This video is from Jack Hunter, a conservative commentator and columnist. We’ll let the video speak for itself.

The Obama administration is considering forced vaccination of children and adults in response to the possibility of a swine flu epidemic this fall.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has been preparing public school superintendents for the possibility that their schools will be used by the government as inoculation centers for a nationwide swine flu vaccination program which may include mandatory vaccination of public school students who are already required to receive several other government mandated vaccinations.

While there is a genuine threat of a swine flu pandemic, it does not justify the level of fear mongering being engaged in by the Obama Administration at a time which makes it look very much as if they are using this issue to advance their health care agenda. Although numbers like 90,000 deaths and 1.2 million hospitalizations from the CDC seem frightening, they fall within the parameters for the effects of the yearly outbreaks of other kinds of flu.

There is no legitimate reason for any program of forced mass vaccination, especially directed at school children and using state mandated public education requirements as a threat to force parents to comply. Mandatory vaccination programs are a violation of the constitutionally guaranteed right to privacy and personal security. It is especially important that the rights of children and the rights of their parents to make decisions about their childrens’ welfare be protected.

Here in Texas we saw an attempt at forced vaccination when Governor Rick Perry tried to mandate that all teenage girls be given the Human Paphaloma Virus vaccine at a cost of over $400 per vaccination to the taxpayers. Outrage over the huge tax cost of the program was exceeded only by anger over having this vaccine forced on teenagers. Protests were so effective that the program was killed. Now we need to do the same on a nationwide basis.

The issue of vaccination – in fact the entire healthcare debate – comes down to one very simple question. Who should make the healthcare decisions for you and your family? Should it be you or should it be legislators or commissions of nameless and faceless government bureaucrats like those created by proposed healthcare legislation.

This issue is so important and so personal that giving up control to government is terrifying. As a result, we are seeing massive nationwide grassroots protests against government run healthcare because whatever the faults of the current system, people want to keep control and make their own health care decisions.

Vaccines are one of the great advancements of modern medicine and for the most part they are safe and important for protecting children and adults from real health threats. Nonetheless it is still morally wrong for government to force any kind of choice like this on citizens against their will. Government should protect freedom of choice, not take it away.

The Republican Liberty Caucus is working to oppose both so-called healthcare reform and mandated vaccination programs.

Citizens have the right to make their own health care decisions, including opting out of current school vaccination requirements and not being forced to comply with any future government inoculation program.

Americans should be trusted to make responsible decisions about the health of their family members and the safety of the community. The role of the government should be to protect citizens and their rights, not to make medical decisions for them without their consent.

So I ask again, who do you want making your health care decisions?

Dan Halloran, RLC National Committeeman and New York RLC Chair, is running for City Council in New York City.

Below is his Tea Party speech from July 4, 2009:

“I believe that the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. The basis of conservatism is a demand for less government interference and more individual freedom.”
– Ronald Reagan, Reason Magazine, 1975

Last August, I blogged at RLC.org about Cheye Calvo, the Mayor of Berwyn Heights in Prince George’s County, Maryland.

Last year, Calvo was sitting at home when a SWAT team barged into his home, shot his two dogs, and accused him of being a drug dealer. Calvo and his mother-in-law were handcuffed and interrogated for hours while surrounded by the dogs’ carcasses and pools of blood.

Police shot the Mayor’s seven-year-old black Labrador retriever, Payton, near the front door and then his four-year-old dog, Chase, also a black Lab, as the dog ran into a back room.

It became quite clear to everyone almost after-the-fact that the Mayor and his family were not drug dealers and Calvo says that he doesn’t even think the police considered that possibility before raiding the home.

Recently, the Maryland legislature passed a bill that was inspired by the SWAT team raid of Calvo’s home, called HB 1267, on SWAT Team Activation and Deployment Reporting.

