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"Mac Frank, his wife Vicki and Susan Callaway begin digging holes starting at the entrance to the Wyoming home Callaway says she was called to in the spring of 2006. A pair of California license plates from her former life leans up against the Newcastle cabin. They are riddled with bullet holes."
"The world’s people deserve their independence. Perhaps it would be fitting to start with the British. Liberate them from the Bush foreign policy that only a minority of them approve. Wartime coalitions without representation are tyranny! They should be the first satellite freed, as a poetic gesture of honest friendship. The Brits didn’t release America without a fight, but perhaps they can be let go in peace."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/gregory/gregory138.html
"It is Ron Paul's uniquely consistent voting record that gets him on liberal-left television talk shows like the Daily Show and Bill Maher's show. The hosts are willing to give him time on camera because he opposed the Iraq war when nobody else did. He has also voted to shrink the state ever since he was elected in 1976. While they don't share his view of domestic policy, they are respectful to find any politician who just will not toe the Party line."
http://www.newstarget.com/021925.html
"The Democrats' attempts to rein in executive power may be more consequential. In January, even before the new congressional majority held a single hearing on the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program, the Bush administration announced that it would henceforth seek judicial approval for monitoring international communications involving people on U.S. soil, as required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)."
http://www.reason.com/news/show/121188.html
"When our cops are shooting and killing our troops, perhaps we should wonder about giving either group unquestioned faith. When different rules apply to police officers than to everyone else, what exists is a police state. The seeds of totalitarianism are planted when the state's agents have a different moral code than the rest of us."
http://www.counterpunch.org/gregory07022007.html
"Bush will leave us with a system of church-state entanglements on an epic scale. By pouring billions of dollars into religiously affiliated social service providers, Bush will have accomplished precisely what the nation's founders warned against: a process by which people of many faiths and none at all are forced through compulsory taxation to underwrite other people's religious activities."
http://www.sptimes.com/2007/07/01/Columns/Bush_s_church_state_m.shtml
"If I injure or even kill someone who isn't qualified to wear the uniform, I'll get the benefit of every doubt, and a panel of my co-workers will probably determine that I acted according to established policies. Heck, as a policeman, if I gun down some unarmed guy who was mentally incapable of following my instructions -- or even if he was following my orders, and I was the one who goofed up -- chances are I'll either be completely exonerated, or suffer a wrist-slap faint enough to be all but undetectable."
http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2007/07/how-i-spent-my-sommerferien.html
"A major reason for the Americans’ wish to be independent from the British empire was their belief that people should have a say in the tax policies imposed on them. Well, we got representation — and a whole lot more taxes too. "
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0707c.asp
"Coercive government, in contrast to business, is a tool for using force and getting away with it – which is exactly what lobbyists are paying for. Your government – local, county, state, and national – takes money from its 'customers' by force, so customer satisfaction is not much of an issue to those in the government. Any other organization or person taking money from others at gunpoint (or threat of gunpoint, which is enough to get the job done in most cases) would be seen as criminal and treated accordingly. But government not only gets away with using force, that's its job!"
http://www.strike-the-root.com/72/allport/allport1.html
"There are two interlocking lies that the government relies on to remain in power. The first is the lie of 'legitimacy' ... The second lie is that of 'necessity'."
http://poxyhouses.blogspot.com/2007/07/couple-of-things-my-friends-told-me.html
"The elite rotate between government posts, lobbying firms, and corporate boards. To a left-libertarian, the typical 'progressive' solution to this problem is non-sensical: put even more power in the hands of the institution where power is already most concentrated! We suspect that however genuine the motives of 'progressive' social reformers are, the increased concentration of power they propose will largely work to the benefit of the already powerful."
http://www.gene-callahan.org/blog/2007/07/left-libertarianism.html
"To someone walking through Schenley Park in Oakland yesterday, the gathering at the Anderson Pavilion might have looked like any other Fourth of July picnic -- food, kids, Frisbees and fun, even a three-legged race."
