Sept. 9 — 15, 2007

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Ender's Review
of the Web

Web articles of likely interest to individualists found during the preceding week.
 

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Pursuing Liberty

Articles showing the positive influence of action in the pursuit of Liberty.

The Ron Paul epiphany

      By Vox Day from WorldNetDaily.com

"The Gay Old Party's leadership, which is far more interested in propositioning interns and policemen than the Constitution, hates Ron Paul and quite rightly feels threatened by him. But their incessant spreading of fear, uncertainty and doubt regarding his candidacy is no more believable than a Microsoft treatise on Linux."

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=57545

Capitalism and Collectivism

      By Scott McPherson from The Future of Freedom Foundation

"The human animal develops a code to guide the decision-making process on the basis of these twin principles of reason and production, called morality. But that is only part of the process. Building on that moral foundation, other principles are discovered; humans are recognized as unique, separate entities, each with the capacity and need to produce for himself. The logical conclusion is that everyone, to be fully human, must have control over his own life and property."

http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0706e.asp

Arrrrr!

      By Thomas Van Wyk from The Liberator Reloaded

"The folks at Pirate Bay have been good enough to post the letters for our 'enjoyment.' The letters are interesting. The epitome of the responses: '0 torrents has [sic] been removed, and 0 torrents will ever be removed' "

http://thomasvanwyk.com/blog/posts/arrrrr

If You Asked Me

      By James Leroy Wilson from Independent Country

"I consider myself a libertarian because I believe: 1. Vices are not crimes ... 2. The only just use of force against another person is to defend someone's life and property from attack, and the only just war is to defend against actual or clearly imminent attack or invasion. 3. Individuals have the right to do with their own person and property as they wish, provided they don't infringe on the rights of others to do the same."

http://independentcountry.blogspot.com/2007/09/if-you-asked-me.html

Life in Amerika

Articles depicting the negative impact of politics on the cause of Liberty.

Ed Rosenthal: Big Man of Buds

      Interviewed by RU Sirius from 10 Zen Monkeys

"Win or lose, this case has made it apparent that the federal laws have to change, and that we need the Peter McWilliams 'Truth in Trials' act. That act would let you use a state medical marijuana law in your defense in a federal case. It also indicates that the State of California has to start protecting the providers, because there are now over 100 providers who have been arrested and charged."

http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2007/09/10/ed-rosenthal-marijuana-martyr/

Power vs. Authority

      By William N. Grigg from Pro Libertate

"In the era of the federalized, militarized, monolithic Homeland Security State, the police themselves are the single most potent threat to individual liberty. This is not necessarily because their ranks have been filled with degenerates, although the decline in recruiting and performance standards certainly plays a role in our predicament. Rather, it is because law enforcement at every level has embraced the power-centered worldview, in which the role of police is to ensure that people submit to the State."

http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2007/09/power-vs-authority.html

Big News in Manassas Park

      By Radley Balko from TheAgitator.com

"In addition to all the other crap the town was doing to run him out of business, it was also not only attempting to cover up the fact that the vice mayor was using his club as his own personal bordello, and may have committed crimes, the city was also covertly using those pictures to turn members of the city council and others against Ruttenberg."

http://www.theagitator.com/archives/027757.php#027757

U.S. reports of drug reactions triple

      By AFX News Limited from Life Extension Foundation

"Reports of dangerous side effects and deaths from widely used medicines almost tripled between 1998 and 2005, an analysis of U.S. drug data found. The number of deaths and serious injuries from prescription and over-the-counter drugs climbed from 34,966 to 89,842 during the study of reports to the Food and Drug Administration. "

http://www.lef.org/news/LefDailyNews.htm?NewsID=5841

Ordered Liberty without the State

Some people say it's Anarchy, some say it's not possible. It is an interesting topic.

