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The U.S. Supreme Court created a mild panic among liberals when it ruled, a few weeks ago, that the Commerce Clause of the Constitution is finite. In striking down the Violence Against Women Act, which authorized women to sue their rapists in federal courts, a narrow majority of the Court took the reactionary radical right-wing position that rape is not a form of interstate commerce.
Lew Rockwell at LewRockwell.com - The Trouble With Licensure: Lew tells us why government mandated licensing is a bad idea. [lew]
For centuries, professionals have sought to cartelize their occupations, that is, to limit competition. The stated reason is protecting consumers, but the real reason is financial....
Medical organizations argue that only licensure enables us to distinguish the qualified from the goof-off. In fact, it is the reverse. Licensure endangers consumers by making them less watchful, since they assume that any state-licensed doctor is competent.
...
Medical licensure is a grant of government privilege. Like all such interventions, it harms consumers and would-be competitors. It is a cartelizing device incompatible with the free market. It ought to be abolished.
Henry Bowman at Sierra Times - An Open Letter to Law Enforcment: Reminds police and military personel that they took an oath "to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." This means refusing to follow unconstitutional orders. [sierra]
For the above reasons, and many others which will no doubt occur to you on your own, I hope and pray that you will remember your oaths and refuse to carry out any such unlawful order to confiscate what Geo. Washington called our "liberty teeth." For proof that he was right, look at the history of what our nation has been, . . . and what it's rapidly becoming. The values of the Founders were responsible for the birth and growth of the greatest nation in human history, while the rejection of those values has brought us to our present state of affairs. If and when the order comes, the choice will be yours. And your children and grandchildren will be the beneficiaries of that choice. If the image of those grandchildren with numbers tattooed on the inside of their left forearm doesn't appeal to you, choose well.
IMADWIPAP at Keep And Bear Arms.com - Amending the Second Amendment: reminds us that the second amendment does indeed mean that every individual has the right to possess weapons. The amendment is there because the militia, all of us, is necessary "for the security of a free state", with the emphasis on "free". He offers the following constitutional amendment, clarifying the second amendment for those who refuse to see the light in the current wording. Bravo!
Clause 1. A well-armed population being necessary to the security of a free people, neither the Government of the United States, a State nor any sub-jurisdiction within a State shall enact any law, rule or regulation prohibiting the ownership of or requiring the registration of firearms. Nor shall the Government of the United States, a State or any sub-jurisdiction within a State enact any law, rule or regulation inhibiting the sale or purchase of firearms or require the sellers of firearms to produce or keep any record of the name, address or other data which might identify a purchaser.Clause 2. Within thirty days of adoption of this amendment all records or registration or any data identifying owners or purchasers of firearms shall be destroyed. Congress shall enforce this clause with appropriate legislation.
Clause 3: Nothing in this amendment shall be construed to deny the States the right to prohibit and penalize possession of firearms by any person convicted of a felony involving violence against another person. However, the right of the States is limited only to prohibit and/or penalize possession on the person. This right is specifically denied to the Government of the United States.
Clause 4: Neither the Government of the United States, a State nor any sub-jurisdiction within a State shall levy any tax against firearms or ammunition that is not common to all other products.
Clause 5: Within one year of ratification of this amendment all states shall adopt and implement a must-issue policy to issue concealed carry permits to all citizens who have never been convicted of a violent felony. All states shall afford full faith and credit to permits issued by other states to an individual to carry a concealed firearm.
Lisa S. Dean at Enter Stage Right - "For the sake of the children": She claims that it used to be just the democrats who shredded the bill of rights. Guess she forgot about the war on freedom (er... some drugs). Now, however, noone can fail to notice the travesties from both sides of the aisle. [desk]
We're told that "the era of Big Government is over" and the era of bipartisanship has finally arrived, but quite frankly, I don't see much of a difference between the two. But in the rare event that anyone hears a Republican open his mouth to speak against a Democrat, the only honest words we could possibly hear him say would be, "Hello Mr. Kettle, I'm Mr. Pot. You're black."