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07183/798681-53.stm
"Heinlein thought space travel was too important to be left in the hands of government. In a sense, the industrialists, pilots and dreamers who gathered at California's Mojave spaceport in October 2004 watching SpaceShipOne win the X Prize for sending a private craft to space and back were living out Heinlein's dream."
http://www.reason.com/news/show/121221.html
"Across the nation, new communities are on the increase, particularly those focused on ecological living. In the past 20 years, the number of intentional communities has risen nearly tenfold nationwide, according to registrations with the Fellowship of Intentional Communities. In 1985, there were some 65 communities; by 2005, that number was more than 600."
http://www.wbir.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=46821&provider=gnews
"Officials in New Mexico -- the eleventh state to legalize medical marijuana, but the first to regulate its production -- are still trying to figure out whether health department employees could potentially face federal prosecution, as users do."
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/07/grow-your-own-s.html
"Argentine leaders say they seek a peaceful restoration of the islands. But Falklanders and others believe that, because of Argentina’s unstable and unpredictable history, any new domestic crisis could overwhelm the best of current intentions."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1993
"The group of agrarian republics envisioned by a Jefferson or a John Taylor was designed to create local centers of decision, a group of agile, loosely-associated organisms responding to local conditions. The tragedy of America is the story of how it mutated into an empire, both internally and externally, and hence outgrew viability."
http://www.reason.com/news/show/121237.html
"U.S. leaders need to face the reality that interventionist U.S. foreign policy has consequences on the nuclear proliferation front. Those who encouraged and supported America’s post-Cold war military interventions—Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals—need to ask themselves whether increasing the incentives for nuclear proliferation was worth the price of intervention when U.S. national security was not at stake. Especially when that price is now the potential threat of nuclear terrorism."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1995
"It seems, then, to be in Iran's interest to develop nuclear weapons as quickly as possible to deter potential attacks from the U.S. Therefore, even without any evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, we must 'logically' assume that they are."
http://partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=2612
"The 'war on drugs,' as I've pointed out elsewhere, is a narcotics price support program, in addition to being a form of employment insurance for various three-letter agencies and militarized police units across the country. I'm convinced that one reason so much effort is invested in drug 'interdiction' campaigns -- which is a bit like taking a sponge mop to the Atlantic Ocean -- is that this inflates the amount of off-the-books funding available to the CIA and its satellite organizations."
http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/
2007/07/nothing-is-either-good-or-bad-part-ii.html
"In commuting Scooter Libby's sentence so that the vice president's former chief of staff won't spend a minute in jail, the president is sending a message, one that, while going out to multiple recipients, consists of a sentiment succinctly summed up in two words: Screw you!"
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=11236
"By commuting the sentence to 0 time in jail, Bush is effectively saying that any time in jail for perjury is too much time. Oh? What about Martha Stewart, Mr. Bush? She received a 5-month sentence for lying to a federal official. Why didn't you commute her sentence to 0 time in jail? If you thought her sentence was fair, then why didn't you at least match Libby's sentence to hers?"
http://www.counterpunch.org/hornberger07032007.html
"While President George W. Bush bears the ultimate responsibility, the nature of the evidence against Cheney and his closest associates is so specific and overwhelming that it makes sense to impeach and bring him to trial first. Subpoenas from Capitol Hill are flying downtown into executive office buildings like paper airplanes, but the potential for obfuscation and delay is immense, and the danger to the Republic speaks for a more urgent, simpler approach."
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/070207a.html
"This is all thinly-disguised posturing for what's really bothering the senators: They don't like that people are allowed to criticize them on public airwaves. This is why they continue to pass ever more stringent 'campaign finance reform' laws, which at heart are really just laws that prevent people and organizations from criticizing politicians."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,287774,00.html
"A clue to the copyright fallacy should be obvious from wandering through a typical bookstore chain. You will see racks and racks of classic books, presented with beautiful covers, fancy bindings, and in a variety of sizes and shapes. The texts therein are 'public domain,' which isn't a legal category as such: it only means the absence of copyright protection. But they sell. They sell well. And no, the authors are not misidentified on them. ... So it would be in a completely free market, which is to say, a world without IP. But sometimes businessmen themselves get confused."
http://www.mises.org/story/2632
"If someone will pay you for the item, it's a resource. Or, if you can use the item to make something else people want, and do it at lower price or higher quality than you could without that item, then the item is also a resource. But if you have to pay someone to take the item away, or if other things made with that item cost more or have lower quality, then the item is garbage."
