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"'I think it’s clear by now that the federal government needs to reclassify marijuana. People who need it should be able to get it – safely and easily,' says The Price Is Right and Power of 10 host Drew Carey in a new Reason.tv video examining medical marijuana and the war on drugs."
http://www.reason.tv/video/show/57.html
"One of my major concerns is the extent to which most people have internalized the principle of obedience: obedience to authority in all its manifestations (including its most notable embodiments, the state and its various agents, such as the campus police in this instance), and an enthusiastic willingness to 'follow the rules'."
http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2007/10/wake-up-only-issue-that-matters.html
"I don't love America because of the flag; I tolerate it because of the glimmers of liberty and justice. If, by some cause, this country or any other somehow achieved rampant liberty and justice, pledging allegiance to that country would still be an unnecessary assumption of permanence."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/72/kirk/kirk2.html
"When Jay Leno's interview of Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul on the Tonight Show was immediately followed by classic punk-rocker Johnny Rotten performing his song 'Anarchy in the U.K.' with the Sex Pistols, both men appeared to recognize a common bond."
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Ron_Paul_get_shoutout_from_Sex_1031.html
"[F]ederal prosecutors appear to be drawn from a pool of beings immune to ... decent and elevated sentiments. Additionally, federal sentencing guidelines [give] prosecutors broad and unaccountable discretion in these matters."
http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2007/11/federal-prosecutors-human-pestilence.html
"I do not criticize Meyer to any degree at all. The state targeted him for destruction. He is a very young man, with all of his life ahead of him. The cost was prohibitive. He had broken the rules, and he had to be destroyed. His example would help to keep the rest of you in line."
http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2007/10/break-goddamned-rules.html
"Constitutional rights are minor inconveniences, noisome chatter, flies to be batted away on the steady road to despotism. And no one, not the courts, not the press, not the gutless Democratic opposition, not a compliant and passive citizenry hypnotized by tawdry television spectacles and celebrity gossip, seems capable of stopping the process. Those in power know this. We, too, might as well know it. "
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20071029_the_american_police_state/
"We've opened up a new front on the war on terror. It's an attack on the unique, the unorthodox, the unexpected; it's a war on different. If you act different, you might find yourself investigated, questioned, and even arrested -- even if you did nothing wrong, and had no intention of doing anything wrong. ... It's a result of our relentless campaign to convince ordinary citizens that they're the front line of terrorism defense."
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/11/the_war_on_the.html
"The determination to create a truly compassionate world – which is the essence of what people want, at their core, from socialism – is both healthy and necessary. Yet use of coercion to create compassion betrays that desire, because coercion itself is cruel and unhealthy. Coercion is the opposite of compassion; more of one leads to less of the other. Ultimately, coercion is destructive of the healthy goals of socialism, which is why State socialism fails to live up to hopes and expectations. "
http://www.strike-the-root.com/72/allport/allport16.html
"Free marketeers around the world, in cooperation with hundreds of liberty-minded groups, have issued a recall of the following non-good/non-service. Subject/slaves (often referred to as citizens) should stop using, supporting and/or legitimizing the recalled 'product' immediately. Name of product: State governments."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/lora/m.lora43.html
"As the state has no interest in developing the personalities and learning faculties of children, it has no interest in fostering their pursuit of truth as adults. It will support truth that increases its power and suppress truth that challenges its power. It will also support lies that increase its power. Sound engineering will find a place in state-controlled higher education, since the state needs engineers to achieve its own technological projects. The state will welcome Keynesian economics since it justifies the exercise of state power. But, sound economics will not find a home in state-controlled higher education. Misesian economics is a foremost threat to the state for it explains the working of the natural order of society and the crippling effects of state interference."
http://www.mises.org/story/2750
"As an anarchist, I don’t have any special reverence for the incorporating document of a government because I don’t accept its legitimacy. Jane Harman is supposed to, however. The least she could do is read the damned thing once in a while."
http://www.bradspangler.com/blog/archives/839
"The reserve currency is world money, good in any country to pay any bill. The reserve currency country is not a debtor in the usual sense. As the reserve currency can be used to settle international accounts, the reserve currency country can borrow at will until lenders lose confidence in the currency. There is abundant evidence that the loss of confidence in the dollar is underway. When it is complete, the US will no longer be a superpower."
