If you want to go fishing in any of the Great Lakes, be sure to have your passport. And to fax in all your ID info to customs an hour before you leave. And then visit customs afterward to have your photographs taken, along with a sliver of your dignity.
These are new rules to protect us from terrorists. Don’t you feel safer now? Of course you do, comrade.
Sheesh, could our government get any more stupid and incompetent? Probably. Stay tuned.
A high school project in New Jersey asked teens to design public policy. They designed one that requires Big Brother to punish kids for making incorrect decisions, proving that government schools are doing a fine job of raising the next generation of sheep.
The new bill would fine kids caught possessing tobacco or smoking in public places.
The article quotes Marie Kakogiannis, a junior at Rutherford High School. “I think it’s a great way for kids not to smoke, but kids are going to find a way to do it. But whatever the government could do to prevent it, they should.”
Only a high school junior, and she’s already a Nicotine Nazi. Isn’t that cute?
Playmoble has introduced a new toy that will help kids experience the Big Brother state we’re living in - The Playmoble Security Check Point.
Lots of smart as commentary springs to mind, but I’ve been beaten to the punch by the reviewers at Amazon.
I’m on too many mailing lists and get too many newsletters. I just skim most of them. One of the few that I always read all the way through are the Downsize DC mailings. They’re always well written and informative, and often maddening because of the information they contain.
This one was so good I just had to share it with you in its entirety:
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Quote of the Day:
“…The Bill of Rights is a literal and absolute document. The First Amendment doesn’t say you have a right to speak out unless the government has a ‘compelling interest’ in censoring the Internet. The Second Amendment doesn’t say you have the right to keep and bear arms until some madman plants a bomb. The Fourth Amendment doesn’t say you have the right to be secure from search and seizure unless some FBI agent thinks you fit the profile of a terrorist. The government has no right to interfere with any of these freedoms under any circumstances.”
– Harry Browne (1933-2006) best-selling author, two-time presidential candidate, and co-founder of Downsize DC
Subject: 68 Senators violated their oaths of office yesterday
Do you know the date of the first law ever passed by the United States’ Senate? It was May 5, 1789.
Do you know the subject of that law? It was the “Oath Act.” It’s purpose was to provide specific wording for the oath the Constitution requires Senators to swear upon taking office.
Strangely, the Constitution actually provides the specific wording of the oath the President is supposed to take, but it does not do so for Congress. Instead, the Constitution simply stipulates the following in Article VI, clause 3:
“The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”
The lack of specific wording meant that Congress had to create the wording. The oath they created as their first order of business, was very simple . . .
“I do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States.”
Of course, later politicians have been increasingly fond of complexity, causing the oath to mutate into this . . .
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter.”
The result remains the same. And please notice that members of Congress do not swear an oath to support or defend the nation, the country, or the government. They swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution, specifically. This is very important . . .
The Founders viewed government as a servant of the people. They did not make the mistake that so many supposed “patriots” make, of thinking the government is the same thing as the nation, the country, or the people. Our country is made up of many institutions — families, churches, businesses, associations — of which the government is only one. All of these institutions taken together, and all the individuals within the country, independent of any institution, are what make up the country.
The government is meant to serve the nation, not BE the country.
In keeping with the ideas expressed in our Declaration of Independence, our government was instituted with highly limited powers. The instrument that imposed these limitations was the Constitution, and it is this document that members of Congress swear an oath to defend.
One of the consequences of Constitutional limits on government power is that bad people are often permitted to get away with doing bad things. The government is categorically denied many of the powers that might aid it in the apprehension of criminals. For example . . .
There are hundreds of murderers running lose in America, and thousands of murders committed each year, that the government might be able to stop. The Constitution specifically prohibits government from doing all that it could do to save lives by catching murderers.
Were the Founders crazy? Were they stupid? No, they were not. The Founders knew that any government that has all the power it might need to optimize its apprehension of murderers, would also have all the power it needed to become a mass murderer.
The Founders knew, even in their time, that governments were, historically, the greatest killers of all. The history of the last century has only added to the evidence. Tens of millions of people were murdered in the 20th Century by governments that had too much power. Our Constitution protects us from this; so far.
Think about that.