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2007/Mungerrecycling.html
"Brown has developed a new model showing that cooperators and cheaters can co-exist in a dynamic boom and bust state in the presence of long-lasting resources, known as 'durable goods.' Durable goods can outlast their producers, and then be passed on to future generations. "
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070704144923.htm
"When we think of ways to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, it's tempting to focus exclusively on new technologies and alternative energy sources. Efforts in these areas will certainly play an important role. But we should not forget existing technologies that use fossil fuels more efficiently. "
http://www.abetterearth.org/blog/id.4111/news_detail.asp
"By the standard definition of (positive) 'law,' there is indeed an income tax. Libertarians properly don't like it and wish it weren't so. It's plunder, but it's legal plunder. Wishing won't make it go away. There's no shortcut to liberty." [More discussion from Sheldon Richman.]
http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=1417
"Military-grade semi-automatic weapons, armored personnel vehicles, tanks, helicopters, airplanes, and all manner of other equipment designed for use on the battlefield is now being used on American streets, against American citizens. Academic criminologists credit these transfers with the dramatic rise in paramilitary SWAT teams over the last quarter century."
http://reason.com/news/show/121169.html
"That’s just the beginning. It’s a long and detailed essay that provides plenty of food for thought. Dead zones at sea are bad enough, but further greasing of the petroculture wheel by the state appears primed to accelerate many more problems. ... Continued reliance on institutional answers to problems seems to be the sure path to creating a nightmare that would make Stephen King soil himself. "
"As the inexorable force of politics by majority rule continues to strengthen job protection by both labour legislation and the pressure of public opinion, the firm must come to regard its wage bill as becoming dangerously like a fixed cost which it is only prudent to keep lower than would be profitable if it were a truly variable cost."
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2007/Jasaylowpay.html
"A truer picture of what we are, and where we're going, is obtained in this news item about American soldiers being naturalized in Iraq, which underscores our resemblance not to the revolutionary insurgents of the Continental Army, but to the redcoats, or, more accurately, the ancient Romans...."
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=11246
"Nothing could be further from anarchy than Iraq. While it may be true that there is almost no governmental control of the population of Iraq, the unbearably dangerous conditions of daily life there are not due merely to even the selfish exercise of personal freedom by rational, thoughtful people. The violence of Iraq is being conducted by pathetically ignorant, tightly organized groups of religiously committed (not to be confused with commitment to religion) people whose minds and emotions are as totally enslaved as is possible to imagine to the most unfathomable ideologies."
http://www.nj.com/opinion/times/
editorials/index.ssf?/base/news-0/1183349156201800.xml&coll=5
"When U.S. government officials and foreign policy pundits discuss terrorism, they usually focus on the characteristics, personnel, history, tactics, targets, objectives and effects of terrorist organizations. They rarely talk about motives. To fully understand Islamic terrorism, one needs to understand what triggers this extraordinary rage. And throughout history one factor stands out above all else: the occupation of Muslim land by non-Muslim forces."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1992
"The draft is another example of the government’s violation of individual rights, and this one could have a profound effect on you. You may not be familiar with the draft, but you should be, because it is a program the government uses to enslave people your age. The draft is the process whereby the government selects people to be part of the military. If your name is selected, you have no choice — you must obey or be punished. If the country is at war at the time you are drafted, you will go through a short training period and then you will be sent into battle, most likely in some faraway country. "
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0703d.asp
"America’s national holiday is the 4th of July, the anniversary of public promulgation of the Declaration of Independence. The 4th of July, like many other government holidays, is surrounded by numerous myths."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig8/gutzman4.html
"The irony is that most Americans have no idea that the political and economic philosophy to which they adhere is contrary to the founding principles of our nation. The plight of the American people can best be summed up with the words of the great thinker Johann von Goethe: 'None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free'."
