Have you heard of "parallel construction"? If not, take a breath, this one is rather shocking.

Here's what parallel construction is, as Wikipedia reports it: "A process of building a parallel - or separate - evidentiary basis for...creating criminal cases against Americans that are actually based on NSA warrantless surveillance."

If this sounds like a rights violation to you, you're correct. Warrantless surveillance is a blatant violation of the fourth amendment, and illegally-obtained evidence is generally inadmissible under the "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine.

Nonetheless, this is exactly what's happening these days. The NSA is grabbing nearly 100% of all American Internet traffic, emails, etc., sorting it all, then handing it off to be used in criminal prosecutions.

And to prevent cases like this from getting thrown out of court, the they have developed special tricks, like parallel construction. Here's how it works, and how to protect yourself from it.

One of Hollywood's legends is that their deaths always come in threes.  This proved true when Joan Rivers' came yesterday (9/04), which followed that of Lauren Bacall (8/12), and one day earlier, Robin Williams (8/11).  They were marvelously gifted, and we should be grateful for the joy they brought to our lives.

As Howie Carr of the Boston Herald notes this morning (9/05), in Massachusetts bad news also come in threes - as it did this week.  On Wednesday (9/03), Secretary of State Lurch hinted he might run in 2016, as did Governor Incompetence and Senator Talking Bull.

...Two months from today we'll know if we're going to suffer the undiluted Curse of Zero for another 28½ months, or if it will be diluted enough to render Zero impotent.  Here's this week's Sitrep.

...You can't blame Mitt Romney for capitalizing on his clairvoyance.  The entire Zero-worshipping Enemedia made fun of his "gaffe" when, during the 2012 campaign, he told Wolf Blitzer that Russia was "without question, our number one geopolitical foe.  They fight every cause for the world's worst actors."

Since it's now blindingly obvious he was right, you can't fault his timing by penning a piece in the WaPo yesterday (9/04):  The Need for a Mighty US Military.

However, Mitt is playing catch up with Rick Perry.  Right now, Rick's the Pub front-runner for 2016.  He showed why in his fabulous speech in Dallas last Friday evening (8/29).  I encourage you take 24 minutes to watch it all.  He quotes Thomas Paine:  "The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government" - and goes from there.  Enjoy:

Did you know that the portion of the federal budget that Congress actually votes on (the discretionary budget) has been falling for years?

The so-called "entitlements," such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and Obamacare, take a larger and larger portion of the total federal budget each year.

Former U.S. Treasury economist Eugene Steuerle, now at the Urban Institute, has created a Fiscal Democracy Index, which measures "the extent to which past and future projected revenues are already claimed by the permanent programs that are now in place."

In 1965, these programs claimed about 35 percent of the federal budget; now they claim about 85 percent of the budget, and they will soon claim more than 100 percent of total tax revenue.

Mr. Steuerle is now out with a new book, "Dead Men Ruling," which explains how we got into the budget mess and the consequences of it. He writes:

When I saw the news bulletin that Moslem terrorists had decapitated six hostages on the southern Philippine island of Jolo, I thought of the 1939 movie, The Real Glory, where Gary Cooper plays a US Army doctor trying to protect Christian villagers in the Philippines from a cholera epidemic and Moslem suicide killers - set in 1906!

The leader of the Moslem fanatics is named Alipang.  Cooper breaks Alipang's will by threatening to kill him and bury him wrapped in a bloody pigskin.  Afraid such defilement will result in his not going to heaven but Jahannam, Islamic Hell, Alipang commands his men to surrender.

I thought it ironic in the extreme that this news report about Jolo should appear three days after an obscure item in the business section of USA Today, Squeezing Diesel Out Of Animal Fat.

The story announced: "Oil company ConocoPhillips and meat producer Tyson Foods said Monday they're joining forces to produce diesel fuel for U.S. vehicles using beef, pork and poultry fat."

Biofuel from pig fat.  Does that ring a bell from say, a year ago (April 2006) when you read about Project Jahannam?

Banks are intermediaries, and it's the business of the internet to eliminate unnecessay ones.  Thus a friend of mine observes:

What Lending Club and other P2P lenders do is provide an online market-place that connects borrowers and lenders directly; think the eBay of loans and you have the right conceptual grasp. Moreover, the business model of online market-place lending breaks with a banking tradition, dating back to 14th century Florence, of operating on a 'fractional reserve' basis.