Bill Starr's Blog

Homeland Security announced Wednesday that all 50 states and the District of Columbia will be technically Real ID-compliant by the May 11, 2008 deadline--even though many states actually have rejected the concept and have zero plans to embrace a national ID card.

Homeland Security blinks on Real ID: No hassles on May 11 | The Iconoclast - politics, law, and technology - CNET News.com

Liberalism, Bureaucratization

Words of wisdom regarding regulation of business by government, penned by von Mises in 1929.

As long as enterprises look only to profit, they are proof against all the evils of bureaucratism. The bureaucratization of privately owned enterprises that we see going on about us everywhere today is purely the result of interventionism, which forces them to take into account factors that, if they were free to determine their policies for themselves, would be far from playing any role whatsoever in the conduct of their business. When a concern must pay heed to political prejudices and sensibilities of all kinds in order to avoid being continually harassed by various organs of the state, it soon finds that it is no longer in a position to base its calculations on the solid ground of profit and loss...

The result is that these and other considerations foreign to the profit-seeking principle of entrepreneurial management come to play an ever increasing role in the conduct of business, while the part played by precise calculation and cost accounting concomitantly dwindles in significance, and private enterprise begins increasingly to adopt the mode of management of public enterprises, with their elaborate apparatus of formally prescribed rules and regulations. In a word, it becomes bureaucratized.

Thus, the progressing bureaucratization of big business is by no means the result of an inexorable tendency inherent in the development of the capitalist economy. It is nothing but the necessary consequence of adopting a policy of interventionism. In the absence of government interference with their operations, even the largest firms could be run in exactly as businesslike a way as the small ones.

Liberalism, Bureaucratization

Thursday, April 03, 2008

U.S. House passes big hike in global AIDS funds -- unconstitutional!

This may be a fine charitable cause for private donors, but the U.S. government has no Constitutional authorization, and therefore no business, spending our tax dollars in this sort of fashion.

The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a bill to more than triple spending to fight AIDS in Africa and other parts of the world, one of President George W. Bush's foremost foreign aid quests.

U.S. House passes big hike in global AIDS funds | International | Reuters

In 2004, Congressman (and current presidential candidate) Ron Paul wrote:

The question nobody in Washington wants to answer is this: What gives the Congress the right to send American tax dollars overseas in the first place? Certainly not the Constitution. Why should American taxpayers, many of whom are poor themselves, be expected to fund foreign welfare? Remember that the poorest Americans are hardest hit by the inflation tax, which is the direct result of deficit spending and the printing of new money to service federal debts...

Even the worst domestic program is better than useless and meddlesome foreign aid.

Saving the World With Your Money by Ron Paul

Monday, March 31, 2008

Another Unexpected Recovery from a Brain Dead Accident Victim | The New American

Ann Shibler writes:

Forty-eight days after being declared dead, Zack returned home under his own power...

These types of "miracles" that come to our attention really do challenge the medical community’s protocols when it comes to medical treatment of the minimally conscious and even brain-dead patients. But this can only be for the better. The more miracles there are, the more improved and longer-lasting treatments will become. Perhaps others will be given the time and care they need to recover, and not so quickly relegated to the morgue.

Another Unexpected Recovery from a Brain Dead Accident Victim | The New American

The Supreme Court Lessens Executive Power | The New American

This looks like a good ruling.

"Some 70 U.S. treaties may be affected by Tuesday’s Supreme Court ruling making the president’s unilateral imposition of treaties unconstitutional. The Supreme Court ruled that treaties are not binding on states unless they explicitly say so or if there is legislation to make that clear."

The Supreme Court Lessens Executive Power | The New American

FIRST THINGS: On the Square » Blog Archive » Evidence-Based Standard of Care

Excellent perspective on having a child with Down syndrome.

"And I will try to remember the fear and shock I felt when the words “Down syndrome” first became a part of our reality, and have compassion for every person who has trouble understanding the blessing Penny is to our family. And yet I will also hope and pray that physicians advising women and families who are frightened and uncertain and faced with life-changing decisions will offer those women a true choice, an informed choice, a choice based on the evidence that all of life is fragile and uncertain, with potential for heartbreak and potential for great joy."

FIRST THINGS: On the Square » Blog Archive » Evidence-Based Standard of Care

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Radio 4 news hit by giggling fit -- BBC

I love this.

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Radio 4 news hit by giggling fit

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Beware of Fantasy by Charley Reese

Charley Reese writes, "Americans in particular should keep in mind that we are currently engaged in mismanaging two occupations of two countries that we illegally invaded. Neither enterprise is going well. Neither is our economy. In short, we have enough on our own plate without trying to steal a bite off of China's plate. We should make sure that Afghanistan and Iran are the last wheezes of the sick American Empire and shut it down and return to our republic."

Beware of Fantasy by Charley Reese

William F. Buckley Jr.: the Establishment’s “House Conservative”

The FBI Hyperlink Honeypot, and what you can do to stay safe

The Liberty Papers »Blog Archive » The FBI Hyperlink Honeypot, and what you can do to stay safe

Agricultural Welfare

Deroy Muroch, writing for Scripps Howard, has a column on how ridiculous farm subsidies are in the present conditions.

Masson’s Blog - A Citizen’s Guide to Indiana » Agricultural Welfare

How Saudi Justice Is Sometimes More Merciful Than American Justice

The Liberty Papers »Blog Archive » How Saudi Justice Is Sometimes More Merciful Than American Justice

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

New York Global Warming Conference Considers 'Manhattan Declaration'

We, the scientists and researchers in climate and related fields, economists, policymakers, and business leaders, assembled at Times Square, New York City, participating in the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change,

Resolving that scientific questions should be evaluated solely by the scientific method...

recommend --

That world leaders reject the views expressed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as popular, but misguided works such as "An Inconvenient Truth."

That all taxes, regulations, and other interventions intended to reduce emissions of CO2 be abandoned forthwith.

New York Global Warming Conference Considers 'Manhattan Declaration' - by Heartland Institute staff - The Heartland Institute

Ludwig von Mises on the folly of the minimum wage

The 1927 comments of Ludwig von Mises on government interventionism still ring true in 2008.

Generally, however, in the capitalist system, with its rapid strides in improving human welfare, progress takes place too swiftly to spare individuals the necessity of adapting themselves to it... The worker too must adjust himself to changing conditions, must add to what he has learned, or begin learning anew. He must leave occupations which no longer require the same number of workers as previously and enter one which has just come into being or which now needs more workers than before. But even if he remains in his old job, he must learn new techniques when circumstances demand it.

All this affects the worker in the form of changes in wage rates. If a particular branch of business employs relatively too many workers, it discharges some, and those discharged will not easily find new work in the same branch of business. The pressure on the labor market exercised by the discharged workers depresses wages in this branch of production. This, in turn, induces the worker to look for employment in those branches of production that wish to attract new workers and are therefore prepared to pay higher wages...

If, however, the government fixes minimum wages by law above the height of the static or natural wage, then the employers will find that they are no longer in a position to carry on successfully a number of enterprises that were still profitable when wages stood at the lower point. They will consequently curtail production and discharge workers. The effect of an artificial rise in wages, i.e., one imposed upon the market from the outside, is, therefore, the spread of unemployment...

What does create a new situation in the labor market is the element of coercion involved in strikes and compulsory union membership that prevails today in most of the industrial countries of Europe. Since the unionized workers deny access to employment to those who are not members of their union, and resort to open violence during strikes to prevent other workers from taking the place of those on strike, the wage demands that the unions present to the employers have precisely the same force as government decrees fixing minimum wage rates... Thus, the higher wages exacted by the trade unions become a cause of unemployment...

For the unemployed to be granted support by the government or by the unions only serves to enlarge the evil... The jobless worker who is on relief does not consider it necessary to look about for a new occupation if he no longer finds a position in his old one; at least, he allows more time to elapse before he decides to shift to a new occupation or to a new locality or before he reduces the wage rate he demands to that at which he could find work. If unemployment benefits are not set too low, one can say that as long as they are offered, unemployment cannot disappear...

It is obviously futile to attempt to eliminate unemployment by embarking upon a program of public works that would otherwise not have been undertaken. The necessary resources for such projects must be withdrawn by taxes or loans from the application they would otherwise have found. Unemployment in one industry can, in this way, be mitigated only to the extent that it is increased in another.

From whichever side we consider interventionism, it becomes evident that this system leads to a result that its originators and advocates did not intend and that, even from their standpoint, it must appear as a senseless, self-defeating, absurd policy.

