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“I was introduced to Jefferson and the writings of the American founders at an early age. I read Locke, Paine, and many others by the time I was in high school. But it wasn’t until I was 30 or so that I began to seriously question the validity and viability of the Constitution and the idea of limited government.”
http://endervidualism.com/salon/intvw/mamaliberty.htm
"[A] new chorus is emerging to challenge the conventional wisdom. The most vocal of these critics is John McCardell Jr., the former president of Middlebury College in Vermont. McCardell's experience in higher education revealed to him that the federal age simply wasn't working."
http://www.reason.com/news/show/119618.html
"Most of the eight other announced Republican presidential wannabes have lots more money and name recognition. But Paul has one big advantage over all of them: He's pure on policy and not a flip-flopper. He's been a consistent exponent of limited constitutional government, low taxes, free markets and a return to the gold standard. He's steadfastly been against the war in Iraq and the war on drugs. He voted against the Patriot Act."
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/columnists/steigerwald/s_501638.html
"When a Supreme Court justice declares that a public school principal has no obligation to know the law of the First Amendment before deciding whether or not to censor student speech, his respect for the very idea that students have First Amendment rights is so low that he should have recused himself from this case."
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0715,hentoff,76319,2.html
"How did we become a country in which it's becoming common to treat misbehaving children as if they were hardcore offenders? One reason, I suspect, is the 'Overkill' mentality now common to law enforcement, a side-effect of militarizing the police: Much of the rising generation of law enforcement officers see the civilian population as an enemy to be subdued, as opposed to fellow citizens whose rights are to be respected and protected."
http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2007/04/get-kiddie-cuffs-or-police-state.html
"It's ironic that the government will file charges against public figures for lying to federal investigators, but government officials can mislead the public for years without any obvious ramifications. 'The probable cause to arrest the protesters as they retrieved food from their parked van?' asked the Washington Post. 'They were wearing black – a color choice the FBI and police associated with anarchists, according to the police records.' For wearing black? This would be funny if it weren't so offensive. "
http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/opinion/homepage/article_1647851.php
"Where once America was about working one's way from the mail room to the corner office. Where once it was a place where Thomas Jefferson's 'natural aristocracy' of virtue and talent could flourish. Where once existed a Horatio Alger mecca. Now lives another parable: about a wastrel who indulges in frat boy high jinx at Yale, uses family connections to escape Vietnam, fails at business opportunities that come along thanks to friends of dad, drinks to excess until 40, then becomes president."
http://www.sptimes.com/2007/04/08/News/A_name_matters_more_t.shtml
"I've been saying for months now that the real scandal in the U.S. Attorney firings is just how whacked-out the Justice Department's priorities really are. Now comes the latest in the Ed Rosenthal case. "
http://www.theagitator.com/archives/027703.php#027703
"What we focus energy on, grows and abides, whether a love relationship or a cancer. Libertarians like to phrase it more along these lines: whatever government subsidizes, it gets more of. But what we’re overlooking when we think that way is that by granting government such an important place in our daily thinking, our moment-to-moment life, we’re feeding that damned beast. We’re giving it power that we don’t believe it deserves."
http://taranjordan.wordpress.com/2007/04/08/whos-subsidizing-government/
"To take part in a jury would clearly impose a cost, that of uncompensated lost time--and the degree of that loss will vary with circumstance. Against that should be balanced first the advantage of not risking jail for contempt when refusing the jury draft, and then the sense of pleasure that may be enjoyed by accepting it and helping that fellow-victim, with any enhanced reputation that may also result. ... [I] suggest working rationally and systematically to abolish government. When that's done, there will of course be no court monopoly, and so no draft--to a jury any more than to the military."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/71/davies/davies10.html
"Vulgar libertarianism has nothing to do with libertarianism proper (or profanity, for that matter) and everything to do with small-minded adherence to preconceived notions, cultural prejudices, right-wingnuttery and just plain being a jerk."
http://www.bradspangler.com/blog/archives/588
"According to conventional wisdom, even though capitalism is better than socialism when it comes to varied products such as hot dogs, blue jeans, and laptops, nonetheless we need government central planners to provide us with military defense. In fact, this is so 'obvious' to most people that the opposite view — namely, that a free market in defense would work just fine — is cause for ridicule."
http://www.mises.org/story/2538
"A new book challenges that stereotype of the idle poor and their supposed quiescence before the market economy. In Off the Books, Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh posits that if a transaction occurs in the ghetto and no one writes it down, it still counts as trade. His sprawling study of Chicago’s seedy South Side unearths a lively world of exchange in a supposed economic graveyard."
http://www.reason.com/news/show/119245.html
"There is a big immigration problem that has been growing year after year. An increasing number of American citizens are moving to Mexico, and some of them are even becoming undocumented workers. Even worse, they are refusing to assimilate and are even insisting on retaining their U.S. citizenship."
