And no, it’s not a car.

Liberty is something we often hear about, but isn’t exactly a topic of discussion at dinner parties. If we don’t really know what liberty is, how will we know when it is taken away, or if it is being taken away? Unfortunately, it often takes tyranny to make liberty more precious.

The purpose of liberty is to allow human life to flourish. Are we flourishing in California and the rest of America in 2013? What will liberty look like in 2014?

Are Americans prepared to fight for liberty?

Government serves the people

John Locke, a 17th century English philosopher and physician, regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers, said government is morally obliged to serve people, namely by protecting life, liberty, and property. He explained the principle of checks and balances to limit government power. He favored representative government and a rule of law. He denounced tyranny. Locke insisted that when government violates individual rights, people may legitimately rebel.

Locke said the only legitimate governments are those that have the consent of the people. Therefore, any government that rules without the consent of the people can, in theory, be overthrown.

These views were most fully developed in Locke’s famous “Second Treatise Concerning Civil Government.”

Locke said that if, either through an abuse of power or an impermissible change, these governing bodies cease to represent the people and instead represent either themselves or some foreign power, the people may–and indeed should–rebel against their government and replace it with one that will remember its trust.

“All men are naturally in a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of Nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man,” said Locke.

What Locke identified are the three but interconnected keystones of a society of free men: Liberty, Rule of Law, and Legislative Power by consent of the governed.

The people work for the government

Americans are burdened by a labyrinth of government policies, procedures, rules and regulations. Our federal government, once limited to basic core functions, now dominates virtually every area of American life. States, local governments and municipalities, and private businesses are increasingly overwhelmed by federal programs and influence. And as government expands its influence, our liberties recede.

The Left has been engaged in a century-long attack on the first principles of America, the Constitution, and the culture that supports liberty and freedom. However, the Left, steeped in ideology and control, always eventually oversteps, and has done so once again.  The recklessness of government, and the arrogance of officials, appear to have finally awakened a sleeping giant, in a nation that has been too long asleep. Many Americans have been jolted awake and are beginning to recognize the imperative to save our Republic.

Compared to the Founding era, more and more power is now being centralized in the national government. Today, for example, many policies that affect local public schools are made in Washington. As creeping centralization slowly overcomes the Constitution’s federal design, the national government has begun to restrict the freedom of religion that is an indispensable element of the American founding.

The Constitution, the supreme law of the United States, is under assault. First Amendment speech rights are being challenged by Congress. Some members of Congress want to limit the definition of the press to only those who work for large, established news outlets. They want alternative media and bloggers quieted.  Yet the First Amendment is very clear: Congress cannot interfere with an individual’s religion or speech. It cannot restrict a citizen’s communication with others to form community by worship, publishing, gathering together or petitioning the government.

President Obama and the Constitution

In 2013, President Barack Obama targeted Second Amendment gun ownership rights, and tried to impose sweeping federal gun control legislation. It failed, but he and the Left have made it very clear, they will attempt this again. Yet the Second Amendment guarantees the right of citizens to keep their own weapons.

One of the most egregious centralizations of power in U.S. history was ushered with President Obama’s health care overhaul in 2010. The law dictates what patients must buy, what insurance companies must offer, orders employers to provide health care coverage for employees, and and what the insurance must cover. Obamacare offers no way out, and no choice. This is a staggering loss of liberty.

Religious freedom under assault

“Religious freedom requires that the government does not interfere with religious faith and the charitable works it inspires,” the Heritage Foundation explained. “If a government is truly limited, friction with religious institutions and individuals will be rare. Of course, occasionally, tensions between faith and state may arise even under a limited government. The Founders counted on these tensions to keep the state in check.”

While we still have religious freedoms in America, the Left continually wages attacks on religion, and specifically Christianity. And they do it legislatively.

Attacks on the Boy Scouts of America are based on the Scouts’ inclusion of religion in their scouting practices and oath.

Public schools across the country are no longer allowing school facilities to be used by groups with religious affiliation.

Catholics have come under assault for standing their ground on the Obamacare contraception mandate. Religious employers are going to be forced into providing contraception, abortions, and sterilization procedures to their employees.