Liberalism, The Organization of the Economy

Sunday, March 23, 2008

The War on Recession - Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. - Mises Institute

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. writes, "Take a look at Murray Rothbard's book The Panic of 1819. Here we have America's first big financial panic. The public was going nuts demanding answers. Congressmen proposed this and that. Debates raged in the papers. But government ultimately took no action at all. Sure enough, the panic went away on its own. So it was in 1920 and 1921. The government didn't intervene and voila normalcy returned."

The War on Recession - Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. - Mises Institute

Congress Raises the Debt Ceiling To Accomdate Bush’s Legacy | The John Birch Society - Truth, Leadership, Freedom

When President Bush took office, the national debt stood at $5.7 trillion. Today it is $9.2 trillion and rising, projected to increase to $9.7 trillion by the time President Bush leaves office — up by $4 trillion in eight years. This is the legacy our children and grandchildren will inherit from the fiscal policy of this administration.

Congress Raises the Debt Ceiling To Accomdate Bush’s Legacy | The John Birch Society - Truth, Leadership, Freedom

Friday, March 21, 2008

More Lies From the Fascists by Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. Mr. Roberts writes:

The choice between FISA and the Protect America Act has nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism, at least not from foreign terrorists. Bush and his brownshirts object to FISA, because the law requires Bush to obtain warrants from a FISA court. Warrants mean that Bush is accountable. Bush and his brownshirts argue that accountability is an infringement on the power of the president.

To escape accountability, the Brownshirt Party came up with the Protect America Act. This act eliminates Bush’s accountability to judges and gives the telecom companies immunity from the felonies they committed by acquiescing in Bush’s illegal spying.

Bush began violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in October 2001 when he spied on Americans without obtaining warrants from the FISA court...

As the lawmakers who gave us FISA understood, spying on people without warrants lets a political party collect dirt on its adversaries with which to blackmail them. As Bush illegally spied a long time before word of it got out, blackmail might be the reason the Democrats have ignored their congressional election mandate and have not put a stop to Bush’s illegal wars and unconstitutional police state measures.

Perhaps the Democrats have finally caught on that they cannot function as a political party as long as they continue to permit Bush to spy on them. For one reason or another, they have let the Orwellian-named Protect America Act expire.

With the Protect America Act, Bush and his brownshirts are trying to establish the independence of the executive branch from statutory law and the Constitution. The FISA law means that the president is accountable to federal judges for warrants. Bush and the brownshirt Republicans are striving to make the president independent of all accountability. The brownshirts insist that the leader knows best and can tolerate no interference from the law, the judiciary, the Congress, or the Constitution, and certainly not from the American people who, the brownshirts tell us, won’t be safe unless Bush is very powerful.

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison saw it differently. The American people cannot be safe unless the president is accountable and under many restraints.

Pray that the Democrats have caught on that they cannot give the executive branch unaccountable powers to spy and still have grounds on which to refuse the executive branch unaccountable powers elsewhere.

Republicans have used the "war on terror" to create an unaccountable executive. To prevent the presidency from becoming a dictatorial office, it is crucial that Congress cease acquiescing in Bush’s grab for powers. As the Founding Fathers warned us, the terrorists we have to fear are the ones in power in Washington.

The al Qaeda terrorists, with whom Bush has been frightening us, have no power to destroy our liberties. Compared to the loss of liberty, a terrorist attack is nothing.

Meanwhile, Bush, the beneficiary of two stolen elections, has urged Zimbabwe to hold a fair election. America gets away with its hypocrisy because no one in our government has enough shame to blush.

More Lies From the Fascists by Paul Craig Roberts

The Anti-war Speech That Earned Eugene Debs 10 Years in Prison

Prominent labor organizer and political activist Eugene Debs delivered a speech in Canton, Ohio, on 16 June 1918. Because of it, he was prosecuted under the Sedition Act for interfering with the draft, leading to a 10-year prison sentence and the stripping of his US citizenship. Mr. Debs said:

The feudal barons of the Middle Ages, the economic predecessors of the capitalists of our day, declared all wars. And their miserable serfs fought all the battles. The poor, ignorant serfs had been taught to revere their masters; to believe that when their masters declared war upon one another, it was their patriotic duty to fall upon one another and to cut one another's throats for the profit and glory of the lords and barons who held them in contempt. And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose -- especially their lives.

They have always taught and trained you to believe it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world you, the people, have never had a voice in declaring war, and strange as it certainly appears, no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people.

And here let me emphasize the fact -- and it cannot be repeated too often -- that the working class who fight all the battles, the working class who make the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely shed their blood and furnish the corpses, have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both. They alone declare war and they alone make peace. Yours not to reason why; Yours but to do and die. That is their motto and we object on the part of the awakening workers of this nation. If war is right let it be declared by the people. You who have your lives to lose, you certainly above all others have the right to decide the momentous issue of war or peace....

You need at this time especially to know that you are fit for something better than slavery and cannon fodder. You need to know that you were not created to work and produce and impoverish yourself to enrich an idle exploiter. You need to know that you have a mind to improve, a soul to develop, and a manhood to sustain....

They are continually talking about your patriotic duty. It is not their but your patriotic duty that they are concerned about. There is a decided difference. Their patriotic duty never takes them to the firing line or chucks them into the trenches....

The Memory Hole > The Anti-war Speech That Earned Eugene Debs 10 Years in Prison

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Bernanke: Federal Reserve caused Great Depression

Despite the varied theories espoused by many establishment economists, it was none other than the Federal Reserve that caused the Great Depression and the horrific suffering, deprivation and dislocation America and the world experienced in its wake. At least, that's the clearly stated view of current Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke.

Bernanke: Federal Reserve caused Great Depression

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Vision Forum at the Supreme Court Hearing on the Second Amendment: Part I

Bob smiled. “Well, if you are going to use that evidentiary argument, then do you realize that in every state that has passed concealed carry laws, the crime rate has dropped in each of those states? So I believe that the Supreme Court should affirm the appellant decision overturning the gun ban, and thus allow law-abiding citizens to carry concealed weapons.”

Doug's Blog: Vision Forum at the Supreme Court Hearing on the Second Amendment: Part I

von Mises on "The War on Drugs"

Excellent commentary by von Mises in 1927 on the folly of our present-day "war on drugs".

By way of context, this was written midway through the 1920 to 1933 of the legal prohibition of alcohol production and consumption in the United States.

Also, the meaning of the term "liberal" has morphed into almost the opposite since von Mises wrote. The present-day equivalent would be closer to today's libertarian.

von Mises writes:

As the liberal sees it, the task of the state consists solely and exclusively in guaranteeing the protection of life, health, liberty, and private property against violent attacks. Everything that goes beyond this is an evil...

It is universally deemed one of the tasks of legislation and government to protect the individual from himself. Even those who otherwise generally have misgivings about extending the area of governmental activity consider it quite proper that the freedom of the individual should be curtailed in this respect, and they think that only a benighted doctrinairism could oppose such prohibitions...

No words need be wasted over the fact that all these narcotics are harmful. The question whether even a small quantity of alcohol is harmful or whether the harm results only from the abuse of alcoholic beverages is not at issue here. It is an established fact that alcoholism, cocainism, and morphinism are deadly enemies of life, of health, and of the capacity for work and enjoyment; and a utilitarian must therefore consider them as vices. But this is far from demonstrating that the authorities must interpose to suppress these vices by commercial prohibitions, nor is it by any means evident that such intervention on the part of the government is really capable of suppressing them or that, even if this end could be attained, it might not therewith open up a Pandora's box of other dangers, no less mischievous than alcoholism and morphinism...

For if the majority of citizens is, in principle, conceded the right to impose its way of life upon a minority, it is impossible to stop at prohibitions against indulgence in alcohol, morphine, cocaine, and similar poisons. Why should not what is valid for these poisons be valid also for nicotine, caffeine, and the like? Why should not the state generally prescribe which foods may be indulged in and which must be avoided because they are injurious? ...

We see that as soon as we surrender the principle that the state should not interfere in any questions touching on the individual's mode of life, we end by regulating and restricting the latter down to the smallest detail. The personal freedom of the individual is abrogated. He becomes a slave of the community, bound to obey the dictates of the majority...

All mankind's progress has been achieved as a result of the initiative of a small minority that began to deviate from the ideas and customs of the majority until their example finally moved the others to accept the innovation themselves. To give the majority the right to dictate to the minority what it is to think, to read, and to do is to put a stop to progress once and for all...

The propensity of our contemporaries to demand authoritarian prohibition as soon as something does not please them, and their readiness to submit to such prohibitions even when what is prohibited is quite agreeable to them shows how deeply ingrained the spirit of servility still remains within them. It will require many long years of self-education until the subject can turn himself into the citizen. A free man must be able to endure it when his fellow men act and live otherwise than he considers proper. He must free himself from the habit, just as soon as something does not please him, of calling for the police.

