You may recall some of these Congressional House members: Walter Jones of North Carolina, Justin Amash of Michigan, David Schweikert of Arizona and  Tim Huelskamp of Kansas.

Some are House members that were endorsed by Ron Paul in the recent election, others were in general agreement with him. They all have one thing in common, now, the GOP Steering Committee has via the Congressional equivalent of a Richard Nixon Saturday Night Massacre removed them from key Congressional committees.

Roll Call has the details:

Speaker John A. Boehner initiated today a small purge of rebellious Republicans — mostly conservatives — from prominent committees; it’s the latest instance of the Ohio Republican’s clamping down on his fractious conference. 

The decisions were made by the GOP Steering Committee at a Monday meeting, which reviewed a spreadsheet listing each GOP lawmaker and how often he or she had voted with leadership, three sources said.

Reps. David Schweikert of Arizona and Walter Jones of North Carolina were booted from the Financial Services Committee. Reps. Justin Amash of Michigan and Tim Huelskamp of Kansas were removed from the Budget Committee.

According to a source, Schweikert was told that he was ousted in part because his “votes were not in lockstep with leadership.”

Michael Steel, a spokesman for Boehner, said, “The Steering Committee makes decisions based on a range of factors.”…

The shuffling is the latest sign that Boehner is flexing his muscle with the right flank of his conference as he seeks a united front during tense fiscal cliff negotiations with President Barack Obama.

A GOP strategist said, “This is a move that the whip team has been advocating for some time. They are using all of the tools at their disposal.”

socraticapology:

eltigrechico:

The first trial of a young man for the crime of not registering for the draft was under way in 1985; his name was Paul Jacob and he was a self-conscious libertarian and fan of Ron Paul. He asked that Paul testify on his behalf. 

“It wasn’t certain that he’d be able to come in,” Jacob says. “We were trying to figure out a way, get a small plane. I remember someone in his shop asked if we could buy gas, they had to reimburse the private plane. We contacted him four or five times afterwards to get him to send us an invoice. Finally Ron just aid he would pick that up.

“He was absolutely fantastic on the stand. They brought up the argument, isn’t this a radical view that wants to destroy all government? He started out saying that when he was in Congress he voted against ninety-nine percent of bills, because government is a massive threat to every individual in the country.” Jacob had scrawled “smash the state” on some piece of paperwork in evidence; the ex-congressman was confronted with this. “‘I wouldn’t use that sort of rhetoric, use the term “smash the state,” I may not have used that verb,’ Ron said, ‘but I certainly agree with the sentiment.’ “

Reminder that this was a thing that happened.

baseballlibertarian:

But drones are a great idea, right? 

Maybe they can use the drones to spy on the government rather than the government spying on us. 

here are a lot of cool things you can do with $1,000, but scientists at an Austin, Texas college have come across one that is often overlooked: for less than a grand, how’d you like to hijack a US government drone?

A group of researchers led by Professor Todd Humphreys from the University of Texas at Austin Radionavigation Laboratory recently succeeded in raising the eyebrows of the US government. With just around $1,000 in parts, Humphreys’ team took control of an unmanned aerial vehicle operated by the US Department of Homeland Security.

After being challenged by his lab, the DHS dared Humphreys’ crew to hack into their drone and take command. Much to their chagrin, they did exactly that.

Humphrey tells Fox News that for a few hundreds dollar his team was able to “spoof” the GPS system on board the DHS drone, a technique that involves mimicking the actual signals sent to the global positioning device and then eventually tricking the target into following a new set of commands. And, for just $1,000, Humphreys says the spoofer his team assembled was the most advanced one ever built.

“Spoofing a GPS receiver on a UAV is just another way of hijacking a plane,” Humphreys tells Fox. The real danger here, however, is that the government is currently considering plans that will allow local law enforcement agencies and other organizations from coast-to-coast to control drones of their own in America’s airspace.

“In five or ten years you have 30,000 drones in the airspace,” he tells Fox News. “Each one of these could be a potential missile used against us.”

On one hand we have to consider that Austin is one of the top computer science schools in America. They aren’t your run-of-the-mill scientists.
I read the title “Texas College Hacks” and immediately thought ‘I bet it’s Austin’.
On the other, yeah, hacked drones. That’s a lovely future to look forward to.