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"By now, you may have heard that the D.C. Circuit has struck down key provisions of the District of Columbia's gun laws. "
http://www.affbrainwash.com/genehealy/archives/021992.php
"In late January, George Smith, executive director of the Maine Sportsmen's Alliance, stood to denounce the REAL ID Act at a community forum in Augusta. A Norman Rockwell painting come to life with the directness and accent of a lifelong Mainer, he said: 'They had their Boston Tea Party. Let's have a REAL ID Party!' The next day, the Maine House and Senate passed a resolution to reject REAL ID by overwhelming margins."
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8125
"Nothing has ever made it so easy for buyers and sellers to get together and engage in trade as the Internet. It reduces transaction costs immensely because they can find each other so readily. And if one seller doesn’t have what a buyer wants, all that has been lost is the few seconds of time and the energy it takes for another mouse click."
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0703b.asp
"Controversial? No. Enjoyable? Yes. And Freehold does have one of Heinlein’s rare birds. The character of Farnham, who you could pretty much read as Heinlein himself without too much skull sweat, lacks the omnipotence of most of Heinlein’s older male characters. Farnham makes mistakes and actually cops to them."
http://www.bookslut.com/specfic_floozy/2007_03_010761.php
"A strange culture of emergency has taken over this country, and the slightest provocation triggers it. It could be an expected terrorist or just an old-fashioned weather warning. The officials are quick to swing into action, and tell you what to do."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/death-by-emergency.html
"Sometimes exhibitionists are confined while rapists go free. Some sex offenders who avoid commitment soon claim new victims, while some men currently committed (including a 102-year-old in Wisconsin) are too old or sick to pose much of a threat."
http://www.reason.com/news/show/118998.html
"But to truly understand the depths of hostility the administration has for the habeas right, one need only look at comments by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. In a recent Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing, Gonzales said: 'There is no expressed grant of habeas in the Constitution.' He was suggesting that habeas corpus is not an individual right, since the words of the Constitution are directed at limiting what Congress can do. Of course if that were true, then the First Amendment which states that 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ... ,' would also lose its status as an individual right."
http://www.sptimes.com/2007/03/04/News/Habeas_corpus.shtml
"Australians are livid because Mr. Hicks' military defense counsel, including Major Michael Mori, Mr. Hicks' family and a determined campaign by Australian activists, have managed to put David Hicks in the Australian spotlight. In the beginning, the United States was prepared to try Mr. Hicks on charges of conspiracy, aiding the enemy and "attempted murder". However, when he was finally formally charged on March 2nd 2007, all of the original accusations were dismissed for lack of evidence... except for a new charge of providing 'material support for terrorism'. This 'crime' did not even exist when Hicks was 'arrested' by the US in 2001. The charge was 'invented' by Congress in 2006, five years after Mr. Hicks was sold by Afghan warlords as an 'enemy combatant'."
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Mar07/Zingh08.htm
"A junkie (political or otherwise) thinks it is exciting to play on train tracks. People tell them that they shouldn’t because a train comes through every day and it might run them over. A junkie’s response is that the train won’t run him over because he’s special. The train that comes through every day will not only stop for him, but will actually turn into Santa’s sleigh and bring him gifts. "
http://www.strike-the-root.com/71/fontana/fontana7.html
"The essence of what I had to say about the concept of wage slavery is that the government-induced cartelization of industry creates oligopsony conditions in the labor market. It does this by artificially reducing the number of buyers of labor (businesses), thereby granting the existing ones an unnatural degree of bargaining power."
http://www.bradspangler.com/blog/archives/522
"[C]onsider the homeowners association (HOA). Certainly, the same taste of power has corrupted the key players. They have dreams too, but their dreams are limited by the restrictive covenant that governs use of the property covered by the association. Sure, they send out a monthly newsletter with words of wisdom regarding how residents should live their lives, but they can't do anything about it. The concepts of general welfare and public good are not defined on the deed filed at the county offices as purposes of the association."
http://www.mises.org/story/2484
"The key is that I am not compelled to do any of these group things. The relationships are largely negotiable, but I accept that participation may give rise to certain kinds of claims on my time and resources. These are voluntary groups, and what makes them work is love, not compulsion. The introduction of violence into any of them would render them valueless and a misery."