The bill, also signed by Governor Martin O’Malley (D-Baltimore), requires any police agency in the state to review and report on SWAT team raids every six months. It also requires specifics about any raid, such as the reason for the deployment of the SWAT team, the legal authority for the SWAT raid, and the result of each activation and deployment.  Law enforcement agencies also have to report on whether a weapon was discharged by a SWAT team member, a forcible entry was made, or whether any person or domestic animal was injured or killed by a SWAT team member.

If local police agencies do not comply, then they will be reported to the Governor and the Legislative Policy Committee of the General Assembly.

This legislation will hopefully prevent future unncessary police raids on citizen’s homes.

Kudos to Maryland Republican Delegates Smigiel and McConkey for sponsoring the legislation along with the Democrats.

The Mayor and his wife, with their now-deceased dogs.

Obama has been meeting with top officials to map out a strategy for a new health regime for the Nation, much of it mandatory.

According to CBSNews.com, any health care reform plan that Obama signs is almost certain to call for nutrition counseling, obesity screenings and wellness programs at workplaces and community centers. He wants more time in the school day for physical fitness, more nutritious school lunches and more bike paths, walking paths and grocery stores in underserved areas.”

“The president is filling top posts at Health and Human Services with officials who, in their previous jobs, outlawed trans fats, banned public smoking or required restaurants to provide a calorie count with that slice of banana cream pie.”

The whole situation has libertarians craving a basket of onion rings and a beer.

“If you care about the sorts of things I do, then you are going to be losing big-time for the next four to eight years,” said David Harsanyi, a Denver Post columnist and author of the book “Nanny State: How Food Fascists, Teetotaling Do-Gooders, Priggish Moralists and Other Boneheaded Bureaucrats Are Turning America Into a Nation of Children.”

Don’t get them wrong, critics such as Harsanyi say — they like broccoli and they lift barbells and they have no particular beef with a healthy president who was once described by his physician as having “no excess body fat.”

Says the paper, “They just don’t like it when government becomes the messenger and the enforcer.”

You can say that again.

Reading my home-town newspaper always gets my blood boiling. I’m from Milwaukee, Wisconsin — where the only thing more ridiculous than abuses by local law enforcement is the ineptitude of local politicians. (Not surprisingly, they’re almost exclusively Democrat Party members.)

Last September, I blogged about how the city of Milwaukee was going to confiscate a disabled man’s home for not paying a parking ticket from 2004.

That wasn’t good enough for city bureaucrats: now, according to The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, the city is planning to take the land of a family who dreamed of building a restaurant. “It’s been our livelihood and I have turned down two promotions at my job because this was my future with my family,” the land owner, Rafael Cetina, told the local newspaper.

If the land confiscation goes through via eminent domain, it will dash the dreams of Cetina, whose family bought the land in 2002 with visions of building a restaurant and club that would serve spicy Mayan flavors paying tribute to his heritage on the Yucatan Peninsula.

Why is the Cetina family land being confiscated?  To expand a fruit stand.

You heard right.

But it gets worse:  the family that owns and operates Pete’s Fruit Market would be empowered by the city to expand the fruit market.  Pete Tsitiridis, owner of the fruit market, and his family made $2,000 in campaign contributions last year to Milwaukee Alderman Jim Witkowiak, the mover-and-shaker in the city’s plans to take the land from the Cetina family.

On Tuesday, the city’s Zoning, Neighborhoods & Development Committee, chaired by Witkowiak, voted to approve the land acquisition. The ultimate decision will rest with the Common Council.

The Cetinas bought the first parcel in 2002 and spent $200,000 on everything from steel framing to lighting fixtures to eventually build the restaurant and club. He is now weeks away from losing the land to the city.

The Cetina family property has no violations against it, and they put up the fence to abide by city ordinances.

Nonetheless, Assistant City Attorney Gregg Hagopian said the site’s location and the fact it has remained vacant for years is an issue.  “It is vacant land that is impeding business growth and expansion and is unused or underutilized,” Hagopian said.

Please contact Milwaukee Common Council members and encourage them to save the Cetina family’s justly-aquired property.