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0704e.asp
"There is a rising ecosystem: the open source ecosystem. There is no single vendor controlling it. There is no single set of pieces that you must use to derive value from the ecosystem. You take the best of breed and hook them together through open standards."
http://weblog.infoworld.com/openresource/archives/2007/04/folks_its_not_j.html
"Peaks Island could secede from Portland without the approval of city officials or a citywide vote under a bill awaiting review by the Maine Legislature's State and Local Government Committee. Drafted by the Peaks Island Independence Committee, the bill asks the Legislature to approve a process for Peaks to become a separate town on July 1, 2009."
http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/statehouse/070409peaksbill.html
"In the year before the invasion of Iraq, they were remarkably blunt about this. They proudly published that seminal document of the Bush era, the National Security Strategy of the United States of America, 2002, which called for the U.S. to 'build and maintain' its military power on the planet 'beyond challenge.' Think about that for a moment. A single power on Earth 'beyond challenge.' This was a dream of planetary dominion that once would have been left to madmen."
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=183573
"The amassed armory failed to stop communism in two Asian wars; nor did the Pentagon use the weapons against the biggest and baddest commies, the USSR and China. So why do we keep amassing endless enemies? Ask those who profit?"
http://www.counterpunch.org/landau04092007.html
"Murphy wasn't prevented from boarding because of a crime he had committed, even a long-buried youthful indiscretion. His presence on a 'watch list' didn't come about because he had been arrested for 'unlawful assembly,' or even for peaceful participation in a legal protest march. His name was enrolled on that infamous list because of a speech he had given criticizing the Dear Leader."
http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2007/04/your-papers-please-simplified.html
"What is probably the most disturbing reality that comes out of even a cursory read of the Constitution, is that in spite of what we are being told by the madmen who have seized control of our government, there is NO circumstance whereby the President is given ANY authority to call up the National Guard on his own - a constitutional provision that has been routinely ignored."
http://www.newswithviews.com/Brownlow/david61.htm
"Instead of making a Malibu beach soap out of a prude, a slut, a 98-pound weakling and a leading man, you do a political drama with a hothead (McCain), an Eddie Haskell (Romney), an underdog (Obama) and a wicked witch (Hillary), all doing turns manning tractors and cow-milking chairs on a digitally-enhanced farm set that looks so much like Iowa, you'd swear it was the real thing. ... All of this bullshit obscures the fact that Democrats Y and Z are essentially the same candidate, backed by the same people and espousing the same positions. But it makes for good theater, and that's the important thing."
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/14096420/
"The McCainiac view of the Middle East – which he portrays as two irreconcilable movements pitted one against the other – is dangerously Manichean, and hardly describes the real balance of forces. The Middle East is hardly ready for a fight to the death between religious fundamentalism and modernity. Such a struggle is bound to result in a bloodbath, as well as the victory of the former – and an economic catastrophe for the energy-dependent West."
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=10811
"So even when those institutions function 'efficiently,' the message of the crucifixion seems to be that institutions and authorities are the enemies of justice. It can't really be another way; as hierarchies evolve, ambition, or even just careerism, and its resulting network of internal loyalties, will undermine an organization's original mission."
http://independentcountry.blogspot.com/2007/04/worse-than-pilate.html
"I admit I have affection for the LP, much like I would a prodigal son – you just can’t help but love someone with good intentions no matter how futile or misguided their actions may be. There’s no way the LP candidate for president will even garner more than single digits of the vote.... The problem is that the Libertarians are barking up the tree of politics to try to harvest some liberty; unfortunately it is simply not the fruit borne of that particular tree."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/71/fontana/fontana11.html
"It was the fact that two potential customers asked to purchase the service, and the company decided it had more to gain from saying yes than saying no. ... It happened because a certain number of gay people wanted to live as married, then slowly established institutions that allowed them to do so. Legalizing gay unions—I don't really care if the government calls them 'marriages,' because what's important is what everyday people call them—doesn't rearrange a core social institution. It recognizes a rearrangement that is already taking place."
http://www.reason.com/news/show/119548.html
"Is it any surprise that outsourcing government activity to Halliburton in Iraq, to contractors at Walter Reed, or to cronies of Bush in New Orleans results in disaster? Of course not. It’s still a government activity driven by the commands of central planners and as bureaucratically mismanaged as ever. That’s not 'privatization', that’s just plain old government contracting."
http://emergencybackupdog.blogspot.com/2007/04/government-contracting-aint.html
"I looked in the RFCs and saw that the Internet was defined as a 'best effort' network, which seemed to embody the principles of net neutrality. So, like most other people, I assumed that the de facto state of things was that all packets were being treated equally and what the ISPs were looking for was a change in the status quo. Silly me."