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0707b.asp
"The CIA recently declassified almost 700 pages of documents related to illegal activities undertaken by that agency in the 1960s and ’70s—the so-called 'family jewels.' Many skeptical Latin Americans were hoping that this exercise in transparency would help re-establish some trust in the U.S. government south of the Rio Grande, where the CIA was heavily involved at the time. Unfortunately, that is unlikely to happen."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1994
"Perón shaped a 20[th] century Latin American myth: that of the philanthropic strongman who assisted only by willpower and an eclectic maze of economic platitudes can bring wealth and justice to the downtrodden. To be fair, he also relied on the abilities of a utterly charismatic blonde movie actress who in time outgrew Perón's own mythical qualities."
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2007/Martinezredistribution.html
"Perhaps the clearest indication that the war in Iraq is no longer under American control is Turkey's announcement of plans to invade northern Iraq, the home of the Iraqi Kurds. … This ultimatum puts President Bush in an impossible situation."
http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=11227
"War tax resistance, popularized by Henry David Thoreau in the 19th century and by singer Joan Baez and others during the Vietnam War, is gaining renewed interest among peace activists upset over the Iraq war."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,,-6757783,00.html
"Red-headed Wilson, 36, says he looks like Howdy Doody, but nothing about him is funny. The black ID bracelet of a platoonmate killed in action firmly around his wrist, he is at one turn intimidating and dark, at another vulnerable, self-deprecating, and visibly wracked with survivor’s guilt. He’s outrun death, but doesn’t quite feel alive."
http://amconmag.com/2007/2007_07_02/feature.html
"I suspect, in fact, that reading a single book, though a long one, would change your view of FDR's war policies greatly. That book is Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, edited by Harry Elmer Barnes, which was originally published in 1953. Of course, a great deal of additional research has been done along similar lines since 1953, but the Barnes book alone is, I am convinced, sufficient to show you what is terribly wrong with the received wisdom about Roosevelt and the war."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/higgs/higgs60.html
"William Strunk, Jr. ... was Professor of English at Cornell University and is best known as the author of the first editions of The Elements of Style, a guide to English usage, which he had printed privately in 1918 for the use of his students. It became a classic on the local campus, known as 'the little book'."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Strunk_Jr.
"He had a deep reverence for the methods of mathematics and the exact sciences, as expressions of human behavior in our general search for the structure of the unknown. He had a strong social feeling of responsibility in a personal, and a historical sense."
http://time-binding.org/institute/csr-akbio.htm
"Heinlein has said that he read all the science fiction he could lay hands on from the age of 16. The cosmic romances of Olaf Stapledon affected him particularly. He read the first series of Tom Swift books, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jules Verne, and H.G. Wells."
http://www.heinleinsociety.org/rah/biographies.html
"[H]e really began to make a name for himself - having dropped his real name, George Fisher, in 1953 - in such films as To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) and The L-Shaped Room (1962)."
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0676349/bio
"In the year 2505 the most popular channel is The Violence Channel, and the most popular program on it is 'Ow! My Balls!' -- series in which some poor sap gets his testicles assaulted in various ways -- dogs, wrecking balls, feet, two-by-fours. Such is the world of Mike Judge's Idiocracy. Never heard it? Lots of people haven't."
http://tonova.typepad.com/thesuddencurve/2007/07/ow-my-balls.html
"I have to say, by making such a one–sided movie, you certainly made my job easier. For example, you show American patients who were denied medical care by greedy for–profit insurance companies. But you ignore the fact that power–hungry politicians do the same thing in Canada, Great Britain, France, and Cuba. I suppose that's why the Canadian journalists at the Cannes Film Festival gave you such a grilling. ... It is insane that insurance companies have so much say over what is 'medically necessary.' But why do you never mention — or don't you know? — that our own government hands that power to insurance companies by penalizing insurance that lets patients decide what's medically necessary?"
