com/photos/gracewong/2175595214/sizes/o/ Statue of Lao Tzu (Laozi) in Quanzhou

But it’s really Paul Jacob talking. And not just (or even mainly) about Taoist philosophy. Indeed, what the old sage said was just … Common Sense:

We live in interesting times. But that’s not what Lao Tzu said. For that and more, listen to Paul Jacob, who covers the big stories of the week as they have appeared on Common Sense with Paul Jacob, his daily commentary program. The stories?

This Week in Common Sense is Paul’s weekend podcast, available via your pod catcher as hosted on SoundCloud, and in video format as hosted on Rumble.

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Thought

Paul Feyerabend

Variety of opinion is necessary for objective knowledge.

Paul Feyerabend, Against Method (1975).
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Today

A Cornerstone

On September 18, 1793, George Washington laid the cornerstone of the Capitol building.

It has grown, since.

On September 18, 1838, Richard Cobden established the Anti-Corn Law League, which proceeded to bring free trade to Britain.

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Thought

Lao Tzu

Governing a large country is like frying a small fish.

Lǎozi was a Chinese philosopher (also called Lao Zi, Lao Tze, Lao Tse, or Lao Tzu), The Tao Te Ching (6th–5th century BC), Ch. 60.
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Today

U. S. Constitution

On September 17, 1787, the Constitution of the United States was signed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In 1849 on this same day in September, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in Philadelphia, but soon returned to Maryland to rescue her family. She made at least 13 trips into the slave-owning South to liberate more than 70 slaves before the Civil War — in which she served as a spy for the North.

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Second Amendment rights

Gun Grabbing G-Men

red flag, gun control, 2nd Amendment, FBI

The FBI itches to take away your guns.

Or at least some people’s guns. That’s what recent revelations indicate, anyway.

What happened is that FBI agents got at least 15 people — it could be many more — to sign away their rights to obtain and possess firearms. Specifically, we read at The Epoch Times, “FBI officials had Americans fill out a form that said they want the FBI to make it illegal for them to purchase or own guns forever because of a mental health condition.”

Yes, it’s a strange case. 

“We’ve learned the FBI had no business disarming these individuals. They did not pose a threat to society. The FBI actions were wholly unlawful,” explained Aidan Johnston, president of a national firearms rights group, Gun Owners of America. GOA demands that “the FBI remove the records from the background check database by Oct. 8 and that Congress enforce the removals.”

This is all about Red Flag laws and similar legislation, such as the “federal law [prohibiting] shipping, transporting, receiving, or possessing any firearm or ammunition” by anyone who has been “adjudicated as a mental defective” or “committed to a mental institution.” But these people were not adjudicated on any status like that. Somehow the FBI pressured them to “give up their rights” — which technically cannot be done. 

But can be, in practice.

I said it was a strange case. Senator Rand Paul (Ky-R) highlighted the strangeness on Fox News, noting the legal puzzle of “how someone that’s mentally incompetent to own a gun could be competent to sign away their gun rights.”

More reasons to distrust the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

J.R.R. Tolkien

The guest who has escaped from the roof, will think twice before he comes back in by the door.

Gandalf, the wizard, in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Two Towers (1954).
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Today

Independence Days

September 16 marks the Independence Days for Mexico (celebrating the declaration of independence from Spain in 1810) and Papua New Guinea (commemorating the exit from Australia in 1975).