Is Bush a Sith Lord?; "Rational Adaptation"?; A Memorial; Shenandoah; these articles have their titles and text in this color and are featured this week in -
Political Liberty, Life in Amerika, Ordered Liberty without the State;
Spreading Decentralism, The New World Hegemon, Politics by Other Means;
Spontaneous Order, Nonspontaneous Disorder, War Is The Health Of The State;
Bits of History, War and Peace, Great Individuals In History;
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"With conviction honed by seven years as a CIA lawyer and analyst, four years as U.S. Attorney, and eight years as a congressman, most of that time spent on the Judiciary Committee, Barr has the credibility to go against the Bush Administration and any of its supporters. 'More than any foreign terrorist group,' Barr tells his audiences, 'provisions of the PATRIOT Act are the greatest threat to America and to American citizens'."
http://www.counterpunch.org/brasch05232005.html
"Protest against rising taxes and government spending. What most people have forgotten is that there is no way that the govgoons can arrest all of us. There isn't that much space in the prison system. Besides, just the costs of prosecuting all of us would bankrupt the government (even faster than it is doing that on its own!) Not to mention the fact that it is the productive portion of society which is disgusted with government taxes and spending!"
http://www.ncc-1776.com/tle2005/tle320-20050522-07.html
"Cuban dissidents are bitterly divided over the U.S. embargo, the post-Castro role to be played by Miami exiles, and above all about suspected ties to the jefe himself. Sometimes it seems there are as many dissident groups as there are dissidents."
http://www.reason.com/links/links052505.shtml
"It's funny. The only time anyone thinks to blast the use of 'unnamed sources' is when the mistake occurs in that rarest of phenomena in mainstream journalism: the dissenting piece of investigative journalism."
http://www.nypress.com/18/21/news&columns/taibbi.cfm
"But -- much as we all hate getting a ticket -- can't laws against speeding and red-light-running actually improve safety, I asked? 'There's four studies now that show not only do the cameras not reduce accident rates, they actually increase accident rates, because people start slamming on their brakes and overreacting when they see that there's a camera,' Dornsife replies. 'There are four studies now'."
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2005/May-22-Sun-2005/opinion/1590565.html
"[T]he last time the Court considered this issue, only four years ago, it ruled that mandatory mushroom messages were unconstitutional. That was just four years after it upheld a program that requires growers to support ads for California tree fruit. Now it says generic beef ads, like the peach and nectarine ads but unlike the mushroom ads, do not violate the First Amendment. The Court insists it never really changed its mind."
http://www.reason.com/sullum/052705.shtml
"We are in the end talking about groups supporting the only thing that the state does: namely roughing people up through violence and threats of violence. That's what every line of every regulation comes down to. That's the meaning of every tax. That's the whole upshot of every tariff, expenditure, prohibition, and bomb. It all amounts to increased use of violence in society. Strip away the banners, songs, uniforms, and speeches: that's all that the state really is."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/conservative-euphemisms.html
"This is where the knowledge of the left is essential: power has to be pushed down. All the way down to the individual at best, but every step on the way is a small but necessary victory. Thus, the creation of supra-state unions such as the European, and federations of states such as the American, are all great failures for freedom."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/51/bylund/bylund2.html
"It is long past time that 'Libertarians' wake up and admit that corporations are not individual people, and that there is nothing in libertarianism that calls for pretending that they are, let alone preferring them over individuals."
"A solution is for Iraq to organize as a republic of three largely autonomous states or provinces-Shi'ite, Sunni, and Kurd-- along the lines of the original American republic. The politicians within each province will be too busy fighting one another for power to become militarily involved with those in other provinces."
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts05282005.html
"What they were, really, was versatile. They'd snatch an old engine from a junkyard Chevy and rebuild it, convert it to marine, and mount it in the boat. They changed their own transmissions, replaced clutch plates, wired the barns they built. They could run a farm, keep old tractors going, blast a stump, raise hogs and slaughter them. They knew guns, and had them. They could hunt, shoot, and fish. They were tough, cut cordwood and split logs and dug foundations. If they wanted a wall, they laid the brick. If something broke, they fixed it."
http://fredoneverything.net/Rednecks.shtml
"[T]he hardest phase to overcome is indeed the first, denial. People simply don't want to know -- because once they get angry and start to fight, they've given whatever it is they face 'reality' in their own minds. And then, horror of horrors, they may pass into the fourth stage and have to do something."
http://americaindenial.com/?q=node/124
"As I have said many times before, what lies at the heart of Fourth Generation war is a crisis of legitimacy of the state. In America, that crisis can only be intensified by any instance where the Washington elite draws a distinction between itself and the rest of the country."
http://www.antiwar.com/lind/?articleid=6075
"Democracy alone does not guarantee individual liberties. Ironically, any legitimate election in Egypt or Saudi Arabia -- as urged by the Bush administration -- could very well elect undemocratic fundamentalist Islamic parties that could usurp individual liberties by instituting strict Islamic law. But then perhaps this would be only an Islamic version of the ultimate vision that some misguided evangelical Christians have for religion in American governance."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1514
"[T]he press was supposed to be a watchdog on power on behalf of the public. That has changed -- not completely, but it has changed. At times now, too many reporters seem to be channeling Dickens's Oliver Twist, with their bowls outstretched toward their government minders, asking: 'Please, sir, may I have some more gruel?'"