But now, because criminals murdered thousands of people on September 11, 2001, many are eager to abandon their Constitutional protections.
Have we become a nation of sniveling cowards? If not, please explain how it is that Congress has either bowed to or exploited this fear to become a gang of lawbreakers?
Yesterday, 68 Senators violated their oaths of office. They voted to pass S. 2248, a new law designed to replace the so-called “Protect America Act.” This bill violates the Bill of Rights . . .
* It permits the President to spy on Americans without a warrant.
* It grants retroactive immunity to tele-communications companies that collaborated with the Bush administration in previous warrantless spying, thereby creating an incentive for other companies to engage in similar crimes in the future (only Qwest Communications insisted on warrants).
Will this new, un-constitutional power, prevent future terrorist attacks? Of course not, nothing can do that, just as there is no law or power that could completely stop murders by domestic criminals.
Does this new law create a tyranny? That would be an exaggeration. But what will happen when the next terrorist attack comes?
The sniveling cowards among us, and the lawbreakers in Congress, will then seek still more powers.
At one point will our children call this tyranny? Will there be any turning back?
Yesterday, 19 Democrats, 48 Republicans, and 1 independent voted to violate the Constitution and their oaths of office. Only 28 Democrats, 1 independent, and ZERO Republicans remained true to their oaths. The Republicans were universally bad.
But please notice that the law could not have passed without the vote of the Democrats!
Let this be clear — neither political party is going to protect our Constitution, unless WE compel them to do it.
All hope is NOT lost. S. 2248 cannot become law unless the House agrees to its provisions. Fortunately, the House version of this bill, while not perfect, is signficantly better. Our best hope, and we must take it, is to tell the House to stick by their version of the bill.
A list of how the Senate voted is pasted below my signature.* Use the personal comments section of your message to Congress to thank your Senator if he or she voted against S. 2248, or to criticize your Senator if he or she voted for it. Ask your House member to reject the provisions of S. 2248.
You can send your message from the DownsizeDC.org website.
Also, please make a contribution to further our work. Your contribution is our budget. You can contribute here.
Jim Babka
President
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.
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*I left the list out, but you can find whatever you need to know on the site. Stop by and vote, and sign up for their newsletter.
Update: Finally, the government does something good, if only through inaction. The House refused to renew this, so the sunset clause made it history last Friday.
How much influence did the 40k+ e-mails sent by members of Downsize DC have? We can’t know for sure, except to say it helped.
The senate has just removed more rights from American citizens, and as an extra bonus have provided immunity to the telecoms who broke the law and violated our rights at the request of King George.From the NYT article:
Democratic opponents, led by Senators Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, argued that the plan effectively rewarded phone companies by providing them with legal insulation for actions that violated longstanding law and their own privacy obligations to their customers. But immunity supporters said the phone carriers acted out of patriotism after the Sept. 11 attacks in complying with what they believed in good faith was a legally binding order from the president.
“This, I believe, is the right way to go for the security of the nation,” said Senator John D. Rockefeller, the West Virginia Democrat who leads the intelligence committee. His support for the plan, after intense negotiations with the White House and his Republican colleagues, was considered critical to its passage but drew criticism from civil liberties groups because of $42,000 in contributions that Mr. Rockefeller received last year from AT&T and Verizon executives.
So if you’re ever caught up in a federal fishing expedition (and remember, what makes you an “enemy combatant” is some federal bureaucrat saying so; proof is not required) just say “I was doing it out of patriotism” and you’ll get immunity.
Oh, wait, you haven’t purchased a senator for $42K? Never mind.
New Mexico legislator Gail Chasey, evidently attempting to prove she can be as dim-witted as any Mississippi legislator, has teamed up with the Sierra Club to propose a tax on TVs and Video games. The money would be used to fight childhood obesity and improve education. If the people behind this proposal were educated in New Mexico, one could argue that education improvement is sorely needed.
After writing that paragraph I Googled her. She lists her occupation as “Retired Educator.” I rest my case.
I’ve always felt that for the first year of any new law, it should only apply to those who voted for it or advocated for it. If that were the case, I’d support this one. Imagine the results.