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8478
"For this Independence Day edition of Uncle Warren's Attic, and to make up for the long silence, this show features two dramatic readings - one many of you have heard before is my short story 'Wildflower Man,' and the other is a reading of a speech you may have heard some of, but may not have ever heard in its entirety - Patrick Henry's address to the Virginia House of Burgesses on March 23, 1775. It's still pretty electric."
http://unclewarrensattic.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=231618
"It was money, and banking, that interested Señor Carolina most. That was Hardyville's prime virtue in the eyes of the Delavalistas -- their money flowing in, their money flowing out, money safe within, money kept private from entry until exit. And that we could give them. Numbered accounts safer than the Swiss. "
http://www.backwoodshome.com/columns/wolfe070702.html
"Due to rising domestic wages, many American parents are saving money by using unregulated overseas workers." [video w/audio]
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/report_many_u_s_parents
"Mr. Cheney took the unorthodox step only after failing in his attempt to invoke a little-known legal principle called the separation of Cheney and state. Aides to Mr. Cheney confirmed that being a national monument gives the vice president not only immunity from subpoenas, but also a draft deferment in perpetuity."
http://www.borowitzreport.com/archive_rpt.asp?rec=6752
"Debbie fronted the new wave group Blondie doing the vocals for the talented band. I like almost anything Blondie did in their many varied styles, from the hip hop-ish 'Rapture,' through 'Atomic' and 'Union City Blue' to 'Heart of Glass,' but 'Dreaming' stands out as my favorite."
http://tonova.typepad.com/thesuddencurve/2007/07/music-video-bab.html
Animated flash cartoon [video w/audio]
http://www.markfiore.com/animation/independence.html
Woz: "I've always very much wanted to be a rebel, and against authority. Because if we just sort of accept authority, and never question it — we just go through a life without knowing what truth really is — thinking we know it all."
http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/
2007/07/03/steve-wozniak-v-stephen-colbert-and-other-pranks/
"The modern American Freedom Movement is a Dagwood Sandwich stacked high with medallions of Classical Liberals, at least two conflicting flavors of Objectivism, heaping portions of traditional Old-Right conservative laissez-faire capitalists, plentiful helpings of 'big L,' 'little L' and 'civil' libertarians, thick slices of Austrians and Chicagoans and Public Choicers, wedges of gradualists and radicals, realists and idealists, purists and big-tenters, rations of Minimal-Statists sautéed with anarchists, salted with anarcho-capitalists, sprinkled with a pinch of agorism, and spiced up with Just Plain Old Curmudgeonly Contrarians, all seasoned to tastelessness with a shakerfull of Iconoclastic Individualism."
http://www.freecannon.com/Mercenaries.htm
"[O]ur neighbors in rural Arizona like ATVs, and they shop at Wal-Mart--they even eat fast food. But it's hard to be out of touch with nature when you raise goats, pigs and horses, hunt and fish, and cut firewood for your main source of heat. Up to your ankles in manure, guts and sawdust is a pretty natural way to live."
http://www.tuccille.com/blog/2007/07/can-you-find-bridge-long-enough-to.html
"Someday, future medicine may actually be based on open-minded curiosity about the laws of nature and how human beings may attain a higher state of health. But until then, we're living in the Dark Ages of medicine, where the power of the Church of Medical Truth seems absolute, and its own modern-day Inquisition conducts routine search-and-destroy missions on any health practitioner who dares to question the power of the Church."
http://www.newstarget.com/021922.html
"George Bush's act of mercy is so inspiring, especially when one considers that compassion is not something generally associated with him. When he was governor of Texas, for instance, there were quite a number of convicted felons towards whom he didn't show much compassion at all. In fact he insisted they receive the full penalty of the law, which in their case was somewhat more severe than in Libby's. They were executed."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2120885,00.html
Music Video of "Copperhead Road" by Steve Earle
http://www.sunnimaravillosa.com/node/1156
"the pattern usually goes like this: 1. observation of a problem 2. one faction offers a context-free solution, usually involving totalitarian measures applied directly against the problem. 3. another faction (often those who have something to lose directly from the context-free solution) argues that the problem doesn't exist, contrary to all observation, and argues against the solution on the grounds of freedom (thus confusing freedom with ignorance)"
http://poxyhouses.blogspot.com/2007/07/how-intelligent-people-fall-for.html
"The global warming hysteria will be remembered as one of those episodes of 'the madness of crowds' which saw bands of flagellants wandering Europe urging folks to finish work on those cathedrals real soon because the world was going to come to an end at the millennium, in 1,000 A.D., and the minor panic of Oct. 30, 1938, when numerous radio listeners were taken in by the realistic Orson Welles broadcast of 'The War of the Worlds'."
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