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0521,schanberg,64250,6.html
"It should come as no surprise that the neocons love TR. They, like TR, believe that the only healthy state is one that is perpetually on a military footing. For example, in 1996, Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan wrote an article in Foreign Affairs that called for America to pursue a policy of 'benevolent global hegemony,' in which most Americans should participate."
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/young.php?articleid=6119
"[I]f there's a perspective that dominates the network, it might best be described as frightened liberal. One rarely noted consequence of this is that proposals to privatize the Corporation for Public Broadcasting get more support from the radical left than from Republican politicians, though of course the leftists don't call it 'privatization.' They call it 'independence,' and they envision it taking the form of a nonprofit trust fund that no longer has to rely on the goodwill of Congress for its money."
http://www.reason.com/links/links052605.shtml
"The US Senate, on the other hand, should abandon its comical pretensions to be being a body reflecting any democratic mandate. Senators should be installed by some version of the phonebook approach. Probably the best method was the one obtaining at the former House of Lords, now destroyed by Tony Blair: incumbency by birthright, handed down the generations. Within not too many decades this simple method produced useful numbers of decent, independent-minded people."
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn05282005.html
"Ultimately it's competition, many producers competing for his dollar, that truly protects the consumer. What protects producers, at the expense of consumers, are restrictions on competition. The quest to restrict competition is what lies at the heart of the trade deficit demagoguery."
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/walterwilliams/ww20050525.shtml
"Even the largest employers, with tens or hundreds of thousands of employees, do not have quasi-governmental powers (unless corrupt governments have granted them such powers). Unlike governments, private businesses are not free to tax or conscript and even the most successful private companies face genuine threats of failure, bankruptcy, and relentless competition -- including competition for quality workers."
http://www.mises.org/story/1821
"Animals have evolved a foraging behaviour that comes close what physicists calculate is the fastest way to find hidden objects, a new study reveals. Searching animals quickly move to the first location, then slowly search that small area, before quickly moving to another area and repeating the process. That does not surprise biologists who have studied foraging and who say evolution should find the best strategy because it pays off in survival."
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7419
"Since millions of Americans violate gun laws and drug laws, and since it would be an economic and logistic impossibility to catch and punish even most of them -- nor would most Americans want to see them all punished, whereas most would probably want to see all murderers punished -- the punishments against people who break these laws end up being grossly unjust and disproportionate."
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0502e.asp
"If the Pennsylvania Supreme Court finds the sperm-donor to be liable for child support, then many forms of infertility treatment in most states could become less available and more expensive. Those donors who step forward will want to be compensated for their increased legal risk."
http://www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2005/0525.html
"The congruity with to the old welfare system could not be more striking. Medicaid encourages the poor -- and the not-so-poor -- to become dependent on government. It encourages people to behave in ways that increase the cost of government and of health care, which makes self-reliance more difficult for their neighbors. And it encourages states to get more people to behave that way."
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3782
"Bush has enabled the police to bypass the courts. Executive power rules, and there are no Jedi knights. The Sith, however, are everywhere. In our day the Sith masquerade as neoconservatives. Neocons deal in absolutes. They believe the end justifies the means."
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts05242005.html
"Thus, when we combine the Padilla and al-Marri cases, we see that the Pentagon is seeking the authority to arrest any person, American or otherwise, and punish him and also the authority to yank anyone out of the federal court system and punish him -- all without having to comply with the Bill of Rights and without having to deal with the federal courts."
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0505f.asp
"[Spoiler warning: This article gives away important details about the new movie.] … How did the Old Republic become the Empire? How could the emperor have defeated what were presumably thousands of Jedi and taken over the galaxy? Now we know the answer: Deception. Just like in the real world."
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/horton.php?articleid=6041
"In his effort to uncover the DOJ's coverup of his brother's murder, Jesse Trentadue may have uncovered evidence of the FBI's failure to prevent the bombing of the Murrah Building."
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts05262005.html
"FDR embraced policies that aimed to stop prices and wages from correcting and embarked on the boldest federal intrusion of the private sector in the history of the U.S. -- all justified by a crisis made worse by previous attempts to stop prices and wages from correcting. And when his policies didn't cause the promised happy days to return again, the golden tongued-FDR could be counted on to shift the blame -- to Hoover, the Republicans, greedy businessmen, flaws in the free enterprise system."
http://www.mises.org/story/1816
"What sense, if any, do terms like 'moderate' and 'extreme' make in this context? We hear them all the time, yet they serve mostly to end or to cloud -- rather than to aid -- debate about what a judge should do or what we, and the Constitution, stand for -- about matters of principle. In the end, to say that a judge is 'outside the mainstream' is simply to make a political appeal, to trade on the pejorative 'extremist'."