http://emergencybackupdog.blogspot.com/2007/03/first-plural-is-cromulent-person.html
"Microsoft is an aging dinosaur. Still, that has not stopped it yet. So let's look at things in another light. Where is Microsoft's growth going to come from? India? China? Brazil? Think again. Are those countries going to shell out big bucks for Vista, or go with Linux for free?"
http://www.whiskeyandgunpowder.com/Archives/2007/20070307.html
"If there's a dispute about how to interpret a law, courts often look at the debate that preceded the vote to discern the legislators' intent. But if the Record includes arguments that weren't actually made and, thus, did not affect any other congressman's vote, the additions can distort more than just a transcript. ... The good news is that it has become less difficult to spot such abuses."
http://reason.com/news/show/119028.html
"In one town, Putney, the vote for impeachment was unanimous. In addition to Governor Douglas's Middlebury, the town of Hartland, which is home to Congressman Peter Welch, backed impeachment. So, too, did Jericho, the home of Gaye Symington, the speaker of the Vermont House of Representatives. "
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?pid=172344
"Currently, China buys US bonds, but they plan to diversify. We are assured by the Minister of the Treasury that this will not impact the market in US bonds."
http://emergencybackupdog.blogspot.com/2007/03/china-wants-to-invest-trillion-bucks.html
"When a country is ruled by an individual who repeatedly and openly arrogates unto himself the power to violate the law, and specifically proclaims that he is under no obligation to account to Congress or anyone else concerning the exercise of radical new surveillance powers such as NSLs, it should come as absolutely no surprise that agencies under his control freely break the law. The culture of lawlessness which the President has deliberately and continuously embraced virtually ensures, by design, that any Congressional limits on the use of executive power will be violated."
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/03/09/fbi/index.html
"It's no small boon to the U.S. government that the story of 9/11-related Israeli espionage has been thus relegated: the story doesn't fit in the clean lines of the official narrative of the attacks. It brings up concerns not only about Israel's obligation not to spy inside the borders of the United States, its major benefactor, but about its possible failure to have provided the U.S. adequate warning of an impending devastating attack on American soil."
http://www.counterpunch.org/ketcham03072007.html
"Despite the unrelenting U.S. propaganda against Iran and North Korea, a poll of 28,000 people in 27 countries for the BBC World Service (March 6) found that Israel, Iran, and the U.S. in that order are regarded as the most negative influences on the world. Even North Korea is regarded as a less negative influence than America."
http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=10635
"Let’s not forget another important point about the Pinochet coup and its painful aftermath: Many of the Chilean officials who did the torturing, especially many members of DINA, were trained in torture at the School of the Americas, the U.S. Army’s infamous school that specialized in teaching the techniques of torture to Latin American military brutes, such as those who loyally and faithfully served Gen. Augusto Pinochet."
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0703c.asp
"The Republicans have 21 Senate seats up in 2008, and if the Iraq war is still going on, they can count on losing most of them, along with the Presidency and maybe 100 more seats in the House. 2008 could be the new 1932, leaving the Republican Party a permanent minority for twenty years. From the standpoint of the Democratic Party's leadership, a few thousand more dead American troops is a small price to pay for so glowing a political victory."
http://www.counterpunch.org/lind03082007.html
"What we have to remember about America's half-baked propaganda machine is that, dumb as it is, it always keeps its eye on the ball. The war in Iraq is lost, everyone knows that, but there are future wars to think about. When a war goes wrong, the reason can never [be] that the invasion was simply a bad, immoral decision, a hopelessly fucked-up idea that even a child could have seen through. No, we always have to make sure that the excuse for the next war is woven into the autopsy of the current military failure. "
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/13710849
"In arguing why the outcome in Iraq is so important, the foreign policy elite usually refer to 'vital U.S. interests' in the Persian Gulf region. These code words are a euphemism for 'oil.' Politicians and the foreign policy establishment rarely discuss this topic directly, because the use of U.S. military power to ensure oil supplies might be compared unfavorably to similar behavior by the Imperial Japanese, which led to World War II."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1933
"If they shimmy back to the top of the greasy pole, they will simply do what they did before: put a little lipstick on the great stonking pig of American militarism, dressing up the brutal drive for global dominance with earnest, pursed-lipped liberal rhetoric. That's what happened in the last Clinton administration; that's what will happen in the next Clinton administration."