First we’d hire personal trainers to visit the offices of the legislators and the Sierra Club. They’d weigh and measure all of them, and using the ridiculously inaccurate BMI determine who was obese. Anyone who was would be locked out of their office and moved to the nearest public park, where they would be forced spend eight hours a day doing sit ups, pull ups, push ups, throw ups, fall downs, and any other calisthenics that would amuse bystanders. Weather wouldn’t be allowed as an excuse - they’d exercise in the sun, the rain, the snow (do they get snow in New Mexico?) until they achieve the officially sanctioned BMI.
They’ll have 30 days to reach their goal. If they do, great, they can go back to work and resume pretending to do whatever it is they pretend to do. If not, they’ll be fired. And when they get home they’ll find the fun police were there first, and have removed every TV, DVD, Video Game and computer from their premises.
BTW, here’s her contact information. Feel free to drop her a line about her brilliant plan.
How many mouth-breathing brain-dead adults can you find in this picture?
A fourteen year old boy in Lewisville Texas applied some hand sanitizer that was on his fifth grade teachers desk. He smelled it, but evidently inhaled too deeply.
The school officials called the cops, who hauled him into the police department, photographed and fingerprinted him. The DA charged him with delinquency, claiming he smelled the stuff “induce a condition of intoxication, hallucination and elation.”
Eventually the charges were dropped, but not until the boy’s father hired a lawyer and the story received media attention.
It’s not surprising that a school administrator would do this - they are almost always anal retentive dull normals with less imagination than a Britney Spears lyricist. But any cop with a double digit IQ should have laughed the thing off, called the school official a disparaging name, and then snickered about it over donuts back at the station. Instead, he hauled the kid in and treated him like a criminal. The police chief should have stopped it right there, but he didn’t. The prosecutor should have cited the police for being assholes and ended it there. But it wasn’t until lawyers and the media were called in that any of the authoritarians backed down.
The school officials, the cop, the chief and the prosecutor should all get together - in the unemployment line.
Some German smokers are showing how upset they are with the new smoking ban by sporting a black t-shirt decorated with a yellow Star of David, with “Smoker” written across the star. This has upset just about every Jewish group in existence.
The smokers are in the right church, but most definitely in the wrong pew. Comparing their government to the way Hitler treated Jews is offensive and inappropriate. They should be comparing their government to the way Hitler treated smokers. The parallels are chilling.
Inspired, perhaps, by California counties that have made it illegal for people to smoke in their own homes, the government is eager to continue expanding their tentacles into once private residences.
The California Energy Commission wants to require all new homes, and remodeled homes, have special radio controlled thermostats which Big Brother could control. First they’ll set it to “suggested” temperatures. Customers would be allowed to override the “suggestions,” but Big Brother would have the ultimate control, and the final say.
Concerns that the signal could be hacked have been brushed aside. A spokesweasel for PG&E says that’s not possible, a statement guaranteed to inspire geeks to prove her wrong.
Thoughts on the New Hampshire Primary
That’s it. We’re fucked.
No one had more money than Ron. No one had more grass roots support. The day before the primary Jay Leno gave him a half hour on the countries most popular late night talk show. The primary was held in the Live Free Or Die state. The Free State Project state.
And he got 8%. Eight miserable fucking percent. A third less than some evangelical asshole who thinks the earth is 6,000 years old and wants to add not one, but two amendments to the constitution to make his superstitions the law of the land.
I figured America was over when the Supremes outlawed private property and ruled that the feds could use the interstate commerce clause to regulate everything, including things that didn’t involve commerce or anything interstate. But the Free State Project looked encouraging, and full of possibilities. Slim possibilities, but still, possibilities. And although I knew Ron was a long shot, the groundswell of support made me think there just might be hope for the country. We could get it back from the fascists and the socialists and start living like Americans again, instead of as slaves. I didn’t really expect him to win, but figured capturing a large portion of the vote would start pushing American politics in the right direction.
I’ve been interested in politics since the Nixon administration. I’ve never seen anything like the huge populist support Paul has had. I’ve never seen anything close to it. It filled me with hope and joy and a belief that there was still a chance there were enough Americans in this country to eventually defeat the United Statsits. And with all that enormous support, the fantastic publicity and with the incredible enthusiasm of millions of people, he gets 8%.