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070412_001931.html
"The fraternal birth order effect is quite substantial. Some 15 percent of gay men can attribute their homosexuality to it, based on the assumption that 1 percent to 4 percent of men are gay, and each additional older brother increases the odds of same-sex attraction by 33 percent."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/10/healthscience/web-0411snsexA.php
"Currently, most countries awaiting ratification of their respective FTAs are able to export most of their products to the U.S. tariff–free, thanks to preferential concessions that work in one direction. This means that American exports to Peru face an average tariff of 12 Percent, while Peruvian exports to the U.S. face no tariff. So what the Democrats, in effect, are saying to American exporters is this: we will continue to penalize you because we think Latin Americans should have labor standards that almost no one wants enforced in the U.S.!"
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1955
"As economists, we know the state exists with a fundamental disconnect between this input and output. Wherever its sphere of activity is, the state’s activities do not rest on consent or service, but thwarting and hindering. And none of this analysis is predicated on intelligence or philanthropy, but on market prices and private property."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/71/mike/mike10.html
"The direct costs of environmental regulation today add something like $2,000 per year to the prices and taxes that the average family pays. The price is surely worth it, but the failure of Congress to own the costs of cleaning the air delegitimated tough agency action in the 1970s, just as it will delegitimate it with global warming."
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8173
"And with the pessimism generated by the decline in profits and the trouble in the housing market, an increasing number of business leaders seem to think that the days of high profits will be over soon."
http://www.mises.org/story/2544
"'National Security' is just one more 'opiate' of the people, another form of mind control; after all, who can be against 'national security?' The National Security State is thus just another 'reality' of American life - one Americans don't question because it would be 'unpatriotic' to do so. But we've certainly paid a heavy price: countless trillions of dollars spent, hundreds of thousands of Americans and countless millions of foreigners killed or wounded, a climate of fear, and the erosion of our most basic liberties such as freedom of speech and habeas corpus."
http://partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=2163
"If they can be made to fear that an external enemy threatens their safety, they will happily trust their rulers with more power and money and ignore the occasional overt corruption. Nothing better serves this purpose than a foreign war. First, of course, the war makers must persuade the people that a threat really exists. This can be pulled off all sorts of ways. "
http://fff.org/comment/com0704f.asp
"The main result of the military action has been to stir up resentment among Muslims in the hopes that the resentment will find expression in terrorist acts in the US. We have been made less safe in order that entrepreneurs can make big bucks protecting us with new security products. It would have been much better just to give the 1,000 billion dollars to the security firms and not invaded the two countries."
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts04122007.html
"The radical Islamists in Somalia never had much following until the Somali people became aware that an outside power was supporting the corrupt and thuggish military chieftains. The popularity of the Islamist movement then surged, allowing the Islamists to take over much of the country. In sum, where no problem with radical Islamists previously existed, the U.S. government helped create one."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1954
"When Kurt Vonnegut published Slaughterhouse Five, he was 47. He’d struggled for 20 years to earn a living as an American writer, working as a public relations man for General Electric, an advertising copy writer, and even a car salesman. 'All I wanted to do was support my family,' Vonnegut wrote in 1999. 'I didn’t think I would amount to a hill of beans.' But this forgotten period of his life also includes a haunting story about television, a World War II story, and Sammy Davis Jr."
http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2007/04/12/when-kurt-vonnegut-met-sammy-davis-jr/
"The case of Sacco and Vanzetti revealed, in its starkest terms, that the noble words inscribed above our courthouses, 'Equal Justice Before the Law,' have always been a lie. Those two men, the fish peddler and the shoemaker, could not get justice in the American system, because justice is not meted out equally to the poor and the rich, the native born and the foreign born, the orthodox and the radical, the white and the person of color."