A judge recently ruled that a bakery owner violated the law when he refused to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding.

As government grows, liberty decreases

It was Thomas Jefferson who warned, “The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases. The natural progress of things is for liberty to yeild, and government to gain ground.”

Jefferson also had plenty to say on liberty: “Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.”

What will you do to save and restore liberty in 2014?

SACRAMENTO — Having faith in freedom, Igor Birman is hoping voters “hire” him for Congress. “I’m here on a job interview asking you to hire me,” Birman tells voters he meets.

Birman, a Russian Jewish Immigrant and Republican, announced in September he is running for Congress against Rep. Ami Bera, a Democrat from Congressional District 7. At 32, Birman has a unique ability to reach young and ethnic voters who historically have been wooed by Democrats. At a Sacramento coffee shop, he sat down to talk to me.

“I was defined by freedom,” Birman said when we met this week. “But that freedom now is in great jeopardy based on the policies of many leaders in our government.”

“This is all in your hands”

Birman is the former Chief of Staff to Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Elk Grove, a post he held since 2009. McClintock has endorsed Birman.

Birman was born in the Soviet Union in 1981. His father father is a physicist and a Refusenik, a term for Soviet Jews who were denied permission to emigrate abroad. Soviet officials said Birman’s mother could leave the country and take Igor and his younger brother, but officials would not let his father go because of his scientific expertise. Finally, after the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991, eventually the family was allowed to leave in 1994, when Igor was 13.

Birman said a few days before the family left Russia, his parents discovered the secret police had been conducting surveillance of them. The police tore apart their small Moscow apartment trying to intimidate the family. Birman said his parents risked everything and gave up everything they owned to come to America.

“This will never happen there,” Birman said his mother repeatedly assured him.

As the Birman family was preparing to leave, his father received a suspicious letter claiming to be from the American Embassy. “But it was in Russian,” Birman said. The letter read:

“Dear Mr. Birman,

“Due to the new fiscal year, the U.S. is no longer accepting new immigrants. Please cancel your plans to come.”

Igor said since his English was good, he called the U.S. Embassy for his parents and asked officials about the suspicious letter. He was told it was a fake. “Come, and come right away,” the U.S. Embassy representative told him.

“My parents risked their lives to get me here, to live in freedom, to flourish,” Igor said. “And now that that same freedom is being threatened by our own leaders, how can I not dedicate my life to make sure that my children and grandchildren are born into a society that I came here to find?”

Consequences of an overgrown government

Birman said Americans are faced with the consequences of an overgrown government everywhere. Obamacare is just one example.

“You don’t have to look much further than families who can no longer find full-time jobs, or who now find themselves with less than full-time work, with 29-1/2 hour work weeks,” Birman said. “Families whose husbands and wives came home and reported their companies no longer carry health care coverage. That’s not because the ingenuity of the American people is sapped. It’s because of government policies that ultimately are up to us to reverse. Many of these folks realize it’s public policy to blame, and that’s why I’m running.”

People are the sovereigns

“People are the sovereigns,” Birman said, meaning that “the people” have all of the rights of kings.

Indeed, the U.S. Supreme Court found in Yick Wo vs. Hopkins, “Sovereignty itself is, of course, not subject to law, for it is the author and source of law.”

“But instead, the people have become supplicants to government,” Birman said. “They tell us what to do, but we hire them.” He said this is reversible. “This is all in your hands,” he tells constituents.

Congressional District 7 contenders

Rep. Ami Bera narrowly won a 2012 election rematch against Rep. Dan Lungren, a veteran Republican, with a long history of holding political office, including as California attorney general. Bera is vulnerable in the district, with 39 percent registered Democratic voters, and 38 percent Republican voters.

In the new “top two” voting system, the two candidates with the most votes in the June primary face off in a November 2014 runoff. Bera almost certainly will be one of those two. Which means that, for the second slot, Birman is challenging Republicans Doug Ose, a former California congressman from 1999 to 2005; and  Elizabeth Emken, who in 2012 ran as the Republican Party nominee for U.S. Senator, losing to incumbent Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

“Do your best to stand for freedom,” Birman said. “If you lose, history will remember you. If you win, my God! Then everyone wins. Americans want someone who will uphold freedom. You don’t win every battle when you stand on principle. But you may win many.”