Liberalism, The Limits of Governmental Activity

The Fed's New Tricks Are Creating Disaster - Frank Shostak - Mises Institute

Frank Shostak writes, "The engine of economic growth is not money, however, but real savings. If the pool of real saving is declining or stagnating, then the economy -- also in terms of GDP -- will follow suit, irrespective of what the Fed is doing."

The Fed's New Tricks Are Creating Disaster - Frank Shostak - Mises Institute

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

von Mises on the power of ideas

The more I read by Ludwig von Mises, the more I find to like.

von Mises writes (1927), "Repression by brute force is always a confession of the inability to make use of the better weapons of the intellect -- better because they alone give promise of final success. This is the fundamental error from which Fascism suffers and which will ultimately cause its downfall... The ultimate outcome of the struggle, however, will not be decided by arms, but by ideas. It is ideas that group men into fighting factions, that press the weapons into their hands, and that determine against whom and for whom the weapons shall be used. It is they alone, and not arms, that, in the last analysis, turn the scales."

Liberalism, The Argument of Fascism

Ludwig von Mises on the Iraq War

Some 1927 words of wisdom from Ludwig von Mises seem relevant to our war in Iraq today.

"Only a group that can count on the consent of the governed can establish a lasting regime. Whoever wants to see the world governed according to his own ideas must strive for dominion over men's minds. It is impossible, in the long run, to subject men against their will to a regime that they reject. Whoever tries to do so by force will ultimately come to grief, and the struggles provoked by his attempt will do more harm than the worst government based on the consent of the governed could ever do. Men cannot be made happy against their will."

Liberalism, Critique of the Doctrine of Force

Truncating the Antecedents by Robert Higgs

Robert Higgs writes, "Many people are misled by formalities. They assume, for example, that the United States went to war against Germany and Japan only after its declarations of war against these nations in December 1941. In truth, the United States had been at war for a long time before making these declarations. Its warmaking took a variety of forms. For example, the U.S. navy conducted "shoot [Germans] on sight" convoys, which might include British ships, in the North Atlantic along the greater part the shipping route from the United States to Great Britain, even though German U-boats had orders to refrain (and did refrain) from initiating attacks on American shipping. The United States and Great Britain entered into arrangements to pool intelligence, combine weapons development, test military equipment jointly, and undertake other forms of war-related cooperation. The U.S. military actively cooperated with the British military in combat operations against the Germans, for example, by alerting the British navy of aerial or marine sightings of German submarines, which the British then attacked. The U.S. government undertook in countless ways to provide military and other supplies and assistance to the British, the French, and the Soviets, who were fighting the Germans. The U.S. government provided military and other supplies and assistance, including warplanes and pilots, to the Chinese, who were at war with Japan. The U.S. military actively engaged in planning with the British, the British Commonwealth countries, and the Dutch East Indies for future combined combat operations against Japan. Most important, the U.S. government engaged in a series of increasingly stringent economic warfare measures that pushed the Japanese into a predicament that U.S. authorities well understood would probably provoke them to attack U.S. territories and forces in the Pacific region in a quest to secure essential raw materials that the Americans, British, and Dutch (government in exile) had embargoed."

Truncating the Antecedents by Robert Higgs

The Ron Paul Campaign: The Glass is Half Full, by Rand Paul | Ron Paul for President 2008 - Ron Paul Revolution

Dr. Ron Paul's son, Dr. Rand Paul, writes, "My prediction for 2008: an utter crushing defeat for Republicans. Not out of anger for Ron Paul's loss, I think he won, but because Republicans are failing on two fronts: not living up to the promises of limited government and balanced budgets and failing to understand how unpopular the Iraq War has become. One last prediction! We will elect at least one Ron Paul Republican to Congress this year."

The Ron Paul Campaign: The Glass is Half Full, by Rand Paul | Ron Paul for President 2008 - Ron Paul Revolution

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Twenty-five tips on staying married

Twenty-five tips on staying married fit for wedding gift : Opinion Columnists : Evansville Courier Press

Upskirt Invasions, Urinary Usurpations::By Paul Jacob

Paul Jacob writes, "Just as I would not want some Peeping Tom taking pictures up the skirts of my daughters, I would not want some local school forcing them to urinate into a cup simply to make it easier for school personnel to kick out a few drug abusers... Call me crazy, but I prefer freedom. It is demonstrated criminal behavior that should warrant the intrusions of police power. Not mere generalized suspicion... For some reason, though, the lovers of power keep lurching to policies that diminish the liberties of all rather than attack invasive behavior of the few."

Townhall.com::Upskirt Invasions, Urinary Usurpations::By Paul Jacob

Big Government at Home and Abroad, Part 2

Jacob Hornberger writes:

Unfortunately, that limited-government foreign policy was ultimately abandoned in favor of an extensive overseas empire, one which now stations U.S. troops in more than 120 countries and in which the federal Leviathan now serves as the world’s international policeman, invader, occupier, torturer, and executioner.

Equally tragic is how U.S. officials, with the support of many Americans, have used the blowback from U.S. foreign policy to suspend the freedoms of the American people. There is spying on Americans, including monitoring of phone calls and email. There are secret courts and secret judicial proceedings. There are “signing statements,” which enable the president to ignore laws enacted by Congress. There are “executive orders,” which enable him to rule by decree.

Worst of all, there is the “enemy-combatant” doctrine, which now authorizes the military to take any American into custody, torture him, and keep him incarcerated for the rest of his life, despite what the Bill of Rights says about due process of law and trial by jury. With its direct military power to arrest, torture, and detain indefinitely, the enemy-combatant doctrine easily constitutes the most direct assault on American liberty in our lifetime.

Is there a way out of all this? Yes, but it involves a return to the founding principles of our nation, not just in domestic affairs but in foreign affairs as well. Private property. Individual liberty. A limited-government republic. The Constitution. The Bill of Rights. Due process of law. Habeas corpus. Trial by jury. Such principles constitute our heritage. Herein lies the key to extricating ourselves from the morass into which we have been plunged.

Big Government at Home and Abroad, Part 2

Thursday, March 13, 2008

planadviser - Cooling Off Periods?

However, the energy-savings numbers often cited by lawmakers and others come from research conducted in the 1970s – which, according to researchers, overlooks the prevalence of air conditioning today. The most recent study showed that while an extra hour of daylight in the evenings may mean less electricity is spent on lights, it also means that houses are warmer in the summer when people come home from work. Conversely, during daylight-saving time's cooler months, people may crank up the thermostats more in the morning.

planadviser - Cooling Off Periods?

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Warning Signs: Two Weeks Away from a Revolution

Alan Caruba writes:

Americans are being screwed by their own government. It’s being led by a President who insists we are “addicted” to oil and a Congress that will not permit the exploration or extraction of the oil we have, so we have to import most of it.

It is a Congress whose leadership such as Rep. Pelosi, Sen. Reid, Sen. Lieberman, and others keep lying about global warming. Sen. Hillary Clinton wants to seize oil company profits and spend it in some fashion, presumably not to find any new oil. Sen. McCain is a global warming believer, too. All of these people are a danger to the future of this nation and there doesn’t appear to be a damn thing we can do about it.

Thanks to them, life for Americans is going to get more expensive.

One wonders when the revolution will begin?

Warning Signs: Two Weeks Away from a Revolution

LONG-TERM SOLUTIONS TO THE HOUSING CRISIS

The historical experience of the past decades is that subsidized housing quickly deteriorates and does not help those it was intended to. On the contrary, it provides unfair competition to the remaining private landlords who offer apartments to low income families, thus deepening the shortage in private units.

LONG-TERM SOLUTIONS TO THE HOUSING CRISIS

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Can Foreign Aid Save Africa?

I agree with Ron Paul.

Why are politicians in the United States deciding what is best for people in Africa? And why are taxpayers in the United States being forced to fund –- for example -- family planning facilities that perform abortions?

Africans should decide what is best for Africa. American taxpayers should decide what charities deserve their money. Forcibly taking money from the United States and sending it overseas is unconstitutional and immoral.

It is sadly symptomatic of the trend toward bigger government that instead of private fundraising efforts, people put their hand out to Congress. It is unfortunate that some activists prefer funding taken by force, to donations freely given.

Can Foreign Aid Save Africa?

