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"Rather than debate whether or how government programs should be reformed, I propose much more fundamental questions: Why not simply separate the economy and the state? Why not free economic enterprise from all government control and regulation? Why not adopt a system in which people are free from government restrictions on entering into any business activity, entering into mutually beneficial transactions with others, accumulating unlimited amounts of wealth, and doing whatever they want with their own money?"
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0602a.asp
"Since most of the world's Dietary Supplement consumption and demand takes place in the United States, our law should be the basis for international harmonization rather than the other way around. The United States has far more experience with the consequences of free consumer access to unlimited health supports than any other country and understands fully both the importance to health and to freedom of choice of this access pattern. The United States also has developed a wide clinical experience with diverse nutrients and substances which supports the conclusion that nutrients at levels chosen by consumers are enviably safe and free of toxic effects and dangers."
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/6/prweb397379.htm
"A 15-year-old girl can enter into a common-law marriage in Colorado, a state appeals court ruled Thursday. Younger girls and boys may also be able to marry."
http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/06/15/teen.marriage.ap.ap/index.html
"I set out to make a film about whether or not there was a law requiring Americans to pay an income tax. I discovered something much more frightening..." This Google video contains the first American promo for Aaron Russo's new film. It runs a little less than 15 minutes. It should give you hope or make you think.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3171333253967404913
"So it goes -- another robber baron manages to destroy whatever good things working folks in South Central L.A. have managed to build for themselves, and pays a few million to hire the city's goons to enforce it. The gardens that folks have spent 14 years tilling and growing are torn up in front of their eyes so that a politically-connected real estate developer can put up another warehouse on their land, all in the name of 'development' and 'jobs' for 'the area'."
http://radgeek.com/gt/2006/06/14/enclosure_comes
"Americans have always claimed to have a respect for life and the worth of the individual. Now, life exists at the behest of the American state, as do individuals. Life really only has value when put into the service of the state to do the state's bidding. Life abroad is expendable if the American state determines that doing so makes people here safer and more secure. Immigrants will need to teach that to their children if they want them to grow up to be good Americans with strong values."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/61/goslin/goslin5.html
"Political organization seems insidious in its similarities to religion -- when one surrounds oneself with other believers, one gradually loses the impetus to question one’s beliefs or actions. One becomes too deeply invested in the cause, too narrowly focused on the goals, too steeped in group ideology or collective mentality, too readily reinforced by the solidarity of like-minded ranks closing in around one, to step back and evaluate the larger picture dispassionately as an outsider might."
http://endervidualism.com/catfarmer/other_peoples_politics.htm
"If we are truly concerned with human suffering, we must rank threats rationally. We must deal with the most life-threatening problems first, and only then proceed to lesser dangers. What would we think of a ER doctor who treated a hangnail before dealing with a spurting artery? Since citizens face far more danger from government officials than private criminals, is it rational to use our fear of criminals to shy away from exploring the possibility of a stateless society?"
http://www.lewrockwell.com/molyneux/molyneux23.html
"People who understand that the state institutionalizes barbarism see the imbalances it permeates with interventions throughout society. The state claims control over our economies, laws, property, homes, families and even lives. But the state is able to control your mind only when you let it make choices for you. That so many people find themselves in a perpetual state of adolescence, if not infancy, in modern society is because they were weaned on the state pledging allegiance daily to its symbols and soaking up the words of state high priests as gospel."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/61/davis/davis8.html
"Devolution through secession is about the only way Americans will ever see a return to decentralized, smaller government. I don't expect independent states to be especially liberty oriented, but I know that the huge, centralized US government is a threat to liberty in and of itself."
http://emergencybackupdog.blogspot.com/2006/06/wherein-i-embrace-secessionism.html
"Proponents of the Federal Marriage Amendment claim that it is needed immediately to prevent same-sex marriages from being forced on the nation. That fear is even more unfounded today than it was in 2004, when Congress last considered the amendment. The better view is that the policy debate on same-sex marriage should proceed in the 50 states, without being cut off by a single national policy imposed from Washington and enshrined in the Constitution."