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=41&ItemID=12575
"He was a successful businessman who steadily and knowingly aggravated huge swaths of his audience with his uncompromising expression of often-despised beliefs. Especially in the 1940s and 1950s, when his reputation was made, his ideas about personal liberty were so far against the grain of an America that, in the wake of the New Deal, mostly believed that government management was needed in every aspect of life that one of his fellow libertarians declared that 'the fact that Hoiles is not in jail is a highly encouraging testimony to the current American scene'."
http://www.reason.com/news/show/119579.html
"Confronted in later life with his own policy prescriptions from the 1940s, an older and wiser Milton Friedman said he had forgotten what a Keynesian he had once been. This admission casts an interesting light on a story Friedman liked to tell about Mises storming out of a Mont Pelerin meeting, saying, 'You are all socialists!' 'Can you imagine?' Friedman would say to his listener. 'Me! A socialist!' Whether or not Mises ever did and said any such thing is contested. But if he did, the accusation was hardly as absurd as Friedman wanted it to sound. "
http://www.mises.org/story/2530
"Just as non-existent weapons of mass destruction or facile concerns for democracy had nothing to do with the invasion of Iraq, so non-existent nuclear weapons have nothing to do with an American onslaught on Iran. Unlike Israel and the United States, Iran has abided by the rules of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has never cited Iran for diverting its civilian programme to military use. For the past three years IAEA inspectors have said that they have been allowed to 'go anywhere'. The recent security council sanctions against Iran are the result of Washington's bribery."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2056027,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=27
"These new Crusaders, however, are not Christians: they are pagans who worship Ares and celebrate the 'warrior ethic' of the Spartans while disdaining the Sermon on the Mount. They represent a new theology of power that has claimed the allegiance of much of the secularized West, a kind of anti-Church Militant intent on usurping the gospel of Christ and replacing it with the gospel of – well, of Satan."
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=10799
" Continuing this war for another two years will bring the day-to-day cost to the American taxpayer to nearly a trillion dollars. Hidden long-term costs such as medical care and disability pensions for the thousands of wounded, and mental health care for those tormented by PTSD, could add another trillion dollars or more to the tab. Why? Why should this misbegotten war continue for another two or three years? The president’s men say that if we leave Iraq as it is now, it will erupt into all-out civil war, and the flames would spread to other tinderbox nations in the Middle East. Perhaps, but perhaps not. There were those who were certain that if we left Vietnam and it fell to the Communists, the other nations of Southeast Asia would topple like dominos. "
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/17067636.htm
"The basic premise seems to be that used by the Catholic crusaders against Cathar heretics in the 13th century, when they slaughtered the entire city of Beziers -- 'good' Catholics and heretics alike -- under the battle cry of Papal legate Arnaud-Amaury: 'Kill them all! God will know His own!'"
http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1109&Itemid=135
"Fawkes is famous for his involvement in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, which he was placed in charge of executing because of his military and explosives experience. The plot, masterminded by Robert Catesby, was an attempt by a group of English conspirators to kill King James I of England, his family, and most of the aristocracy in one swoop by blowing up the House of Lords building in the Houses of Parliament during its State Opening."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes
"Huygens was the greatest mechanist of the seventeenth century. He combined Galileo's mathematical treatment of phenomena with Descartes' vision of the ultimate design of nature."
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Huygens.html
"She was a 6-time winner of the O. Henry Award for Short Stories, and her many awards include the National Medal for Literature, the American Book Award, and, in 1969, a Pulitzer Prize."
http://womenshistory.about.com/library/bio/blbio_welty_eudora.htm
"[A]s an adult star, JOSH WHITE would be honored as the first black artist to give a White House Command Performance (1941), the first to perform in previously segregated hotels (1942) the first to earn a million selling record "One Meatball" (1944)…."
http://www.joshwhitejr.com/biojwsr.html
“Taking up a few years after the revolution, Middle America focuses on familiar characters mostly in the business of getting on with their business in the free zone, which has expanded from Montana to include several neighboring states.”
http://endervidualism.com/salon/books/lewis2.htm
"'Hey! You can't bring those up here!' Uh oh. We'd barely gotten out of Bob's Honda and our visit to the Mysterious Driveway Place was already going wrong. The skinny young man who rounded the corner of a building to greet us pointed at our sidearms. The look on his face said we were lepers who'd forgotten to ring our little warning bells and shout 'Unclean!' "
http://www.backwoodshome.com/columns/wolfe070409.html
"Back before millions of images of every conceivable sex act could be accessed for free online, it was common for writers, especially genre writers, to pay the bills by writing a little porn on the side. Usually they would use pseudonyms, but occasionally someone would plaster his own name on the stroke book's cover, as Robert Anton Wilson did with The Sex Magicians, the first novel he published and, until now, a nearly impossible book to find. "
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/119599.html
“How does a promising science fiction author continue to deliver after his first publication wows many with its scale and imagination? If the author is John C. Wright, he does it by turning the conclusion of his story into two more volumes, and crams each with more of what made the first so captivating.”