Monday, March 10, 2008

Letter to the editor: Eastern DST uses more energy

Date: Sun, 9 Mar 2008 18:08:11 -0400
From: "Bill Starr"
To: "John Harmon"
Subject: Letter to the editor: Eastern DST uses more energy

The morning daylight arrived one hour later Sunday morning, just as we all expected with the first day of DST.

However, if it feels like you're losing about two hours of morning daylight this time of year, there's a good reason.

According to the US Naval Observatory, the sun passed overhead in Columbus on Saturday, March 8 at 12:54 pm (http://tinyurl.com/2setkh). So we already had 54 minutes of daylight shifted from morning to evening the day before starting DST, just from being on eastern time rather than central.

On Sunday, the solar transit was 1:54 pm, so we had almost two full hours of daylight shifted from morning to evening with DST on March 9.

When a public referendum was held in 1956 asking Hoosier voters their preference on Eastern versus Central time and whether to use daylight-saving time in the summer months, the only clear consensus that emerged was that most opposed the "double-fast time" that would result from being on Eastern Standard Time and switching to Eastern Daylight Time in the summer (http://tinyurl.com/296mt9).

Shifting two hours of daylight from morning to evening in March would be more tolerable if it were saving us energy, per the conventional wisdom. That was the supposed justification for Congress's extending DST from 7 to 8 months starting in 2007.

However, a recent study of Hoosier energy usage by University of California-Santa Barbara researchers indicates that DST actually increases energy usage by 1 to 4 percent, and therefore costs us money. The study does not indicate whether the artificial "DST" effect of being in the geographically incorrect time zone might be adding even more cost.

The original paper dated 5 Feb 2008 can be found at "http://tinyurl.com/366x8x". A Wall Street Journal summary by Justin Lahart on 27 Feb 2008 communicated the findings to a broader audience (http://tinyurl.com/35oz8d).

Mr. Lahart wrote, "Having the entire state switch to daylight-saving time each year, rather than stay on standard time, costs Indiana households an additional $8.6 million [per year] in electricity bills. They conclude that the reduced cost of lighting in afternoons during daylight-saving time is more than offset by the higher air-conditioning costs on hot afternoons and increased heating costs on cool mornings... The energy-savings numbers often cited by lawmakers and others come from research conducted in the 1970s. Yet a key difference between now and the '70s... is the prevalence of air conditioning."

If you'd like to see a more equitable share of morning daylight, and potentially cut your utility bills as well, here are two actions to consider.

1) Encourage your two state legislators to sponsor and support legislation like this session's Senate Bill 34 (http://tinyurl.com/2x5wgm), which would request the DOT to move Indiana back to the central time zone.

Even if the 5 counties by Louisville and Cincinnati stayed on eastern, we'd still increase the number of Hoosiers in a single time zone from 81.6 to 95.7 percent.

2) Encourage your three U.S. Congressmen to sponsor and support legislation to cut the DST period back to 7 or 6 months, or even eliminate DST altogether.

Besides cutting energy use and costs, who knows how many person-hours the country could put to better use than changing clocks twice per year.

Sincerely,
Bill Starr
Columbus, Indiana
Sun, 9 Mar 2008, 6:08 pm EDT

Intellectual Conservative Politics and Philosophy » It Takes a Village to Raise an Idiot: California and Parental Rights

Dr. Brian C. Melton writes:

Today, people reflexively expect the state and federal governments to assume control. This is unfortunate on at least two levels. First, the government (especially as influenced by modern educational theorists) is the least qualified to act in a parent’s stead. Second, as we see here in California, the government tends to go after just those parents who are the least likely to need supervision: parents who care enough about their children’s future to take a personal hand in shaping it.

Intellectual Conservative Politics and Philosophy » It Takes a Village to Raise an Idiot: California and Parental Rights

Virtual Fence at Arizona Border Doesn’t Work | The New American

John F. McManus writes:

There is one step that would greatly ease the illegal immigration problem, if not end it completely. All that’s needed is to put a stop to providing a variety of taxpayer-supplied benefits to those who have broken the law to come here. No more education, medical care, food, housing, etc. No more anchor babies who are then cited as legal justification for family members to be here. Let those who aspire to live and work in the United States aspire to complete the process of legal immigration.

Virtual Fence at Arizona Border Doesn’t Work | The New American

Policing the World Not the Job of Our Nation’s Military | The New American

John F. McManus writes:

The question has to be asked: Is it the task of our nation’s military to seek, find, and attempt to destroy a person suspected of attacks not directed at the United States?

Waging a "war on terrorism" will never end. It provides an excuse for military operations and diplomatic meddling here, there and everywhere. It certainly endangers those who serve in the U.S. military and who are repeatedly tasked with missions that never would be authorized without claims they are directed at terrorists.

We repeat: Our troops should be brought home and used only for the role the American people expect of them and what they are willing to be taxed for, not for the role of policing the world they are now filling.

Policing the World Not the Job of Our Nation’s Military | The New American

Sunday, March 09, 2008

Making Government Indoctrination Compulsory | The New American

Selwyn Duke writes, "The social engineers want a monopoly over the heart and mind of man; hence hate-speech laws, speech codes on college campuses and in workplaces — and campaigns against natural schooling... What we really need is a separation of school and state."

Making Government Indoctrination Compulsory | The New American

Cute take on atheism.

Cute take on atheism.

athe.jpg (JPEG Image, 450x450 pixels)

Masson’s Blog - A Citizen’s Guide to Indiana » DST quote

I object to being told that I am saving daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind. I even object to the implication that I am wasting something valuable if I stay in bed after the sun has risen. As an admirer of moonlight I resent the bossy insistence of those who want to reduce my time for enjoying it. At the back of the Daylight Saving scheme I detect the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy and wise in spite of themselves.

– Robertson Davies, The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks, 1947, XIX, Sunday

Masson’s Blog - A Citizen’s Guide to Indiana » DST quote

The Numbers Guy : Why Your Clock Changes Sunday

Good DST discussion.

The Numbers Guy : Why Your Clock Changes Sunday

Clock: Update your PC for the new Daylight Saving Time

Infmom writes, "Meanwhile, if the goal is to get people to go to bed earlier and get up earlier, just shift the TV schedules ahead by an hour."

This is a very creative solution I have not heard before. Would probably need to be coordinated with flexible summer work hours to work effectively.

Clock: Update your PC for the new Daylight Saving Time

Press 'ignores' terrorist stopped by armed student

"America's acquiescence to anti-gun hysteria has led to one tragedy after another," Gottlieb stated. "This disastrous policy has given us nothing but broken hearts and body counts, and it's got to end. The heroism of an armed Israeli seminary student halfway across the world sends a message that we needn't submit to murder in victim disarmament zones. That's why his actions are getting such short shrift from America's press. It's a story they are loathe to report because it affirms a philosophy of self-reliance that they despise."

Press 'ignores' terrorist stopped by armed <I>student</i>

Daily Herald - Changing clocks is a downer

Saturday, March 08, 2008

Watching Those We Chose: DST actually COSTS energy

Thursday, March 06, 2008

Things I've Learned from being a Ron Paul Supporter | Ron Paul for President 2008 - Ron Paul Revolution

Rands In Repose: I Don't Multitask

I'm not quite sure why, but I like this.

Rands In Repose: I Don't Multitask

Rands In Repose: I Don't Multitask

I'm not quite sure why, but I like this.

Rands In Repose: I Don't Multitask

Sunday, March 02, 2008

The Right to Sell Organs

Sigrid Fry-Revere asks:

Why, in a society where the exchange of money for goods and services is the norm, should people be limited to the two options of giving their bodies away or having the government take them without asking?

To make a real dent in the organ shortage, states don't need more laws, more police investigations, more active recruitment of donors, or more aggressive tactics to get families to donate; what they need is a legitimate market.

The real way to stop the transplant nightmare is staring us in the face. Just let people do what they naturally do — exchange money for goods and services.

The Right to Sell Organs

Friday, February 29, 2008

You Are What You Spend - New York Times

If we look at consumption per person, the difference between the richest and poorest households falls to just 2.1 to 1.

I heard about this article on Neal Boortz and again from SchansBlog.

You Are What You Spend - New York Times

Could Ron Paul Trigger a GOP Revival? by Colin Colenso

Colin Colenso writes, "It is time for mainstream Republicans to welcome and assist the Ron Paul Republicans in reviving a stronger GOP with a clear and powerful voice for the future. It is time for mainstream Republicans to support Ron Paul as their best chance, for not only winning the election in 2008, but in reviving the Republican party and its conservative ideals."

Could Ron Paul Trigger a GOP Revival? by Colin Colenso

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Daylight Saving Wastes Energy, Study Says - WSJ.com

Having the entire state switch to daylight-saving time each year, rather than stay on standard time, costs Indiana households an additional $8.6 million in electricity bills.

