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"A federal appeals court has thrown out the January 2003 conviction of 'Guru of Ganja' Ed Rosenthal on federal marijuana cultivation charges. A three-judge panel of the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found that the verdict was tainted by a juror's phone call to an attorney friend, who told her she could get in trouble if she failed to follow the judge's instructions not to consider the crop's medical purpose."
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/433/edrosenthal.shtml
"No one likes being picketed. More often than not, those targeted for picketing are the powerful and connected, while those doing the picketing have no other means of expressing dissent. If our free speech rights can be circumscribed anytime a protest is too offensive, the powerful will be handed another tool to silence their critics."
http://www.sptimes.com/2006/04/23/Columns/Group_s_message_is_vi.shtml
"While homeschooling has been around for many years, the custom has always been the mother staying at home and becoming the teacher. But in recent years with the changing economy, more dads have become the stay-at-home parent. When it came time to educate their children the fathers assumed the role of Homeschooling Dads."
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/4/prweb375532.htm
"The Page County landfill scandal is a powerful example of how government touches our lives -- with bribes, nepotism, Mafioso connections, abuse of the poor and the uninformed citizen, and just plain jackbooted ugliness. What happened, and what continues to happen in Page County, Virginia, demonstrates how ordinary citizens and taxpayers are abused by a notion that governments -- even local governments -- are sovereign, all-powerful and can join with criminals to rape the public, without the slightest fear of punishment."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski150.html
"Despite Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' claim that such legislation is needed to shut down 'large-scale criminal enterprises' that divert their profits to 'terrorism activities,' the legislation is not aimed at them. Current law provides all the criminal and civil remedies necessary to prosecute large-scale piracy operations; otherwise we wouldn't have prosecutions of software piracy rings to report on. No, the new bill is aimed at you and me."
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060424-6660.html
"Last month, Fairfax County prosecutor Robert Horan announced that he would not press charges against the officer who shot and killed Culosi. That's no surprise. In his 39 years as a prosecutor, Horan hasn't brought a single charge against a police officer. ... I'm not a fan of criminal negligence laws, but if we're going to have them, certainly our law enforcement officials should be among the first we require to follow them."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,193652,00.html
"We do not pay sufficient attention to the fact that statists are less interested in either the substance of their specific 'problems,' or the merits of their proposed solutions, than in retaining and aggrandizing control over the lives of others. We spend far too much of our time giving credence to statists' issues by making reasoned or empirical responses to their proposals, and too little time addressing the underlying power ambitions."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer135.html
"A person could plant ten acres in commercially valuable timber and more or less forget about it for 20 years. Or a person could divide the space into woodlot, garden, and orchard, which means a bit more on-site work. Or a person could add a greenhouse and raise something exotic for sale. More work, and now somebody has to live there, maybe a four-hour drive from the money-tree. But what about livestock?"
http://www.strike-the-root.com/61/klassen/klassen6.html
"The problems with these various cycles, Pollard observes, is that the taxpayer outflows are increasing, while the inflows of tax money are decreasing. And the burden of government and consumer debt is skyrocketing. The overall process is what I've described elsewhere as a crisis of inputs in the state capitalist system."
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2006/04/vicious-cycles.html
"Illinois and California - have taken advantage of a never-used House rule this past week to demand impeachment proceedings themselves. An announcement like this could rock the insulated little world that exists on Capitol Hill. Leave it to the states to do the [federal] government's job. ... Bush has defended his wiretapping, torture and war and recent allegations have all but proven that the authorization to leak Plame's identity came from the president himself. If these charges were levied against anyone else they'd stand in front of the International Criminal Court for war crimes charges."
"So, what is a brand worth to my child? That is the important question that every parent should ask when considering college applications. And university presidents will soon be forced to wrestle with that question themselves, as the gap between the perceived value of the brand and its actual value to the corporate consumer becomes more obvious with every inflated grade...."
