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"Only one man now stands between Rhode Islanders and a permanent medical marijuana law, and even he isn't going to be able to stop it. On Wednesday, the state Senate voted overwhelmingly for the bill. Last week, the state House passed it by a similar margin."
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/
488/rhode_island_medical_marijuana_bill_passes_veto_proof
"The throng in Columbia cheered Giuliani, Romney and the others as they roared their support for torture and rule by emergency decree. In the "war on terror" anything goes. Only Paul told the crowd and the tv cameras that No, torture is wrong and the Constitution is paramount."
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn06022007.html
" If the legislation becomes law, Connecticut will become the 13th state to allow the palliative use of marijuana despite the federal prohibition against it."
"I was shocked at my meager options and decided to do something, anything. I flipped every light switch in the house to on and turned up my stereo full blast to make as much of a disturbance as possible. Maybe one of my neighbors would call to complain. I ran back to the peephole. He was still there. At this point I realized that a man still trying to break through the door with lights, noise and a person in the house would probably not just take my stereo and sneak away. I was in terrible danger. "
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55929
"[O]f course, any police officers reading this are rolling in the aisles. They know -- even if the average American hasn't yet been formally notified -- that there's really no more 'no-knock' distinction, because we now live in a full-fledged police state where all warrants are presumed to convey 'shout-once-and-storm-in' authority."
http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/7708237.html
"In times past, unpleasant behavior had unpleasant consequences. Officials of many sorts had to wear name tags and, if the people upstairs got a lot of complaints, the responsible party would hear about it. Now, no. Management is afraid to discipline people who fall into the various categories of special privilege."
http://www.fredoneverything.net/Continental.shtml
"Murderers, rapists, burglars, and muggers beware: while engaging in your craft, the local police department is chasing rogue taxicabs! This issue highlights the Nanny State at its worst. Do we deserve to be treated like children, or can we be trusted to discern for ourselves whether or not the cab that answers our call is one we wish to ride in? "
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0702e.asp
"Rosenthal's case was as widely publicized--especially in California--as any case could be. It's virtually inconceivable that nobody on that jury knew that Rosenthal was growing marijuana for medical purposes, on behalf of the City of Oakland, and that several jurors who brought the earlier guilty verdict publicly repudiated their verdict and called for Rosenthal's release. At least some of the jurors must have encountered widespread calls for jury nullification in the case--that is, for jurors to bring a 'not guilty' verdict in defiance of the federal law. All it would have taken was one juror willing to hold his or her ground to hang the jury and let Rosenthal go free--in a political climate very supportive of doing exactly that. But the jury convicted. What went wrong?"
http://www.tuccille.com/blog/2007/05/ganja-guru-gets-shafted-again.html
"In 15 square miles of abandoned land, about 400 misfits—aging hippies, disillusioned veterans, teenage runaways—have built a community where no one cares if you smoke pot, fire your rifle all day, let your kids drive your car, or walk around naked in the desert heat. ... The governing philosophy is a mix of anarchism, patriotism, New Age stoner wisdom, and a militia-style distrust of the state. "
http://www.reason.com/news/show/120512.html
"It may be that in a free market there will exist a natural, mean personal wealth value, beyond which diminishing returns enter quickly, and below which one is extremely disposed towards profit and enrichment. If this is true, then that means that normal, productive, and non-privileged people will tend to have similar estate values. This wide distribution of wealth will tend to reinforce bottom-up society and a balance of power unrivaled in history (except maybe in frontier experiences)."
http://blog.6thdensity.net/?p=682
"They are fear mongers with guns going about always in search of enemies to destroy. The fact that those 'enemies' have harmed no one nor mean any harm is irrelevant. The fact that they are unarmed is not irrelevant--a disarmed population is a compliant one. I feel so much safer knowing da po-po is on da job: armed groups of bullies licensed to kill, looking to incarcerate and permanently scar the reputation of any young man who could have given a ride to someone, at some time, who smoked some pot. Do you feel safer?"
http://www.strike-the-root.com/71/fontana/fontana16.html
"It is in this tranquil hinterland that the real Christiania emerges. Children ride their bikes up and down apparently unsupervised, neighbours help each other install wiring or plumbing while artists sit on terraces completing their latest painting or sculpture. In this cleanest of Scandinavian capitals, there is even a squad of volunteer street cleaners to keep the place spotless."