1. You could buy an airline ticket and fly without ever showing an ID.

2. You could buy cough syrup without showing an ID.

3. You could buy and sell gold coins without showing an ID

4. You could buy a gun without showing an ID

5. You could pull as much cash out of your bank account without the bank filing a report with the government.

6. You could get a job without having to prove you were an American.

7. You could buy cigarettes without showing an ID

8. You could have a phone conversation without the government knowing who you called and who called you.

9. You could open a stock brokerage account without having to explain where the money came from.

10. You could open a Swiss bank account with ease. All Swiss banks were willing and happy to open accounts for Americans.

There are thousands of other examples.The monitoring is in place all that is required from here is the clampdown.

The differences, between now and 1975 in the business sector are even more prevalent. In recent years, in industry after industry regulations and prohibitions have been poured on top of free markets. It doesn’t look like things will get any better in years to come. Eventually, the economy will suffocate and collapse, if this continues.

I would add some more to the list:

11. In California, you could smoke in a bar.

12. In Michigan, where I lived then, you could buy alcohol at age 18.

13. You could buy a “gas guzzler” car, like the classic 1976 Buick 225.

14. If you were a child, you could play soldier, or cops and robbers, or cowboys and Indians with real looking plastic guns — instead of the ugly, bright-colored ones mandated today.

15. You could be politically incorrect.

16. You could attend a public school that didn’t look like, and operate like, a prison.

17. You could go to a pro baseball game and get an actual bat on “Bat Day.”

18. You could be an energetic boy without getting pumped full of Ritalin.

19. You could blast off an Estes model rocket in any vacant lot, especially a school’s.

Add your own below.

By Katy Grimes

As a young child, I was fortunate to be able to live in Newport, Rhode Island, the first British colony in America to formally declare its independence, and the first state to  guarantee freedom of religion.

We lived a short time in an old home in downtown Newport, which survived the Revolutionary War. Soldiers fought the Brits from the upstairs windows of our home, according to local lore.

Newport was rife with constant reminders of The American Revolution. I used to imagine what life was like in 1776 Newport, when the state repealed its allegiance to King George III of England.

Reflecting upon Independence Day, it’s so important to remember the Revolution wasn’t just a rebellion against the King of England, it was a rebellion against being ruled by a monarchy. Our forefathers and many of our ancestors gave up everything and shed their own blood rather than submit unto King George lll.

Liberty and the Declaration of Independence

My early years were still during an era unembarrassed by, and unapologetic of America’s individualist morality. But by the time I entered college, America was undergoing significant moral, ethical, political and social change.

Globalism was being ushered in promoting the hegemony of Western culture, capitalism  and free markets. The foundations of democracy and social stability were clearly being undermined.

Can this individualistic ethic be renewed in an America enveloped in entitlements and self-absorption?

Re-reading the Declaration of Independence, the nation’s most cherished symbol of liberty,  helps refresh our ties to American history. Thomas Jefferson drafted it, and his words still capture the heartfelt convictions of liberty-loving Americans.

Jefferson rightly focused on the importance of  individual liberty, ideals first shared by John Locke and the Continental philosophers.

Jefferson argued in his opening two paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence that a people had the right to overthrow their government when it abused their fundamental natural rights over a long period of time:

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for a people to advance from that subordination in which they have hitherto remained, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the equal and independent station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s god entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the change

We hold these truths to be [sacred and undeniable] self evident, that all men are created equal and independent; that from that equal creation they derive in rights inherent and inalienables, among which are the preservation of life, and liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these ends, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government shall become destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing it’s powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes: and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. but when a long train of abuses and usurpations, begun at a distinguished period, and pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to [subject] reduce them to arbitrary power, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

As the United States’ government continues to grow, has it also abused our fundamental natural rights over a long period of time?

Would Americans today sign such a document, under similar threats as the founders?