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3779
"Today, I remember and honor his choice: a choice to say, 'No, I'm not' when the government tried to tell him, 'You're our boy'; an action that, along with others like it then and since, has helped create a more questioning attitude about war and the involuntary servitude of young men in the military machine, particularly with regard to this country's current jihad."
http://www.sunnimaravillosa.com/archives/00000340.html
"The Nuremberg Tribunal called aggressive war 'essentially an evil thing.' To initiate such a war under any circumstances 'is not only an international crime,' said the Tribunal, 'it is the supreme international crime,' because it carries all the others in its wake. It breaks down all barriers of law and morality, in states and in individuals, creating the necessary inner chaos and physical opportunity for the most abysmal perversions of human nature."
http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd05252005.html
"The shots came from a group of American Humvees huddled near the highway underpass. The troops had opened fire without warning on the family's car from 90 feet away. Amada was sitting in the passenger seat. One of the bullets that pierced the windshield struck her in the head."
http://www.antiwar.com/rothschild/?articleid=5996
"Through his operas and theoretical essays, Wagner exerted a strong influence on the operatic medium. He was an advocate of a new form of opera which he called 'music drama', in which all the musical and dramatic elements were fused together."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Wagner
"He gained great success as a nightclub and musical comedy performer, and during the next 25 years became one of the toasts of Broadway. Not until he was fifty did he dance for white audiences, having devoted his early career exclusively to appearances on the black theater circuit."
http://www.kathleenacademy.com/funzone/bojangls.html
"Peggy Lee's contributions to American music - not only as a singer but also as a lyricist, composer and musical innovator - exemplify popular music at its best through the eras of jazz, blues, swing, Latin and rock."
http://www.wic.org/bio/plee.htm
"Shenandoah is an anti-state, antiwar, pro-family classic. Family, love and marriage, birth and death, war and the nature of the state (about which this film's insight is deep) are the main themes of Shenandoah. Its cast is outstanding."
http://endervidualism.com/agora/shenandoah_1965.htm
"The far greater threat comes from people who rationalize murder -- as with war, abortion, capital punishment, or when Darth Vader murders a room full of children training to be Jedis someday. The Dark Side of the Force is not evil for evil's sake. It's evil because it believes the ends always justify the means."
http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/001082.html
"Morality doesn't begin with a feeling but, rather, with the fact that since we have free will, we need to use our minds to discover a code of values that will guide us in our pursuit of survival and a happy, flourishing life. The principles of such a code would have told Anakin that if he pursues his love for Padme out of all moral context, if he indulges in every kind of betrayal and atrocity to save her, that he would destroy his own moral character and capacity to love anything."
http://www.objectivistcenter.org/mediacenter/articles/ehudgins_rff-revenge-sith.asp
Flash animated cartoon
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0521,fiore,64425,9.html
"1. Ask whose funeral it is. 2. Look at your watch a lot. 3. Videotape the burial. 4.Wear something pink. 5. Offer tissues to mourners, for a reasonable price." 40 more of increasing outrageousness.
http://www.savethehumans.com/instantgrat/thelist/fun_funerals/index.shtml
"Although reckless driving and minor driver impairment were cited as additional factors, police investigators ruled pure, unadulterated stupidity as the primary cause in the death of an unlicensed motorist involved in a single-car accident Sunday."
http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4121&n=1
"People of color, religious, sexual, or ideological minorities face the same difficulties in life as well -- more actually, when you factor in the racism, poverty, hate, and discrimination in American society. Yet still, in my observation at least, they hold up better psychologically and spiritually."
http://endervidualism.com/amassoud/rational_adapt.htm
"Mises writes. 'The price of labor is a market phenomenon determined by the consumers' demands for goods and services.' By implication, businessmen are not being cruel when they seek lower-priced labor, whether domestically or abroad. They are carrying out the consumers' orders." This review is in two parts. The link here is to part one which has a link to part two.
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0501b.asp
"After decades of debate, biologists have come to understand what was blindingly obvious to most laymen -- which is that rather than being shaped by nature or nurture, most behavioural traits are the result of an interaction between the two. Nevertheless, one or the other can still be the dominant factor. And the study in question, to be published in June's edition of the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, suggests that in the case of psychopathy, the genetic side is very important indeed."
http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=4008792
"There is little doubt that Cuba will be better off once Castro has left the planet (the question is to what degree), but what does the future hold for Cubans on the Island and those in exile? Will Cubans on the Island ever experience true capitalism and freedom? Will exiles be able to rekindle moments that today are nothing more than perfectly faded memories?"
http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/05/05/25/antunez.htm
"The subject segment was on what government is doing to reduce teenage sex. No longer fashionable, under the Bush Prudes, just to teach kids to use condoms, the word from on high today is Abstinence. Yes folks, those of you who pay the alleged 'income tax' are placing some of those dollars in a propaganda machine to convince teens not to copulate until married."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/51/davies/davies11.html
"We have a reason to hope, for although every Republic contains within it the seeds for its sad and decadent regression into Empire, so too does every Empire, pompous and presumptuous, contain within it the seeds of its own decline. "
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