http://endervidualism.com/salon/books/wright2.htm
"'Now it can never be destroyed by terrorists,' Chertoff added. While the counterterrorism unit assigned to protect Washington, D.C.'s landmarks was recognized for its 'loyal service,' Chertoff said the counter-counterterrorism team deserved special praise for having had 'such a profound impact' on the future of American security."
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/60494
"A tip for Mitt Romney: put more space between the phrases 'small varmints' and 'if you will'."
http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/player.jhtml?ml_video=85132
Animated flash cartoon video w/audio
http://www.markfiore.com/animation/mcrove.html
"National Zoo's giant panda Yun Mei has set off a storm of protest. The Onion News Network's Brian Scott tells you why."
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/panda_demands_abortion
"It is a common mistake for people to assume that religious faith and fervor are qualities to be found only within institutionally-structured churches with formal doctrines and rituals. They are to be found, in varying degrees, within all belief systems, be they secular or theistic in nature. ... We spend far too little time examining the epistemological basis for our thinking. The question 'how do we know what we know' is rarely taken up even by the more intelligent among us. Most of us prefer the leisurely approach to understanding; relying upon self-styled 'experts,' or the outcome of public opinion polls, to advise us of the opinions we are to embrace."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer152.html
"So the creator loses the right to control what someone else does with his own property in his own home. Boo hoo. When the slaves were emancipated, the slave owner also lost a preexisting right of control." [I like Dilbert, but that doesn't shield Adams from logic.]
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2007/04/scott-adams-cognitive-dissonance.html
"This is the kind of attitude we have to fight against. The 'there oughta be a law,' the Bible 'tells us everything we need to know' attitude is something that is killing us as a country and a people. Now, it's no secret that I am no fan of organized religion. To my mind, there is a huge difference between being religious and being spiritual. This is a very personal thing for me, and one I get quite irate about, one of the few. Without going into detail, any person's relationship with whatever they consider divine is their own damned business, and none of mine, as long as they don't try to force me to follow their beliefs."
http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2007/tle412-20070408-02.html
"Following a discussion of what morality is, an important practical question arises: how can we bring about more morality and less immorality on all three tiers? To act morally or immorally is ultimately an individual choice, and no number of external factors, however powerful, can completely determine that choice."
http://www.quebecoislibre.org/07/070408-5.htm
"Many of my fellow white Americans are using the Imus affair to rip on Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. True, I don't have any respect for these men, particularly Sharpton. I don't know why Imus went to Sharpton's show to apologize for anything. Has Sharpton ever apologized for the Tawana Brawley fiasco? That inflicted far more damage than anything Imus ever said. But in the grand scheme, how much harm have Sharpton and Jackson really done?"
http://independentcountry.blogspot.com/2007/04/white-americas-double-standards.html
"At his worst his whimsy could be cloying, and I have to admit I stopped reading his books altogether after the disappointing Galapagos. But at his best, Kurt Vonnegut wrote powerfully about cruelty, absurdity, and meaninglessness. He even managed to make them funny." "His short story 'Harrison Bergeron' ... is widely regarded as a classic political dystopian work." "A leftist anti-authoritarian of sorts, he exposed the horrors of totalitarianism as he saw them, including on the left."
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/119613.html
http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/37580.html
http://blog.lewrockwell.com/lewrw/archives/012686.html
"What Don Imus said on the airwaves was offensive, no question. But for decades now we have been interpreting free speech laws to extend to coarse, offensive language – even when it’s without noticeable value as political or religious speech. Why make an example of one man at the expense of principle and consistency? ... Inconsistency in such matters is not a trivial failing. A rule selectively enforced is not a rule – it’s an arbitrary display of power; it’s political pandering. And arbitrary displays of power – even wrapped in righteous rhetoric – have a nasty way of backfiring."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig8/rajiva1.html
"So a class of disgruntled Vista users are suing Microsoft, claiming it engaged in deceptive marketing practices while touting its new OS. I dunno. Suing Microsoft for deceptive marketing is like suing Paris Hilton for being blonde. It's in their DNA, they can't help it. "
http://weblog.infoworld.com/robertxcringely/archives/2007/04/vista_thy_name.html
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