While the bill’s title focuses on federal gun regulations, it has far more to do with the 10th Amendment’s limit on the power of the federal government. It states, in part:
The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution for the United States guarantees to the states and their people all powers not granted to the federal government elsewhere in the constitution and reserves to the State and people of New Hampshire certain powers as they were understood at the time that New Hampshire ratified the Bill of Rights, particularly the Tenth Amendment in 1790. The guaranty of those powers is a matter of contract between the State and people of New Hampshire and the several States comprising the United States as of the time that the compact was agreed upon and adopted by New Hampshire and the several States comprising the United States.
The regulation of inter-state commerce was delegated by the People of the Several States to the federal government in the US Constitution. Since the regulation of intra-state commerce was not delegated to the federal government, this authority, as codified in law by the 10th Amendment, remains with the State governments or the People themselves.
Heads set to roll as Obama goes on attack over security failures that allowed Christmas Day bomber on to plane
A senior aide said Obama would seek accountability at the highest levels for the failure, a remark some observers took to mean that heads would roll.
The terrorist plot to bring down Northwest Airlines Flight 253 exposed a near-catastrophic failure at every level of our government,' the Republican leader in the House of Representatives, John Boehner, said in a statement.
Phi Beta Iota: This would be a good time for President Barack Obama, President in name only, to either be the President and introduce the Electoral Reform Act of 2010, or to resign in ackinowledgement of the fact that he simiply is not up to the job because we live in a two-party tyranny that makes decisions on the basis of nakedly amoral partisan interests, not the public interest. If he also introduced the Smart Nation – Safe Nation Act, with a nod of respect to Congressman Rob Simmons, then (R-CT-02) and today the challenger to Wall Street fixer Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), he would instantly restore the integrity of the Constitution, the Republic, and the US Government.
We do not lack for knowledge of what to do. HUNDREDS of authorities are on record with good ideas that have not been implemented (e.g. the Aspin-Brown Commission). We lack for INTEGRITY in acknowledging reality and getting a grip on all that we need to do that is markedly different from the past.
We predict that President Obama will do something really stupid, such as fire Blair (who is non-partisan) and promote partisan Panetta to his maximum level of incompetence, while ignoring the reality, as we pointed out in ON INTELLIGENCE: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World (AFCEA, 2000), that firing the engineer does not change the train built to run on a single track between Moscow and DC into what we really need–10,000 open source bicyles, 1,000 open source motorcycles, and 100 assorted small-size secret cars, most of them with multinational passengers. What is new is that Homeland Security was built on the old train model, and is just as useless. The USA today is on the cusp of a historic era where we can stick with the simple-minded Weberian stove-pipes of the past, Epoch A command & control “central planning,” or we can ride the wave and embrace bottom-up Epoch B collective intelligence and distributed resilience. From where we sit, no one in Congress or the White House reads or thinks–they are all on auto-pilot, and their definition of progress is to take that next step over the cliff.
The truth at any cost reduces all other costs. We're not there.
sensible memo from BTC: Aviation Security After Detroit
INDUSTRY ANALYSIS: Aviation System Security
Business Travel Coalition December 27, 2009
By Kevin Mitchell
The Christmas attempt by a Nigerian man with PETN (one of the most powerful explosives known) affixed to his body to cause harm to an internationally-originated Delta Air Lines flight on approach to Detroit shone a bright light on much that is wrong with the U.S. approach to aviation system security. It is welcome news that President Obama has ordered an airline industry security review so long as it is strategic in nature.
. . . . . . .
The immediate post 9/11 security priority for the U.S. was to prevent a commercial airline from ever again being used as a weapon-of-mass-destruction. Airport screening was strengthened substantially, the Air Marshall program was expanded, cabin and cockpit crews were trained in advanced anti-terrorism techniques, many pilots were armed, F-14s were placed on alert, and most importantly, cockpit doors were reinforced and passengers were forever transformed from passive participants in a time of threat to able defenders. All of this was accomplished within a relatively short period of time after the U.S. was attacked on 9/11.
From that point forward the highest and best use of each incremental security dollar spent should have been on intelligence gathering, risk-management analysis and sharing, and on fundamental police work such that terrorists would never reach an airport, much less board an airplane. What does the immediate investigation into the near-calamity on Christmas reveal?
• The father of the accused terrorist, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, informed U.S. officials months ago that he was concerned about his son’s extreme religious views. Not a friend, not a teacher, but his very own father issued the warning!