http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1059&Itemid=135
"There must be something wrong with this picture of the evils of immigration. There is something wrong with it. It’s a picture that is bereft of any knowledge of the most basic of economic principles. That’s the principle that in any free exchange between two traders, both gain more value than they give up in the trade. Free exchange is a positive-sum game and total value always increases as a result of such exchanges. "
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0612f.asp
"Goldilocks awakened to find herself surrounded by 3 bears: a great big bear, a medium-sized bear, and a little Baby Bear."
http://bkmarcus.com/blog/2007/03/3-bears
"[P]erhaps the most widespread and vital uses for group input online are in scoring systems. In addition to eBay feedback, these are the customer ratings that Amazon.com and Yahoo Shopping post with product reviews. They’re the feedback scores that Netflix tallies to help subscribers decide which movies to order. And they’re the up-or-down votes that sites like Digg and Reddit (part of the Wired Media Group, which also includes WIRED magazine) rely on to determine which stories to feed Web surfers."
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.03/herding.html
"[R]isk-taking counts because it contributes powerfully to the moral justification for people retaining ownership of the profits they earn. The great medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas was one of the first to stress this point. Those willing to risk the expenditure of their capital, time, or labor in an enterprise, Aquinas argued, enjoyed a claim over the fruits that non-risk takers in that activity did not share."
http://www.acton.org/ppolicy/comment/article.php?article=370&fromemail
"The issue is trust. The less one trusts other people, the more likely one wants laws and regulations to restrain them. That means, of course, that one has to trust the government instead. But the government isn't really anything but a group of individuals working together. How, then, can one trust the government? ... In the real class struggle going on in America today, Big Business and Big Government are allies, not adversaries."
http://partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=2121
"It's a particularly cruel myth that governments exist to help the poor, when in reality they exist to protect rich clients from the poor. But it has always been so, and widespread poverty will continue until the myth is exposed."
http://www.strike-the-root.com/71/davies/davies7.html
"There's something revealingly similar about the facilities that can't take the stress of population growth. They are all government-run or heavily government-regulated. By nature these facilities are bureaucratic and non-entrepreneurial. No wonder they are thrown by increased demand. In contrast, private businesses (especially when not protected from competition) prosper by getting better at satisfying customers and anticipating market change. So whose fault is it when schools and hospitals are overwhelmed by immigrants? It's unfair to blame immigrants."
http://www.fee.org/in_brief/default.asp?id=1159
"[T]he RIAA is trying to preserve protections for its interests that run counter to how a civil society embraces freedom and responsibility. Just as bad, the RIAA is making the fatal mistake of treating its honest customers like criminals who have to be supervised, while their staunch position does nothing to stem actual piracy."
"The focus in the analytical array on the leaders’ decision may also suggest (correctly) that they make their decision in the service of their own interests—and, of course, those of their crucial supporting coalition of special-interest groups—not in pursuit of the people’s interest. Naturally, they invariably declare that all their actions reflect nothing but their unsullied attempt to serve the general public interest. Anyone who believes this sort of nursery tale is sorely in need of deeper immersion in the facts of history, not to mention the discipline of public choice."
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1936
"Every last shred of professed obligation to support the military, let alone the unbearable moral ambiguities piled upon soldiers, is a coordinated myth designed to trick us all into working together like a big, amoral machine - with policy wonks at the control panel, of course. The reality is that people are wrongly dying because of the State, people have always wrongly died to preserve the State, and they will continue to die until we, the people, start saying 'no'."