The Rule of Law without the State

      By Spencer Heath MacCallum from Ludwig von Mises Institute

"[L]aw and, consequently, crime are defined in terms of property rights. The law is compensatory rather than punitive. Because property right requires compensation, rather than punishment, there is no imprisonment, and fines are rare. Such fines as might be imposed seldom exceed the amount of compensation and are not payable to any court or government, but directly to the victim."

http://www.mises.org/story/2701

Capitalism didn't Invent Anything

      By Larry Gambone from Porcupine blog

“Inventions are made by individuals (Or two brothers as with the Wright Brothers and les freres Lumiere) and not by corporations. Corporate capitalism invents nothing. It might buy out someone's idea, or adapt an existing concept, but produces nothing new. Corporations develop ideas, but in a bureaucratic fashion. This explains the poor quality and impracticality of so much contemporary design."

http://porkupineblog.blogspot.com/2007/09/capitalism-didnt-invent-anything.html

The Dialectics of Wage Slavery: Further Developed

      By Nick Manley from Life, Love, and Liberty

"I wish to extend Brad’s analysis beyond the context of the limited number of opportunities of employment by others due to state intervention in the economy and focus on the limitations on the ability to be self-employed due to an artificial shortage of capital."

http://www.lifeloveandliberty.com/2007/09/10/the-dialectics-of-wage-slavery-further-developed/

Top Ten Reasons for a New 9/11 Investigation

      By Glen Allport from Strike The Root

"The government running this protection racket has shown no interest in getting to the bottom of why such a failure happened and in punishing or at least replacing those responsible for the failure."

http://www.strike-the-root.com/72/allport/allport11.html

Spreading Decentralism

Articles demonstrating an increase in the dispersal of power.

The Western Lands: Larry Craig, Bill Richardson, and the "libertarian West"

      By Jesse Walker from Reason

"Back in the real world, the West's libertarian leanings should remind us of the virtues of federalism. If Idaho and New Mexico could set their own rules about land use and marijuana without Washington interfering, they wouldn't become Hayekian utopias, but they would become much freer than they are today. That's valuable whether or not they also serve as swing votes."

http://reason.com/news/show/122405.html

Homeschooling Comes of Age

      By Isabel Lyman from Ludwig von Mises Institute

"Although it's commendable when the young achieve Herculean goals, homeschooling has always been more about freedom and personal responsibility than winning an Ivy League scholarship or playing at Wimbledon. In general, it has attracted working-class families of all ethnicities and faiths, who have been eager to provide a nurturing, stimulating learning experience."

http://www.mises.org/story/2682

Google announces the Google Lunar X PRIZE

      By Jonathan M. Gitlin from Ars Technica

"Hot on the heels of the success of the Ansari X PRIZE, which was designed to spur on the development of a commercial spacecraft able to reach low earth orbit, the Google Lunar X PRIZE will be awarded to 'the team that can soft land a craft on the Moon that roams for at least 500 meters and transmits a Mooncast back to Earth'."

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070913-google-announces-the-google-lunar-x-prize.html

Who Would the World Elect?

      By James Leroy Wilson from Independent Country

"Here is a Presidential poll open to anyone in the world. Vote totals are broken down by country. While Ron Paul is in the lead so far, if you take away U.S. votes (which are most of them) Barack Obama seems to be the world's choice. Paul is clearly #2 almost everywhere, and no other candidate is even remotely close."

http://independentcountry.blogspot.com/2007/09/who-would-world-elect.html

The New World Hegemon

Depictions of the coming Imperial power

We Have Met the North American Union

      By Anthony Gregory from LewRockwell.com

"If it wanted true free trade and open borders, as some fear, it would not need to beat around the bush: it would just have to stop controlling imports and shut down the immigration offices. This is not its goal. It does not want to cede control of anything. Phony free trade agreements, immigration plans with trillion-dollar price tags, drug reimportation bans – these are the marks of a government wishing to maintain and extend its control, not let go. It aims to let goods and people in and out at its discretion. It claims to favor free trade even as it erects barriers, blockades nations, and never thinks of just unilaterally dropping its tariffs."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/gregory/gregory145.html

Rant: Learning to Love the Imperial Presidency

      By Gene Healy from Reason

"Conservatives started to consistently vote for major expansions of presidential strength, even when those expansions contradicted traditionally conservative positions. By the Reagan era, prominent Republicans were calling for a repeal of the 22nd Amendment, which limits presidents to two terms. In the ’90s, then-Speaker Newt Gingrich led an unsuccessful effort to repeal the War Powers Act, even though that would have increased the powers of President Clinton."

http://www.reason.com/news/show/122018.html

Pakistan’s Thug

      By Alvaro Vargas Llosa from The Independent Institute

"The general is now making a mockery of any notion of the rule of law in order to remain president and head of the armed forces. By stepping over institutions such as the Pakistani Supreme Court, he has unleashed precisely what his macho rule was supposed to prevent—chaos and civil strife. Needless to say, such an environment is a godsend to violent fundamentalists who will welcome the state’s distraction from the goal of hunting them down and the increasing disgust of the civilian population with military rule."

