I don't know where to begin this week. At the end of last week, it took a Federal judge to compel Health and Human Services Secretary Katherine Sebelius to do the moral thing and put 10 year old Sarah Murnaghan on the adult transplant list hopefully improving her chances for getting a lung transplant in the next three to five weeks which is the time doctors say she has left.

This bureaucrat was not being asked to give Murnaghan special treatment or place her higher on the list than she belonged. All her parents, Congressional representatives, doctors and lawyers wanted was for this little girl to have the opportunity to receive an adult lung if it was available.The doctors said the procedure was valid and would work for her, yet this know-it-all smug woman had the nerve to tell Congressman Lou Barletta who appeared before her pleading for this girl's chance at life that "Some people live and some people die."Read that last sentence carefully because thanks to all who supported the Affordable Healthcare Act or Obamacare, you will be hearing that sentence again repeatedly in the future and hopefully not out of the mouths of some bureaucrat deciding your fate.This is what American freedom has become in the twenty first century. Not so free is it? We live under the guise of freedom cleverly designed as a government who wants to "help us", who wants to "protect us".This help and protection is the result of a deliberate bipartisan plan by Washington elected and fueled into perpetual continuity by unelected bureaucrats who are like an infinite hydra with unlimited power to control, compromise and contain your freedom and mine.How free are we? I ask you this, but before you decide to answer, consider this. I emailed this column to the paper this week. That e-mail may be part of the terabytes of data gathered daily to be pored through by computer algorithms looking for alleged threats to this nation. This is also a violation of my fourth amendment right to privacy.When I called my editor to make sure he received the column this week, I am fully aware that the government in the name of protecting my security recorded that phone call, the duration and make no mistake about it, the words were scanned for troublesome patterns.The President stands before us and tells us the government is not listening to our conversations. He is speaking out of the side of his mouth.Years ago, those in power talked about how the NSA was able to scan phone calls with computers seeking spoken words on a watch list and how if it heard these words in a particular range, the call could be flagged as a potential problem. So while Obama might be saying that no person is listening to your conversations he did not say nothing is listening to it. The NSA's computers are indeed listening to them. Say the wrong words and you are flagged as a potential threat.In the last ten years, the government has thrown out the window in the name of our so-called security, the requirement to get a warrant to search property, to tap your phone and to follow you.The idea of innocent until proven guilty is gone as well as now we are all suspects of a paranoid government seeking to secure itself, not us. This is the same government that made no secret out of adding veterans to potential threat lists.The "Patriot Act" was a shot from the hip in response to a terrible tragedy and scare that for the first time threatened American soil, but my dear readers, freedom is a risk. Nowhere is freedom guaranteed without risk.We fought for our freedom a tyrannical king who comes nowhere close to the oppressive nature of the government bureaucracy today. We fought to defend that freedom through a half dozen wars and now one horrible terrorist act has done more than kill 3,000 people. That criminal terrorist act has cost all of us our freedom through the calculated moves of power mongers in Washington DC starting in the Bush Administration and accelerating at breakneck pace up to this morning in supporting, renewing and expanding the powers of the Patriot Act. This Act is an abuse to our freedom.Benjamin Franklin said, "Those who surrender freedom for security, will not have, nor do they deserve, either one."This past week our President said, "You can't have 100% security and also then have 100% privacy and zero inconvenience. We are going to have to make some choices as a society."I have a suggestion. How about these people who believe this drivel pick a state where they are happy and move there and spy on each other and give us back our freedom and privacy. My opinion may not be popular with everyone, but I would rather live in freedom and protect myself by making smart choices than have a government snooping through my life under the claim of protecting me. They aren't protecting you or I. This game is to allow them to protect themselves.We did pretty well for decades before 9/11 in preventing terrorism from affecting us, but political correctness and fear have gripped this nation and allowed bin Laden and Al Qaeda to rob us of our very freedom under the fear of another attack.If our government was truly concerned about our safety they would not be spending billions of dollars on computer equipment, they would be securing our borders. But obviously terrorists possibly walking across the border isn't as big a priority as recording Grandma's phone call.The writing is on the wall, dear readers. This behavior is not new. It has been repeated through many empires and societies through the years. Keep in mind they no longer exist.America is a free nation and it needs to return to being a land of equal opportunity, of self sufficiency and individual pride and frankly this government's direction is not heading that way. Get involved while we still can.Til next time…