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"U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, in a stinging indictment of Constitutional abuse by the Bush Administration over its use of warrantless wiretaps of American citizens by the National Security Agency, ruled the program violates the Administrative Procedures Act, the doctrine of separation of powers, and the First and Fourth amendments to the Constitution and ordered an immediate halt to the practice."
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_9365.shtml
"Lest anyone think that Judge Vaughn Walker is one of those brazen liberal 'activist' judges - that many infuriated conservatives insist are endangering the republic - the California First Amendment Coalition, a useful news source on legal matters, reports that Judge Walker, 'a former corporate lawyer,' was appointed by the first President Bush' and is considered a conservative in the legal community."
http://www.decaturdailydemocrat.com/articles/2006/08/16/news/opinion/editorial01.txt
"On Nov. 10, 2001, her crusade leads Melinda to the door of the sister with whom she used to be best friends but with whom she has not spoken for years: Brooke's mother. At her side is Martin Yant, a private investigator specializing in wrongful convictions whose work has already exonerated 10 prisoners. (In his book 'Presumed Guilty,' Yant states his belief that 10,000 people in America are wrongfully convicted every year.)"
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,208523,00.html
"If the Kentucky Supreme Court rules for the state in this case, what's to stop the police from coming to your door and concocting a story like, 'I hate have to tell you this, but your son was killed a few hours ago in a car accident. Mind if we come in and talk to you about it?' Once inside, then, they snoop around your house for marijuana."
http://www.theagitator.com/archives/026937.php#026937
"'RFID passports will do little to keep us safer,' Albrecht added. 'On the contrary, by requiring us to carry RFID tags in our travel documents, the government is jeopardizing our personal information while doing little to slow down the bad guys'."
http://www.newswithviews.com/McIntyre/Liz10.htm
"Much of the advertising blocked by McCain-Feingold--though hardly all--reflected poorly on incumbent members of Congress. Without such criticism and the debates it engenders, elections would hardly have any point. Members of Congress, however, do not take threats to their re-election lightly. In passing McCain-Feingold, they required labor unions, corporations, and other groups to stop funding ads that threatened members of Congress at the moment the ads mattered most."
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6627
"If we are to be realistic, then we must realise that some form of governmental arrangement must exist for the concept of closed borders to be viable. If we take the United States as an example, then the federal and state governments would have to establish and administer border controls in order to deter immigrants from seeking entry into the country. The question must be asked, how should this be funded? Well, like all government programmes and policies, it is funded via force and coercion."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/62/awuku/awuku3.html
"So it is with the security state. We give it power, we permit it to run itself with no oversight, we put up with its excesses, and we have a hard time imaging what life would be like without it. Well, it's time we start imagining, because the result of the security state will be more insecurity, more costs on the rest of us, and ever more sectors of our society invaded by these overlords more interested in themselves than the public."
http://www.mises.org/story/2290
"America would never have been settled without [governments] taking the lead. I hate these arguments about would or would not have happened if something different had happened in history, especially when they are stated as some sort of certainty. I usually reply with a 'Says You!' and leave it at that. This time, I hastened to point out that the Americas had been settled for millennia without any apparent government action to encourage it. I doubt very seriously that proto-states organized the migrations across the Bering land bridge or over the North Atlantic ice sheet."
http://emergencybackupdog.blogspot.com/2006/08/more-water-cooler-statism.html
"Northeast Georgia Homeschoolers and their parents award homeschooling high marks. Homeschooled teens from White, Hall and Habersham counties say they are getting a quality education by staying home, and they believe themselves to be as socially active as their public school counterparts. Homeschooling parents say they like the flexibility homeschooling affords family schedules and that they can tailor their child's education to his or her individual needs."
http://www.whitecountynewstelegraph.com/articles/2006/08/17/news/news03.txt
"You can choose from a wide variety of quality Internet private schools, learn-to-read (and math) books and computer learning software, and home-schooling resources to teach your children. Also, Internet education sites are always there, always ready to coach your child, twenty-four hours a day. ... While no one can guarantee you success in homeschooling, like anything else in life, if you keep trying, you will probably succeed in giving your kids a great education at home."
http://www.newswithviews.com/Turtel/joel24.htm
"[T]aking from the earth's limited resources to build unwanted and unneeded products is worse than merely shuffling money around. Money, even in the hands of those who didn't earn it, will still be used more efficiently than money that the government spends - because individuals will spend it on their wants and needs, not on battle tanks or bridges to nowhere."