“A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.” — Samuel Adams, 1779, a delegate to the Continental Congress, and signer of the Declaration of Independence

By Katy Grimes

There are huge news stories all across the country today about the latest discovery in the Obamacare law. I have been writing about these cost increases long before this latest hysteria.

And now, well after the election, a new report was published showing just how high medical costs will increase. It’s going to be ugly and price most families right out of the health insurance market.

Media reports

“Some people purchasing new insurance policies for themselves this fall could see premiums rise because of requirements in the health-care law, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told reporters Tuesday,” the Wall Street Journal reported today.

“The secretary’s remarks are among the first direct statements from federal officials that people who have skimpy health plans right now could face higher premiums for plans that are more generous.”

The Associated Press reported yesterday, “Medical claims costs — the biggest driver of health insurance premiums — will jump an average 32 percent for Americans’ individual policies under President Barack Obama’s overhaul, according to a study by the nation’s leading group of financial risk analysts.”

The national average is a 32 percent increase in medical costs. Estimated increases in California are 62 percent, and costs in Ohio are estimated to increase 80 percent. Both California and Ohio voted overwhelmingly to reelect President Barack Obama. Had this study come out before the election, I wonder just how well Obama would have done, even in liberal bastions like California and Ohio.

“While some states will see medical claims costs per person decline, the report concluded the overwhelming majority will see double-digit increases in their individual health insurance markets, where people purchase coverage directly from insurers,” the AP reported.

Special exemptions

But what most of the media is still largely silent about are the many exemptions, and exempted groups.

“HHS regulations also provide that the hardship exemption will be available on a case-by-case basis for individuals who face other unexpected personal or financial circumstances that prevent them from obtaining coverage.”

“The shared responsibility payment (IRS penalty) should not apply to any taxpayer for whom coverage is unaffordable, who has other good cause for going without coverage, or who goes without coverage for only a short time.”

IRS allowable exemptions

The proposed regulations also catalog the statute’s nine categories of individuals who are exempt from the shared responsibility payment:

* Individuals who cannot afford coverage;

* Taxpayers with income below the federal filing threshold;

* Members of Indian tribes;

* Hardship;

* Individuals who experience short coverage gaps;

* Religious conscience;

* Members of a health-care sharing ministry;

* Incarcerated individuals; and

* Individuals who are not lawfully present.

These exemptions leave only the working middle class, and those who pay income tax to pick up the tab. And now we are finding that most of the middle class will not be able to afford the insurance, and their children will not be covered.

Who doesn’t pay?

The half of Americans who do not pay federal income taxes will not be required to pay the “mandatory” IRS fine if they do not buy government health insurance.

Illegal immigrants will not be fined.

And just in case anyone else was missed in the exemption list, the last paragraph was added to cover any other vulnerable group:

“The HHS regulations also provide that the hardship exemption will be available on a case-by-case basis for individuals who face other unexpected personal or financial circumstances that prevent them from obtaining coverage.”

In February, I wrote about the penalties to spouses and children in Obamacare in “Obamacare grants exemptions for everyone but taxpayers:”

“…the federal health care law has been manipulated. The law now says that, as long as an employer keeps the employee’s portion of his single health care premium below 9.5 percent of the employee’s annual salary, such a portion is deemed “affordable.” However, according to Gottwals, many employers in California only contribute to the employee’s portion of the health plan premium, not for dependents who may also be on the company health plan.”

Obamacare unfriendly to spouses

Craig Gottwals, an attorney and health insurance expert with BB&T–Liberty Benefit Insurances Services, Inc.  explained the issues: “The question for employers and the insurance industry became, ‘What about a family of five?’”

Without being included in the employer’s contribution, the family health-care insurance coverage will be off the chart, leaving the spouse and kids to fend for themselves, Gottwals explained.

He added, “Furthermore, if the employee’s premium is deemed ‘affordable’ because it is below 9.5 percent of the employee’s W-2 wages, the non-working spouse and children will be denied access to federal subsidies to buy healthcare in the Exchanges.  Hence, if the employer offers ‘unaffordable’ coverage to the spouse and kids, the spouse and kids are precluded from federal assistance.”