Just what a lot of us have been thinking.

Daylight Saving Wastes Energy, Study Says - WSJ.com

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Bombed if you do...

Ron Paul writes, "The truth is Iran is being asked to do the logically impossible feat of proving a negative. They are being presumed guilty until proven innocent because there is no evidence with which to indict them. There is still no evidence that Iran, a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, has ever violated the treaty's terms – and the terms clearly state that Iran is allowed to pursue nuclear energy for peaceful, civilian energy needs. The United States cannot unilaterally change the terms of the treaty, and it is unfair and unwise diplomatically to impose sanctions for no legitimate reason."

Bombed if you do...

On Illegal Immigration and Border Security

Ron Paul writes, "Right now we are subsidizing a lot of illegal immigration with our robust social programs and it is an outrage that instead of coming to the United States as a land of opportunity, many come for the security guaranteed by government forced transfer payments through our welfare system."

On Illegal Immigration and Border Security

The True Cost of Taxing and Spending

Ron Paul writes, "So, a family of four would pay $46,000 just for this war."

The True Cost of Taxing and Spending

Gates Announces More Foreign Entanglements | The New American

John McManus writes:

Why should our country maintain a military arm? The only answer that makes any sense is that we have a military force to protect the lives, liberty, and property of the American people, the people who pay for it. That's all! Not to intervene when two factions in some far-off nation start killing each other. Not to decide it is America's right and duty to decide what type of government exists in some foreign land. And not to enforce United Nations Security Council resolutions — which is the incredibly wrong justification that was employed for sending our forces into Iraq.

Gates Announces More Foreign Entanglements | The New American

Real Inconvenient Truths.... About Abortion | The John Birch Society - Truth, Leadership, Freedom

Doesn’t the similarity between your defense of abortion, and Douglas’ defense of slavery, bother you in any way?

Does it raise in your mind any suspicions at all that you might just be on the wrong side?

Real Inconvenient Truths.... About Abortion | The John Birch Society - Truth, Leadership, Freedom

Monday, February 25, 2008

Common Sense and the Drug Problem

Hank Sames writes:

There are doctors, lawyers, and other professionals who smoke pot as casually as drinking a cocktail. This disregard for the law from otherwise law-abiding citizens is not good for society. Legislating personal behavior that does not inflict violence on others encroaches on personal freedom, and when citizens do not perceive harm to themselves, the law becomes unsustainable in a free society.

One of the great harms that come with making drugs illegal is the criminal activity that goes along with it. The organized-crime gangs that are involved in the illegal drug trade have become both rich and violent. The money they receive from drugs allows them to corrupt local law enforcement and politicians.

Our law-enforcement system is overwhelmed because of the drug war. The more time that law enforcement spends on drug cases, the less time it spends on crimes of violence.

What would legalization of drugs do? First off, it would relegate drug use and abuse to the private sector, where it rightly belongs. It would also shrink the prison population and relieve the courts of those cases. That would create huge cost savings. Legalization would relieve citizens of the tremendous tax burden to fund the drug war.

A country that is educated about drug use and abuse and has personal freedom as its core value is a much healthier society. It is time for Americans to face the drug war — and its failures — head on and put a stop to this decades-long, failed, and destructive policy.

Common Sense and the Drug Problem

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Dishonest Scales by Larry L. Beane II

Larry L. Beane II writes:

So, why was there no inflation (devaluation) of the currency until 1913? That's the year the United States created a central bank. The Constitution makes no provision for the Federal government to do any such thing, and the Constitution even specifies that money must be backed by gold and silver. But, of course, the folks that tell us the Constitution is a "living document" will tell us that the dollar simply must be "flexible" (while the same people would never in a thousand years propose a "flexible" foot, pound, or gallon to shrink over the course of time).

Today, the dollar has no definitional standard – unlike the highly regulated gallon or inch. Rather, dollars – freed from any tie to gold or silver – are printed on paper out of nothing. Every year, the government incurs an ever-increasing debt, and constantly prints more money to pay its bills (great gig, huh?), which lowers the relative market value of every dollar in your pocket (or in your money market fund, in your stock portfolio, or even dollars that you have yet to earn).

Uh, what does Scripture say about "dishonest scales" again?

Dishonest Scales by Larry L. Beane II

Friday, February 22, 2008

Do Elections Guarantee Freedom?

James Bovard writes:

The... American voter... [is] merely asked to personally consecrate the continued violations of the highest law of the land by whoever won. The current system of government is structured so that voters effectively have to vest near-absolute power in someone. This is simply how the rulers and the establishment have fixed the game. Any choice that would deny nearly boundless power to the rulers is kept out of the sunlight by the powers that be.

Bush’s reelection made clear that a president’s proclaimed goals could exonerate his methods — thus largely obliterating many of the safeguards built in by the Framers of the Constitution. But elections based on the winner’s receiving unlimited power are based on far different principles than are elections in which winners remain subservient to the Constitution and the law. This is the difference between voting for a master and voting for a chief law-enforcement officer. America is far closer today to what the Framers dreaded — “slavery by constitutional forms.”

With current elections, people are permitted to choose whose pawns they will be. Voting is becoming more like a medieval act of fealty — with voters bowing down their heads and promising obedience to whoever is proclaimed the winner.

What if being permitted to choose a master once every four years is the primary “freedom” left? Are citizens merely choosing whose vassal they will be? Many citizens today behave like slaves who spent their time wishing for a good master, rather than scouting up information on runaway routes.

America was born as a republic — with limited-government powers, carefully crafted checks and balances, and distinct roles for the people, for legislators, for judges, and for the executive branch. Many Americans these days are content with “democracy” — regardless of how much of the strength and safeguards of the original Constitution have been lost.

Do Elections Guarantee Freedom?

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Secrets: The Amazing Sierra Hull

Great review and video of young musician!

Secrets: The Amazing Sierra Hull

Arming the Academy | The John Birch Society - Truth, Leadership, Freedom

Selwyn Duke writes:

Does it make sense to think that declaring a school a "gun-free zone" will do anything but render the hands of potential white knights gun-free?

Then there is the idea that individuals deemed sane enough to carry a gun beyond the boundaries of the academy are not equipped to do so within them. Are we to believe that, upon stepping foot on campus, a person is seized by a unique madness that causes him to temporarily take leave of his senses?

The reality is that the academy is a great bastion of leftist feeling posing as thought, and its minions just don’t like firearms. But with gun-free now synonymous with shooting spree, they would do well to remember that guns don’t kill people, bad policies do.

Arming the Academy | The John Birch Society - Truth, Leadership, Freedom

Townhall.com::Why Are Americans Giving Up Their Freedom?::By David Strom

David Strom writes:

Dispensing with the idea of limited government in realm of benefits has meant dispensing with the idea of any limits to government power at all. Once we accept the notion that government should ensure that our pursuit of happiness succeeds, we have accepted the notion that government has the right to define what a happy life should look like...

Can conservatives succeed in convincing Americans that government benefits, and hence power, should be limited? Perhaps. But only if they remind Americans (as Barry Goldwater did) that a government big enough to give you everything you want is one big enough to take away everything you have.

Townhall.com::Why Are Americans Giving Up Their Freedom?::By David Strom

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Victory in Iraq by Vedran Vuk and Walter Block

Good arguments for getting out of Iraq.

Victory in Iraq by Vedran Vuk and Walter Block

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

The Libertarian in First Grade by Joshua Katz

or "Everything I Need to Know about Libertarianism I Learned in First Grade".

The Libertarian in First Grade by Joshua Katz

Code of Ethics for Government Service

More food for thought. How is everybody doing?

Code of Ethics for Government Service

'Honey… It’s President Ron Paul – and It’s For You!' by William H. Huff

Excellent food for thought for those who respect the Constitution1

'Honey… It’s President Ron Paul – and It’s For You!' by William H. Huff

Monday, February 18, 2008

A Sure-Fire Argument on the Second Amendment

Excellent analysis of the context in which the Second Amendment was written.

A Sure-Fire Argument on the Second Amendment

Our Enemy, The Presidency by Anthony Gregory

Good food for thought. Anthony Gregory writes:

The president of the United States has far more power than any office in the history of humanity. It is trite even to make the comparison. The current president claims the right to detain, torture and kill anyone on earth and to start wars and occupations in any nation of his choice. He claims the right to levy taxes on anything, prohibit anything, mandate anything, spy on anyone, and demand that all jurisdictions on the planet bend to his will. While the laws of economics limit his actual power to alter reality, the pure destructive potential of the modern presidency is beyond unspeakable...