http://independentcountry.blogspot.com/2006/08/easing-out-of-big-government.html
"Unfortunately, the reality of our political and moral predicament is not so neat and tidy, nor so easily resolved. If the neo-cons all hopped a spaceship for the Hale-Bopp comet tomorrow--indeed, if the cult had never arisen at all--we would still be right where we are today: neck-deep in the Big Muddy. ... Indeed, it was the Great Gamesters themselves who set the neo-cons to work on devising ways to extend the 'unipolar moment' of unchallenged American power that arose after the collapse of the Soviet Union; the first version of the PNAC plan was drawn up at Cheney's order by Paul Wolfowitz and Scooter 'Leaker' Libby in 1992, in the last months of the Bush I administration."
http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=797&Itemid=135
"He has twisted the role of commander in chief, which the Founders included in the powers of the presidency solely to insure that there would be a civilian responsible to the citizenry above any general, into the role of a generalissimo--a military ruler in charge of the entire nation."
http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff08192006.html
"The plot story became leading global news, but most of the information on arrested suspects has come by way of allegations and police leaks. These have not yet added up to any indication of evidence. The suspects are now in their second week in detention after the police won a court order Wednesday to hold them another week. Many Muslim leaders say this is only an indication that the police have no evidence so far, and that they are only now looking for it."
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/suri.php?articleid=9558
"Apparently the post-electoral talking points had been issued in advance, because almost from the moment that Lieberman 'conceded,' a wave of politicians and commentators began similarly hammering home the theme that Lamont's victory was a comfort to terrorists and Al Qaeda, his supporters de facto collaborators."
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/11151851/the_low_post_lieberman_is_not_going_away/1
Two of twenty-five questions for those named in the title: "3. How is bombing non-combatants from above via the Air Force not its own form of 'terrorism?' Why do uniforms and greater fire power make one side morally superior? 4. Why are non-combatant victims of American or Israeli bombs at least partly to blame for the policies of their government, but American and Israeli civilians are always innocent?"
http://www.partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=1920
"War hawks always try to inhibit dissent by portraying their opponents as unpatriotic or squeamish. Often the tactic works, forcing war critics to water down their positions so that they barely qualify as opposition. Criticism is prefaced and qualified with 'support for the troops,' endorsement of war aims, and paeans to the good intentions of policymakers. The only 'criticism' that survives is disagreement about tactics and the lack of an exit strategy. This puts the critics right where the hawks want them."
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0608d.asp
"Order and rules generated by a community using evolved mechanisms--the neutrality requirement, for example--aren't antithetical to freedom. Wales has said part of the inspiration for Wikipedia were Hayek's writings on spontaneous order and information aggregation. Though Wales often emphasizes that Wikipedia is 'an encyclopedia, not an experiment in democracy,' he and other participants are very cognizant that the success of Wikipedia suggests exciting things for other types of open-source collaborations and movements."
http://www.reason.com/links/links081506.shtml
"The real threat to conventional medicine in Cherrix's decision has nothing to do with the health or life of this one young man, but rather the far more dangerous idea that if Cherrix can question his oncologist, then maybe we ALL can question our oncologists!"
http://www.newstarget.com/020001.html
"LifeSharers gives its members preference for one another's organs when they become available. The main concept behind the group: Those willing to give an organ should be the first to get one. That idea runs counter to the conventional approach of matching organs to recipients based solely on factors such as need, health, age and geography. The national group that orchestrates organ donations has taken an official stand against LifeSharers."
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060815/LIFESTYLE03/608150313/1040
"When I ship a package using the United Parcel Service, I'm a customer buying a service. How do we know I'm a customer? Because I do it voluntarily. But the only reason I pay taxes, as is true of most people, is that taxes are compulsory. If I refuse to pay taxes, then I'll lose my assets and might go to prison. As I wrote in The Joy of Freedom: An Economist's Odyssey, calling taxpayers customers of the IRS is like calling chickens customers of the egg farmer."
http://www.antiwar.com/henderson/?articleid=9521
"[T]o the extent that there are terrorists financing the operations through drug sales, it's a direct result of the exorbitant profits that the drug war produces, which would disintegrate with legalization. Thus, what the DEA officials fail to realize (or not) is that it is their own war that provides the monies to finance the terrorists. It's just another perverse result of another perverse federal program."
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0608e.asp
"Rapid growth in federal pay also results from regular promotions that move workers into higher salary brackets regardless of performance and from redefining jobs upward into higher pay ranges. The federal workforce has become increasingly top-heavy. The structure of that workforce has also changed over time. There are fewer low-pay typists and more high-pay computer experts in the government today than there were a generation ago. But that doesn't explain why, as the BEA data show, federal wages have risen 38 percent in just the past five years, compared with 14 percent in the private sector."