All that hope, all that enthusiasm, all for nothing. Now our only choice is being crushed under the thumb of socialism or the heal of fascism.
“But,” says the True Believer, “We’re getting our message out there! People are hearing the message of liberty and liking it!” Yes, what an impressive showing. Libertarians have been preaching the message for thirty years. And in the most popular, well known, liberty oriented candidate ever, in the most liberty oriented state of the union, you got 8% of the vote. Whoop De Fucking Doo. Maybe in another thirty years you can double that number. Won’t that be impressive.
The US is finished, my friends. It’s over. It’s done. The Ron Paul Campaign is finished. The Free State Project is a joke. We are a nation of cheerful retards lining up for Special Olympics. We say retarded things like “I have a right to health care” or “the rich don’t pay enough taxes” or “this is a Christian nation” or “we’ll stay in the Middle East for a hundred years if that’s what it takes to fight terrorism,” and the politicians pat us on the head and say “there there, you really are smart.” We race our spastic race while they clap and cheer us on. They’ll be at the finish line giving big hugs to everyone with no regard as to who actually won, because all that really matters is that you try. And while they’re passing out their hugs they’ll be winking at each other, amused at how well they’ve fooled us again and eager to get back to faithfully serving their corporate masters.
“Change!” they all shout. “We stand for Change. Real Change this time. Not like the last time and the time before and the time before that and the time before that when we lied to you and you believed us and we lied to you again and you believed us again and again and again. This time we really mean it!”
You want to feel change, my friends? Then put your hand in your pocket and finger your coins.
The war on Some Drugs will continue. Our standing as the country with the highest percentage of our population in prison will remain unchallenged. We’ll keep jailing people for non-violent victumless “crimes” and prisons will remain a growth industry. Our dollar will remain fiat currency and drop in value every time they print up more. The Patriot Act will remain in place. Habeas Corpus will not be returning. Nor will private property. We will all get our Real ID cards and, like good little Germans pre WWII, obediently present them to uniformed thugs every time they demand to see our papers. The pussification of the country will continue to accelerate. More and more personal decisions will be taken from us as the government continues to pass laws telling us how we must raise our children, what we can eat, where we can have a smoke (not in your homes, comrades!), what we can drive, what we can say and where we can say it. And 92% of the population will smile and say “It’s a free country!”
I’m done with political activism. It’s useless. It’s pointless. The game is so deeply and thoroughly rigged that there’s no possibility of real change for the better. Part of that rigging is a system that makes it impossible for anyone who isn’t one of the “two” parties to have even the slightest chance of winning. But most of the rigging is simply pandering to the gullibility and stupidity of the majority of “Americans.” Real Americans, those who truly understand liberty, who have studied the constitution and the writings of the founding fathers and really know what it is, are such a rare breed that we have absolutely no chance of overcoming the multitude of assholes who mouth the word with one sentence and cheer on the expansion of the government with the next.
Screw it. I’ll still bitch and moan, because it’s fun, but getting involved is for suckers, and I’m tired of being one. I’m getting too old to keep tilting and windmills, and it’s time to concentrate on having as much fun as I can for the rest of my years. It’s time to kick back with old friends and make a new ones and stop wasting time trying to change things. I haven’t played video games much, because I haven’t had the time. But maybe I’ll go get an Xbox and waste every evening in pointless battles against teenagers I don’t know or care about. Or put a bigger hard drive on the Tivo and renew my Netflix subscription. Or devote my time to perfecting some new vice or nasty habit. Because trying to improve this country is a pathetic waste of time and effort. The best we can hope for is to have a few laughs watching it circle the drain.
Raise a glass to Clifford E. Clark, who took out a traffic light camera with three rounds from a .30-06. Clark was fined $50.
$50? That’s quite a bargain. Where do I sign up?
If you live in Boston and think your kid might have an illegal gun stashed in his room, don’t go looking for it yourself. No, that would be too much trouble, especially when Officer Friendly is volunteering to conduct the search for you.
The Boston Globe reports, “in the next two weeks, Boston police officers who are assigned to schools will begin going to homes where they believe teenagers might have guns. The officers will travel in groups of three, dress in plainclothes to avoid attracting negative attention, and ask the teenager’s parent or legal guardian for permission to search. If the parents say no, police said, the officers will leave.”