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2026

I Can't Stand Bullies, Revisited

      By William N. Grigg from Pro Libertate

"Nobody likes, let alone admires, a bully. Those who cower behind a bully -- the Friedmans and Goldbergs of the world, along with the Sean Hannitys, Bill O'Reillys, and countless lesser specimens of the same despicable breed -- seek vicarious vindication as Men Not To Be Messed With. And when one bully is defeated, those who followed in his wake will simply attach themselves to another."

http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2007/09/i-cant-stand-bullies-revisited.html

Politics by Other Means

War, rumors of war, and politicians fomenting war.

The War Party

      By Matt Taibbi from Rolling Stone

“Quietly and miserably, like an anxious mother tiptoeing away from an autistic child who has fallen asleep with his helmet on, the Republican Party continues its hopeless search for a viable nominee while backpedaling from its own disaster in Iraq. The candidates, all of them -- I exclude here Congressman Ron Paul, who is an uninvited guest to this ball -- are fourth-rate buffoons, not one of them qualified to hold down the last ten minutes of a weekday open-mike night in a Skokie comedy club."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/16295589/the_war_party

9/11 Six Years Later

      By James Leroy Wilson from The Partial Observer

"Consider our situation with Iran. President Bush has been taking a belligerent stance toward it. If the President wants to attack Iran for a non-9/11 reason, he can 'determine' there was a 9/11 connection and commence bombing. Congress has not rescinded the Authorization of six years ago, nor has it written another stating the President must have Congressional approval before attacking Iran. Iran can therefore assume that there is a state of war between the two countries right now. It can either brace for an attack, or do whatever it takes, diplomatically or not, to prevent an attack."

http://partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=2665

The Limits of Frederalism

      By Radley Balko from Reason

"It’s difficult to understand how the same party that (correctly, in my view) argues that the federal government has no business telling the states how they should regulate their businesses, set their speed limits, keep their air and water free of pollution or regulate the sale of firearms within their borders can at the same time feel that the federal government can and should tell states that they aren’t allowed to let sick people obtain relief wherever they might find it."

http://reason.com/news/show/122508.html

One bomb away from losing rights

      By Robyn E. Blumner from St. Petersburg Times

“Accusing opponents of inviting the next attack on American soil if they don't acquiesce is one of the administration's favorite tactics. That is how it passed the USA Patriot Act and later its reauthorization, as well as the disgraceful Military Commissions Act of 2006. It is also how the administration beats down those on its own team who deign to raise civil liberties concerns."

http://www.sptimes.com/2007/09/09/Opinion/One_bomb_away_from_lo.shtml

Spontaneous Order

Articles showing decentralized successes.

Technology and Life Itself

      By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. from LewRockwell.com

"The story of IBM's work to shrink memory reminds us that the market is the primary means for pushing the technological frontiers. It is private enterprise that has the incentive to do it right, and can provide the profit-and-loss infrastructure to know whether the advance is really good for society, and the means to make the advance available for all of humanity. (Now, it's true that IBM gets government grants and to that extent, its R&D department partakes of the waste endemic to fully government-run organizations; but note that the exciting and dynamic part of its research is pointed toward the commercial marketplace.)"

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/technology-and-life-itself.html

How vitamin C stops the big 'C'

      By Staff from Johns Hopkins Medicine

"Nearly 30 years after Nobel laureate Linus Pauling famously and controversially suggested that vitamin C supplements can prevent cancer, a team of Johns Hopkins scientists have shown that in mice at least, vitamin C - and potentially other antioxidants - can indeed inhibit the growth of some tumors ... just not in the manner suggested by years of investigation."

http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/Press_releases/2007/09_10_07.html

Reducing Poverty through Economic Freedom

      By Kimani S. Njoroge from Foundation for Economic Education

"The Ugandan example is testament that free people can indeed pull themselves up from poverty. The scale of their economic activities does not matter, as long as they want to improve their lives through the best means they know -- whether as subsistence farmers or micro-entrepreneurs. Nobel laureate Milton Friedman referred to them as a collection of Robin Crusoes who cooperate in the production of goods and services."

http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=1568

Protection against chest infections

      By Staff from scenta

"New research, published in New Scientist magazine, points towards a possible solution to exercise-derived chest infection: the flavonoid quercetin, found in berries, fruits and tea. Flavonoids are water-soluble plant pigments."

http://www.scenta.co.uk/Health/1704942/protection-against-chest-infections.htm

Nonspontaneous Disorder

Articles showing centrally planned disasters.

