Foreign Assistance Act

Section 508 of the decades-old Foreign Assistance Act stipulates:

"None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available pursuant to this Act shall be obligated or expended to finance directly any assistance to any country whose duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup or decree: Provided, That assistance may be resumed to such country if the President determines and reports to the Committees on Appropriations that subsequent to the termination of assistance a democratically elected government has taken office."

I've been following what has happened in Egypt and it's clear to me that Egypt's military removed the 1st ever democratically elected Egyptian President.  With this, I'm hopeful that our annual Egyptian aid of $1,500,000,0000 per year might be withheld until such time as a new democratically elected government is in place.

However, I'm worried that the Obama administration will once again selectively pick and choose which laws to enforce.  The law is clear, military take over = loss of aid.  Before you argue cutting aid will hurt innocent Egyptians, please understand that over 85% of our annual aid goes directly to the military and I don't know about you but does that really makes sense?

Are you sure we don't live in a Police State?

In the aftermath of the Asiana 214 crash I saw a boy, maybe 14 years old, being interviewed by the press in the terminal area.  Behind him a group of TSA and security officers were slowly moving closer and in short order a burly, serious looking officer interrupted the interview and abruptly asked  the boy "Were you on the flight that crashed?"  The boy said yes and the man grabbed him by the scruff, pulled him away from the reporters saying you have to come with me.

No big deal?  As soon as I saw how this young boy was treated I got angry.  What gives any government official the right to lay hands on someone, let alone a young boy and recent crash survivor?  If I was handled like that I would have thrown an absolute fit.  Turns out that those who walked away from the crash had to go through what was basically a four hour integration and search before they were released - while hundreds of concerned family members agonizingly waited to learn what happened to their loved ones. 

Seeing that young boy being bullied and basically hauled away angered me and it's my hope that the officer who did this be reprimanded... that is unless we really do live in a police state.