What do TSA groping, NSA data-mining, and mercury-laced fluorescent light bulbs have to do with keeping your doctor? They are the products of seductively entitled but flawed laws. As Daniel Webster said, “good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority.”

The Transportation Security Administration and the National Security Agency restrain our liberty under the auspices of the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 (PATRIOT Act). The Energy Independence and Security Act is phasing out incandescent bulbs.
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TheBlaze has a very interesting take on the latest goings-on in Crimea and the Ukraine and more broadly Russia’s alliances with various proxies hostile to America – a look at Sun Tzu’s “Art of War.”  While the full story has 16 relevant quotes, here are a few to illustrate the point.

TheBlaze writes: The quotes below reflect not only a potential framework for understanding Vladimir Putin’s moves, but the moves of America’s enemies in Asia and the Middle East more broadly.

1. “Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.” [Chapter I.19]
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Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK)

Updated: U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), today delivered the following opening statement at the SASC full committee hearing entitled: “Defense Authorization for Fiscal Year 2015 and the Future Years Defense Programs”.

As prepared for delivery:

Events across the Middle East, Africa, and most recently in Ukraine have brought into sharp focus a reality that President Obama seems unwilling to accept: the tide of war is not receding.  Instead, U.S. national security is being challenged in ways that I haven’t seen in all of my years serving in Washington.
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President Barack Obama is a “low-IQ US president,” whose threat to launch a military offensive should nuclear talks fail is an oft-cited punchline in the Islamic Republic, particularly among children, an Iranian general said on Tuesday.

“The low-IQ US president and his country’s Secretary of State John Kerry speak of the effectiveness of ‘the US options on the table’ on Iran while this phrase is mocked at and has become a joke among the Iranian nation, especially the children,” General Masoud Jazayeri said, according to the semi-official Fars News Agency and reported further by The Times of Israel.
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