Hornberger's Blog

The Real Criminals Under Our National-Security State System

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 31, 2013

Let’s recap the situation regarding criminal conduct within the U.S. national-security state, just to see how the national-security state has succeeded in corrupting the morals and values of our nation. People Who Are Considered Heroes by the National-Security State 1. The officials who devised the scheme that plunged America into the illegal world of torture. 2. The officials who actually ...

Why Not Just Abolish the NSA?

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 30, 2013

Notice that all the public discussion about the NSA’s super-secret, massive surveillance scheme assumes that the NSA has become a permanent part of American life. The debate revolves around what restrictions, if any, should be placed on the NSA’s authority to spy on people. But the real question that Americans should be debating is: Why not simply abolish the NSA? The ...

The Feds versus the Fourth Amendment

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 29, 2013

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads as follows: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the ...

Detroit, Greece, and Excessive Federal Debt

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 26, 2013

Detroit is another reminder of the danger of excessive government debt. It leads to bankruptcy. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out how a government gets to that point. The government begins spending more than what it is bringing in with taxes. To cover the difference, it borrows the money. As the process continues, year after year, the amount ...

Let’s Do Some Separating

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 25, 2013

The standard approach toward the never-ceasing crises that arise from socialistic and interventionist programs is “reform.” The idea is that such programs are a given — that is, that Americans should just consider them a permanent part of American life (under the false guise of “freedom and free enterprise”) and devote their efforts to refining, improving, and modifying them ...

Why No Oswald Treatment for the Leakers?

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 24, 2013

I’ll bet that not one single American is surprised about the U.S. government’s actions against leakers Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning, and John Kiriakou. What the U.S. national-security state is doing to them is exactly what all of us would expect them to do. They’re aiming to lock Manning up for the rest of his life for leaking information that, at ...

The Pentagon and the CIA Were Responsible for the Cuban Missile Crisis

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 23, 2013

One of the enduring U.S. myths from the Cold War is that communist Cuba, headed by Fidel Castro, and the Soviet Union were responsible for bringing the world to the brink of all-out nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. The myth holds that the Soviets and Cubans were responsible for the crisis by basing Soviet offensive ...

Michael Gerson’s Nasty Attack on Rand Paul and Jack Hunter

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 22, 2013

Last week Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson leveled a nasty attack against Rand Paul for hiring longtime conservative-libertarian activist Jack Hunter as a staffer. The ostensible reason for the attack was some “neo-Confederate radio rants” that Hunter had made as a radio talk-show host when he was in his 20s. The title of Gerson’s piece was, “Rand Paul ...

Send the CIA Kidnapper Back to Italy to Face Justice

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 19, 2013

An opportunity for the anti-Snowden crowd to show their consistency to principle has arisen. A convicted American kidnapper has been apprehended in Panama as a result of an international arrest warrant. The man was convicted in Italy in 2009 and sentenced to serve 9 years in jail. However, he went on the lam and has never returned to ...

Is the Drug War Now Over?

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 18, 2013

Drug-war proponents are going through one of their periodic paroxysms of ecstasy over the capture this week near Nuevo, Laredo, Mexico, of a man alleged to be one of Latin America’s biggest and most brutal drug lords, 40-year-old Miguel Angel Trevino Morales. Mainstream journalists are even wondering what effect the arrest might have on the decades-old drug war. Permit me ...

The Paranoid Obsession over Cuba

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 17, 2013

The U.S. government’s belligerence toward Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Ecuador for sympathizing with Edward Snowden’s request for asylum brings to mind the U.S. national-security state’s Cold War mindset toward communism, a mindset characterized by deception, delusion, and paranoia, a mindset that did immeasurable harm to the American people as well as people in Latin America and that continues to ...

Edward Snowden and the Corruption of Morals and Values

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 16, 2013

The vilification of Edward Snowden by U.S. officials and their spokesmen in the mainstream press reflects perfectly the extent to which the national-security state apparatus, which was foisted on America’s governmental system after World War II and without even the semblance of a constitutional amendment, has warped and perverted fundamental morals and values. After all, what exactly has Snowden done ...