In a peculiar twist, earlier Obamacare regulations mandated that employers offer coverage to children, but declined to mandate that spouses be offered dependent coverage. For employers unwilling or unable to contribute to spousal healthcare, a family will be better off if the employer does not even offer healthcare to spouses at all.  This is because, if the spouse is not offered healthcare, he or she can actually get a federal subsidy to buy coverage in an Obamacare exchange.  Whereas, if the spouse is offered “unaffordable” coverage by an employer, the spouse is denied federal subsidy assistance.  Employers are not mandated to cover spouses on insurance under Obamacare.

What next?

Obamacare is a disaster, and California’s Legislature and Gov. Jerry Brown are embracing it with open arms. With high-speed rail, cap and trade, higher taxes, increasing business regulations and Obamacare implementation, this recipe for disaster is sure to sink California.

By John Seiler

Cue the great Byrds song, “I Wasn’t Born to Follow” from one of my favorite movies, “Easy Rider”:

I bring that up because The New York Times’ featured “conservative,” David Brooks, whom I knew briefly in Washington, D.C. back in 1987, writes a column today entitled, “The Follower Problem.”

Brooks is upset that we get crummy leaders because we’re not good followers. Brooks:

“Maybe before we can build great monuments to leaders we have to relearn the art of following. Democratic followership is also built on a series of paradoxes: that we are all created equal but that we also elevate those who are extraordinary; that we choose our leaders but also have to defer to them and trust their discretion; that we’re proud individuals but only really thrive as a group, organized and led by just authority.

“I don’t know if America has a leadership problem; it certainly has a followership problem. Vast majorities of Americans don’t trust their institutions. That’s not mostly because our institutions perform much worse than they did in 1925 and 1955, when they were widely trusted. It’s mostly because more people are cynical and like to pretend that they are better than everything else around them. Vanity has more to do with rising distrust than anything else.”        

Actually, it’s “mostly because” our “institutions” are much bigger and costlier than they were in 1925 and 1955. They also are more remote, with centralized “federal” authority replacing state and local authority almost everywhere.

In 1925, the federal portion of the economy was around 4 percent; now it’s 25 percent. The California state government then was around 2 percent of the economy; now it’s 6 percent.

In the last 10 years, federal pay, perks and pensions have grown to become twice their equivalents in the private sector. This occurred under a Republican president, George W. Bush, and a Democratic president, Barack Obama. During the same period, Republicans and Democrats also traded back and forth dominating Congress. So it was a bipartisan elevation of federal functionaries to commissar status.

Brooks concludes:

“To have good leaders you have to have good followers — able to recognize just authority, admire it, be grateful for it and emulate it. Those skills are required for good monument building, too.”

Well, I’m not following the rotters who “lead” us now. If our “leaders” lead by reducing government back to what it was in 1925, then I’ll reconsider.

Until then, my attitude will remain that of Jack Nicholson’s character:

By LAER PEARCE

As fans of DC Comics know, there’s a cube-shaped planet called Bizarro, where there are stupor-heroes, Batman wears a futility belt and the Bizarro Code states, “Us do opposite of all Earthly things!” The state of Bizarro California is no doubt at the top of all the lists of good things and the bottom of all the lists of bad things.

Why not? When it comes to good education, California is near the bottom. And with public employee pension fund losses, we’re at the top.

Now there’s news of another list we’re backwards on: the “Freedom in the 50 States” rankings by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, which ranks the states based on how their policies affect individual economic, social and personal freedoms.

California comes in 48th, behind only New York and New Jersey, which in itself is powerful evidence for the repressiveness inherent inDemocrat Party liberalism. The study also shows freedoms are declining in California, which has dropped two positions from its 2007 ranking. Here’s why:

Contrary to popular perception, California not only taxes and regulates its economy more than most other states, it also aggressively interferes in the personal lives of its citizens. California simply needs to cut government spending. … Labor laws are extremely strict, of course; for instance, California is one of only five states to mandate short-term disability insurance. Health-insurance coverage mandates add about 49 percent to the cost of premiums in the state. Eminent-domain reform has been cosmetic, and the state’s liability system almost reaches the abysmal quality of the Deep South’s.