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2600246.ece
"About 300 people turned out for a 2005 secession convention in the Statehouse, and plans for a second one are in the works. A poll this year by the University of Vermont's Center for Rural Studies found that 13 percent of those surveyed support secession, up from 8 percent a year before. "
"Still, 'fair trade' and 'ethical' fashion have yet to find their footing in America's popular culture. They are terms that still remain too esoteric for the general public, particularly because fair trade is more often associated with foodstuffs and artsy-crafty products."
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/5/28/131057/827
"I believe that a modern incarnation of the Liberator Pistol could probably be made for under ten dollars. Given modern super polymers, the thing could even be made invisible to metal detectors. I'm willing to bet there are hundreds of organizations and thousands of individuals more than willing to pay for this historic effort."
http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2007/tle419-20070527-02.html
"Last winter, a dispute flared up between the Sunriver Owners Association, the de facto government of the 2,000 resident vacation community, and the Sunriver Service District, which governs the police and fire department, over the status of Sunriver's roads, which are considered private but open to the public. In February, the Service District ordered police to consider the roads exempt from minor vehicle infractions."
http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2007/05/allergy-to-freedom.html
"How come we as humans always tend to realize the real risk of horrors tomorrow, but not understanding the horrors that are already upon us? We are not at the brink of an Orwellian police state – it is already here. The wars on drugs, terrorism, poverty, and Iraq aren’t approaching failure – they have failed, and failed good."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/bylund/bylund19.html
"And here we come to the crux of the matter. Those who defend the new, open authoritarianism do so because '9/11 changed everything.' The events of that day, we are told, justify the evisceration of the Constitution, the militarization of society, torture, indefinite detention, aggressive war and hundreds of thousands of instances of 'collateral damage.' Because we must do 'whatever it takes' to prevent the Islamists from hurting us again, or even taking over our entire country. "
"Our freedom of movement now may be constricted at any time by anyone wearing the State-issued official costume and junk jewelry, and we can be incarcerated merely for insisting on the sovereign right to mind our own business. That is a tidy description of a police state – however relatively prosperous or apparently benign it may be."
http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2007/05/when-state-owns-your-name.html
"It serves those lining up to embrace the fear-mongering Islamophobic neocon agenda for more confrontation with the Muslim world. It serves those who fear AIPAC more than the consequences of a strike on Iran. It serves the Democrats who want to keep an attack on Iran on the table, but assure President Bush that his impeachment is off the table because it's just too radical a prospect for them to consider."
http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp05312007.html
"In the media age, we can't have a hero humble enough to actually be one; what is needed is a tireless scoundrel, a cad willing to pose all day long for photos, who'll accept $100,000 to talk about heroism for an hour, who has the balls to take a $2.7 million advance to write a book about himself called Leadership. That's Rudy Giuliani. Our hero. And a perfect choice to uphold the legacy of George W. Bush."
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/14952564/giuliani_worse_than_bush
"I’ve spent my life arguing that the Klan should be abolished.... Without a doubt, I would rather the Klan lynch someone once a month rather than once a week, so I was somewhat tempted by his 'work from the inside' approach, but I had some significant doubts that it could work."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/71/molyneux/molyneux3.html
"Beltway pundits are so easily fooled, because they are so eager to be. Their brains and emotional reactions -- and thereafter their political statements -- are dominated by these shallow and inauthentic symbols of masculinity and piety which overwhelm reality. They search so desperately for these attributes that they find two-dimensional cartoon images which are just archetypes -- really caricatures -- deeply satisfying."
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/05/31/thompson/index.html
"As a presidential hopeful, Giuliani's authoritarian streak is as strong as ever. He defends the Bush administration's domestic surveillance program. He endorses the President's power to arrest American citizens, declare them enemy combatants and hold them without access to a lawyer or a judge. He thinks the President has "the inherent authority to support the troops" even if Congress were to cut off war funding, a claim of presidential authority so sweeping that even Bush and his supporters have not tried to make it."
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8264
"The idea underpinning their search engine - dubbed Wikia Search after Wales's umbrella company Wikia - is that its search algorithm, which determines which web pages appear top of the lists of links it serves up, will be made public. Wikia's search engineers think this will elicit the trust of users in a way that Google, which keeps its algorithm a closely guarded secret, never will. Open source search results will also be more relevant, as the algorithm will continually be tweaked by its users, keeping it up to date with new technologies as they are deployed, Wales says."
http://www.newscientisttech.com/channel/tech/mg19426066.500
"RCTV journalists and producers have not been arrested or stopped from working, but their main link to the public has been removed. Rather than giving up, the station has turned to YouTube, where it now has its own channel for the show El Observador. A Colombian channel is also broadcasting RCTV content into Venezuela."