Charley Reese at the Orlando Sentinel - Dishonest use of language: Standard operating procedure: How the government keeps us believing lies by using loaded language. [lew]
For example, the U.S. government has decided that North Korea is what the United States chooses to label a "rogue state." This is a pejorative label that serves the purpose of the U.S. government (to justify an anti-missile system, for one) but does not accurately describe North Korea....
We would have a much saner and safer world if U.S. politicians used language for communication rather than for manipulative purposes. It is just as easy to say that North Korea is a totalitarian state. It is just as easy to say that the United States and North Korea have differences of opinion on some issues and to spell those out.
Chris Wolf at Hands Off the Internet - Proposed L.A. statute threatens evolving Internet: LA councilman Alex Padilla wants to force the city's cable TV providers to open up their wires to all ISPs. This is a bad idea, "a hands-down winner for worst proposal of the year." [market]
To Be REALLY Safe, Let's Ban Everything: Scotchgard and Dursban (a pesticide) have been banned for no rational reason. I'm reminded of one of my favorite quotes by Victor Milan:
The great distinction:To which I add that a libertarian is a capitalist who worships freedom.
A conservative is a socialist who worships order.
A liberal is a socialist who worships safety.
I finally caught up on my backlog of Vin Suprynowicz The Libertarian articles:
- Fines for political speech - Nevada has revoked the first amendment. They now impose fines of $5,000 for passing out anonymous campaign literature.
- Oh, did we cite you under the health regulations? Heaven forbid that you should do anything in Las Vegas without bending over for the authorities.
- 'There Oughtta Be A Law,' Chapter 417 - Some people in Missouri are intent on passing a law against leaving children alone in a car. My wife learned a few years ago that the People's Republic of Massachusetts already has such a law. She practically got her head bitten off when she left our son sleeping in the car while she went into the store for 5 minutes.
- OSHA would ban cookie-lifting - Let's ban OSHA instead, sheesh.
- Hose out the ant farm - Get rid of the Department of Education:
For once, in this case, the Democrats and their incompetent Education secretary are correct. A GAO audit of the Department of Education is not necessary, and is unlikely to do much good.
Why? Because the very process of an audit assumes there is some correct and constitutional way for the DOE to spend that $32 billion a year, when in fact one may search Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution to the point of exhaustion without finding any delegated power for the federal congress to meddle in the schooling of the nation's youth -- clearly a matter for the states or for the people in their private capacity as parents, under the unambiguous terms of the 10th Amendment.
- Quite a mess for the grown-ups to clean up - Clinton continues to give away America's nuclear secrets to China.
- Educrats give fat cat relatives a 'bye' - Questionable hiring practices at Nevada public schools.
- Some kids should be locked up - Junenile justice often makes
sense, but sometimes kids should be tried as adults:
Judge Gaston would take a better example from the courts in West Palm Beach, Fla., where 13-year-old Nathaniel Brazill was indicted as an adult on Monday, June 12, for stealing a .25-caliber pistol, taking it to school, and killing Middle School teacher Barry Grunow on the last day of school, May 26.
The Florida boy's lawyer contends the pistol went off accidentally. But almost no modern firearm will discharge "accidentally." If one points a firearm at another person, places one's finger inside the trigger guard, pulls the trigger, and then says, "Whoops, I didn't mean it," the mechanical defect in question is in the shooter's brain, not in the weapon.
"GNU Parted allows you to create, destroy, resize and copy partitions. It supports ext2 and FAT (FAT16 and FAT32) filesystems and Linux swap devices, and MS-DOS disk labels. This is useful for creating space for new operating systems, reorganising disk usage, copying data between hard disks, and disk imaging."
Bad joke of the day:
GM and Chrysler are merging their truck divisions. Their first new model will be called the Jimmy Durango.