"[N]either the WASP Dominationists who control American policy nor the Jewish leaders of the Israeli Lobby give a damn about what Americans -- of all faiths and none -- want. These honchos serve only the interests of power. They may tell us -- they may even tell themselves -- that they are only pursuing, with unfortunate but unavoidable ruthlessness, the security of the American and Israeli people. But the record of the past decades gives overwhelming proof that these policies do not bring security; they bring only more death, more suffering, more fear -- and more money for war profiteers, and more authoritarian power for government officials to wield with increasingly weak or non-existent restraints."
http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1064&Itemid=135
"[N]ormal libertarians understand that the right to life takes precedent over the right to liberty, because life is required to make liberty possible. But this view requires living in the real world, and it is the real world which those who crave absolutes want to avoid."
http://independentcountry.blogspot.com/2007/03/pro-war-libertarian-mentality.html
"The writers of the Constitution knew how Israel changed from a decentralized militia society with a small government into a centralized, expensive monarchy with a large standing army. The story of Israel was consistent with what they had learned about England, France, Rome, and other great powers: centralism, monarchy, and standing armies created a vicious cycle of excessive growth and expensive government."
http://libertyunbound.com/archive/2007_04/kopel-israel.html
"The Julio-Claudian gangsters that started the Empire and destroyed the Republic kept the corpse of the Republic around for many years to lend themselves some kind of 'legitimacy'. There was still a Senate to legislate, albeit as long as the legislation pleased the Emperors. There were still Republican offices of tribune and consul and such like, albeit filled with Imperial lackeys."
http://emergencybackupdog.blogspot.com/2007/03/dying-republics-as-entertainment.html
"The Spanish-American war wiped off the map what remnants there were of the decrepit Spanish empire: Cuba, Puerto Rico and Philippines. It prompted the response of a group of Spanish novelists, poets, essayists, and philosophers that, up to that moment, had been at the fringes of their country's intellectual mainstream. "
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2007/Martinezsavages.html
"The Western media is emphasizing the fact that Safronov joins a list of some dozen other Russian journalists who have died under mysterious circumstances during the presidency of Vladimir Putin (including real journalists like Anna Politkovskaya and shadowland operatives like Alexander Litvinenko). Although this number is but a fraction of the death toll of journalists in George W. Bush's satrapy of Iraq, it is of course a disturbing figure. "
http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1060&Itemid=135
"In desperation to salvage something, the administration might risk even greater disasters. The Bush administration has created an unimaginable catastrophe in Iraq. It has been unable to establish a reliable client state within, and cannot withdraw without facing the possible loss of control of the Middle East's energy resources."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2029918,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=27
"Afghanistan is, today, a narco-state, one that has been handed over to the 'Northern Alliance,' i.e., former pro-Soviet puppets, and a 'parliament' consisting mostly of Islamist (albeit 'pro-American') fundamentalists with a few pro-Western intellectuals in business suits thrown in for purely decorative purposes. If that is 'liberation,' then no wonder the Taliban has growing appeal."
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=10646
"[A]n Iraqi dies from violence or deprivation every ten minutes. An American dies every ten hours. And, every ten days, significantly more than a billion dollars from the U.S. treasury is spent maintaining the occupation -- not on helping veterans, not on assisting in the reconstruction of Iraq, but on continuing the physical occupation of a country where polling and circumstances on the ground indicate that the people do not favor the continued presence of foreign forces."
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?pid=173172
"While not precisely xenophobic, the Afghans are historically hospitable and protective to a fault of visiting foreigners whom they have welcomed - witness their treatment of bin Laden - but have precious little tolerance for foreigners who, by intention or default, seek to rule them."
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/IC09Df01.html
"a French dramatist and duellist born in Paris … now best remembered for the many works of fiction which have been woven around his life story…."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrano_de_Bergerac
"Gamow showed that, as a star burns hydrogen, the star heats up. He supported the 'big bang' theory of Lemaître. He was also a popularizer of science…."
http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Gamow.html
"Embittered over being passed over for the lead in Golden Boy, which was written for him, he signed a contract with Warner Brothers, which changed his name to John Garfield. Won enormous praise for his role of the cynical Mickey Borden in Four Daughters."