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6430
" Now that they've got their majority vote, advocates for Peaks Island's secession from Portland face the challenge of uniting this Casco Bay community in the fight to become a town."
http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/local/060615peaks.shtml
"The Justice Department sought to get a federal judge to dismiss much of the EFF lawsuit, claiming that 'the lawfulness of the alleged activities cannot be determined without a full factual record, and that record cannot be made without seriously compromising U.S. national security interests.' Thus, it is no longer safe to permit Americans to know what the government is up to. National security requires that the government have unlimited right to deceive the American people about how far it is intruding into their lives."
http://www.amconmag.com/2006/2006_06_19/article.html
"The decision also drew criticism from groups that have pointed to a sharp increase in recent years in no-knock, SWAT-type police raids on private homes, usually in pursuit of drugs. 'Because of today's decision, we can expect to see an even more pronounced increase in the use of illegal, military-style no-knock raids,' said Radley Balko of the Cato Institute, which filed a brief in the Hudson case."
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1150362317902
"U.S. District Judge John Gleeson ruled that it is constitutionally permissible to round up foreign nationals on immigration charges based solely on their race, religion or country of origin. What's more, he said that they can be detained indefinitely, even after they have agreed to be removed to their home countries."
"Politicians were not born yesterday. They know their constituents' likes and dislikes. So when the politicos geared up to slaughter thousands of Iraqis, back in 2002 and early 2003, they knew that their imminent killing spree would garner more popular support if they promised to carry it out for next to nothing. So that is precisely what they promised."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/higgs/higgs44.html
"President Bush invaded Iraq, a country that represented no threat to the American people or the territory of the United States. In other words, the U.S. forces that bomb and shoot Iraqis don't have to be there. They are not responding to impending danger to Americans. They are in someone else's country with 500-pound or heavier bombs and other powerful weapons. How would we feel if things were the other way around?"
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0606f.asp
"The death of the sadistic sociopath Abu Musab al-Zarqawi shouldn't bring a tear to anyone's eye, but it is primarily a short-lived public relations triumph for the Bush administration that may mask an actual victory for the Sunni insurgency."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1748
"If licensing doesn't work, what is the alternative? The answer is, no licensing. If anyone could teach without a license, like home-schooling parents or private-school teachers, then millions of new, competent, creative teachers would flood the market. These new, unlicensed teachers would compete with one another and drive the price of education down, much as competition drives down the price of computers. ... It is amazing how fast we learn to judge the work of others when we have to pay for their services out of our own pockets."
http://www.newswithviews.com/Turtel/joel18.htm
"It was not Mr. Robert that originated the rules that bear his name. Having fumbled a bit at a church meeting, Robert undertook study of parliamentary procedure to improve his skills. He studied how the English Parliament and other deliberative assemblies handled their meetings. There was, in the accumulated traditions of the Parliament, an excellent system of rules that was the result of centuries of trial and error. These rules were (and are) an example of spontaneous order. Like law, language, and money, the institution of parliamentary procedure was the result of human action, but not of human design."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/guillory7.html
"Interestingly, the marketplace uses prices to minimize the reduction in living standards associated with increased scarcity. A higher price of gasoline, for example, encourages consumers to eliminate the lesser valued consumption uses to which they put gasoline. Higher valued consumption uses remain. Higher gasoline prices also provide incentives for additional production from suppliers who otherwise would not produce, mitigating the increased scarcity."
http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=550&year=2006&month=6
"Existing roofers who can comply with a certification requirement might be thrilled about state and federal regulations. That diminishes competition and keeps a high barrier to entering the field. It is one step closer to monopoly, which is what many established producers in all sectors would like. But will the homeowner be better off? Not likely."
http://www.mises.org/story/2213
"There are many sound economic (not to mention moral) arguments that can be made against any particular tax. But surely one of the most damning indictments is that the tax code as a whole leaves the taxpayer in the dark about how he might minimize his personal governmental burden. How is a person to arrange his financial affairs if before he knows the effect of a change in one tax, he has to know how that change will effect all the other taxes he is subject to? "
http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=556
"In a world of left and right, libertarians should fit nicely somewhere in-between or -- even better -- in a neither-nor position. But still libertarians tend to identify much more with the right wing in politics rather than with the left wing. How is this so?"
