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"In short, the Constitution did not impose American liberty, contrary to what children are taught today. Instead, it permitted the liberty that already existed to continue to exist and even be more secure against despotic encroachments. Somehow this point has been lost on the current generation, and, as a result, we are learning all the wrong lessons from our founding and other history."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/imposed-freedom.html
"His characters seem like people we've just watched on MSNBC. ... Dante delivers the thrill of watching familiar figures spin the issues and dole out doublespeak, yet he doesn't stint on the satisfaction of seeing them have their brains eaten afterwards. He's the first horror director to take the bits of media flotsam and jetsam that have been drifting around--the flag-draped coffins at Dover Air Force Base, the talking-head cable shows, the internment camps, the Ohio and Florida recounts, the 'Mission Accomplished' banners--and make something electrifying out of them."
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=72&ItemID=9262
"Thanks to bold reform, ex-communist countries have taken some 40 million people out of poverty in the last seven years. It is easy to forget that only one generation ago these republics were in the hands of regimes that had obliterated the institutional foundations of the free society."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1630
"Is this what happens when civilian functions increasingly become penetrated by military tactics and attitudes; when police and military functions blur; when personnel from all branches of military act as police on foreign and domestic soil and conversely, when police - local, state and federal - act more as special ops military units, sometimes with black Ninja suits and automatic weapons?"
http://www.counterpunch.org/rajiva12092005.html
"Last week, I was so irate after flying the 2,000-mile roundtrip from my home in Washington, D.C., to Chicago that I vowed to hitchhike next time. Did I have to endure the loss of my luggage for an extended period of time or sleep overnight in the airport because of the notoriously bad winter weather in Chicago? No, it was something much worse. Ominously, I received a boarding pass inscribed with 'SSSS'--bureaucratese for winning (really losing) the lottery for a spot in the Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) special security inspection line."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1629
"On Monday, December 5, the 9-11 Public Discourse Project--a private group formed by 9-11 Commission members after their official mandate lapsed in 2004--held a wrap-up press briefing in Washington, signaling the last gasp of official inquiries into the attacks four years ago."
http://villagevoice.com/news/0549,murphy,70685,6.html
"[T]he immigration issue is in real terms solved through the many choices made by sovereign individuals; how they act and interact in order to achieve their goals. There can simply be no immigration policy, since there is no government -- only individuals, their actions and their rights (to property)."
http://www.mises.org/story/1980
"Would you like the state to interfere in your choice of food? Would you like the state to make alcohol illegal (like it has done before)? Would you like the state to determine what vitamins you can take? ... What is at issue here is not WHAT you put into your body--but whether you have the RIGHT to determine such things. And the even more fundamental question is this: Do you have the right to ingest provably harmful substances?"
http://www.strike-the-root.com/52/macgregor/macgregor8.html
"I am an anti-establishmentarian, a Christian who prefers to see the church and the state kept separate. One reason for this is my view of the state as illegitimate and unfit for association with the church. Another is that no good purpose can be served by the state's meddling in religion. As I see it, politicians and bureaucrats like to align themselves with God so as to imply that they have God's endorsement."
http://emergencybackupdog.blogspot.com/2005/12/keep-state-out-of-religion.html
"In at least three ways, what diversity does besides irritate everybody is to Sovietize the country. One way is that the gummint has to make hundreds, nay thousands of stupid laws to intrude where it’s got no business because if it doesn’t, people will find a way not to mix. You got to watch them like a hawk. If you say they’ve got to hire twenty percent minorities, they’ll hire the minorities best at whatever their business is. The others won’t get hired. So the gummint has to make detailed laws and make everybody fill out brainless forms and be watched by bureaucrats, probably affirmative-action hires themselves, who bungle everything because that’s what government does."
http://fredoneverything.net/Apartness.shtml
"On a per capita basis the Iraqi insurgency is far more effective at inflicting U.S. casualties than the North Vietnamese were. In fact, as will be shown below the Iraqi insurgents are about twice as effective at producing U.S. casualties as the North Vietnamese. Hence, if the Iraqi insurgency is able to increase its ranks by a factor to be estimated below, it will gain the ability to inflict on U.S. forces at a level similar to that of 1986-1970."