They say they’ll only confiscate the guns and won’t press charges. Unless they were used in a shooting, of course. And if they find any drugs, they’ll confiscate those too, without pressing charges. Although they might. They’ve received lessons in discretion, so parents can trust that the friendly officer will make the right decision.
A better way to invade bedroom privacy is being tested by The Huston Police department. They were caught conducting secret tests of an unmanned spy plane. They refuse to specify what they’re going to use it for, only saying they aren’t ruling anything out. They say they’ll tackle privacy and illegal search issues “later.” Check out the video from local news station KPRC.
Mothers Against Drunk Driving is suing Mothers Against Illegal Aliens for using “Mothers Against” in their name. Their C&D letter said “MADD cannot be associated with your organization and the use of “Mothers Against” gives a strong implication of a relationship with MADD.”
Not really. As the writer of this blog discovered, a quick Google of “Mothers Against” returns hundreds of “Mothers Against” organizations. Why they went after this one is anyone’s guess.
M.A.D.D, like every other nanny organization, is a fountain of made up numbers and fake statistics. Their favorite, of course, is the number of drivers killed in “alcohol related accidents.” Note the careful phrasing. We’re not talking drunk drivers here, we’re talking alcohol related. If the driver swallowed his mouthwash before going to work and blew .01 on a breathalyser, that’s alcohol related, even though no sane person would consider that drunk. If a driver hits a drunk pedestrian, that’s alcohol related. If the driver is stone cold sober but his passenger had a few, that’s an alcohol related accident.
I’d suggest that they change their name. Just shorten it by one letter, to M.A.D: Mothers Against Drinking. They are no longer going after drivers who are actually drunk. Their goal is prohibition, one baby step at a time.
At one point, they used the motto “Impairment starts with the first drink.” They’ve dropped that, removing it entirely from their web site. Perhaps they realized they were jumping the gun by a few years. But a few quotes from their literature shows where they’re really coming from.
”Promoting ‘responsible drinking and driving’ is like promoting ‘responsible drive-by shootings’.”—MADD’s Driven Magazine, Fall, 1997
Forget limits on BAC. It’s just not acceptable to drink and drive, period” - Madd President Wendy Hamilton.
“Lowering the legal [arrest] standard will be a deterrent for light drinkers as well as heavy drinkers. There is no safe blood alcohol level, and for that reason, responsible drinking and driving means no drinking and driving.”—Catherine Prescott, former President, MADD.
“…we do not want to overlook the casual drinker. If you choose to drink, you should never drive. We will not tolerate drinking and driving-period.”—MADD President, Karolyn Nunnallee.
Source: this informative, very ugly site.
A well done breakdown of how M.A.D.D lies with numbers can be found here. And you know you can trust it, because it’s published by Modern Drunkard Magazine.
When Michael Graham took his daughter to the pediatrician for a routine checkup, he wasn’t expecting that she’d be grilled about his drinking. He didn’t expect the doctor would ask his kid if he and his wife got along well, or if either of them used drugs, or of he made his daughter “feel uncomfortable”, but that’s what happened. (Note, you can read the whole article by clicking on the numbers at the bottom of the page.)
He goes on to tell the story a five year old who was asked if her parents had a gun. When she said yes the doctor grilled her for more details; he wanted to know what kinds of guns the parents had, how many they had, and how they were stored.
As if that weren’t bad enough, the doctor then called the police and reported everything he had learned.
An errant doc? A nosy exception to the rule? Nope. These are not isolated instances. They are, in fact, required.
This policy document, published by the American Academy of Pediatrics, establishes a policy requiring doctors to not only hound their young patients, but to question them about anything their parents do. The following are direct quotes from the policy paper:
“Pre-teens as well as teenagers should be interviewed privately during each office visit with the reassurance of confidentiality and a discussion of its limits. Even an apparently straightforward complaint such as headache or sore throat may be associated with an underlying substance abuse problem.”
“It may be helpful to begin with questions about the patient’s attitude toward use of tobacco, alcohol, and other drugs within his or her environment (home, school, and friends) rather than probing personal beliefs or habits.”