http://www.strike-the-root.com/61/bylund/bylund10.html
"We live in a country ruled by dangerous and foolish people; by sociopaths who are prepared to engage in the planned killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children, for no other purpose than to satisfy their insatiable appetites for power. But what is far worse than this is the fact that we live in a country whose residents either value such traits or, at the very least, are unable -- or unwilling -- to recognize and condemn them. The ruling class -- and its coterie -- offers the most specious rationalizations for their practices to a public largely reduced to flag-waving."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer139.html
"It's no different with the government's war on terrorism, where the killing of one terrorist simply produces more terrorists, which means that the war on terrorism, like the war on drugs, continues onward with no sign of its ever ending. The reason is simple: It is the federal government's own interventionist foreign policy, including the death and destruction that arise from such policies as sanctions, invasions, and occupations, that give rise to the deep anger and hatred that then produces the terrorist blowback. By dismantling America's overseas military empire, and restoring the noninterventionist foreign policy of a constitutional republic, the threat of terrorism against the United States would disappear."
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0606e.asp
"In Zarqawi's case, there is speculation that he was something of an American creation. Certainly the U.S. left him alone before the war and during the war's early stages, when he and his gang or terrorist thugs were operating out of northern Iraq under the protection of the U.S. no-fly zone."
http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff06132006.html
"Libertarian internet enthusiasts tend to forget the fallacy of the broken window. We see the internet. We see its uses. We see the benefits it brings. We surf the web and check our email and download our music. But we will never see the technologies that weren't developed because the resources that would have been used to develop them were confiscated by the Defense Department and given to Stanford engineers."
http://www.mises.org/story/2211
"As Milton Friedman notes in Free to Choose, the results of the ICC were much different than what the 'reformers' had anticipated. Instead of independently 'regulating' the railroads, the ICC, which was staffed by people with ties to rail companies, worked hand in glove with the entities it was supposed to be overseeing. Thus, the first 'revolving door' between industry and the entities that regulate it was established."
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0603d.asp
"In a real way, Leary helped conjure not only the '60s counterculture but the '90s high-tech counterculture, too. A clear theme of individual fulfillment runs through all of his thought, and it's a shame that Greenfield didn't discuss his ideas more seriously, much less put them in a richer social and intellectual context."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/14/AR2006061402139.html
"Nuking Iran is an essential part of the attack plan. The U.S. lacks the necessary conventional military force to invade and occupy Iran, but the use of nuclear weapons against Iran has a wider purpose. The neocons are determined not to have any more embarrassments, such as the Iraqi insurgency. By nuking Iran they intend to send a wider message that the U.S. will use every means at its disposal to ensure its hegemony. The neocons believe that the use of nukes will convince Arabs and the wider world that there is no recourse to accepting America's will."
http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=9127
"Kinzer, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, deconstructs America's disturbingly counterproductive foreign policy through competing critiques of the country's imperialism and its incompetence. His chronicle of America's role in interventions into 14 sovereign nations posits failure and avarice as our lasting progeny. It is a history lesson we can't afford to forget."
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2695/
"Americans need to ask why they should want their military personnel to try to play the role of referee in such an environment. Zarqawi's death should remove the last excuse for 'staying the course' in Iraq. We've overthrown Saddam Hussein, enabled the Iraqi people to create a new constitution, presided over the election of a new government, and now killed the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq."
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6434
"Maxwell is widely regarded as the nineteenth century scientist who had the greatest influence on twentieth century physics, making contributions to the fundamental models of nature. In 1931, on the centennial anniversary of Maxwell's birthday, Einstein described Maxwell's work as the 'most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton.'"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Clerk_Maxwell
"Strauss’s admiration for poetry, if not philosophy, of Nietzsche finds musical fulfilment in Also sprach Zarathustra, which he premieres in Frankfurt. Conducting engagements in many European cities, including Moscow."
http://www.richard-strauss.com/biography.html
"[I]t was not until he moved to Mad magazine in 1956 that his work got wide recognition. Berg's 'The Lighter Side' feature became one of the most popular series in Mad."
http://www.lambiek.net/artists/b/berg_david.htm
Mythological epic action/adventure stars Todd Armstrong, Nancy Kovack, Honor Blackman, Gary Raymond; directed by Don Chaffey, with special effects by Ray Harryhausen. "Based on Greek mythology and an ancient tale, Jason and the Argonauts belongs in the fantasy category. At the time of its release it reached the pinnacle of achievement in special effects."