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002092/
"British actress whose particular contribution to post-war cinema was to introduce a genteel eroticism to the English upper classes, playing off an unmistakable husky voice against 'English rose' respectability."
http://www.britmovie.co.uk/actors/g/002.html
"Tonio turned to her, expressionless except for some unreadable pain behind his eyes. 'You can make me take the plea bargain, Mom, because I'm underage and can't afford my own lawyer. But you. Can. Not. Make me. Take that test. I won't.' Charlotte drew back her arm to backhand him across the face. For a moment, mother and son froze, locking gazes with each other."
http://www.backwoodshome.com/columns/wolfe070305.html
"This film is in theaters now, but unfortunately not for long. Please get out to see this film! "
http://bkmarcus.com/blog/2007/03/amazing-grace
"As the subtitle indicates, 'World War Z' is an oral history, owing much to the works of Studs Terkel (in particular 'The Good War,' about the survivors of World War II). The narrative emerges over the course of a series of interviews that Brooks as interviewer conducts all over the globe."
http://libertyunbound.com/archive/2007_04/ferguson-zombie.html
"Freedom's on my mind a lot, and I got to thinking about freedom after reading about the Copyright Royalty Board and its ridiculous new fees for Webcasters. So this show includes a lot on that subject, including a huge tip of the hat to everyone participating in ventures like the Podsafe Music Network."
http://unclewarrensattic.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=189966
As Dan Bakkedahl reports, this year's daylight savings may kill our children.
http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/?lnk=v&ml_video=83445
Captain America's death teaches us that fighting to protect civil liberties is dangerous.
http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/?lnk=v&ml_video=83437
"Just hours after Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby was found guilty in his trial relating to the CIA leak scandal, Mr. Libby suffered another setback as President George W. Bush officially stripped him of his nickname in a somber White House ceremony."
http://www.borowitzreport.com/archive_rpt.asp?rec=6709
"It is believed that, upon the riff's release, even those who claim that the genre is dead will have no choice but to pump their fists, bang their heads, and bow down to the gods of rock for all eternity."
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/59249
"Something is wrong with me. I cannot understand why people don’t keep their numbers down and live in delightful towns like Boiling Springs. I do not understand economic growth. I for one, and I sometimes think I am the only one, am content with books, music, horses, dogs, fishing, the internet, and broad countryside where one may enjoy the wind and rain. I do not want more of what I don’t want any of at all."
http://fredoneverything.net/Pagan.shtml
"It's debatable how long we can make the IP address space last, especially as more and more devices, such as VoIP phones, become Internet-connected, but you can only keep squeezing the toothpaste tube for so long before it makes sense to buy a new one, even if the old one isn't technically empty. So in the early 1990s, the IETF started its 'IP next generation' effort."
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/IPv6.ars
"The internet is filled with copycats. Green-card lawyers invented spam; now everyone does it. Other people invented phishing, pharming, spear phishing. The virus, the worm, the Trojan: It's hard to believe that these ubiquitous internet attack tactics were, until comparatively recently, tactics that no one had thought of. Most attackers are copycats. They aren't clever enough to invent a new way to rob a convenience store, use the web to steal money, or hijack an airplane. They try the same attacks again and again, or read about a new attack in the newspaper and decide they can try it, too."
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/03/post.html
"A genius succeeds not through flashes of inspiration, not through some light-headed caper in the land of the muses. This misconception is the reason why those who hold it do not accomplish on the level of Newton, Leonardo, or Voltaire. The great man works, he strains himself to conquer problems at a level of difficulty unimaginable to most."
http://www.quebecoislibre.org/07/070304-3.htm
Here's who's shaping what you read, watch, hear, write, buy, sell, befriend, flame, and otherwise do online.
http://www.pcworld.com/printable/article/id,129301/printable.html
"As I wrote in that essay, being in any kind of relationship necessarily means giving another person some degree of power over one—less so in casual friendships, and much more in intimate, loving relationships."
http://www.sunnimaravillosa.com/node/1045
"All Muslims -- Shiite, Sunni, Sufi, of every possible background of national origin, ethnicity, class, etc. -- are presumably acting in carefully planned concert to accomplish this goal. Steyn doesn't say how they receive their instructions -- through the internet, perhaps? Or perhaps, being lower creatures than the 'European races,' they have an insect-like hive mind that directs their behavior? This is the puked-up tripe that is being taken seriously by the movers and shakers in America's power grid."
http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1065&Itemid=135
"There may be other explanations for this bug. If there are, Microsoft needs to make them plain and it needs to make them quickly. As it stands, OneCare appears to show a company with serious organisational problems, with products that cannot be considered safe by any competent IT manager."
http://opinion.zdnet.co.uk/leader/0,1000002208,39286244,00.htm
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