Libertarians & immigration

      By Donald J. Boudreaux from Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

"[T]o ask government to mimic the outcomes of a pure private property rights system is to come dangerously close to asking government to treat the entire country as if that country is the private property of the state. What an irony! Anyone who advocates such a policy overlooks the single most important reason for strictly limiting government's power: Unlike true owners of private property, government can resort to force to increase the size of its property holdings and the value of its portfolio. Government is not an owner of private property. Restrictions on government discretion are appropriate precisely because government possesses a legitimized monopoly on coercion."

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/columnists/boudreaux/s_526907.html

Light Rail Doesn't Work

      By Randal O'Toole from Cato Institute

"I have always loved trains, and if light-rail transit worked, I would be the first to support it. So it is with some dismay that I review the sorry record of transit in Canadian and U.S. cities that have built light-rail lines. For the most part, light rail has increased congestion, harmed transit riders, and wasted taxpayers' money."

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8655

Briefly Considered: Scrimp and Save, Make Your Payments ... And Lose Your Home Anyway

      By William N. Grigg from Pro Libertate

"[Y]our mortgage lender goes bankrupt after being mortally wounded by the bursting housing bubble. As a result, the property tax checks issued by the lender start to bounce -- and now you stand to lose your home to tax foreclosure as a result. This is the situation facing thousands of home "owners" whose mortgages were financed through American Home Mortgage Corporation Inc. (AHMC), which filed for bankruptcy in August. Like most mortgage companies, AHMC issued thousands of loans backed by Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae, which are 'government-sponsored' lending agencies."

http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2007/09/briefly-considered-scrimp-and-save-make.html

Dollar Index Can't Flex its Puny Muscles

      By The Mogambo Guru (Richard Daughty) from The Daily Reckoning

"[T]here is nothing mysterious about the dollar falling in value, thanks to the Federal Reserve always creating more and more of them, and thanks to the desperate, no-holds-barred government actions behind the scenes, which are always a sure sign of a government in Deep, Deep Trouble (DDT). Now the poor old buck has broken the 80 level on the dollar index, a historically significant milestone of sorts, as there are rumored to be lots and lots of big bets using that level as the dividing line between breaking even and getting killed by the exchange rate of the dollar."

http://dailyreckoning.com/Writers/Mogambo/DREssays/MG091207.html

War Is The Health Of The State

War is the ultimate State intervention in society.

Another 9/11—in a Long Series

      By Robert Higgs from The Independent Institute

"Everyone with any critical sense understands that like the attack on Pearl Harbor in its immediate aftermath, the attacks of 9/11 have thus far left many unanswered questions. No one should be surprised if twenty or thirty years hence, information has surfaced that completely controverts the government’s current story of what it knew and did not know, and what it did and did not do, prior to the attacks."

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2023

The Mystery of al-Qaeda

      By Justin Raimondo from Antiwar.com

"Al-Qaeda and the War Party: one could not succeed without the other. There is no conclusive evidence that this odd symbiosis is more than just ideological. Yet I wouldn't be surprised if it extended to the operational. The mysteries of al-Qaeda are intertwined with the unsolved mysteries of 9/11: how did 19 young men evade detection for years and pull off one of the boldest, most destructive terrorist acts in modern history? Or were they detected, and allowed to go through with their task?"

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=11584

Six Years Later: Bin Laden Still Free, U.S. Mired in Iraq

      By Radley Balko from FOXNews.com

"A loosely-connected, (relatively) poorly funded, backward-thinking organization like Al-Qaeda could never inflict significant harm on the United States, at least not in a straightforward war. Their best hope is to scare us into rash, ill-considered actions like overextending our military, alienating our allies, and doing away with the open society and civil liberties that define who we are."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,296349,00.html

We're All Suspects

      By Nat Hentoff from The Village Voice

"Six months after the president's signing of the Protect America Act, Congress will be able to review and change it. We'll see how tough Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi—leaders even hollower than Tom Daschle—turn out to be. With national elections nearing, will the Democrats again succumb to the fear of being charged with abandoning national security?"

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0737,hentoff,77738,6.html

Bits of History

The Past seen with a fresh look.

Libertarianism: Left or Right?