"Here is a different approach to donating organs: Band together and give to one another. ... 'People can donate their organs to others who will return the favor,' Undis said."
http://www.heraldnet.com/stories/07/06/01/100loc_b3oharran001.cfm
"Could property rights in the form of tradable credits provide incentives for improving polluted waters while also reducing the cost of treating and preventing pollution? Several states and the EPA seem to think so."
http://www.abetterearth.org/blog/id.4012/news_detail.asp
"Why do people have faith that bad economic polices are good? Because they incorporated biases into their worldview as they grew up and have no desire to examine them. Most people don't study economics, and most who do don't let their studies 'corrupt' their biases. Market ideas are not intuitive. Caplan points out that while political scientists have been empirically documenting voters' systematic bias against free markets, economists have failed to assimilate the findings."
http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=1339&year=2007&month=6
"The simultaneous opening of markets for goods and closing of markets for labor has sparked a strange dissonance in debates about free trade. The same Republicans who will go to the mat for your right to buy cheap widgets from Bangladesh will fight as hard to keep the widget makers safely behind the fence. Burmese kids are watching pirated copies of Pirates of the Caribbean and reading translations of Harry Potter novels, but bureaucratic barriers to mobility loom larger for them than they did for their great grandparents."
http://www.reason.com/news/show/120490.html
"The U.S. continues to be trapped on the horns of a dilemma, wedged squarely between a rock and a hard place. Raise interest rates to head off a devastating mass exodus from the dollar and sink the economy... or, lower interest rates to keep the economy afloat and doom the dollar. Or, simply continue printing money like there's no tomorrow, steadily devaluing the $6 trillion in the hands of foreigners, and hope no one will notice."
http://www.safehaven.com/article-7678.htm
"I probably already have Mad Cow Disease. So do you and other cow eating humans in the US and the UK. We’re probably all doomed. Otherwise, why would the USDA be so keen on keeping meatpackers from privately testing their cows for Mad Cow?"
http://emergencybackupdog.blogspot.com/2007/05/do-usda-officials-have-advanced.html
"Politicians start wars for political reasons. They may seek to control resources or a foreign population. Or they may want to secure existing interests that could be at risk without war. The military is a means to political ends. War always has a domestic side. Ruling classes hold power so that they may live off the toil of the domestic population. And because the ruled far outnumber the rulers, ideology and propaganda are necessary to maintain the allegiance of the subject population. War is useful in keeping the population in a state of fear and therefore trustful of their rulers."
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0705l.asp
"As a Market Anarchist, I believe that government, as the monopoly on law and force in a society, exploits people's resources, children and moral integrity in the name of wars that only benefit itself and its powerful friends. I also believe that the only way to prevent governance abuse is to have a free competition of governance, on the market. Right now, those who govern us are held accountable to no one. They will never be held accountable unless they have equally powerful competitors able to use the law to get recourse for the victims. They will never be held accountable until we can choose to not support them, and support someone else instead, leaving us free to live our lives the way we intend."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/71/tremblay/tremblay6.html
"So, if you don't want to say the kids are dying for nothing, you can say they are dying for Halliburton, for ExxonMobil, for the president's ego, for a cockamamie theory of a bunch of academics, for Israel, for money or for oil. What you cannot truthfully say is that they are dying for freedom."
http://www.antiwar.com/reese/?articleid=11060
"What, then, does this survey of America's national debt tell us? In order to feed their egos, interventionist politicians wage war. To do so, they must incur debt and receive the support (or at least the acquiescence) of their subjects; and to obtain money and loyalty, time and again they resort to deceptions and outright lies. Truly, war is an entitlement program for neoconservatives; and in order to get a free hand to wage war abroad, they happily concede New Dealers' demands to wage war at home."
http://www.quebecoislibre.org/07/070527-4.htm
"In the story of the White Rose, there is a stern warning for us: democracy is not an end in itself. Further, it cannot even be considered an optimal solution for making political decisions — certainly not after the Nazi debacle and not after what has taken place as the United States has been transformed from a constitutional republic with limited powers into a war-mongering welfare-warfare democracy with no limits on its ability to interfere in the lives of U.S. citizens and people around the world."