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49875
"Americans are tired of trying to rule the world, and they are resistant to having the rest of the world rule them. It would be one thing if the world is threatened by hostile extra-terrestrials. As it is, to resist the globalists requires America to re-assert an 'America First' policy and regain control of its own security, trade, and immigration policies."
http://www.partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=1820
"I can hardly imagine anything more arrogant than for a government to destroy crops in another country because that government doesn't want 'its' people to have access to them. Nor can I imagine a program better suited to create hatred for Americans. And we wonder why figures like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela get into power. Are the people in Washington crazy?"
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0604j.asp
"For the last few years, a coalition of technology companies, academics and computer programmers has been trying to persuade Congress to scale back the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Now Congress is preparing to do precisely the opposite. A proposed copyright law seen by ZDNet UK sister site CNET News.com would expand the DMCA's restrictions on software that can bypass copy protections and grant federal police more wiretapping and enforcement powers."
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/0,39020645,39265310,00.htm
"Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to the nation's capital last week was an especially noteworthy disaster. A summit that should have dealt with the vital issue of how the United States can peacefully acknowledge China's rise as a great power focused instead on narrow trade and proliferation issues and became a farce of administrative snafus."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1710
"Now this paranoid sect has at last seized the commanding heights of American power. Two of its most venerable and faithful adherents are the central players in the court of the Crawford Caligula: Vice President Dick Cheney and Pentagon warlord Donald Rumsfeld. And they have found a most eager disciple in the peevish dullard strutting in the Oval Office."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig7/floyd1.html
"Unless the American people figure out a way to reverse what has happened to their country -- and have the will to do something about it -- they will earn the mark of shame reserved for those people in history who voluntarily relinquished their freedom in exchange for the aura of security."
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0604i.asp
"[I]n the seven years since the IOM report was issued, virtually no research on potential risks and benefits has been done, because the government has blocked such studies. So, we know neither more nor less about medical marijuana than we did seven years ago, whatever the FDA says. Why would the agency inaccurately claim that the science is settled when it isn't? I hardly need to say it: This isn't a medical or scientific conclusion. It's a political one."
http://www.slate.com/id/2140503/
"Jane Jacobs was no ordinary person, however. With only a high-school diploma she managed through her books to dramatically change the face of the urban landscape. But she also practiced what she preached. Her writings reflect not only her reading and seeing, but also her doing."
http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=434
"Mozilla Corporation's efforts to promote the Firefox browser journeyed into the realm of experimental film Thursday with the presentation of the Firefox Flicks awards for the best 30-second commercials promoting the open-source browser."
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/software/0,70762-0.html?tw=wn_index_3
"April is National Donate Life Month. Life Sharers, a national non-profit network of organ donors, believes people who are willing to donate their organs should be the first to receive one if needed."
http://hometownlife.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060427/NEWS12/604270927/1029
"The Bush administration energy policy in the US, just as in Iraq, relies on command and control and nothing more. It is a form of low-level socialism and can be expected to produce results along the same lines as the much-heralded effort to get oil flowing in Iraq, a country where the stuff is as common as fog in Northern California."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/energy-planners.html
"And the devil of it all is that homeowners are happy with the whole scheme! They are sitting in a gold mine! They are bombarded with offers of low-cost home-equity loans with which to buy Escalades and world cruises and every luxury modern man might desire; this massive housing bubble is created and sustained by politicking and actually brings large tangible benefit! ... [B]ut ... no such ownership actually exists...."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/61/davies/davies4.html
"The solution there is to let the price continue to rise, which would either encourage more greedy, jowly fatcats to get into the production game or encourage consumers to reduce their oil consumption. Instead, Bush, having diagnosed America's oil addiction, proposes a weird solution: trying to get the addicts a better price for the drug."