http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/audie_insurgency.htm
"[W]hat I found when I arrived in Botswana's capital, Gaborone, were BMWs buzzing by on paved roads. The quality and variety of dining options was outstanding. The water was safe to drink in both the capital and in rural areas. Shopping malls in Gaborone were full of affluent Batswana (the proper name for citizens of Botswana) shopping for designer jeans and the latest Harry Potter book."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1628
"Khaled al-Masri, a German citizen resident in Ulm, Germany, went on a trip to Macedonia, was arrested by local authorities on New Year's Eve, 2003 and held for over 3 weeks in a motel. Then, he was handcuffed, blindfolded, stripped by masked men, drugged, diapered and flown to Afghanistan, on the basis of a 'hunch' by a counter-terrorist chief in the CIA. The hunch was no more than the fact that Masri's name resembled that of an associate of one of the 9-11 hijackers."
http://www.counterpunch.org/rajiva12052005.html
"'Mr. President,' one aide in the meeting said. 'There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution.' 'Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,' Bush screamed back. 'It's just a goddamned piece of paper!' I've talked to three people present for the meeting that day and they all confirm that the President of the United States called the Constitution 'a goddamned piece of paper'."
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7779.shtml
"The CIA has all the information about their [(torture techniques)] use. Meanwhile, around the world, and not only among our enemies, this country is increasingly seen as a habitual, egregious violator of human rights. Let's finally put the CIA under the rule of law."
http://villagevoice.com/news/0550,hentoff,70898,6.html
In the House, Bush is a liability, the Hammer's been indicted and the once-united GOP juggernaut stumbles toward an ugly divorce. "Once everyone saw that Bush could not be counted on to deliver coattail victories, Hill lawmakers began scrambling to distance themselves from the more unpopular aspects of Bush's agenda. In the House, this resulted in a three-way split within the Republican Party."
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/8898189
"What other proof do we need of the Bush administration's low esteem for truth than the fact, revealed by the Los Angeles Times, that the Bush administration has been caught paying journalists to write favorable stories about the war in Iraq? First they rigged the 'intelligence' used to start a war; then they rigged the news reports about the war. And these people think they should be trusted?"
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts12062005.html
"During his campaign for president, which Huffington seems to think of as McCain's Golden Age, he was even more belligerent, thrusting out his chin at every opportunity and bellowing about the need for 'regime change' in so many different places that it was hard to keep track of his various targets. During the Kosovo conflict, McCain associated himself with the most extreme Albanian nationalists in the U.S. in calling for a much more vigorous American intervention. That's why the neocons have always loved him."
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=8221
"The press has no one to blame but themselves for their disintegrating readership. People are tired of reading bullshit and even more tired of a disgraced institution propping itself up with passable reporting three years after the fact. They've moved on to better sources of information. And no amount of reorganization or job cutting will make a newspaper a viable source of news to someone who has tasted the real deal."
"Here's the essence of what transpires when I purchase a gallon of gasoline. In effect, I tell the retailer that I hold title to $3. He tells me that he holds title to a gallon of gas. I offer to transfer my title to $3 to him if he'll transfer his title to a gallon of gas to me. If this exchange occurs voluntarily, what can be said about the transaction?"
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/walterwilliams/2005/12/07/178043.html
"Undis said he did some research and found he wasn't the first person to think of this, but he said he became the first to do something about it. He developed LifeSharers, in which members practice directed donation. In signing up as a member they decree that their recoverable organs be offered first to other Life-Sharers members."
http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/index.php?sty=54596
"The depth of PBS' (or its affiliates') involvement in partisan politics may be difficult to judge. An internal PBS memo recently leaked and circulated on the Internet instructs PBS affiliates on how to stonewall those who call or email in protest. PBS' final review of the documentary is still pending, but the memo is hardly a propitious sign."
http://www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2005/1207.html
"Congress could facilitate the process by passing legislation (justified by the Commerce Clause) that would allow consumers in any state to purchase health insurance from companies in any other state, under the laws and regulations of the state where the insurer is incorporated. This would not only free up health insurers to medically underwrite, it would create a kind of competition between the states to ease regulatory burdens to attract insurers. The result would unleash market forces on the task of finding the best carrot-and-stick approach to encouraging healthy lifestyles."