• The accused Nigerian is in the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment database (550K names) maintained by the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center. While not on the selectee list (14K names) or no-fly list (4K names), should not some of our scarce security dollars have been used to ensure that he was placed on the selectee list, questioned and subjected to extra searching prior to being allowed to board the Detroit-bound flight from Amsterdam?
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano appeared today on ABC’s This Week show and unabashedly steered clear of government accountability arguing that the U.S. did not have enough information to keep the accused man from boarding the flight or to add him to the selectee or no-fly list. However, his very father warned us! Moreover, the UK’s Daily Mail reports that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was banned from Britain; his last visa request refused! That the suspect did not but should have received additional questioning and physical screening is where the U.S. government’s focus should be, versus on the in-flight security illusion of restricted passenger movement, if it is intended to be more that temporary.
COLOMBO (AFP) – Nearly half a billion dollars in tsunami aid for Sri Lanka is unaccounted for and over 600 million dollars has been spent on projects unrelated to the disaster, an anti-corruption watchdog said Saturday.
. . . . . . .
The group alleged that out of 2.2 billion dollars received for relief, 603.4 million dollars was spent on projects unrelated to the disaster.
Another half a billion dollars was missing, the group said.
ROMULUS, Mich. (AP) — Law enforcement and counterterrorism officials say the components of a failed explosive were apparently mixed onboard an international flight bound for Detroit. Passengers subdued a Nigerian man who was apparently burned when the device fizzled, but didn't explode.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. counterterrorism officials are trying to figure out if the failed bombing of an international flight preparing to land in Detroit reveals a serious new threat. Even though it burned but didn't explode, investigators wonder how the mixture allegedly used by a Nigerian man evaded detection
Phi Beta Iota: In the time immediately following 9/11 it was clearly established by multiple parties that our asymmetric opponents were spending $1 for every $500,000 we spent. Today we speculate that the ratio is closer to $1 (them) to $5 million (us). We lack a grasp of reality; we lack a strategy; we lack a force structure; and above all, we lack the moral high ground. Imperial Hubris is what happens when government get “too big to fail” and then promptly collapse because they suffer from a culture that turns disaster into catastrophe. Terrorism is the LEAST of our problems, but for the sake of avoiding argument we accept the United Nations High Level Panel's conclusion that terrorism is number nine out of ten high-level threats to humanity. What we do every day to ourselves is easily a million times more threatening, more costly, and more immoral than anything a single terrorist or terrorist group–whatever their motivations–might do. The BAD DECISIONS made by government are the real sucking chest wound for society, both in terms of perpetuating catastrophic industrial and weather changing practices, and in terms of failing to meet the fundamental needs of people who–if empowered with connectivity and education–would create infinite wealth in every clime and place.
Information technology's next grand challenge will be to secure the cloud–and prove we can trust it.
By David Talbot
Phi Beta Iota: The story is so good we will not extract from it. It must be read in its entirety. Government is failing to do its job, leaving a “wild west” environment alive and corruptible in the cloud. Standards are beginning to emerge but security is not a priority and the end-user as the ultimate source of the security is not even being considered (over ten years ago Eric Hughes conceptualized anonymous banking and end-user controlled encryption of all data). Eventually, after great expesne and great loss of data, government and industry may realize that the ultimate security is that which originates with the individual end-user, not a central service that can be hacked by disgruntled insiders or that can make a mistake that instantly explodes tens of millions of clients. Below is the original Mich Kabay slide, still relevant.
Mich Kabay's Threat Slide Link Leads to NSA Las Vegas Briefing
During an appearance on MSNBC's Morning Joe today journalist and author Carl Bernstein lamented that the debate over and the writing of health care reform legislation has shown us “Congress at its worst.”
Bernstein harshly critiques the nation's legislative branch as a body that is “responsive only to money and special interests” while ignoring the public and national interest:
The bad news is the really great problem in this country is the systemic breakdown of one of the three branches of government: the Congress of the United States. And until it's repaired, [Obama] and this country are going to be undermined. We could have had health care legislation in a meaningful way that would have gone twice as far at solving our budget and our health care problems, but because of the irresponsibility and the systemic corruption of the United States Congress, we don't.
Phi Beta Iota: Actually, all of our major institutioins have failed–the Executive, the media, the church, the schools. We live in a “cheating culture” in which INTEGRITY is no longer the foundation value. The good news is that there is nothing wrong with America the Beautiful that cannot be fixed by an Electoral Reform Act followed by reform of national intelligence, governance, and then national security.