http://endervidualism.com/agora/jason_argonauts_1963.htm
"So why do you always stay until the end of the closing credits when you go to the movies? Because ever since Ferris Bueller's Day Off, every so often you're given an extra treat. It might be as simple as a lilting guitar reprise of the Firefly theme, or Michael Buble crooning 'Spider-Man, Spider-Man, Does whatever a spider can.' Or it might be as mind-boggling as a very brief scene that spins around what you thought you'd witnessed in the film that just ended."
http://bwrmontag.blogspot.com/2006/06/congeresque-review-x-men-3.html
"The best of the cowboys live by a democratic, egalitarian code in which independence and honesty are valued more than any numbers that can be indited on a ledger, but their ranks also include chiselers, thieves, and the usual run of cowards, including one wretch who utters what, to Kelton, is that most self-damning of all statements: 'There ought to be a law'."
http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleid.19236/article_detail.asp
"'And now here's the Channel 7 BlabberCast News At Nine with your trendy Dual News AnchorTalkers Mike Shallo and Cindy Ayrhead.' 'Well Cindy, it looks like our lead story once again is the ongoing nationwide flu-scare food-hoarding pandemic.' 'Yes, Mike, and tonight we have several reports from our GroupScoop Reporting Team. First, here with the latest exclusive Channel 7 BlabberCast Breaking News on the latest ongoing nationwide War on Hoarding effort is our own Buffy Sue Whiteface, embedded with the 101st HHS Public Interdiction Tactical Unit'."
http://www.freecannon.com/BirdFlu.htm
Animated Flash cartoon (video w/audio)
http://www.markfiore.com/animation/gaymarriage.html
"When I received my first 'spam' e-mail offer, I admit I was a bit skeptical. I hadn't asked for any information on refinancing my mortgage, and the rates in the e-mail seemed too good to be true. Why hadn't I heard about this great deal on TV or in the Yellow Pages?"
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/49434
"Of course it's one thing for a freelancer (flaky by definition) to go a little further over the top. It's another when a 'normal' person looks up from under his daily burden and begins wondering about Grasshopper life. And this, I suspect, is the ultimate dread of the corporate state (both its Big Brother and Little Brother wings). 'Lazy, dying Grasshopper' isn't, at bottom, a fable about responsibility. It's a tidy bit of propaganda for those who want to control by fear. 'Independent, creative Grasshopper' terrifies those who want the masses safely in lockstep."
http://www.backwoodshome.com/columns/wolfe060615.html
"[C]onsider that I received a bunch of e-mails from people with ideas they thought too terrifying to post publicly. Some of them wouldn't even tell them to me. I also received e-mails from people accusing me of helping the terrorists by giving them ideas. Both of these reactions make the same erroneous assumption: that terrorist attacks are easy, and all terrorists need are a few good ideas. But if there's one thing this contest demonstrates, it's that good terrorist ideas are a dime a dozen. Anyone can figure out how to cause terror. The hard part is execution."
http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,71152-1.html?tw=wn_story_page_next1
"It's 2056. The main technological advances of the previous five decades was to convert the USA's oil shale and Canada's oil sands to petroleum cheaply and efficiently. They become the two most important oil producers in the world. At the same time, their governments fall further into corruption and tyranny. Elections are still held, but everyone knows they're rigged. Oil profits 'trickle up' to the rich, and North America's middle class, once the envy of the world, disappears."
http://partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=1862
"My kids ask me why the city sends men around paving unnecessary things. I tell them about the boon to city coffers that the housing bubble has sparked. The fiscal year is near its end and they have to spend the big piles of tax money that are sitting around or the next year they might -- gasp! -- have their budgets cut."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/61/fontana/fontana4.html
"Check this out. From 1986."
http://brickburner.blogs.com/my_weblog/2006/06/frank_zappa_on_.html
"Just as McKinney may be legally immune because of who she is, I believe Seligmann is being persecuted for what he is. From the beginning, the Duke 'rape' case has been portrayed as a racial issue; white boys raped a black woman. Stories lingered on the wealth of Seligmann's family thus casting the case as one of elitism; the rich can violate the law without consequence."
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