http://www.reason.com/links/links042706.shtml
"So far in the war on terror, we've seen widespread domestic spying programs, the inclusion of anti-war groups on Pentagon watch lists, so-called 'free speech zones,' and an ever widening gap between politicians and the American people--physically, as well as in terms of accountability. We've seen the selective use of intelligence to create threats that didn't exist. We've seen leaking to smear war opponents, and we've seen investigations into leakers who managed to smear the war. What kind of fun stuff will the next major theater bring?"
http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/002021.html
"One of the fascinating aspects of the Iraq War has been the way in which some people have permitted their sense of reality to shift and mutate as circumstances have changed. Recall that the primary justification for supporting the war was that Saddam Hussein was about to unleash a biological, chemical, or nuclear attack on the United States. People were convinced they were in danger."
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0604g.asp
"While the Iran Freedom Support Act contains language explicitly disavowing the charge that it represents a blank check for war with Iran, that is precisely what it does. It sets the stage for isolating Iran economically and paves the way for the creation of an Iranian version of Ahmed Chalabi and his 'heroes in error.' We will, once again, pay for the privilege of being lied to. As that old Peter, Paul, and Mary song goes: 'When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?'"
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=8914
"Mrs. Jacobs was seen by many of her supporters -- mistakenly -- as left-wing. Not so. Her views embraced the marketplace, supported privatization of utilities, frowned on subsidies, and detested the intrusions of government, big or small. Nor was she right-wing. In fact, she had no time for ideology."
"The ideas behind PGP had been known and understood by computer scientists and mathematicians for years, so the underlying concepts weren't truly innovative. Zimmermann's real innovation was in making these tools usable by anyone with a home computer."
http://www.webmonkey.com/webmonkey/06/17/index4a.html
"Carrhae, one of Rome's worst defeats, bears many resemblances to America's modern debacle in Iraq. The Bush Administration showed the same arrogance and ignorance as Crassus, and the same lust for what appeared easy military glory and rich plunder, ignoring expert advice while heeding disinformation from those with hidden agendas."
http://www.ericmargolis.com/archives/2006/04/the_generals_pr.php
"It is unclear whether the Bush administration honestly wants to advance democracy in Iran or whether it is merely creating another pretext to start bombing. If the Iranian regime responds to Bush's brazen intervention by rounding up reformers, further repressing free speech, acting even more paranoid, it may help Bush sway Americans on the need to bomb Iran in the name of democracy."
http://www.amconmag.com/2006/2006_04_24/article2.html
"Those who have willingly sent America's youth to die, kill, and maim in this abysmal quagmire are audience to a drama from which they keep a safe distance. The majority of the war's supporters have paid no personal price for the illegal misadventure, have sacrificed nothing, and take no responsibility whatsoever for the blood their tax dollars have helped spill."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/61/gronquist/gronquist2.html
"The reality is that what the Bush administration calls a national security strategy is really a global security strategy based on 'promoting freedom, justice, and human dignity -- working to end tyranny, to promote effective democracies, and to extend prosperity through free and fair trade and wise development policies.' But this is a false belief that the best and only way to achieve U.S. security is by forcibly creating a better and safer world in America's image."
http://www.antiwar.com/pena/?articleid=8897
"He designed the first power loom in 1784 patented it in 1785, but it proved to be valueless. In the following year, however, he patented another loom which has served as the model for later inventors to work upon."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Cartwright
"She first appeared onstage in 1900, singing and dancing in minstrel and vaudeville stage revues. In 1902 she married the song and dance man William 'Pa' Rainey and from then on became known as Ma Rainey. The couple formed a song and dance act that included Blues and popular songs."
http://www.redhotjazz.com/rainey.html
"Stylish Warren Spahn is the winningest left-hander in history with 363 victories, all but seven coming with the Boston-Milwaukee Braves. He was a 20-game winner 13 times, including six years in a row; and led the National League in wins eight times and complete games on nine occasions."
