What a strange year. Maybe I am completely off-base --and I am more than willing to accept that I could be reading it completely wrong. I can't help but feel that our (USA) government is turning a corner towards the "dark side". I am not just talking about this administration. This has been a disaster in the making for probably fifty years.

The Megaupload case is one example: Unceremoniously grab people's property (in the form of their data) and offer no mechanism to get it back. Furthermore, look through and examine all said data without a search warrant. Everyone is assumed to be a criminal without any proof or due process.

Yes, these were MU servers and, yes, they probably had a bunch of pirated stuff on there. Yet, I am sure that lots and lots of people had legitimate files and data of their own on MU. Today these people have to face the very real prospect of loosing it forever thanks to our now-totalitarian government.

Then there's the whole healthcare business. Don't get me wrong, I want everyone to have access to healthcare --not just here, all over the world. We can't evolve as a society when such a fundamental need is not accessible to millions of people.

That said, the way we've done it is, well, nothing short of disgusting and, yes, scary. I don't know about you, but I didn't sign-up for my representatives to vote and pass laws without reading them. And that is certainly true of something this complex. Something that affects so many people for potentially more than one generation. In my book something this important ought to have a very public extended debate period in order to ensure that everyone involved has a chance to understand, contribute and know what we are walking into.

This week's Supreme Court decision is also scary. Now, I'll admit that, as an engineer, I am not well versed on the finer points of constitutional law.

This is what I understood: The Federal Government has the option to apply a tax penalty to every citizen if they don't behave in a certain way. And the Supreme Court just said that this is perfectly legal per the US Constitution.

If I am correct in my interpretation of the precedent they just set, this is truly a scary moment in history.

Now, let's take a moment and leave the healthcare law out of the discussion. Some emotionally connect with the "for" and "against" camps. I just want to look at this issue of tax-if-you-don't-do-as-you-are-told issue.

This is scary and dangerous and not one US Citizen should tolerate it. If it requires a constitutional amendment to fix, we probably need to fast-track in that direction.

Why?

Per this ruling the Federal government could penalize you with a tax if:

- You don't buy an electric car
- You don't install solar panels on your roof
- You don't buy government-approved "healthy" foods
- You don't use mass transportation
- You don't share all of your financial data with the government
- In general, you don't do what they want you to do

Again, forget the healthcare law. The Supreme Court just told all of us that the US Federal Government can tax the hell out of you if you don't behave as they wish. That could be buying-into healthcare or anything else they decide to come-up with. And, they aren't even required to actually read the laws they pass or seek our approval to levy these new penalty taxes.

Back to MU. The government is now holding people's valuable data hostage to a process that is probably illegal in some form. Being that lots of these politicians are lawyers, they probably got us by the balls. They know very well what they are doing and can have their way with us.

Pirates using MU should be hit hard. But, how about trampling all over everyone else --without recourse-- while trying to get the few bad guys? It's as if the cops decided to shoot everyone in sight in hopes of getting a few bad guys hiding at a shopping center and, for good measure, they shoot the shopping center ownership and management at the same time. Bullshit.

Regardless of your position on these issues, you should be horrified by what is happening to our country. Your rights are being eroded one step at a time. Very soon we will not be able to recognize where we are living.