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=5226
"Whether we like our congressman or not, we should not let him or her stay in Washington, D.C., more than just a few years. Eight years is more than enough for any politician, party affiliation and ideology notwithstanding. Less is even better! As for U.S. Senators, we should send them home after only one term! The senate is a menace, and that's putting it mildly."
http://www.newswithviews.com/baldwin/baldwin270.htm
"Virtually all of what you and I do in our personal lives is contrary to the coercive, violent, destructive, death-inflicting behavior of political systems. It is when we remove ourselves from our personal relationships with others and organize ourselves into abstract entities (e.g., the nation-state) that we let loose upon the rest of humanity those 'dark side' forces that political systems find it so easy and profitable to mobilize into destructive campaigns. Our basic decency as individuals tends to dissolve when we become members of collective mobs."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer124.html
"Government exists for one reason and for one reason only: the self-perpetuation of the power, perks, and privileges of our rulers and their supporters. Has the distribution of 'homeland security' funding become a way for our elected representatives to buy votes at everyone else's expense? Of course it has: that's the way the system works. This is the 'democracy' we want to export to the ends of the earth, not in its corrupted form but in its purest essence."
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=8218
"Without raising very many eyebrows, Bush has managed to change the conditions for victory in Iraq from the creation of a stable and thriving democracy to merely transferring responsibility for the war to the Iraqi people."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/52/olson/olson2.html
"The long and short of the affair was that four ATF agents and some 90 Mt. Carmelites--two dozen of them, mere children-needlessly died. The intelligence information that lay behind the invasion was dated, imprecise, and in some particulars, plainly false."
http://www.counterpunch.org/reavis12102005.html
"No one can deny that this president has gotten the United States into a hell of a mess. We are now fighting two wars at the same time. One is the result of a vicious surprise attack on our nation. Whatever the historical context of the attack, Americans can understand why that war is being fought."
http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/olson_impeach.htm
"Raymond William Bradford, the founder and editor of Liberty magazine, died of cancer Thursday night. He was 58 years old. He gave me my first job in journalism, and I worked for him for three and a half years, squirreled away in his big creaky house in rural Washington state. He slept in the day and worked in the night, and he could talk for hours about American history, fringe politics, old movies, baseball, and his favorite foods. (I remember him querying Backwoods Home magazine to see if they'd be interested in an article on the proper preparation of popcorn.)"
http://jessewalker.blogspot.com/2005_12_04_jessewalker_archive.html#113423862177205946
"President Bush may not know it yet--or, then again, he may--but in Iraq he is about to do a Nixon. Psychologically and politically, the withdrawal phase has already begun. Militarily, the pullback will start within weeks or, at most, months after the December 15 Iraqi parliamentary elections. How can I be sure? I'm not, and I have no inside information. But the evolving structure of public opinion about Iraq has made the current war effort there unsustainable." This reasoning assumes a degree of sanity in the US federal state. Let's hope.
http://www.reason.com/rauch/120505.shtml
"Armed with graphs, bar charts and intimate knowledge of what is actually happening on the ground in Iraq, the former US Marine shredded Bush's claims, blazing a path for his fellow Democrats, which most of them continue to shun."
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn12092005.html
"Fallujah represents the possibility of success, but also shows how the United States could be the impediment to that success. Najaf represents a model for success, but where success may not be what it seems -- either in terms of U.S. forces being able to withdraw or in achieving the desired end result."
http://www.antiwar.com/pena/?articleid=8222
"In 1902 Kropotkin published the book Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, which provided an additional means for animal and human survival, beyond claims of 'Survival of the Fittest' proffered at the time by some Darwinists, such as T.H. Huxley. ... 'The mutual protection [among animal species allows] the possibility of attaining old age and of accumulating experience, the higher intellectual development, and the further growth of sociable habits, secure the maintenance of the species, its extension, and its further progressive evolution. The unsociable species, on the contrary, are doomed to decay'."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kropotkin
"Clarence Birdseye, who became known as the father of frozen food, was a man of extraordinary vision, insatiable curiosity, and enormous persistence. He used his unique gifts to develop a freezing process that not only preserved food safely, but also preserved its taste and appearance."
http://www.birdseyefoods.com/corp/about/clarenceBirdseye.asp
"NBC developed Sanford and Son, casting Foxx in the lead role, which ran from 1972 to 1977. Foxx received considerable acclaim for this television series but a spin-off role, as Fred Sanford, in 1980 was not as successful. In 1983 he filed for bankruptcy and two years later the Internal Revenue Service claiming he owed them 3 million dollars seized many of his possessions including his Las Vegas home."
