The lie of the day: "Mueller’s team continues to operate almost entirely leak-free"

Garrett M. Graff, "journalist", formerly of Politico, formerly of the Howard Dean presidential campaign, in Wired here.

What he really is is a Mueller toady:

"Mueller always knows more than we think".

"Mueller is building a bulletproof case".

"Mueller likely already knows how this story ends ... and it seems clear that Mueller might actually be relatively close to wrapping up the investigation".

Republicans Vote To Continue Spying On Americans, Trashing Fourth Amendment

Wired.com has the story here.

The so-called conservatives, Republicans on Wednesday voted once again to subvert the constitutional principles for which they forever protest they stand.

Why is it that the loudest yelps for the constitution are heard from the chief abusers of the Fourth Amendment?

Steve Jobs: 'I'm a Big Believer in Boredom'

As reported here:

Jobs usually had little interest in public self-analysis, but every so often he’d drop a clue to what made him tick. Once he recalled for me some of the long summers of his youth. "I’m a big believer in boredom,” he told me. "Boredom allows one to indulge in curiosity," he explained, and “out of curiosity comes everything.” The man who popularized personal computers and smartphones — machines that would draw our attention like a flame attracts gnats — worried about the future of boredom. “All the [technology] stuff is wonderful, but having nothing to do can be wonderful, too.”

3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals Defends Fourth Amendment on Cellular Info

A federal appeals court on Wednesday rejected the Obama administration’s contention that the government is never required to get a court warrant to obtain cell-site information that mobile-phone carriers retain on their customers.

For more on the ruling against the Obama administration, which wants to spy on you without a warrant, just like the Bush administration did, go here.

6th US Circuit Court of Appeals Defends Fourth Amendment on Email

“The government may not compel a commercial ISP to turn over the contents of a subscriber’s e-mails without first obtaining a warrant based on probable cause”, the appeals court ruled. The decision — one stop short of the Supreme Court — covers Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee.

So, how about all that email the NSA has already illegally read?

Read more on the story at Wired.com here.

Another Reason Not to Use Your Credit Card: The Feds Track You Without a Warrant

As reported here at wired.com:

Federal law enforcement agencies have been tracking Americans in real-time using credit cards, loyalty cards and travel reservations without getting a court order, a new document released under a government sunshine request shows.

Look for rfid chips in the currency next.

Our Rights are Presumed, not Granted

If they are the sort of things which can be granted, permitted, dispensed, or won, then they can also be rescinded, forbidden, withheld and lost. But they are, on the contrary, natural and pre-existing, and therefore inalienable, as in "From my cold dead fingers!"

I say popular confusion about this in our time is all Lee Greenwood's fault, at least since 1984:

And I’m proud to be an American,

where at least I know I’m free.

And I wont forget the men who died,

who gave that right to me.

Nobody "gave that right" to freedom, or to anything else, to anyone. Everyone already has "that right." It is granted by God, or Nature's God if you prefer, by virtue of His will that one exists.

On this subject Thomas Mitchell offers "A Few Reminders for the Constitutionally Challenged," which appeared here and which was the original occasion of this post, which is now kind of an irony because Mitchell's post opens with the words of James Madison: "The right of freely examining public characters and measures, and of free communication among the people thereon has ever been justly deemed the only effectual guardian of every other right."

Why irony? Because as I edit this post today, July 24, 2010, The Las Vegas Review Journal is in the news at wired.com for hiring a lawyer to go after bloggers like me for copyright infringement for reproducing their articles on their blogs.

While we really like Mitchell's idea that The Bill of Rights should be renamed The Bill of Prohibitions, here's a reminder of a little something that predates the current copyright law, Mr. James Madison and the Bill of Rights:

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead [men's] bones, and of all uncleanness.

Try copyrighting that.