“Inquiry regarding the extent of tobacco, alcohol, or other drug use by peers and family should be a part of the routine history of every child who is seen in the pediatrician’s office.”
What happens when the kids get something wrong? When I was growing up my father had a beer with every evening meal. One beer, never two, and I never saw him drunk, or even tipsy. Yet, if I were asked, as a five year old kid, about Dad’s drinking I probably would have said “Dad drinks beer every day.” Of course, back then, pediatricians weren’t acting as the eyes and ears of Big Brother.
While it is reasonable for a doctor to make further inquiries if there are signs of abuse or he suspects something is wrong, this kind of fishing is unconscionable. Since this is official policy, parents should never leave their kids alone with their pediatrician.
Isn’t that sick?
“I like the idea of giving every baby born in America a $5,000 account that will grow over time, so that when that young person turns 18 if they have finished high school they will be able to access it to go to college or maybe they will be able to make that down payment on their first home” – Hillary Clinton
“New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, continuing to hit on economic themes in her White House campaign, said the government should do more to help people save for retirement, and is proposing an annual tax credit of up to $1,000 to help do that.” - The Wall Street Journal, October 10, 2007
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the Public Treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the Public Treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy always followed by dictatorship.” - Alexander Fraser Tyler, 18th century Scottish historian, The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic
In a semi-free country like the US it’s difficult to impose tyranny in one fell swoop. It has to be done slowly, little by little, baby step by baby step. And it’s important that those first few steps seem reasonable.
The first anti-smoker law was passed in the sixties. It demanded smoking and non-smoking sections in airplanes. That seems pretty reasonable, and it was passed with little objection. If someone said “In a couple of decades this will lead to it being illegal to have a smoke in a bar,” everyone would have laughed at him. And if he said “In forty years this will lead to it being illegal to smoke in your own home” he’d have been written off as being batshit crazy.
This week the city of Belmont CA passed a law that does just that. If you live in an apartment or a in a condo you’ve paid for, your private property, it will soon be illegal to smoke in it.
Fellow citizens, how long are we going to put up with this kind of shit? What will it take to wake up the American Sheeple?
I thought this e-mail, from Quick Hitts Podcast listener Don Venardos, was something you’d all enjoy. (Reprinted with Don’s Permission. The only e-mails I publish without permission are the nasty ones.)
My latest thought on healthcare:
Remove the restriction that limits group insurance to employment based organizations, then let the Democrats create the single payer system that they so desperately want for every member of the Democratic party, paid for by the dues from the Democratic party. They can set up whatever fee structure they want and have their own socialist bliss, whilst leaving those of us who prefer free markets to
ourselves.
If it is a good idea then their ranks will swell and they will be happy campers. Of course, with all of their soak the rich rhetoric I have a feeling that there will be no one left in the party to foot the bill, but there is no better lab than the real world, so if they are so convinced that this is the way to go then they should put their money where their mouth is and prove it to the world.
Regards,
Don Venardos
“HUNTINGTON BEACH – Huntington Beach is the first city in Orange County to consider a program that would make it mandatory for pet owners to spay or neuter and to have microchips inserted in their cats and dogs.”
I’ve always neutered my pets because it’s The Right Thing To Do. I don’t spychip my pets, but if the owner wants to that’s fine. But making it mandatory is more than ridiculous, it’s an incredible infringement on pet owners. Pets are property and it’s up to their owners, not government bureaucrats, to make decisions about them.
I’ve read a bit about studies that claim RFID chips cause cancer in animals, but I don’t find them very convincing. The real problem is a complete disrespect for pet owners and property rights.
The best way to lead is by example. Therefore, the bureaucrats of Huntington Beach who support this law should first be sterilized and microchiped themselves. And in keeping with their policy, it should be mandatory.
The next time one of your fellow United Statists says “It’s a Free Country” show them this article.
And if they keep babbling, show them this one.
America no longer exists, but the United States is still a pretty cool place, so the Fourth is still worth celebrating.
Big fireworks displays are great fun, but they’re still a passive experience, and Lee Greenwood sucks. So be sure to blow off some of your own fireworks. Make some noise. Blow stuff up. It’s against Big Brother’s nanny laws, so it’s the most American thing you can do.