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6611
"Since early childhood, our minds have been carefully conditioned -- by institutions presuming the authority to train us in mindsets that serve their interests -- to regard our subservience to organizational purposes as an integral part of who we are. In a secular society, such subservience is to the state. This is not simply a matter of being trained to favor state interests over our own, but of learning to have such interests coalesce into a unified sense of self."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer142.html
"Like the War on Poverty and the War on Drugs, the purpose of the 'War on Terror' is not to eradicate terrorism, but to enlarge government and destroy liberty."
http://independentcountry.blogspot.com/2006/08/getting-our-butts-kicked-in-war-on.html
"The fruits of my labor do not belong to the state. I will not surrender my ability to produce or consume to the state so that I can share in the 'realism' and moral bankruptcy of its oppressive wars, fueled by the political ambitions of collectivist tyrants. I am not the state. I am an individual. I do not sanction the state's actions, and I do not benefit from its wars. Yes, my life will go on as undisturbed as is possible, and for that I am not one bit guilty."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/decoster/decoster118.html
"In recent columns I've argued that a free society depends ultimately on people having a proper sense of just conduct. This means more than the words they recite or put on paper. Most crucial is how they act and expect others to act. For this reason it is futile to put undue emphasis on written constitutions as the key to liberty. The real constitution is within -- each of us. If the freedom philosophy is not inscribed in the actions of people, no constitution will help."
http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=707
"Swift action by British intelligence services foil an imminent terrorist strike by religious extremists that would have resulted in mass death and social upheaval on an unprecedented scale. ... The country goes on high alert, with raids on private homes and places of worship. Native adherents of the suspect faith fall under a cloud of suspicion as 'the enemy within'; neighborhoods are riven with distrust. Any attempts at exploring the grievances that so radicalized the plotters are dismissed as treasonous coddling of a monstrous foe impervious to reason. The year, of course, is 1605."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/081806Z.shtml
"I didn’t hear about the Internet until 1990, and then it was too arcane to be useful to me. I bought my own personal computer that year and used it to write instead of using a typewriter. Unbeknownst to me, Tim Berners-Lee transformed the Internet that year. Seven years later, I had finished my novel, and I went on-line for the first time with my own website. Almost immediately I started to meet like-minded people online."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/62/klassen/klassen1.html
"The group virtually ended its strikes against U.S. targets when the United States withdrew its forces from Lebanon in the early 1980s. Hezbollah, as it has proven before, is a formidable foe, but its main target is Israel. Why did the Bush administration needlessly shake the Hezbollah hornet's nest by stalling the cessation of hostilities in Lebanon so that Israel could have more time to futilely attack Hezbollah's and Lebanon's infrastructure?"
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1789
"Among many things, the war in Lebanon is a window of the future, and either the Israelis cease their policy of bluster and intimidation, and finally accept the political prerequisites of peace with the Arab world, or they too will eventually be devastated by cheaper nuclear weapons in the hands of at least three Arab nations."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/kolko3.html
"The return of U.S. troops to Lebanon would be a mistake of colossal proportions, one that would rival -- if not top -- what Gen. William E. Odom calls 'the greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history,' namely the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq."
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=9556
"While still young, he, along with Blaise Pascal, made some discoveries in regard to the properties of numbers, on which he afterwards built his method of calculating probabilities. … His brilliant researches in the theory of numbers entitle him to rank as the founder of the modern theory."
http://www.nndb.com/people/768/000087507/
"It it is often stated that Oersted's was completely accidental and spontaneous. That contention is, however, misleading. Oersted had studied Naturphilosophie under Schelling himself, and wholeheartedly adopted the view that nature is systematic and unified."
http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Oersted.html
"As the mother of Cary Grant in the pensive None But the Lonely Heart (1944) she started off her late film career brilliantly by receiving the Oscar for Best Actress…."
http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0000856/bio
Not often does something displace my weekly movie review from being listed first in this section. This excellent short story in podcast form merits the top spot easily (in the past other things might have also, but IMO not as much as this one). Even if you "don't do podcasts" you should listen to this one. It's short and of only one part, plus the link has a player feature that will let you hear the story without download. Warren says this by way of introduction: "While waiting for The Imaginary Bomb II or whatever it's to be called, here's a gentle little story I wrote about the power of a free man."
http://imaginarybomb.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=120939
Science fiction horror action adventure stars Christopher Lambert, Loryn Locklin, Kurtwood Smith, Carolyn Purdy-Gordon, Lincoln Kilpatrick, Jeffrey Combs; directed by Stuart Gordon. "The dystopian vision offered by this film indicts many trends which strongly pull the society in which we live in directions away from individual freedom and toward an oppressive 'big brother' agency of domination."