Americans shouldn’t look to the president for their self-respect, patriotism and cultural identity. The presidency in its current form is entirely too powerful and thus an inherently corrupting and inhumanely destructive thing. The presidency as it supposedly should be, under the Constitution, is a relatively humble office overseeing the executive branch, one of three composing a radically restrained government with very limited enumerated powers. Today, the presidency overshadows the other branches, the states, and all Constitutional and statutory limits on its power. In any event, why should 300 million people, and to a great extent the rest of the world, have to live under one all-powerful law enforcement official? The whole idea seems like some kind of insanity. How did this become the American way? If we are to restore our freedom, we need our compatriots to snap out of this trance...

Our Enemy, The Presidency by Anthony Gregory

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Playing the Odds by David Calderwood

Like paying taxes (extortion by any honest view), this is yet another time that self-preservation requires us to play by the contemptible rules dictated by the slaves who surround us.

Playing the Odds by David Calderwood

If You’re Going to Lock and Load, You Should Talk the Talk by Greg Perry

Some great quotes!

by Greg Perry

These Lines Are Just Pure Fun

When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.

They Want Your Guns

Never say "gun control" but instead, say "victim disarmament." I've seen the visceral effect this has on our enemies in public. It's as if somebody punched them in the stomach when they realize they've lost the moral high ground. – L. Neil Smith

The victim disarmament industry is filled with people who would rather see a woman raped in an alley and strangled with her own pantyhose than see her with a gun in her hand. – L. Neil Smith

The sophisticated and subtle tyrant will unarm his people, and store up their weapons, under pretence of keeping them safe. – Sir Walter Raleigh

Why do You Carry A Gun?

Because I think it is sociopathic to outsource my self-defense to others. – Bill Buppert

Because I think my wife would rather bail me out of jail than have to identify my corpse in a morgue. – James Robert Rodgers

Those Bad Guns!

An "assault" is an action that only an animated creature can engage in; inanimate objects, by definition, can't. – Peter W. Wickham, Jr.

In General

An armed society is a polite society. – Robert A. Heinlein

You can have freedom or you can have peace. – Robert A. Heinlein

The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed. – Alexander Hamilton

The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able may have a gun. – Patrick Henry

The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subjected people to carry arms; history shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subjected peoples to carry arms have prepared their own fall." – Sarah Brady (Correction: Hillary Clinton.) (Correction: Adolph Hitler in his Edict of March 18, 1938)

If You’re Going to Lock and Load, You Should Talk the Talk by Greg Perry

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Progressive Recycling

Thomas E. Brewton writes, "Recycling is a modern-day liberal-progressive idol that is, like the idols of old, both ineffective and harmful."

Intellectual Conservative Politics and Philosophy » Progressive Recycling

McCain sings 'bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran'

Source material for previous post.

The Raw Story | Unplugged McCain sings 'bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran'

GOP, R.I.P?

Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation. He writes:

The conservatives are on firmer ground when they criticize McCain for his so-called campaign-finance reform. Every aspect of McCain-Feingold is without doubt a violation of freedom of speech, among other liberties. McCain has sanctimoniously insisted he’s only trying to take corruption out of politics — as though that were possible — but in fact he and his allies in this cause are mainly concerned with protecting incumbents from “negative” advertising. The floor debate in the Senate made that abundantly clear...

I wish the conservatives disagreed with McCain on more things. In my mind, one incident with McCain is enough to rule out supporting him, regardless of who his opponent is. When he stood in front of an audience and laughingly sang the old Beach Boys hit as “Bomb, bomb bomb/bomb, bomb Iran,” McCain should have been regarded as disqualified from holding any office in the land. If the United States attacks Iran, many innocent men, women, and children will be killed or maimed, just as they were in Iraq. Is that a laughing matter, Mr. McCain? ...

The same for when he called for increasing U.S. troop strength in Iraq and said it would be fine if the troops stayed there for a hundred years or more...

GOP, R.I.P?

68 Senators Violate Their Oaths of Office

Jim Babka writes:

In keeping with the ideas expressed in our Declaration of Independence, our government was instituted with highly limited powers. The instrument that imposed these limitations was the Constitution, and it is this document that members of Congress swear an oath to defend.

One of the consequences of Constitutional limits on government power is that bad people are often permitted to get away with doing bad things. The government is categorically denied many of the powers that might aid it in the apprehension of criminals. For example . . .

There are hundreds of murderers running lose in America, and thousands of murders committed each year, that the government might be able to stop. The Constitution specifically prohibits government from doing all that it could do to save lives by catching murderers.

Were the Founders crazy? Were they stupid? No, they were not. The Founders knew that any government that has all the power it might need to optimize its apprehension of murderers, would also have all the power it needed to become a mass murderer.

The Founders knew, even in their time, that governments were, historically, the greatest killers of all. The history of the last century has only added to the evidence. Tens of millions of people were murdered in the 20th Century by governments that had too much power. Our Constitution protects us from this; so far...

But now, because criminals murdered thousands of people on September 11, 2001, many are eager to abandon their Constitutional protections...

Yesterday, 68 Senators violated their oaths of office. They voted to pass S. 2248, a new law designed to replace the so-called "Protect America Act." This bill violates the Bill of Rights . . .

DownsizeDC.org Blog | 68 Senators Violate Their Oaths of Office

Making Pot Legal -- the argument

Marijuana law reform is often presented by the activist community as a broad political concept (e.g., "Hemp can save the planet!"). It is not. At its core level, it is an effort to bring civil justice to millions of Americans who have been targeted, persecuted, and in many cases, have had their lives ruined for no other reason than the fact that they chose cannabis rather than alcohol to relax.

Making Pot Legal: We Can Do It – Here's How by Paul Armentano

Friday, September 07, 2007

Huckabee Takes Unfair Shots at Ron Paul - Markets - Market Features

Huckabee Takes Unfair Shots at Ron Paul

Sunday, September 02, 2007

Banging Your Head Against a Wall by A.D Lelong

Excellent commentary on the Virginia Tech shooting.

Banging Your Head Against a Wall by A.D Lelong

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Conservative Republicans Have Only One Choice in 2008 by Chuck Baldwin

Chuck Baldwin writes:

Let's cut to the chase: conservative Republicans have only one choice for President in 2008: Congressman Ron Paul of Texas. Unlike the GOP frontrunners, Paul is the real deal...

He has a twenty-year record as a conservative congressman that is virtually unblemished. Unlike the vast majority of congressmen and senators in Washington, D.C., Paul consistently honors his oath of office to support, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States...

Ron Paul's commitment to the sanctity of human life goes beyond rhetoric...

In addition to being willing to stop the illegal alien invasion, Ron Paul is one of only a handful of congressmen that dares speak out against the emerging North American Union, NAFTA superhighway, and the Security and Prosperity Partnership agreement, all of which are being promoted by the White House in concert with the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)...

Because Paul truly supports the Constitution, he truly supports "the right of the people to keep and bear arms." Period...

Not ignorant of military matters (he is an Air Force veteran), Paul subscribes to a historical American approach of no entanglements with foreign nations. In fact, in the area of foreign policy, Ron Paul stands alone as a traditional, constitutional, American statesman...

Unlike his neocon counterparts, Ron Paul believes in an independent America. He believes that it is not America's responsibility to police the world. He believes America's political leaders are duty-bound to protect the interests of the United States, not the interests of internationalists. Accordingly, he opposed the unprovoked and preemptive invasion of Iraq. Time has certainly vindicated Dr. Paul's principled position...

If the United States government had listened to Ron Paul, we would not have lost nearly 3,500 American soldiers and Marines, spent over $1 trillion, and gotten bogged down in an endless civil war from which there is no equitable extraction. Furthermore, had we listened to Dr. Paul, Osama bin Laden would no doubt be dead, as would most of his al-Qaeda operatives, and we would be less vulnerable to future terrorist attacks, instead of being more vulnerable, which is the case today...

Should Ron Paul win the Republican nomination, he would almost certainly win the general election. His constitutional, common-sense ideals would be attractive to such a broad range of voters, I dare say that he would win a landslide victory, no matter who the Democrats nominated. Conservatives, independents, libertarians, union members, and even some liberals...

Face it: the big money interests, the Chamber of Commerce crowd, the international bankers and GOP hierarchy will never support Dr. Paul. He is too honest, too ethical, too constitutional, and too independent for their liking. Therefore, the only chance Ron Paul has of winning the Republican nomination is for every Christian, every conservative, and every constitutionalist within the GOP to get behind him.

Conservative Republicans have only one choice for President in 2008: Ron Paul.