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts11012007.html
"The real reason to stop watching television and spending any time with the old media, is that it needs to die. It serves no purpose other than to perpetuate lies."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/fisk/fisk25.html
"[W]hat this story really shows is how hard it is for people to change their security intuition. Security-by-letterhead was fairly robust when printing was hard, and faking a letterhead was real work. Today it's easy, but people -- especially people who grew up under the older paradigm -- don't act as if it is."
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/10/security_by_let.html
"The governing parties in Poland and Slovakia came to power promising to end corruption, and the Hungarian opposition, which lost last year's election by the narrowest of margins, promises to do the same. ... [I]n addition to better policing and steeper sentences, the fight against corruption must include the reduction of the size and scope of the state."
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8667
"If the antics of Delaware were merely the clownishness of the faculty of a second-rate diploma mill, they might be amusing. But the whole country appears to yearn for regimentation, for authority. As the Democrats attack a nonsensical fantasy of racism, so the Republicans flail at imaginary terrorists twisting in their inner fog. They eagerly revoke habeas corpus, monitor email, use NSA against the citizenry, start wars on fraudulent grounds, and openly advocate torture. (Has any other country done the latter?)"
http://www.fredoneverything.net/Delaware.shtml
"In this second resounding challenge to the Bush administration's utter contempt for the Bill of Rights, Judge Marrero made it inescapably clear how un-American our rulers have become. By erasing the protections for individual liberties put in place by the framers, the president and his accomplices are turning us into a country that bears little resemblance to the one set forth in the Constitution."
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0744,hentoff,78210,2.html
"President Bush has been a busy man. Even though the quagmire in Iraq threatens to worsen as Turkey prepares to invade the Kurdish north, Bush has time to undertake the arduous task of preventing World War III and begin the transition to democracy in Cuba. How does he do it?!"
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0710l.asp
"Whoever is next on the War List is always The New Hitler and the country they lead is always The New Nazi Germany. Anyone who wants the new war is the brave and glorious Churchill. Everyone who opposes the new war is the cowardly appeaser Chamberlain...."
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/10/30/podhoretz/index.html
"Here is the totalitarian mentality of fanatic nationalists like Levin exposed for all to see: she and her fellow fifth columnists are lobbying a foreign government to interfere with freedom of the press in America, on behalf of foreign interests. It doesn't get much more disgusting than that, now does it?"
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=11837
"Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is at her mushroom-cloud hyperbolic best, and this time Iran is the target. Her claim last week that 'the policies of Iran constitute perhaps the single greatest challenge to American security interests in the Middle East and around the world' is simply too much of a stretch."
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/103007a.html
"Are you listening children of America? It is essential that you refrain from using marijuana, because if you do, the government will arrest you and give you a criminal record that will haunt you for the rest of your life. That is why you shouldn't use marijuana."
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle_blog/2007/nov/01/arresting_marijuana_users_sends_
"I doubt anyone would find much cause to disagree with his inclusion on the 'conservative' list, sitting comfortably between such hard-core partisans as Giuliani, Drudge, Gingrich and Limbaugh. Nor did anyone (at least that I heard) object when William Safire, on last week's Meet the Press, chose Gen. Petraeus as the most likely Republican Vice Presidential nominee to run with Mitt Romney."
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/11/02/petraeus/index.html
"Warmer climates might open up heretofore cooler territories into which living beings – perhaps members of endangered species – might relocate and prosper. Contrary to the hubristic certainties voiced by hack politicians and social visionaries – each driven by passions to rule humanity – I prefer leaving the answers to such questions to be worked out by the spontaneous and autonomous interplay of life forces on this planet."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer165.html
"Since the end of April 2001, the US dollar price of a troy ounce of gold has risen from US$264 to US$747 as of October 1, 2007 (Fig. 1) (November 1 spot is $783); in that period, gold has even 'outperformed' the US stock market. To put it in less pleasant terms: the exchange value of the US dollar vis-à-vis gold — the world's ultimate, freely chosen means of payment — has fallen considerably in the time span under review."
http://www.mises.org/story/2743
"Despite popular prejudices to the contrary, a new paper reports that immigrants in the U.S. are far less likely to end up locked in a public institution than the native-born, with an incarceration rate one-fifth as high."