Personal Freedoms

California scores somewhat better on personal freedoms — number 41 overall — because of its policies on same-sex partnerships and marijuana. But it can’t rise out of the cellar because it has the most restrictive gun laws in the country and is very tough on motorists and smokers.

The Mercatus Center’s recommendations for California — cut state spending, repeal many health insurance mandates, relax labor laws — are fine but skirt the 13,200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000-pound gorilla that rules public policy in California: Gaea, the Earth Mother.

California is a theocratic state whose goddess is Gaia and the environmentalism she spawns. A news story in Wednesday’s Los Angeles Times underscored Gaia’s power. It told how air quality regulators — high priests in Gaea’s temple — will be spending an unspecified amount of money to determine if poor neighborhoods near a major rail hub in San Bernardino have above-normal cancer and asthma rates.

I already know the answer: yes. Not because they necessarily have higher disease rates — and even if they do, being poor brings many unhealthy things with it — but because we’ve already been through this particular temple ceremony. It happened at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach (“Port of Call for CA’s Crippled Commerce,” CalWatchdog, Jan. 10, 2011). In the name of environmental justice for nearby poor neighborhoods, the West Coast’s two biggest ports have lost their competitive edge due to a mandated Green Ports initiative that has cost hundreds of millions of dollars to implement.

As a result, Californians have lost the freedom to buy cheaper stuff because the cost of the Green Ports initiative has been added to the cost of goods moving through the ports. Truckers have lost the freedom to keep their perfectly fine old trucks, and have been forced to replace them with less durable, cleaner-burning models at a cost of as much as $200,000 each. With 10,000 trucks at the port, that’s a $2 billion tithe to Gaea.

Banning Fireworks

Californians are also about to lose their freedom to celebrate freedom itself by watching Fourth of July fireworks shows at beach towns along the coast. The California Coastal Commission started this war for freedom — the freedom of birds not to get startled once a year, not any human freedom — when it successfully stopped a fireworks show in the northern California hamlet of Gualala.

Now water-quality priests are getting ready to impose a $1,452 “pollution discharge fee” on a volunteer-funded fireworks celebration in La Jolla. Environmentalists, seeing another opportunity to curtail freedom in California, are furious the fee isn’t higher.

So much for Founding Father John Adams’ insistence that Independence Day “ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade . . . bonfires and illuminations [fireworks] from one end of this continent to the other, from this day forward forevermore.”

And on it goes. Gas mowers, charcoal barbecues, dune buggies, wood-burning fireplaces, big-screen plasma televisions — they’re either gone, nearly gone or on their way to much higher prices, because California’s eco-theocracy will always put the Earth Mother ahead of you.

Laer Pearce, a veteran of three decades of California public affairs, is currently working on a book that shows how everything wrong with America comes from California.

In the wake of 9/11, President Bush and Congress micturated their collective pants and imposed the unconstitutional and misnamed “PATROT Act,” really the TRAITOR Act, to destroy our constitutional liberties. Yesterday some Republican congressmen, including newly elected Tea Party types, joined most Democrats in the House in voting against extending the TRAITOR Act another 10 months.

Californian Republicans voting against the TRAITOR Act were:

Dana Rohrabacher

John Campbell

Tom McClintock.

They should be applauded. They defended Americans’ precious freedoms, without which America is just a big East Germany.

And here’s the list of California House Republicans voting for for this Soviet tyranny over our once-free people. Shame on them:

Ed Royce

Gary Miller

Darryl Issa

Mary Bono Mack

Brian Bilbray

Jeff Denham

David Dreier

Elton Gallegly

Wally Herger

Jerry Lewis

Dan Lungern (natch, for the author of the repressive Lungren Law)

Kevin McCarthy

Howard P. “Buck” McKeon

Devin Nunes

Didn’t these Republicans get the message of the Tea Party revolt that Americans want less tyranny, not more? What will it take to wake them up, riots in the streets Cairo-style?

They can redeem themselves by, in the future, voting against renewing the TRAITOR Act and other tyrannies.

Americans need to rally to make sure the TRAITOR Act is deep-sixed and our liberties reclaimed.

Feb. 9, 2011