Housekeeping: I’ve been busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. It’s all good and the new company (one of the new companies), Lambert Research LLC, does not lack clients. It’s a good problem to have. It makes for slower blogging on my part, and I appreciate you all hanging in there.
Surveillance Wars
The following is an excerpt from Just the News.
After years of evidence that the FBI has abused its spy authorities, Congress is embarking on a bipartisan effort to revamp a key surveillance law to better protect civil liberties, including appointing special lawyers to advocate on behalf of Americans secretly targeted by the government.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Section 702 powers allow the government to rummage through phone records in terrorism and counterintelligence probes without a warrant and have long raised deep concerns, starting with ACLU litigation years ago and continuing through the bungled FISA warrant that unlawfully targeted the Trump campaign and adviser Carter Page during the Russia collusion probe.
But lawmakers continued to renew the law to ensure the government had the powers it needed to fight terror threats. But since its last renewal, the FISA Court and the U.S. intelligence community released devastating reports in 2020 and 2022 chronicling years of FISA abuses that went far beyond the Russia probe and even included the targeting of a sitting member of Congress.
Those revelations have increased the resolve of lawmakers to make substantive changes this year when the law expires, including inside the House Intelligence Committee, where a bipartisan group was selected last week to craft suggested changes.
“I think that you will see changes made to it,” Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.), one of the newest members of the House Intelligence Committee, told Just the News, adding there was clear evidence that the law’s past safeguards have been breached by the FBI and intel agencies.
“Unfortunately, there have been some people that have leaped those guardrails, for lack of better terminology, and there have got to be consequences for those people who were entrusted,” Scott said in an interview with the “Just the News, No Noise” television show. “If you were entrusted with the ability to query that information, and you abused that, then there have to be consequences.”
Scott said lawmakers on the committee want to address who in government can query the database, who can be targeted and who must sign off on such warrantless surveillance.
He also suggested there is some support for adding lawyers to the secretive process to help defend the rights of Americans who are being surveilled without their knowledge. (Continued…)
Link to article here.
Push Back
The Wolf stovetop at the White Wolf Mine isn’t going away anytime soon…
The Biden regime, aided by its green energy allies, is invading the American family’s personal space with its coming regulatory crackdown on gas stoves, U.S. Oil and Gas Association President Tim Stewart says.
“The kitchen is the epicenter of everybody’s home,” Stewart told the “Just the News, No Noise” TV show. “It’s where parents teach their kids. You gather around the center island and eat together. This is a place where all the teaching takes place. And this green movement is knocking on our front doors and working its way to the center of our houses.”
The aggressive, new regulatory reach straight into the heart of American domestic life “really bothers people,” said Stewart. “It’s an invasion of their personal space.”
He said his industry will be forming an effort to whip up consumer support against the regulations and send an unmistakable message to “keep your hands off our stoves.”
In January, the Biden administration was forced to backpedal after an official hinted at a possible nationwide ban on gas stoves, claiming the appliances are linked to climate change, pollution and health problems such as cancer.
Calling the appliances a “hidden hazard,” Consumer Product Safety Commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. told Bloomberg in January that “any option is on the table” with regard to regulating them.
Roughly 38% of U.S. households have gas stoves.
The DOE “rule would ban 84% of the gas stoves that they’re testing as not being efficient enough,” he [Stewart] said. “And so the crappy gas stoves that you and I had in our college dorm rooms might make the cut.
But the high-end Viking and subzero ranges, they’re not going to make the cut under this DOE proposal. And according to that 84% test, it will save people $4 a year, that’s their estimate. So it’s not about savings, not about health, it’s about control.”
Read more here.
I would like to see the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and Patriot Act sunsetted. Where either of them worth the cost to our personal freedom? My opinion is that the were not. It is pretty evident that, regardless of the laws put in place to constrain abuse, it is just to easy to abuse laws like this to gain more control.
Gas stoves. Good on you for helping delay the next ice age. Electric power is so much cheaper than other sources of power in the PNW that I will keep my house all electric but cooking on a gas stove is certainly quicker more convenient. My contribution will be limited to a lot of grilling using propane though.
A Wolf gas range at the WWM…there’s a metaphor in there somewhere. While we love our Electrolux gas range, but if it ever bit the dust THAT Wolf stovetop/range would be just the ticket to fill the counter gap.
Only a moron politician (redundancy just to hammer/flog the point) would ‘think of’ then ‘propose’ such an asinine thing as “banning” gas stoves and ranges. First guns, as, according to the mental giants among us, The Founders had no concept of an AR when drafting 2A (or 1A for Hillary joke memes), and now gas appliances being “not in The Constitution” so should be banned “to save humanity!”. (Wait! Didn’t these goofballs say the Earth is toast in p…what now…three years…so why do they care?)
