000524.html

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Wed, 24 May 2000 12:00:00 GMT

Brian Fitzgerald - hope: nice poem. Good to remember. I had a good discussion with Brian. He may make a pacifist out of me yet.

From Sierra Times, advertising the 50 Million Round March:

Wanna Prevent this? Click on the Photo

James Bone at The Times of London - Gun fans say bite the bullet: The NRA is planning to open a gun-themed restaurant in Times Square. Local liberals are not happy. Hehe. [lew]

Patrick Poole at WorldNetDaily - Barr pleads the Fourth: Another story on the land mines in the Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Act of 1999. This article focuses on the section of the bill that guts the fourth amendment even more than it has already been gutted by the war on some drugs. If only Mr. Barr would realize that his opposition to this legislation is at odds with his drug war support. In general, I find Bob Barr to be a friend of liberty. I wish I knew how to heal his drug war blindness. Then we could be friends. [wnd]

Joe Farah at WorldNetDaily - The Billion Dad March: Joe proposes, tongue firmly planted in cheek, that we have a Billion Dad March on father's day on the mall in D.C. Subject, anger. Speakers, none. [wnd]

Lance Gay at Scripps Howard News Service - Panel hears testimony for, against secret-evidence law: This was on public radio last night (yes, I listen to it sometimes while driving). The answer is clear to me. The fascists are claiming they need secret evidence for national security reasons. If that is really the case, then it's time for the United States to follow Rome down the tube of history. I don't believe it's the case. What is really necessary is to imprison the fascists. Then again, it's only muslims who are being hurt here, and everyone knows they're all terrorists. Take me for example. [wnd]

Jude Wanniski at WorldNetDaily - Gen. Barry McCaffrey, war criminal? A letter to the Wall Street Journal commenting on General McCaffrey's op-ed in which he defended himself against Seymour Hersh's Overwhelming Force article in the New Yorker. Mr. Wanniski thinks that McCaffrey should lose his drug czar job and retire to private life. [wnd]

We've become the bullies of the world, bombing whoever gets in our way, and we kid ourselves into thinking these are the necessary costs of being the world leader. It's not right. What doth it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but loses his soul? The same is true of a nation.

Robert Scheer at latimes.com - Why Are We Still Funding 'Star Wars'?: We've already poured $120 billion down this rat hole with nothing to show for it. Time to cut our losses. Let's follow the Swiss and build a real nuclear defense system of hardened bunkers and fall-out shelters (my conclusion, not Mr. Scheer's, as is the rest of this commentary). Of course the real threat today is from a suitcase nuclear weapon carried in by a terrorist. The fallout shelters might help, but there will be no warning whatsoever of where or when it will happen. Our best defense against that threat is to end the charade that the U.S. is the world's policeman. We can do this by withdrawing American troops from everywhere and shutting down the standing army. Replace it with local militias. Then the terrorists will have little reason to bomb us. [lew]

The Pentagon's efforts to shoot down a missile in space are inevitably rigged because the damn things move so fast and it will always be just too difficult to detect decoy balloons, which disguise the target from the real thing. The latest debunking analysis, by Theodore A. Postol of MIT, confirms the story of decades of anti-missile system failures: The tests only work when the testers cheat.

A new article in The Libertarian series by Vin Suprynowicz:

{@'Million Moms' distracted attention from de facto gun ban} - Many people were unable to purchase guns over the 40 Thousand Meddlers weekend because the national instant check system was down. The law that created this gun registration scheme states that if it's down, dealers are allowed to sell. Few will, however, since our national gestapo, the BATF, tends to discourage the practice.
Firearm accidents kill fewer small children each year than drown in mop buckets. Accidental firearm death numbers are in the same ballpark as the number of kids now killed or maimed by automobile airbags mandated by the government.
The more relevant statistic for most "moms" is that a woman who does nothing to resist a rapist is 2.5 times more likely to suffer serious injury than a woman who uses a handgun.

Pysol is a collection of (currently 293) solitaire games. It is written in Python. After 10 minutes of play, I class this as the best solitaire implementation I've ever encountered. The background music is real nice. The play is snappy where it ought to be, smart where it ought to be. I'm using the Windows version, but there are downloads packaged for Unix and Macintosh as well. [meat]

jta is the Java Telnet Application/Applet. It is a complete implementation of the Telnet protocol plus terminal emulator with plugins enabling different terminals and SSH (using Cryptix). It appears to work as long as you specify the host on the command line. I couldn't get a dialog to come up to specify the host and port. It's plenty fast enough on my machine with JDK 1.3. [meat]

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Quotes

Government doesn't work. Never did. Never will. Can't. But there are lots of good people. Love them.

-- Bill St. Clair

The Atlanta Declaration

Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

-- L. Neil Smith

Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

-- L. Neil Smith

A Penalty Clause for the Bill of Rights

Any official, appointed or elected, at any level of government, who attempts, through legislative act or other means, to nullify, evade, or avoid the provisions of the first ten amendments to this Constitution, or of the Thirteenth Amendment, shall be summarily removed from office, and, upon conviction, deprived of all pay and benefits including pension, and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

-- L. Neil Smith

Based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.

-- John Lott, commenting on the National Academy of Sciences report on gun control laws.

Who is a libertarian?

Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap")

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."

-- L. Neil Smith

(Formerly called the "Non-Aggression Principle", or "NAP")

Why Did It Have to be... Guns?

Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

-- L. Neil Smith

Concise

"Tell me," I was once asked, "What do you think about gun control? Give me the short answer." To which I replied, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."

-- Mike Vanderboegh

Also from The Atlanta Declaration:

... like going to the bathroom, breathing, eating, sleeping, or making love, it turns out that self-defense is a bodily function one cannot safely or effectively delegate to a second party.

-- L. Neil Smith

This does not mean that "Marijuana should be available by prescription." It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion.

-- Vin Suprynowicz

If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law.

-- Edward Abbey

The state can only survive as long as a majority is programmed to believe that theft isn't wrong if it's called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping isn't wrong if it's called arrest, that mass murder isn't wrong if it's called war.

-- Bill St. Clair