Conservative Republicans Have Only One Choice in 2008 by Chuck Baldwin

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Ten Reasons Why Ron Paul Can’t Win by Thomas Eddlem

Padilla Jury Opens Pandora’s Box by Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts writes, "There is little doubt that Padilla’s conviction, and probably also the convictions of the two co-defendants, is a terrible injustice. But the damage done goes far beyond the damage to the defendants. What the red, white, and blue "Padilla Jury" has done is to overthrow the US Constitution and give us the rule of men..."

"when law becomes a weapon, liberty dies regardless of the form of government..."

"The incompetent 'Padilla Jury' has done Americans and their liberty far more damage than will ever be done by terrorists, other than those in our criminal justice (sic) system..."

"The Padilla case was the way the Bush Justice (sic) Department implemented its strategy for taking away the legal principles that protect American citizens. Padilla is an American citizen. He was denied habeas corpus and his rights to an attorney and due process. He was tortured in an attempt to coerce him into self-incrimination. In treating Padilla in these ways, the US Department of Justice (sic) violated both the US Constitution and federal law. There is no doubt whatsoever that the Justice (sic) Department committed far more crimes than did Padilla..."

"The 'Padilla Jury' has opened Pandora’s box. Unless the conviction is overturned on appeal, American liberty died in the 'Padilla Jury’s' verdict."

Padilla Jury Opens Pandora’s Box by Paul Craig Roberts

Friday, August 17, 2007

Ron Paul: The Unoriginal Candidate by Rick Fisk

Rick Fisk writes:

Ron Paul would turn back the clock on many original ideas put forth by past Presidents. Wilson's income tax? Gone. The Iraq war and pre-emptive war, the two Bush additions to original Presidential thought gone as well. The department of Education? Homeland Security? Welfare? All Gone. No original idea would be spared from the boring veto pen of a Paul presidency

Ron Paul: The Unoriginal Candidate by Rick Fisk

Thursday, July 12, 2007

More on Indiana's time zone

Jeremy (#76) wrote, "... you have to admit that this quote is irrelevant. Think of how much has changed since 1953... There has been a change in the country and these statistics have absolutely nothing to do with Central/Eastern timezone... think about all of the cities (and just land) in between Philly, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Denver, etc. Each of those cities are located pretty close to the middle of their respective time zones. Indianapolis is located at the edge of its time zone (whether that's Eastern or Central)..."

Thanks for your thoughtful comments Jeremy. I agree that we cannot make too much of the state's per capita income history. About all I make of it is that there was no apparent harm to Indiana's economy when the entire state was on one time zone and when we were on the same time zone as our western neighbors, and I doubt that it would do any harm to the state economically to return to that situation.

You accurately point out that the four cities that I picked as examples are each very near the central meridian for their respective North American time zones, as well as being near the same latitude as Indiana. Therefore, there are pretty representative of "normal" for our distance from the equator.

We were on year-round eastern standard time for so long, which was effectively central daylight saving time given our longitude, that it is really easy to lose track of what is typical for our latitude. During that time, we averaged about 45 minutes of DST year-round -- about 45 minutes of sunlight shifted from the morning to the evening.

The time zones were laid out so that places like these four cities that are near the central meridian for their time zone (75, 90, 105, and 120 degrees longitude) would set their clocks to match their local mean time (solar time averaged out over the year). Locations in the eastern half of the time zone would have their clocks up to 30 minutes slower than their LMT and those in the western half would have the clock up to 30 minutes faster than their LMT.

The mid-point between these meridians for eastern (75) and central (90) is 82.5 degrees. This natural boundary runs near the eastern edge of Michigan and Kentucky, and right down the middle of Ohio. It's pretty easy to see why Ohio asked the national government to move the boundary to their western border, so the entire state could be in a single time zone. It's harder to figure out why Indiana would have asked to have it moved even further west to divide us into two zones. Quite a few Hoosiers can attest how awkward it is to have the boundary running between the counties within a state.

"USDOT decides" (#83) wrote, "Time zones are decided by the USDOT, not a governor, not the legislature, and local politicians..."

While that is technically correct, the DOT certainly weighs heavily the input and requests of state and local politicians, as the duly elected representatives of the people, when they make these sort of decisions.

In 1967, for example, six years after the federal government had first divided us by moving half of Indiana from central to eastern time, Governor Branigan petitioned the DOT to place all of Indiana back in the central time zone.

http://www.indianalawblog.com/documents/Timezone.pdf

In their opening post (Docket OST-2005-22114-1), the DOT's position is, "The General Assembly and Governor of the State of Indiana have asked the Department of Transportation (DOT) to initiate proceedings to hold hearings in the appropriate locations in Indiana on the issue of the location of the boundary between the Eastern and Central Time Zones in Indiana. The General Assembly and Governor did not, however, take a position on where the boundary should be..."

The strong implication from the DOT is that if the General Assembly and Governor took such a position, the awkward county-by-county petition process would no longer be needed.

Bill
Thu, 12 Jul 2007, 7:12 am EDT

Ex-congresswoman enters race for Indiana governor - Topix

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Ex-congresswoman proposes return to Central time for Indiana

I wrote:

Politics aside, I certainly like to hear anyone in a position of influence talking about trying to return the entire state to the central time zone again.

For my taste, and compared to average for our latitude, the sun sets about 45 minutes too late in the summer and rises about 45 minutes too late most of the rest of the year. Just check out Philadelphia, St. Louis, Denver, or Reno if you want to see what is normal for our latitude.

http://tinyurl.com/32orxx

On central time, our sunrises and sunsets are only about 15 minutes earlier than typical for our latitude.

Long Thompson said she also would consider seeking to move the entire state to the Central time zone. "It's pretty ridiculous when it's still daylight to almost midnight," she said.

Terry Martzall (#2) wrote, "... apparently the sun goes down later in northern Indiana because in central Indiana it is dark by 9:30 p.m.... if her definition of 'close' is 2 1/2 hours... perhaps we should review the other things she promises?"

It appears likely that Long Thompson was using hyperbole. Depending on whether you consider the daylight hours over at sunset, civil twilight, nautical twilight, or astronomical twilight, the latest daylight on June 28 in Indy on eastern daylight time was either 9:17, 9:49, 10:30, or 11:18 pm. Astronomical twilight is getting pretty close to midnight, although 10:33 pm is the typical astronomical twilight for our latitude that day.

Jeremy (#6) wrote, "For everyone who is in favor of being on central time, remember that means it will get dark between 3:30 and 4:00 PM during the winter. Do you really want to make winter days any shorter?"

Again, I guess it depends on what you mean by dark. The earliest sunset of the year is about Dec 8. On eastern time, the sun sets about 5:20 pm in Indy, with twilight at 5:50, 6:23, or 6:56 pm depending on which definition you use.

The typical latest sunset at our latitude (see Phila, Denver, etc.) is about 4:35 pm. On central time, the latest sunset in Indy would be 4:20, with twilight at 4:50, 5:23, or 5:56 pm -- only 15 minutes earlier than normal for our latitude.

As far as making the winter days shorter, that has nothing to do with the time zone. There are only 9 hours 21 minutes from sunrise to sunset in Indy from Dec 18 through Dec 25, no matter what time zone we are in. The only way to have longer winter days is to move closer to the equator.

"Come on Jill" (#58) wrote, "How embarassing (sic) for her that she has no ideas except to criticize Daylight Savings Time."

I didn't see any criticism of DST in this article -- only a comment about which time zone might be preferable for Indiana.

Central DST is still DST. It just shifts 45 minutes of sunlight from morning to evening instead of one hour and 45 minutes like eastern DST.

Bryan (#71) wrote, "People we are always going to have two time zones. We have had them for over 40 years and got along just fine."

Conversely, we had virtually a single time zone for over 40 years before that and got along just fine then too.

By the state's own figures (pdf page 7 of 44), Indiana's per capita income was 106.4 percent of the national average in 1953 (when most or all of the state was on central time year-round, and had been for decades). By 2006 this figure had dropped to 91.4 percent.

http://www.in.gov/iedc/pdfs/Strategic_Plan.pdf

Bill Starr
Columbus, Indiana
Wed, 11 Jul 2007

Ex-congresswoman enters race for Indiana governor - Topix

No, Mr. President: The Iraq War Is Not the American Revolution | The John Birch Society - Truth, Leadership, Freedom

Gary Benoit writes:

The president’s high praise of our modern-day citizen-soldiers who are willing to leave their homes and place themselves in harm’s way to defend our freedoms is well deserved. Tragically, however, through no fault of our soldiers, they are not being used to defend our freedoms, despite the president’s claims to the contrary...