      By Sheldon Richman from The Future of Freedom Foundation

"Left and Right did not refer merely to which side of the assembly one sat on or one’s attitude toward the regime. That attitude was a manifestation of a deeper view of government. The Left understood that historically the state was the most powerful engine of exploitation, although the various factions disagreed on the exact nature of exploitation or what do to about it."

http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0706b.asp

The Root of Financial Panics

      By George F. Smith from Strike The Root

"Money had been removed from the people and placed in the care of politicians. And political money didn’t require the expense and labor of mining ore. It required only ink and the will to print. Thereafter, there would be no such thing as a scarcity of money. Strife was history, and life would go on. But there was a catch."

http://www.strike-the-root.com/72/smith/smith2.html

The Ghost of 1933 Lives – But How Do You Blame Something That Is No Longer Important?

      By Ed Bugos from Whiskey & Gunpowder

"The real reason that the gold standard was abandoned was not because gold hoarders and foreign exchange speculators held the fate of the economy at ransom, or because it technically failed. The gold standard was done away with because it stood in the way of inflation and big government so we could have the world we have today…easy money, illusory prosperity, boom-bust, war, empire, and welfarism. Today, of course, it is difficult to blame gold for any of these shortcomings. ... [However,] owning anything is 'fraught with risk' in this day when politicians move the line between private and public property around like it was a skipping rope. The prudent course is to diversify."

http://www.whiskeyandgunpowder.com/Archives/2007/20070912.html

Sy Leon, R.I.P.

      By Butler Shaffer from LewRockwell.com

"He was also adept at promoting the cause of liberty to wider audiences. He formed an organization, 'The League of Non-Voters,' to critique the voting process as an illusion by which we are led to believe that we are controlling the political system. His ideas resulted in a book that received a good deal of attention: None of the Above."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer161.html

War and Peace

Articles showing the nature of War.

Surging Toward Iran

      By Justin Raimondo from Antiwar.com

"I have emphasized, in this space, that nothing short of complete and immediate withdrawal from Iraq is going to avert a regional war in the Middle East, because that's exactly what's on the administration's agenda. "

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=11599

Pro-Democracy Killing in Iraq

      By Jacob G. Hornberger from The Future of Freedom Foundation

"Where is the morality in the killing of even one single Iraqi citizen, much less hundreds of thousands of them, in the process of ousting Saddam Hussein from power and replacing him with a new regime? Huckabee and other pro-war conservatives take the position that the deaths of Iraqis will be worth it if certain political goals are ultimately achieved — e.g., democracy, the installation of a pro-American regime in Iraq, or stability in the Middle East. But every American needs to ask himself the following question: Is it moral to kill even one person, much less hundreds of thousands, for the sake of such political goals?"

http://www.fff.org/comment/com0709c.asp

The No-Exit Strategy

      By Jacob Sullum from Reason

"Whatever its merits as a cost-minimizing tactic in retailing, 'you break it, you own it' isn't bad as a cautionary principle in foreign affairs. But as a plan for what to do after you've ignored the warning, it's worse than useless. As Gen. David Petraeus' recent congressional testimony confirmed, the reason not to go in has become the rationale for staying indefinitely."

http://www.reason.com/news/show/122422.html

Chum to the Slaughter: Bush Baits Iranians With New Border Base

      By Chris Floyd from Empire Burlesque

"With the media's attention focused on the Petraeus pony show and the sudden reappearance of the dread pirate Blackbeard Laden, the Bush Administration is quietly taking yet another step toward a war with Iran -- and using the lives of 200 U.S. soldiers as so much bloody chum to bait the Tehran shark."

http://www.chris-floyd.com/content/view/1280/135/

Great Individuals In History

Some people stand out from the crowd.

Explorer/Entrepreneur -- Marco Polo : Sept. 15, 1254

       From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Although the Polos were by no means the first Europeans to reach China overland (see, for example, Radhanites and Giovanni da Pian del Carpine), thanks to Marco's book their trip was the first to be widely known, and the best-documented until then. Marco Polo's description of the Far East and its riches inspired Christopher Columbus' decision to try to reach those lands by a western route."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Polo

Filmmaker -- Jean Renoir : Sept. 15, 1894

       from Turner Classic Movies

"Renoir is arguably the greatest artist that the cinema has ever known, simply because he was able to work effectively in virtually all genres without sacrificing his individuality or bowing to public or commercial conventions. Although the son of the famed impressionist painter Auguste Renoir, his visual sensibility was entirely his own, and the technical facility that marks his films is the result of long and assiduous study."