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0702f.asp
"Most Americans seem to believe that obeying their nation's laws is all that it takes to be a good person. Identifying oneself as a 'law-abiding citizen' is a common homily trotted out to prove one's superior morality and worthiness. It seems never to occur to such folk that there may be good laws and bad laws, that 'laws' are frequently found at the root of the world's most egregious evils."
http://www.freecannon.com/WarAgainstCitizens.htm
"What the highest Establishment figures in the 19th century could say freely, we can no longer even speak of today. The moral realities and complexities that our forbears could discern are opaque to us, hidden behind an impenetrable gaze of bluster, happy talk and narcissism. Our degeneration is almost complete."
"How can you tell if a particular country is a 'Christian nation'? Compare it to the US of A, of course, the archetypal 'Christian nation'."
http://emergencybackupdog.blogspot.com/2007/05/are-you-christian-nation.html
"Wars also end with a formal surrender. But government wars on poverty, drugs, etc., can never be won in a similar way. If a belief that the war in Iraq cannot be won is a reason to end it, it is equally a reason to end those domestic wars. Because of its powerful emotional impact, war imagery and language is also abused in other ways that would make George Orwell proud."
http://www.mises.org/story/2561
"I would point out that it is unlawful killing that is condemned in the sixth commandment. Killing in self-defense, animal sacrifices, and capital punishment were all permitted by God in the Old Testament because they were lawful killings. There is nothing lawful about an American soldier traveling thousands of miles away and killing an Iraqi in his own house. In reply to the latter reason I would remind the desperate Christian warmonger who uses it that no nation or group of people can claim today to enjoy the privileged position that was occupied by the nation of Israel in the Old Testament. And that goes for the United States as well."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/vance/vance111.html
"The Bush administration should change policy and end the occupation of Afghanistan, which would cool the Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan and the Islamic militancy in Pakistan. In addition, the United States should threaten to cut off aid to Pakistan unless Musharraf and his intelligence services make a genuine attempt to capture or kill bin Laden."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1973
"The Lobby constantly asserts that anyone who even mentions this 'incident' is nothing but an anti-Semite, because, after all, why talk about it now? The reason is that it underscores the utter falsity of the argument that Israeli and American interests are uniquely and perpetually in perfect alignment. The Israelis attacked the Liberty, according to several books and a BBC documentary on the subject, in order to prevent the U.S. government from learning of Israeli plans to occupy the Golan Heights – a sliver of land that rightfully belongs to Syria, and which is still causing a great many problems for U.S. interests in the region. "
http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=11042
"Thalberg was at heart, all about movies, literally pouring his life into his work.... Modest, he disavowed screen credit during his lifetime, decrying any credit that one gives themselves as worthless."
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0856921/bio
"Best known as the creator of James Bond, Ian Fleming's own life provided some of the background for his most famous creation. "
http://www.eofftv.com/names/f/fle/fleming_ian_main.htm
"Valli starred in mostly uninspired works until her temporary retirement in 1944, due to her refusal to appear in Fascist propaganda films…."
http://tcmdb.com/participant/participant.jsp?participantId=196521
"In 1963, Chaney joined the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). … On June 21st 1964 with two ... associates ... the three set out to investigate a church bombing in Longdale, Mississippi, a potential site for a Freedom School teaching literacy and voter education. ... The FBI recovered their bodies from an earthen dam on Aug. 4th."
http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/911/James_Chaney_fought_for_civil_rights
College parody / comedy stars Justin Long, Maria Thayer, Jonah Hill, Columbus Short, Adam Herschman, Lewis Black; directed by Steve Pink. “This film possesses a great many similarities to the older college fraternity comedy [: Animal House], but it also has significant differences. Those differences give this movie a promise which perhaps the classic lacked.”
http://endervidualism.com/agora/accepted_2006.htm
"Bradbury has decided to make news about the writing of his iconographic work and what he really meant. Fahrenheit 451 is not, he says firmly, a story about government censorship. Nor was it a response to Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose investigations had already instilled fear and stifled the creativity of thousands. ... Bradbury, a man living in the creative and industrial center of reality TV and one-hour dramas, says it is, in fact, a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature."