Yes, our “men and women of the Guard” do stand ready to “fight for America.” Yet many of them have been maimed and killed in Iraq for reasons unrelated to defending our beloved country in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks...

If America were attacked by Iraq on September 11, then the Congress should have immediately declared war against Iraq. But that is not what happened. Iraq did not attack us, and Congress did not declare war.

In fact, as President Bush himself acknowledged on September 17, 2003, months after our invasion of Iraq was launched, “We’ve had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11th [attacks].” Even today, that admission may sound surprising to many Americans who mistakenly believe we went into Iraq because Iraq attacked us here. After all, in his public speeches, including his recent Independence Day speech to West Virginia’s Air National Guard, President Bush has repeatedly juxtaposed references to Iraq with that of 9/11. These juxtapositions have created the false impression that Iraq had attacked us, without the president actually saying it...

Today’s freedom-loving patriots who wear the uniform were deployed overseas to attack a country that did not attack us, and they are there now propping up a new regime that, unlike Saddam Hussein’s old regime, is closely aligned with Iran, a radical Islamic terror state identified by President Bush himself as part of an “axis of evil.”

“We must support the Iraqi government,” Bush declared in his July Fourth speech. Yet that government, which would never have come into existence without American blood and treasure, could prove worse than the admittedly despicable regime it replaced.

“If we were to quit Iraq before the job is done, the terrorists we are fighting would not declare victory and lay down their arms — they would follow us here, home,” Bush warned on July 4. But what job is supposed to be completed in Iraq? Originally, Bush repeatedly stated that we needed to go into Iraq to enforce United Nations Security Council mandates forbidding Iraq to possess weapons of mass destruction. But no WMDs were found. We also, according to Bush, needed to rid the world of Saddam Hussein’s regime, but Saddam Hussein is now dead. And now we supposedly need to prop up the new Iraqi regime in the midst of what has become a civil war, until such time as that regime can take care of itself.

President Bush may glowingly cite the American War for Independence and the Founding Fathers when he trumpets his Iraq policy, but the truth of the matter is that his Iraq policy runs totally contrary to the intent of the Founders when they fought the War for Independence and later drafted the Constitution.

Bush is not upholding American independence by launching an offensive war against a foreign nation. He is not defending our freedom by sending our troops abroad to put in place and then prop up an increasingly radical Islamic regime in the midst of a civil war. He is not even helping the victims of the civil war by doing that.

The Founding Fathers recognized the follies of interjecting ourselves into foreign quarrels and warned against it. “It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world,” George Washington wisely counseled in his Farewell Address to the nation.

In an Independence Day address in 1821, John Quincy Adams said: “America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own…. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standards of freedom.”

Does that sound like a description of what’s happening in Iraq? It obviously does not sound like President Bush, who certainly is not on cue with the Founding Fathers.

Nor is President Bush emulating the Founding Fathers when he behaves like a king, sending the nation into war without a congressional declaration of war. The power to declare war, recall, was assigned to Congress — and Congress alone. The Founding Fathers assigned this power to Congress because they did not want a single man to be able to plunge the nation into war as Bush has done (and as other modern-day presidents have done before him).

Our modern-day citizen-soldiers should never have been sent to war against Iraq, and they should not be there now. If we truly want to celebrate the Founding Fathers who won our independence for us, and support our modern-day citizen soldiers who have been placed in harm’s way in Iraq, we would bring our soldiers home — now!

No, Mr. President: The Iraq War Is Not the American Revolution The John Birch Society - Truth, Leadership, Freedom

Thursday, June 28, 2007

Slandering the Dead: The American Massacre at al-Khalis by Chris Floyd

So here we have a local guard, an admirable example of Shia-Sunni cooperation, working with the Iraqi government against suspected insurgents, ground into mulch by American bullets then denounced by American brass as killers and terrorists. Thus yet another village has been turned against the blind and brutal occupation; thus many more seeds of revenge and bitterness have been planted.

Is this part of the much-ballyhooed "counterinsurgency doctrine" crafted by the sainted General Petraeus to win hearts and minds, to teach peace to the conquered? Or just the inevitable product of a war of aggression, an action conceived in deceit and callous inhumanity?

Slandering the Dead: The American Massacre at al-Khalis by Chris Floyd

Saturday, June 02, 2007

Slouching Toward a Police State by Matthew Hart

Matthew Hart writes:

On the evening of May 19th, in the course of a purported investigation into drug trafficking at a local homeless shelter, two Oklahoma City police officers handcuffed a woman and tasered her to death because, as a police spokesman said, "the officers felt that she was not under control." The victim, a 35-year-old homeless woman, resided in the shelter with her husband while recovering from a drug addiction. She was not involved in the initial drug investigation, yet apparently began to scream and attacked one of the officers. After attacking a second officer, she was "taken to the ground and handcuffed." At this point, this 35-year-old female crack addict, handcuffed and on the concrete, still represented a great enough danger to two heavily armed male police officers that they deemed it necessary to electrocute her fatally. This murder earned the two officers paid administrative leave...

From seatbelt laws and speed limits to anti-drug and anti-smoking laws, who really believes that the State’s interest lies in saving us from ourselves? Law number one should be "no victim, no crime." Increasingly obvious is the fact that, far from protecting and serving the people, the police exist everywhere and always to protect the State and its ill-gotten gains from the people, and we pay them to do it. In the course of "protecting the people" from free and private transactions between consenting adults, these two officers murdered a woman guilty of what amounts to a lack of control...

These are but two local examples of what amounts to a major problem with state-subsidized "law enforcement." Where may innocent victims of this rampant abuse of power turn for justice in this day and age?

... few view the abuse as it really is. Indeed, most seem to applaud the work of the nanny state as it strips us all of the right to do as we see fit absent the trespass of others’ rights to do the same. On this march toward our own undoing, will we watch wordlessly as our fellows are overrun by the massed machinery of the State?

Slouching Toward a Police State by Matthew Hart

Of Hobgoblins and Quarantines by Becky Akers

Becky Akers writes:

And when our manipulative masters muse, the toadies in the mainstream media race to furnish a microphone. Banks of them, in fact, as well as the reams of newsprint they aren’t devoting to Ron Paul.

Meanwhile, consumptive Andrew Speaker seems to be one of those rare Americans who trusts his own judgement. He realizes that "infection specialists," doctors, and other "experts" belch, hiccup, and start off in diapers like the rest of us. Heavens, they even make mistakes now and again. Andy refuses to kowtow, especially when said experts put their interests ahead of his.

Which is precisely what the assorted busybodies in this sad tale are doing...

From New York, Andy went to Denver. He’s now under guard and firmly in the CDC’s clutches, with the agency precariously balanced between its veneer of compassion and its lust for control. Its employees are supposed to be concerned and caring. But they’re also government officials who can force treatment on their victims – not a happy vision after Josef Mengele. And so they pussy-foot around their power over Andy...

The CDC blames its abuse of sick folks on the Constitution: "The federal government has authority under the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution to prevent the interstate spread of disease." That’s another whale of a whopper. Article I, Section 8, Clause 3 merely authorizes Congress "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes."

But the CDC’s tyrants are too busy finessing Andy’s kidnapping to worry about the Constitution. "Normally when someone has tuberculosis, we influence them through a covenant of trust," CDC Director Julie Gerberding sniffed. Poor gal: Andy’s odyssey left her no choice but to issue a "federal isolation order," though she allows that "in this case the patient had a compelling personal reason for traveling." She also admits that he "broke no laws in his travels." A pity: that would certainly save face as the CDC stations an armed deputy before Andy’s hospital room.

Justifying Julie’s crime is Lawrence Gostin, a "public health law expert" at Georgetown University. Larry’s never met a quarantine he didn’t love...

Other CDC bureaucrats tried to excuse Andy’s imprisonment...

Can we improve our systems? Absolutely. There will be many lessons learned from this. Why do I suspect they’ll all teach Leviathan to forge more chains?

And so Andy is guarded in his hospital bed as heavily as a politician or other criminal...

Of Hobgoblins and Quarantines by Becky Akers

Friday, April 13, 2007

WorldNetDaily: The Imus lynch party

Good points by Patrick Buchanan.

"Where are the demands for apologies from the talk-show hosts, guests, Duke faculty members and smear artists, all of whom bought into the lies about those Duke kids – because the lies comported with their hateful view of America? ..."

"The issue here is not the word Imus used. The issue is who Imus is – a white man, who used a term about black women only black folks are permitted to use with impunity and immunity..."

WorldNetDaily: The Imus lynch party

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Friday, May 09, 2008

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Friday, April 04, 2008