Typical not thinking this through by the geniuses. How will restaurants fair? I suppose lab meat doesn’t need cooking. But will pro chefs and cooks get an exemption? Geez, Louise. How stupid can these people get? (Ok, admittedly that’s rhetorical.) BUT, looking past the shamelessness smokescreen, there is an agenda: “Go Electric! Or else! Peons!”…powered by useless windmills and solar panels once they are finished wrecking reliable energy production…to further control people. Of course, as this plays out, the Ninny’s in Charge will deem “people NOT them, or part some micro-minority oddball protected class”, as bad for the environment. Wait…they already have. Strap in folks, it’s going to get more bizarre.
But that is a great cooktop, metaphors aside.
“will pro chefs and cooks get an exemption?”
I doubt it. (Unless you’re cooking for Gavin Newsom and his unmasked friends sitting at a crowded table at The French Laundry during the peak covidiocy of mandatory masks and “social distancing”.)
I recall the anti-knife idiots in the UK demanding all knives be under 5” AND blunt/dull at the tip. (Clearly this is narcissism, to demand that people’s knives match the genitals and intellects, respectively, of the banners. Anyway, ) Chefs were protesting this proposed nonsense, and the banners were saying that the chefs had to adapt. For the children, or the LGBTQ+, or the New Britons, or some such idiocy.
Me as well, I doubt they’ve thought this through beyond their goal of control and power over The Peon Subjects. These people are not that bright, and literally say EV’s for all when they can’t even figure out how to plug the damn things in. It’s not any more complicated than that at this point, and may not be salvageable short of some Divine Miracle.
LL’s demo’d bridge gif is my Plan A, unless God decides to directly involve me to effect change…otherwise…”Sayonara, enjoy your lunatic dumpster fire without me.”
Five burners, no waiting… I sure miss my nat gas range and electric oven stove, the best of both worlds. They have been going after wood stoves for a few years, it has given the greenies impetus for going after our propane and nat gas stoves, they can have mine when they pry that cold spatula out of my rigor mortis hands…
I have a wood stove and use it regularly in winter. The temp can be the same as it is with my central heat but the wood stove just makes things feel warmer, probably because of the infrared. Won’t even talk about how pleasant it is to read a book close to a wood stove fire when it is cold and rainy out.
I envy you, they won’t let me put a wood stove in the current apartment I am living in on a second floor, the third above me wouldn’t notice it much…
Same here!!
Government jobs are welfare for college grads with useless degrees. If they would just take the money and keep their mouths shut the situation would be tolerable. Alas, they believe they have the divine right “to do something”. After all, they are smarter than everyone else. What they are is ignorant poorly educated people with a high I.Q. and an overinflated option of themselves.
what, 99.5 percent isn’t efficient enough for ’em? mine only emit water vapor. last time i checked water was not on the hazmat list…..rules for privacy invasion, yeah right. like they have followed the laws. this won’t end until some folks get strung up. if i may, what does lambert research research?
So yours emits dihydrgen monoxide. You need to reference the Material Safety Data Sheet for that substance .
Well, if they seriously wanted to reduce childhood asthma, there’s one thing they could do. I will now shut up because you and I know exactly what I and Willis Carrier are talking about.
If you need more of a hint, well, chill out, man.
And they’ll pry my thermostat out of my room temperature hands.
Bastards.
Bad enough that all fuels are twice as expensive as they were on January 19, 2020…
They can have my gas stuff when they pry it from my cold dead hands! Congrats on the business going strong! That’s great news, and we can wait for blog posts!!!
My niece’s husband is an electrician that specializes in solar panel and generator backup in rural areas. The generators he recommends all run off LP. His recommendation is two 250 gallon tanks and to run house appliances like hot water heater, central heat furnace, dryer, and stove off LP as well. When the tank goes dry switch over to the other tank and have the empty tank filled.
He has been talking about buying a dozen or so LP appliances as an investment…
Add lawyers to the process to defend citizens’ rights? Sheee-it. I thought that was what caused the problems in the first place.
I spoke to Jonathan Emord, author of The Authoritarians, about the genesis of the administrative state.
The administrators determine if a gas stove is permissible.
You are guilty before proven innocent. You gave no right to a jury.
They can issue a general warrant to observe your stove.
And confiscate it.
Sounds like the FISA court also.
In these cold dead hands will this gas stove remain.
Oh yes, I for one am glad our elite rulers will keep their Vikings while we serfs huddle around lifeless lithium batteries and cracked solar panels.