http://www.reason.com/news/show/122514.html
"I reflected that Americans don’t quite know what’s down here. We think of Pedro and his burro sleeping under the cactus, or illegals tunneling under the border. That’s Mexico. Well, yes, sort of, but no, not at all. There’s an actual country here, a hundred million souls, Latin to the marrow, and below a whole Latin world stretching to Tierra del Fuego. The poor in Mexico try to go to the US because that’s where the money is. The rest aren’t interested. They’re Mexican, and they like that just fine, thank you. Though they seldom say it, being considerate, gringos seem cold and reserved to them."
http://www.fredoneverything.net/JocoParty.shtml
"Evidence suggests that much of our concern about global climate change—and calls for government action—may be misplaced. No matter what we do, climate will continue to change, as it always has, warming and cooling periodically for various reasons. We are not in the midst of a crisis."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2058
"[A]s we have long pointed out here at FFF, the real value of the regulated society is not any protection it provides to people. All that protection talk is just a sham. The real purpose of the regulated society is to keep the business and banking community in line — meaning in conformity with federal policy. The real purpose of the rules and regulations is to serve as a Damocles sword, ready to fall on any business or bank that refuses to go along with the feds."
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0710m.asp
"As long as the Forest Service has a blank check to protect homes, homeowners feel little need to replace their pretty cedar-shake roofs and control their yard vegetation. Although some insurance companies are starting to change, most rely on the Forest Service and other fire agencies to protect the properties they cover. ... That doesn't mean we should simply let the federal forests burn. But there is no one-size-fits-all solution for managing fire on federal lands. Some need more fire, some need more fire suppression."
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8763
"I can appreciate their dilemma. As long as the government's schools are monopolies capable of compelling attendance, they have to respect the many worldviews of the children that attend them. In a country as diverse as this one, it isn't always obvious where the line lies between making minorities comfortable and acting like a goddamn jackass. The typical bureaucrat prefers to err on the side of jackassery."
http://www.reason.com/news/show/123222.html
"The regime-changers inside the administration, centered around Dick Cheney's office and the civilian upper reaches of the Pentagon, may have decided that the Turks have to be thrown overboard now that the campaign to target Tehran is going full-gear. If the Kurds' price for subverting the Iranian regime is covert aid for their continuing assault on Turkey, then it hardly beggars belief that the War Party is willing to pay it: loyalty is not one of their strong suits, as Iraq's Shi'ites can readily attest."
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=11828
Kirsten presents the beginning of a fascinating set of YouTube videos.
http://www.crackerscentral.com/enjoyeverysandwich/
2007/11/were-here-for-your-fucking-freedom.html
"Although the two men, from rival clans, had clashed over several issues in their Potemkin government, the last straw seemed to be a tussle over – what else? – oil. The two leaders backed rival contestants for oil rights in Somalia, which, depending on the expert or interested party you consult, is either sitting on billions of barrels of black gold – or else on nothing but bedrock to the earth's core. The fact that neither man could actually deliver the promised rights to their various favorites in the present condition of occupation, chaos and civil war didn't stop them from giving it the old college try – and getting out the knives against each other over the still merely potential windfall."
"American troops are not only being sacrificed for the benefit of Bush and his oil buddies, more importantly they’re being sacrificed for the benefit of the Jewish terrorist state of Israel. Bush’s rich buddies getting richer from the blood of America’s youth is only a residual result of the main driving force for these wars: Israel’s security and expansion."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/72/johnson/johnson3.html
"To defend the nation from its enemies, Jacobins expanded the government's police powers at the expense of civil liberties, endowing the state with the power to detain, interrogate and imprison suspects without due process. Policies like the mass warrantless searches undertaken in 1792 - 'domicilary visits,' they were called - were justified, according to Georges Danton, the Jacobin leader, 'when the homeland is in danger'."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/28/opinion/edfurstenberg.php
"That most of us tend to identify and empathize with the plight of those who are close to us – family, friends, compatriots, co-religionists – is understandable and even natural. Nations write their own histories, and if they are victorious and powerful, they have an enormous influence on the construction of the broad and accepted historical narratives. But in a world in which globalization is making it impossible for nations to live in isolation from each other, they all need to reexamine their common histories."