http://endervidualism.com/agora/fortress_1993.htm
"Mencken was as complex and full of contradictions as any human being, but as William Manchester wrote of the post-stroke Mencken he read to in the mornings: 'I have never known a kinder man. But when he unsheathed his typewriter and sharpened its keys, his prose was anything but kind. It was rollicking and it was ferocious.' Mencken was a constant and outspoken defender of freedom of conscience and civil rights. He attacked America's preoccupation with fundamentalist Christianity and opposed the persecution and injustice that Puritanism imposed."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/french/french47.html
"The FAA, which has in the past banned such objects as toenail clippers and hair gel, took the extraordinary step of banning people after the Department of Homeland Security conducted a thorough investigation of previous terror plots. 'We looked at terror plots of the past, and in each and every case, people were involved,' said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff at a Washington press briefing. 'These new rules send the strong message that the FAA has zero tolerance for people'."
http://www.borowitzreport.com/archive_rpt.asp?rec=6566&srch=
War and terrorist threats are all less important than a break in a 10 year old murder case.
http://www.comedycentral.com/sitewide/media_player/play.jhtml?itemId=73143
"While an unnamed 'senior counterterrorism official' acknowledged, 'the potential for abuse is enormous' a Treasury Department undersecretarycrat declared that spying on Americans is '... without doubt, a legal and proper use of our authorities.' Apparently, Treasury undersecretarycrats get to define their own rights."
http://www.freecannon.com/AllsFairInTerrorism.htm
"Freedom, love, peace; all those things that we strive for, they're already right here. If you're looking for them, you're moving in the wrong direction. Freedom is a choice to be true to your self and live in this moment. There is no past or future, there is only this moment. Now it's gone and the next moment is here. Every moment is a new choice. Love is a choice too. You don't need an object to be in love, to act out of love. Love isn't something you get from someone else any more than freedom is. It's here anytime you choose. Peace isn't a lack of noise, problems or war. Peace is peace with what's here."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/62/fontana/fontana5.html
"Big government looks more powerful today than ever. But the ideas that prop up big government are weak. Tired. Moribund. The notion that a bunch of ordinary fallible people, locked in far-away bureaucracies or barging into our castles in ninja suits, know more about what's good for us than we know ourselves is simply an absurdity. A fantasy. A wet-dream for power lovers and a nightmare for people who truly want to achieve satisfying lives."
http://www.backwoodshome.com/columns/wolfe060815.html
"Muslims are no more a unified personality than are Christians, Jews, atheists, Pagans, Buddhists, Confuscianists, or any other theological grouping of people. The article seems to imply that Iranians were not Islamic until 1979, at which time Muslims descended on the country like locusts. In fact, the large majority of Iranians have been Muslim for centuries. Even the late Shah Reza Pahlavi, who was deposed in 1979, was a Muslim."
http://www.bigheadpress.com/TheTimeSink/
"Get ready for the REAL WiMax, now that Sprint Nextel has finally revealed its plans for deploying the new wireless networking technology in the United States. Having pretty much debunked in earlier columns our expectations for WiMax in general and Clearwire's approach in particular in the U.S., you might be surprised that I see Sprint Nextel succeeding in this same space. What's key (and very different) is HOW they are doing it."
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20060818.html
"I found myself some time ago under social circumstances in a group that included an angry radical feminist, which is to say a radical feminist. Out of nowhere that I remember, she announced, 'Men are sexist pigs.' Such assertions are par for the species. It was not easy to know how to respond. ... A few men are sexist pigs, and I don’t like them either. True, I don’t care for some of the attitudes that seem to characterize a lot of American women. This is far [from] thinking that women are pigs or bitches. ... A defining characteristic of the Hater is that maintaining the grounds of his (or, most assuredly, her) hatred is far more important than truth, reason, or kindness. The hatred is an end in itself, an identity, the core of his (or her) being. All thought and balance vanish in the insistence on painting the hated in as bad a light as possible."
http://www.fredoneverything.net/Haters.shtml
"The first thing is to stop flying. Drive the airlines into total bankruptcy. … The second thing is to vote for no incumbent ever again. … The third thing is not to vote for any Republican or Democrat ever again. … The fourth thing is to pass a law--yes, this libertarian is actually saying 'there ought to be a law (as long as it applies only to the government)'--making it an offense punishable by public hanging for any government employee, at any level, to lie to any individual for any reason."
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