http://www.tcmdb.com/participant/participant.jsp?participantId=160204|80577

Writer -- Roald Dahl : Sept. 13, 1916

      By Kristine Howard from RoaldDahlFans.com

"Children of all ages have read and enjoyed books by Roald Dahl. Many of his stories, such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach, have become classics in their own time."

http://www.roalddahlfans.com/mydahlbio.php

Actress -- Jane Greer : Sept. 9, 1924

      By Jack Johnson from IMDb

"At age 15, an attack of palsy left her face partially paralyzed. She claimed that it was through facial exercises to overcome the paralysis that she learned the efficacy of facial expression in conveying human emotion."

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0339452/bio

Culcha'

Books, Movies, TV, Media, Music, poetry, etc.

Legends of the Fall (1995)

      Reviewed by Tom Ender from Endervidualism

"Anti-state western drama stars Brad Pitt, Julia Ormond, Anthony Hopkins, Aidan Quinn, Karina Lombard; directed by Edward Zwick. “I enjoy both westerns and antiwar films. This film combines both those genres and blends in romantic drama with the form of a family saga set in a key formative era for America: the early 20th century. In addition, this movie presents one of the most consistently anti-state attitudes I have encountered in any film regarded as reasonably mainstream.”"

http://endervidualism.com/agora/legends_fall_1995.htm

Teaser [for Two Hundred Head Of Pig]

      By George Potter from Market Theocracy

"What they did to Uncle Paul and Uncle Elmer was wrong. Flat wrong. They were hurting nobody. Taking from nobody. They weren’t stealing or killing or touching a hair on an innocent head. They were growing a flower they liked to smoke. I have to do this. This is what I’ve been left with. The only path open to me."

http://markettheocracy.blogsome.com/2007/09/10/teaser/

The Deal with the Devil -- Part XIII: Challenging Fate

      By Claire Wolfe from Backwoods Home Magazine

"Friday, the day before the duel, dawned dusty and hot. Hardyville went about its business in a daze, as if ordinary activities were mere illusion. Charlotte rose, showered, dressed, and pushed her granola around in its bowl as if the motions of normal life could make tomorrow's reality go away. She hardly had the strength to drag herself around the house. But she forced herself to step into the burning sun, start her car, and drive to the shop. "

http://www.backwoodshome.com/columns/wolfe070910.html

Sneak Peek

      By L. Neil Smith from The Libertarian Enterprise,

"In this scene, the girls are leaving the Moon, where they've been for the past two years in one-sixth gravity, headed for Mars—Jasmeen's homeworld—where Llyra can train at a third gravity for a while. While individuals who live on all of the other settled worlds are free, politically, a small handful of totalitarian regimes survive on Earth. Unfortunately, at this particular point in history, the only regularly-scheduled transportation between the Moon and Mars is aboard the fusion-powered liners of a corporation wholly owned and operated by the East American government, all that remains of the former United States ... "

http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2007/tle434-20070909-02.html

The lighter side

Humor, satire, cartoons, parodies, food, popular music and other things to amuse.

“Students First In Line” Program To Offer Job Training At Needy Schools

      By Staff from Onion News Network

"The nation's poorest schools will receive extra government funding to teach their students skills like rifle assembly and precision marching."

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/66316

Britney vs. Bin Laden: A Celebrity Comeback Battle

      By Steve Robles from 10 Zen Monkeys

"So now that we've introduced our challengers, let's see how they stack up against each other in hand-to-hand comeback combat... Tale of the Tape[:] bin Laden – Exiled terror icon. Once a reviled boogeyman for the Bush administration, now more like the Johnny Carson of Jihad. (You see him once in a blue moon, and he looks worse every time). Britney – Fallen pop tart. Once a Madison Ave poster girl inspiring erections across lines of age, race and income, now more like the girl you end up bangin' after a drunken 3 a.m. introduction at the Jack in the Box drive-thru. Let's get ready to rumble...”

http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2007/09/11/britney-vs-bin-laden-a-celebrity-comeback-battle/

The state of the State of Columbia

      By Garry Reed from Loose Cannon Libertarian

"From time to time a pint-sized parcel of property dubbed District of Columbia is heard to agitate for statehood. Considering that its capital, Washington, which is of course also the capital of a whole nation/empire/allegedly Free World, would have the same city limits as the state would have state lines, we’re talking more city-state than state."