http://www.antiwar.com/hadar/?articleid=11832
"In 1914, America was a republic with a small federal government, a self-reliant citizenry, growing industry, an expanding middle class, an uplifting culture and exemplary morals. By 1990 and the end of that long war, we had become a tawdry and increasingly resented world empire with a vast, endlessly intrusive federal government, a population of willingly manipulated consumers, shrinking industry, a vanishing middle class, a debauched culture and morals that would shame a self-respecting stoat."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/lind/lind130.html
"[W]e Americans are no longer exporting inflation with our strong dollar, and the tide has just started turning. The 'tide' imagery is intentional, as this is not only an apt description of the inflation that is starting to swoop down upon us, but I am happy to report that this also describes part of the script of my next film, which is going to be XXX-rated. The working title is, 'The Sins Of The Flesh And The Pain Of Inflation!' "
http://www.dailyreckoning.com/Writers/Mogambo/DREssays/MG103007.html
"Whatever the outcome, we can be certain that some will call it 'victory' and some will call it 'defeat.' ... What has been defeated is the idea that we can reshape the world to our liking with military hardware. What has been defeated is the naive assumption that there are no limits to the use of force. What has been defeated is the notion that war, a tool of destruction, can be used to construct a nation. We expected more from the use of force than the use of force could deliver. That is why we are desperately looking for a 'way forward'."
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07305/830026-109.stm
"The Blackwater imbroglio has placed the key questions of who actually controls these private forces and to whom they are accountable front-and-center, and we can expect a fair amount of chin-scratching and policy tweaking in the next few months. But unless we take the advice of that fellow from Texas who ran for president in 2000 promising a humbler and more modest foreign policy that leaves nation-building to those who actually live in the nations in question – whatever became of the guy, anyway? – the implementation of the activist and interventionist foreign policy we have in place now will require plenty of private contractors."
http://www.antiwar.com/bock/?articleid=11850
"[W]hat the U.S. ruling class wants and intends to have no matter what is 'Dominion Over the World.' If war is the necessary means to that end -- and it is -- then war it will be. And the American public will be on board."
http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2007/11/one-hundred-routes-to-war-one-hundred.html
"Soldiers who want antiwar Americans to march to demand that they be brought home should take a cue from Vietnam veterans. They marched with peace protesters and threw their medals at the Capitol. Soldiers serving on the front refused orders. Some fragged their officers. Vietnam Veterans Against the War claimed more than 50,000 members by 1971. That year saw numerous dramatic acts of dissent by U.S. troops, including 50 veterans who marched to the Pentagon and demanded that they be arrested as war criminals. Fifteen vets took over and barricaded the Statue of Liberty for two days. These acts swayed opinions and helped convince lawmakers it was time to withdraw."
http://www.boiseweekly.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A308507
"Keats produced some of his finest poetry during the spring and summer of 1819; in fact, the period from September 1818 to September 1819 is often referred to among Keats scholars as the Great Year, or the Living Year, because it was during this period that he was most productive and that he wrote his most critically acclaimed works."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Keats
"Von Baeyer's work was at once pioneering and many-sided. With admirable penetration and extraordinary experimental skill he combined dogged perseverance and, even at 70 years old, a youthful buoyancy in his work. He was careful never to overestimate the value of a theory. "
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1905/baeyer-bio.html
"A distinguished stage actress through much of the first half of the century, Gordon was also a prolific playwright and screenwriter."
http://www.tcmdb.com/participant/participant.jsp?participantId=74061
"Soo is probably best remembered for his smart-aleck Detective Sgt. Nick Yemana on 'Barney Miller,' one of the more popular sitcoms of the 1970s, alongside Hal Linden and Abe Vigoda."
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0814530/bio
"Joss Whedon is heading back to TV-- along with his 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' and 'Angel' ingenue, Eliza Dushku. Dushku will star in the Whedon-penned series 'Dollhouse,' which has been given a seven-episode order by Fox. News came as an extra-big Halloween treat for Whedon fans, considered some of the most passionate in all of TV." [This series truly intrigues me, Blade-Runner-esque – though from the “replicant” side – very PhilDickian sounding, but why for Fox again?]