http://www.laweekly.com/news/news/ray-bradbury-fahrenheit-451-misinterpreted/16524/
"Carty pulled a cell phone out of a pocket in his tactical vest. He drew its batteries from another and inserted them. Punched in a one-word text message and selected a pre-set list of numbers to zap to. Poked send. He waited to make sure the call was well-launched. Then he switched off and removed the batteries. 'SHOWTIME,' the message read. "
http://www.backwoodshome.com/columns/wolfe070528.html
"Just watching - intermittently - Stanley Kramer’s Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) - with Montgomery Clift in the role of the mentally defective man questioned by Maximilian Schell (who won an Academy Award for his performance) about his sterilization under the Nazis. Clift is riveting in his scene but to my mind Schell is even better as counsel for the defense."
http://lilarajiva.wordpress.com/2007/05/27/the-hare-was-shot-by-the-hunter-in-the-field/
"With the reconstruction of Ground Zero finally underway, anchor Brandon Armstrong invites two guests to discuss the progress."
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/62083
"I have been tossing around some ideas for TV programs, and I think I have hit on a winning formula. Take 60s and 70s TV shows and remake them but with a 21st century edge."
http://emergencybackupdog.blogspot.com/2007/05/ideas-for-tv-shows.html
"CNN is widely credited with initiating the acceleration of the modern news cycle with the fall 2006 debut of its spin-off channel CNN:24, which provides a breaking news story, an update on that story, and a news recap all within 24 seconds. In addition to creating its groundbreaking format, CNN:24 broke many important stories with reports such as 'Ford No Money Everyone Fired,' 'Iraq Bomb Kill Truck,' 'Country Hates Bush,' 'Dow High Now,' and 'Squirrel Water Skis'."
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/62267
"Dear Conventional Wisdom, I see JDM is still doing this 'Conventional Wisdom answers your letters' shtick. Any chance that’s gonna stop soon? Sincerely, A JDM Reader, Who Regularly Reads ReadJDM.com. Dear Reader, Sure. Just as soon as we stop having drinking holidays that happen to fall the day before JDM’s deadline."
http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/002782.html
"Historically, science has not progressed by calculations and models, but by repeatable observations. Some theories held by science authorities have turned out to be spectacularly wrong: heavier-than-air flight is impossible, the sun orbits the earth, etc. For excellent reasons, we have much more confidence in observations by several independent parties than in models produced by a small set of related parties!"
http://www.mises.org/story/2571
"Lost amidst the media excitement over Giuliani's response was whether or not Paul was correct. The Nation's John Nichols wrote a column (5/16/07) pointing out that Paul's argument more or less echoed the findings of the 9/11 Commission, which noted that Osama bin Laden had called in 1996 for Muslims to drive U.S. troops out of Saudi Arabia—whose mission there was largely to support air patrols over Iraq—and that subsequent statements rallied followers to oppose U.S. policy in Israel-Palestine and Iraq. Such discussions are common in academic and policy circles, but not so in the mainstream media."
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3108
"The real definition of faith as promoted by the 'revealed' religions and governments is the suspension of an individual’s God-given reason in order to accept, or at least to tolerate, an unreasonable claim made by a religion or government. Faith is vital to both institutions and can only lead to very negative consequences."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/71/johnson/johnson7.html
"Personality was once thought to be the exclusive domain of human beings. But scientists are increasingly seeing it as a trait common in wild animals, ranging from squids and spiders to mice and monkeys. It also serves a purpose, they say."
http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/2007/1938812.htm
"Of the three dozen attractions featured on the museum's walkthrough page, only two attempt scientific context, and even those disregard scientific method in favor of explaining why science can be bent around the Bible's innate correctness. I can't blame them, because the museum isn't designed to cater to people looking for a scientific approach to anything; they're chartered to proselytize fundamentalist Christianity by interpreting available evidence to match the Bible's teachings."
"What dogfighting laws illustrate, however, is that laws are not made because of rational theories of human rights, property rights, or even animal rights, but on the feelings and sentiments of the people."
http://partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=2373
"The implication is that the Second Amendment is the Constitution, or that it’s the single most important right enumerated therein. The question for Harkrader, the NRA, and especially presidential hopefuls who support gun ownership by law–abiding citizens is: where do you stand on the other amendments?"
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1976
"The hacker 'BtCB' posted the new decryption key for AACS on the Freedom to Tinker web site, just one day after the AACS Licensing Authority (AACS LA) issued the key. In true tongue-in-cheek hacker fashion, the hacker posted the 128-bit key as a method of decrypting a small haiku that they placed on the same page, noting that it just might accidentally (wink, wink) be the same key that will decrypt new high-definition discs as well."
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070531-new-aacs-fix-hacked-in-a-day.html
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