http://www.baseballhalloffame.org/hofers_and_honorees/hofer_bios/spahn_warren.htm
Screwball Western parody with social overtones stars Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder, Madeline Kahn, Harvey Korman; written and directed by Mel Brooks, with a writing staff which included Richard Pryor. "I count quite a few Westerns among my favorite movies. However, that doesn't mean I can't enjoy a parody of Westerns. This movie satirizes the Western genre, but does so in a way that shows affection for the great movies that constitute its target.”
http://endervidualism.com/agora/blazing_saddles_1974.htm
"Some obvious pitfalls line the path from political pop to real world change. As with Bruce Springsteen's bitter vet's lament, 'Born in the U.S.A.,' the music can be hijacked by political forces you despise, such as Ronald Reagan. It can turn into a largely feckless part of a general hip marketing image, as with Rage Against the Machine. It can be covered by Peter, Paul, and Mary."
http://www.reason.com/links/links042406.shtml
"Can we get those ideals back? Neil, the eternal optimist believes we can. that's why he ends the album with 'America the Beautiful.' He is much more of a believer than me, but more likely closer to the majority of the residents of this country. The music on this album is classic Neil Young. Electric but not flashy."
http://www.counterpunch.org/jacobs04292006.html
"One day after being named the new White House spokesman, former Fox News pundit Tony Snow announced that a deal merging Fox News and the Bush White House had been successfully completed."
http://www.borowitzreport.com/archive_rpt.asp?rec=1380
Dave Gorman wouldn't be surprised if G.W. Bush tried to beat his father's low approval rating.
http://www.comedycentral.com/sitewide/media_player/play.jhtml?itemId=63120
"A raging grease fire has spread across the southern half of Wisconsin and into the neighboring states of Illinois, Iowa, and Minnesota, killing at least eight and leaving hundreds injured or missing after the intense heat and acrid odor of charred pork and cheese-filled breading overwhelmed the region."
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/47719
"Just as the idea of a right triangle implies the Pythagorean theorem, the idea of human action implies 'before' and 'after,' 'cause' and 'effect.' We cannot make sense of human plans unless we understand that there is a past that, for the human actor, provides the soil in which the seeds of action might be sown; there is a present during which the sowing might transpire; and there is a future in which the actor hopes to reap the fruit of any action."
http://www.mises.org/story/2125
"I have no fantasies about shooting anyone. I have seen enough of that for one lifetime. I don't hunt, having no desire to kill anything I don't have to kill. I don't need to pose with a rifle. Having carried one in the Marine Corps, I do not regard them as exotic. But when you are far from anywhere, you provide your own security. I am comfortable with the idea. So are a lot of men."
http://www.fredoneverything.net/SurvivalSchools.shtml
"Objectivists appear to regard the survival instinct as a predicate for normative propositions. They assume that whatsoever advances survival is good, while whatsoever hinders survival is bad. This is itself a moral assumption that cannot be derived from facts. ... Would not the right moral choice be entirely up to individual actors who can best judge what promotes their own survival? It makes no sense to me to put judgments about my survival in the hands of others. And what can be said for moral choices in matters where survival is not immediately at stake?"
http://emergencybackupdog.blogspot.com/2006/04/for-objectivists-friend-is-someone-you.html
"I have no doubt school administrators will explain that the election day assignment was purely to educate children about the political process, and that they were not instructed on who or what to vote for. However, it should be noted that no such assignment was given in last year's gubernatorial election, or the previous year's presidential election, and you do not need a college degree in political science to know that voter turnout is usually more important in an election than persuading individual voters how to cast their ballots."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/61/bank/bank2.html
"Few Americans anymore believe that government action should be guided by reference to moral principles. Instead, they react to each new 'crisis' by simply demanding that government 'do something,' which usually means restricting someone else's freedom. Such is the case with immigration."
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0604k.asp
"As for stars, [the] book provides an ideal role for an actress in lead character Dagny Taggart, so it's not a stretch to assume Rand enthusiast Angelina Jolie's name has been brought up. Brad Pitt, also a fan, is rumored to be among the names suggested for lead male character John Galt."
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