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117975136.html?categoryid=14&cs=1
"Scott Stein’s satirical novel Mean Martin Manning (ENC Press) is about a reclusive man who retired early from a career in advertising and has spent a couple of decades holed up in his apartment, subsisting largely on salami-and-cheese sandwiches slathered with mayonnaise, watching TV, shopping online for frog figurines, and minding his own business."
http://www.reason.com/news/show/122500.html
"In addition to the usual collection of odds and ends, this edition brings you...."
http://unclewarrensattic.blogspot.com/2007/10/uw-attic-41-back-to-78s.html
"The kids have started showing up at my door with their costumes and candy receptacles. I bought stuff to distribute which I wouldn’t eat myself, but candy which their parents will likely approve. Now, for my blog readers, I have a new 'trick,' an old 'treat' and just for good measure a combination, sort of an archaic 'mash-up,' of the two."
http://blog.tomender.com/2007/10/31/trick-or-treat/
"Rep. Gelinas proposes an educational bill to increase the number of young people he meets in under-13 chat rooms." [Yes, he's a Republican. ADULT themes]
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/live_from_congress_representative
"Torture is a question of semantics - Waterboarding sounds so much more fun than simulated drowning." [The follow-up – next piece -- with Rob Riggle also entertains.]
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=127769
"I have to wonder if the perpetrator is exclusively attracted to bicycles, or are other inanimate objects just as sexy? If so, I envy him on some level. There would be no such thing as a boring night at home." [Aside from the humor, who qualifies as a victim in this case?]
http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/10/man-loves-bicyc.html
"Stephen finally hears from Carol Fowler, the South Carolina Democratic Party Chair."
http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/?lnk=v&ml_video=127751
"From Smith to Ricardo and Mill, classical liberalism was a revolutionary doctrine that attacked the privileges of the great landlords and the mercantile interests. Today, we see vulgar libertarians perverting 'free market' rhetoric to defend the contemporary institution that most closely resembles, in terms of power and privilege, the landed oligarchies and mercantilists of the Old Regime: the giant corporation."
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2007/11/naomi-klein-shock-doctrine.html
"Expanding government power to keep some people out, under the theory that they might either vote or use social services – and thus lead to expanded aggression – is not truly libertarian. If you think aggression now is necessary to forestall more aggression in the future, this is essentially the same argument underlying gun control and pre-emptive intervention all over the globe. Of course, if those who vote for increases in state power are in the wrong morally as well as practically, what does that say about those who support increases in state power over immigration?"
http://www.strike-the-root.com/72/alston/alston2.html
"Michael Gerson, a former speechwriter and policy adviser to President George W. Bush, is the latest in a long line of political writers who fail to see the distinction between a virtue and an enforceable legal obligation. Missing that difference leads to all sorts of mischief and undermines a writer's insistence that he favors liberty. Some people may find it an unpleasant choice, but choose they must: freedom or compulsion? There is no third way."
http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=1679
"Since it's publication in 1957, Atlas Shrugged, the philosophical and artistic climax of Ayn Rand's novels, has never been out of print. It continues to receive critical attention and is considered one of the most influential books ever published, impacting a variety of disciplines including philosophy, literature, economics, business and political science."
http://www.quebecoislibre.org/07/071028-6.htm
"As a guy who has been married and a father for a long time, and as a guy who has seen everything get continuously worse, I'm kind of getting freaked out here because 'continually worse' is a nightmare from which you never awake!"
http://www.dailyreckoning.com/Writers/Mogambo/DREssays/MG102907.html
"Google is (still) not manufacturing its own handsets, but has instead approached a number of manufacturers, including HTC and LG Electronics, to build a phone tailored for Google. Google is, however, rumored to be developing its phone platform based on Linux.... The thing that will no doubt give carriers pause, however, is that the company hopes to keep the entire platform as open as Linux is, exposing every element of the OS for developers to tweak, modify, and hack as they please."
"Omigod! One of our kids has created a squiggle that looks like a handgun. I have to react. I have to suspend him. There's a two million-to-one chance that he'll shoot up an entire schoolhouse someday. People will point fingers at me. 'You should have seen the signs! You should have known!' They'll file charges against me. There'll be a civil suit. The media will hound me out of office. I'll lose my overpaid taxpayer paid job and my taxpayer paid medical insurance and my taxpayer paid retirement and I won't be able to pay my mortgage or send my kids to college."
http://www.freecannon.com/Stupidification.htm
"Microsoft's Windows Vista OS has done a lot of damage to the low-end PC market, so there is a great opportunity for a smaller and leaner OS, Liu said. Linux has come a long way and could grab an audience in the low-end market, Liu said."
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/
article/139196/everex_readies_sub300_linux_notebooks.html
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