http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/1322/A_true_original_Redd_Foxx
Antiwar Classic stars Kirk Douglas, Ralph Meeker, George Macready, Adolphe Menjou, Timothy Carey and Joe Turkel, directed by Stanley Kubrick. "[A]ll the character portrayals are excellent, especially those of the more despicable officers ... [who show] how bureaucracy most often undermines what little integrity remains within ... its human cogs. However, [the movie's attack] on the State and its favorite work: war, make this film most exceptional."
http://endervidualism.com/agora/paths_of_glory_1957.htm
"Like the series, the movie’s mostly fascinating to watch. You can’t take your eyes from the screen, because you’re afraid you might miss something really bizarre and cool. And then there’s Charlize Theron and the Lycra outfits."
http://wconger.blogspot.com/2005/12/movie-review-aeon-flux.html
"Teachout [author of an earlier but recent Mencken bio] could not accept that anyone could have honorably doubted the necessity of American entry into World War II. In contrast, [Marion Elizabeth] Rodgers explains why Mencken thought as he did: his experience of World War I. She recounts his trip to Imperial Germany in 1917, his personal knowledge of Allied news falsification and 'official balderdash,' and his loss of writing outlets in the shutdown of free speech. She cites public accusations that Mencken, a German-American, was an agent of the German Kaiser."
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/books/2002672683_mencken11.html
Who's been waging the war on Christmas? Jon Stewart! Video with audio. [NB: Samantha Bee's clip within a clip, within a clip, in this piece raises a very good point, but Stewart is more focused on the ridiculous nature of more recent events. Hilarious!]
http://www.comedycentral.com/sitewide/media_player/play.jhtml?itemId=36003
"Hark . . . do you hear that sound? It's the radio, playing 'Frosty the Snowman!' For the eighth or ninth time today! And that thud in the yard? Why, that's Dad, falling off the ladder while attempting to hang fake icicles from the roof. And if you listen really, really hard, you can hear, softly in the distance, the sounds of shoppers trading punches over parking spots at the mall. No doubt about it: The holidays are here!"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/03/AR2005120301250_pf.html
"Telephone logs recorded by the National Security Agency and obtained by Congress as part of an ongoing investigation suggest that the vice president may have used the Oval Office intercom system to address President Bush at crucial moments, giving categorical directives in a voice the president believed to be that of God."
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/43189
"They are not sheeple. Yet they are the main force through which tyranny gains and increases a foothold (with the help of religion and other social idealisms . . . utopianism). They are not followers; they are abstainers -- they are private individuals. As such, they are fundamentally opposed to all -isms and to all utopian visions, liberty and tyranny alike. They are outsiders, at root. ... Are they being logical? Probably not. On the other hand, in regard to a primitive kind of individual integrity, they are being human at their best."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/52/rieben/rieben4.html
"Malthus and the Neo-Malthusians called the natural forces that limited population growth, the 'positive check.' They instead advocated what they called the 'preventive check'--the deliberate use of contraception or other foresightful behavior to avoid misery. ... As might be expected, the contrasting positions [with Darwin] on foresight and family formation also coincided with contrasting views on making contraceptive information available."
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2005/PeartLevymalthus2.html
"A lot of people seem to think that, by being anti-death penalty, I inherently support convicted murderers. That's a tremendous leap in logic. The point of the column was that I'm against killing people. That being the case, how could I possibly justify Tookie Williams killing four of them? That doesn't make sense. I'm just saying he's the one who's about to be killed here, and I don't condone it. The victims are already dead; if they were still alive and about to be murdered, I wouldn't condone that, either."
http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/001709.html
"[I]t has been argued that what gives the Turkish economy much of its vigour is the mass of small family businesses with a foot in the 'black' economy, free of minimum-wage, maximum-workweek laws and social charges that the labour union and socialist influences in Brussels seek to impose on all EU member countries."
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2005/JasayTurkeyEU.html
"If you've ever intentionally smelled a partner's clothing for comfort, you've got a lot of company. Preserving, smelling and wearing the clothes of a sexual partner while separated is common, and it's probably normal behavior, suggests a University of Pittsburgh study."
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20050304-000003.html
"Earlier this year, an Orlando police officer fatally shot a plainclothes colleague who was investigating underage drinking outside the Citrus Bowl. The plainclothes officer had gotten into a scuffle with tailgaters and fired his gun into the air."
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2005/Dec-04-Sun-2005/opinion/4549184.html
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