Two weeks ago Big Government reported that Facebook and Politico created a new partnership to reveal users’ public private messages–if and when they relate to their feelings about a political candidate–will be fed through a ‘sentiment analysis tool’ and potentially reported on Politico.

Conservatives should understandably have concerns about Politico’s upcoming reporting since most Facebook users are young and supportive of Barack Obama–in fact Facebook’s own CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been rumored to be an Obama fan, too.

But now there’s new criticism coming from the left: Christopher Calabrese of the The American Civil Liberties Union’s  (ACLU) Legislative Office posted a blog on January 13th stressing their concerns:

Most troubling is Facebook’s willingness to search and collect users’ private political preferences and thoughts, preferences they may have shared only with their closest friend in a private email.

This raises at least three concerns. The first is that many users may not want to be part of any “sentiment analysis” or poll. For example, they may be a firm supporter of Mitt Romney but find Ron Paul’s ideas interesting. Are they now going to feel hesitant to talk about Paul’s ideas out of awareness that it might be registered as support or boost a candidate they don’t like? Second, we don’t see any mention of user consent anywhere in Facebook’s announcement. How has Facebook decided that users agreed that their personal communications can and should be used in this way?

Finally, what other uses might this information be put to in the future? Will it be used to serve users ads from politicians or manipulate voting preferences in some way? We can see the marketing materials from Facebook now: “Candidates, serve ads to secret supporters! No one knows about their preferences except their closest friends and us.”

The real question here is what are Facebook’s motives? In the wake of its first public offering of an IPO at $5 billion, analysts are saying that the social utility is worth a total of $85 to $100 billion–the biggest Silicon Valley IPO ever. Last year Facebook earned a revenue of $3.71 billion up 88 percent from 2010.

With such stunning financial success, why is such an invasive measure necessary?

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The President’s recent commencement address to Hampton University students in Virginia counseled the young minds about the dangers of being bombarded by too much information, but who knew that Joe Lieberman was listening when the President said:

Meanwhile, you’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t rank all that high on the truth meter. With iPods and iPads; Xboxes and PlayStations; information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment. All of this is not only putting new pressures on you; it is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy.

The President also schooled the kids on how difficult it is to sift through all of the information on the web.  Perhaps he thinks the government should help us by winnowing out some of the inconsequential information?

All of that mind-boggling information and the new pressures on our country and our democracy must have triggered a response in this “independent senator” from Connecticut (who caucuses with the Democrats of course, just like the other “independent senator,” Bernie Sanders of Vermont), as Joe Lieberman has offered legislation that he claims will “protect” America during an emergency by giving the President power to shut down the Internet. (more…)

The Orlando Sentinel recently reported that President Obama wants to nix NASA’s moon missions and instead intends to spend funding for space ventures beyond earth’s orbit. Perhaps to Avatar’s beautiful planet Pandora?

Now what would make the president stray so far from JFK’s vision of lunar supremacy? Perhaps he wasn’t that thrilled to learn what I just did about what occurred on the first moon landing. My friend Eric Metaxas wrote a great book, Everything You Alwayhs Wanted to Know About God (But Were Afraid To Ask), and in it he recalled that Buzz Aldrin confirmed to him that he took communion on the Moon.

Nobody knew.  The live broadcast was blacked out at the time.  Here are Aldrin’s own words, as quoted by Metaxas: (more…)

An entire generation of Democrat voters failed to vote in Massachusetts Tuesday night.  The same generation of Democrat voters failed to thwart recent GOP victories in New Jersey and Virginia.  But no one’s reporting on them.  They’re the silent generation.

The Silent Generation is between the favored ages of 18 and 37 years old.   There are over 49 million of them, and they make up approximately 15% of the American population, certainly enough to swing any election in any state in any race.  Problem is this:  they have been denied the right to vote in these elections.

That’s because, thanks to Roe v. Wade, which was decided 37 years ago today, they’re not even here.

Ironically, the ACLU does not concern itself with them.  They are never interviewed and are rarely mentioned by Democrat candidates.  No one knows for sure how many of them are Democrats or Republicans or independents for that matter because they are invisible and unregistered.  They are those Americans, those voters, who have been aborted since the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision legalized their demise.  They cannot vote because they were denied lives as American citizens. (more…)