http://www.freecannon.com/StateOfColumbia.htm

Keys to Success

      By John Hodgman and Jon Stewart from The Daily Show

"Using his eight keys for success, John Hodgman redefines failure in Iraq. "

http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/?lnk=v&ml_video=102586

Deep Thought

Scientific and scholarly studies, philosophical essays, in-depth and longer articles

The Goal Is Freedom: Force Fetishists

      By Sheldon Richman from Foundation for Economic Education

“Libertarian political philosophy tells you what you should not do -- initiate physical force -- but it does not tell you what you should do. That is the task of broader moral philosophy. ... As soon as the law seeks to regulate nonviolent conduct, it enters into a hopeless thicket. Distant legislators and bureaucrats have no better qualifications to tell others how to live under complex circumstances than they have to centrally plan an economy."

http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=1571

What does "freedom" mean?

      By Wally Conger from out of step

"More than ever, we radical libertarians must recapture our language. We must keep clear what we mean by “freedom” and not surrender to statist, watered-down redefinitions."

http://wconger.blogspot.com/2007/09/what-does-freedom-mean.html

A Brief Review of the Work of Professor Noam Chomsky

      By Moss Roberts from ZNet

"For those not familiar with the term, 'libertarianism' is an outgrowth of Enlightenment liberalism. In advocating freedom of individual development, libertarianism is part of the Anglo-American tradition of suspicion of official authority and institutions as arbiters of society and morality."

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=103&ItemID=13783

It's Just Freedom

      By Russell Madden from Atlas Magazine

"Animals have no rights because they do not have free will nor a conceptual-level consciousness nor use for a moral code. 'Rights' are relevant only in a social context for delineating how individuals can implement their chosen morality. Without those requirements, it is a category error to even mention 'rights' in the context of nonhuman animals. If an animal has no rights, it cannot have its rights violated. For animals, in general, this issue is not even close to being a borderline situation. Cruelty to humans is morally and legally wrong because we have a right to our own lives. Cruelty to animals is indeed morally wrong...but it should not be a legal issue (as long as the animal belongs to the abuser)."

http://www.russellmadden.com/Its_Just_Freedom.html

Miscellany

Articles not easily classified

Money Won't Supply Your Soup Spoon

      By The Mogambo Guru (Richard Daughty) from The Daily Reckoning

"I love this! Now, the next time one of those snotty little social workers comes over here, knock, knock, knocking on my door, complaining about my stupid kids acting like the destructive little juvenile delinquent morons that they are, and always coming up with the same tired conclusion; the father is at fault! Me! It's always my fault!"

http://www.dailyreckoning.com/Writers/Mogambo/DREssays/MG091307.html

Red Color in Cherries Signals Disease-Fighting Phytonutrients

      By PR Newswire from Life Extension Foundation

"In addition to the powerful disease-fighting anthocyanins, cherries contain comparable amounts of antioxidants as blueberries and are one of the few known food sources of melatonin, a potent antioxidant that may help improve the body's natural sleep patterns. Cherries also pack a powerful nutrient punch. Each serving is a good source of vitamin A (beta carotene) -- containing 19 times the beta carotene of blueberries and strawberries. Cherries also are rich in vitamin C, potassium, magnesium, folate and fiber."

http://www.lef.org/news/LefDailyNews.htm?NewsID=5838

UWA 39: Webby Wanderings

      By Warren Bluhm from Uncle Warren's Attic

"It’s long past time I gave you a little more taste of Maria Daines with her partner and guitarist ... Paul Killington. After launching the show with Carne Cruda’s 'Amazing Artichoke of World Peace,' we dive into Maria’s 'Tear Down the Walls' and 'Alright When The Morning Comes.'" [Download podcast or use the online player at the site.]

http://unclewarrensattic.blogspot.com/2007/09/uwa-39-webby-wanderings.html

The best open source programming language

      By Martin Heller from InfoWorld

"When we started working on the Bossies, we divided the broad Application Development group into many subcategories, including Language. It seemed like a good idea at the time. ... Finally, we realized that there probably is no such thing as a 'best' language, be it a natural language or a computer language. The most we could do would be to pick best languages for specific applications, and even that would be difficult. It left us to identify languages that have become widely supported and perhaps acknowledge languages that have found a strong niche."

http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/09/10/37FE-boss-programming-language_1.html

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