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Texas Chili Contest is an old story that made its way around the net a few years back, but it's worth reading if you haven't seen it or re-reading if you have. Hillarious! [sierra]
This variation on a famous scene in Apocolypse Now occurred to me yesterday:
I love the smell of coffee in the morning.
Smells like... consciousness.
Can anyone think of a suitable ending for a Klinton variation on the same theme:
I love the smell of interns in the morning.
Smells like... ???
Sean Hackbarth points today to Bill Buckley's article on Peter McWilliams' death. I don't know where Sean is on the drug issue in general, but Peter's death "threw cold water" on him. Wake up, drug warriors. Making martyrs is not good politics. [mind]
At this point, I'll repeat my favorite Vin Suprynowicz quote from page 18 of his book Send in the Waco Killers. After saying that drugs should be legalized, he clarifies his (and my) position:
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.
Bruce Umbaugh has lots of pointers to stories about P3P at X-Ray Net today. Also some stuff about the BT hyperlink patent. I added X-Ray Net to my daily read and my links page just a few days ago. I'm glad I did. [xray]
Brian Puckett at Keep and Bear Arms.com - Why I Will Not Obey California's Gun Registration Edict: This is from November, 1999, right after California passed its SKS ban and registration of semi-automatic rifles (so-called "assault weapons"). A good analysis of the second amendment and its practical remifications. I made a local copy here.
Consider the situation if a state declared that it was perfectly legal to own a Bible-or a copy of the Koran or the Talmud- but that you had to register it in order to keep and use it. Now, what if you did not register it-would you lose the right to own and read it? Of course not. The very idea is absurd. Under the laws of this nation you have the right to worship as you please. As we have seen, that right automatically includes articles necessary or associated with the right, such as books, crucifixes, stars of David, yarmulkes, and so forth.In exactly the same way, if the state suddenly required registration of printing presses, would the owner of a press lose his right to own or use it by not filling out a registration form? Of course not. The right would still exist. No piece of paper affects it.
...
If you can lose a "right" by not filling out a piece of paper, then it is not a right. It is a privilege granted by the government, which is a different thing altogether. In the area of government, a privilege is a special permission or immunity granted by a government, it is generally related to the use of some public facility (such as driving on the streets, or using the public library) and it may be suspended or revoked even for minor infractions or misdemeanors.
Joseph Sobran at LewRockwell.com - Playing Monopoly: commentary on the real, and very dangerous, monopoly in America. It's not Microsoft, it's the federal government. [lew]
Years ago I was asked: "Why don't you criticize Big Business the way you criticize Big Government?" A fair question. I answered that I wasn't forced to deal with General Motors. I was free not to buy its products, and it couldn't jail me for driving a Honda. By contrast, I had to pay the federal government roughly the price of a new car every year -- and I never got the car. My money was distributed among others who were favored by the politicians....
The Constitution is an antitrust act for government. It was designed to prevent the federal government from becoming a monopoly of power, or what the Framers called a "consolidated" government. A few specific powers were delegated to it, and all others were denied to it. The point of the Tenth Amendment is not, as is usually said, to protect "states' rights," but to limit federal powers.
Michelle Malkin at TownHall.com - Fed up with Fannie and Freddie: Fannie Mac and Freddie Mac dole out mortgages to Americans while living on the government dole whenever they need it. During profitable times, they keep the profits. During unprofitable times, they take taxpayer money to keep afloat. [lew]
John Burgess at the Washington Post -
Task Force Targets Money Laundering 
: the Financial Action Task
Force has released a list of countries whose banking laws permit money
laundering. As far as I'm concerned there is no such thing as money
laundering, unless you consider Mr. Howell's periodic washing of his
cash on Gilligan's Island. Money laundering is a made-up crime that
allows governments to spy on what should be our private financial
transactions. [lew]
Charley Reese at the Orlando Sentinel - Feds have no business in most things politicians yak about: Charley reminds us that the constitution gives the federal government very limited powers. My take: I see no evidence that most of them have even read the constitution, even though they each took an oath to protect and defend it. [lew]
Al Gore repeated in an interview with the New York Times that he intended to appoint Supreme Court justices who would not be bound by the meaning of the Constitution as it was understood in the 1700s. That alone is reason enough for people to vote against Gore, because the Constitution should be interpreted as it was understood in the 1700s.
{pictureRef ({@gadsenflag}, align:"right")} Henry Bowman at Sierra Times - A Cautionary Tale: Cautions the socialists that freedom-lovers are ready to stop playing by their rules. [sierra]
The Henry Bowman Brigade consists of a small group of people nationwide that has collectively reached its outrage tolerance limit with regard to the state of affairs in our country, the corruption of our government, and the degradation of our citizenry.We have come together to say 'no more; this far and no further' to those who would destroy our great nation and the values which gave it birth. We have come together to pledge ourselves and all that we have to reversing the many destructive trends evident today in our schools, public institutions, governmental divisions and the fabric of social intercourse in our society.
We have come together to say that we will pay any price, including the highest price, to make our country again into what it used to be, because we would rather die on our feet than live on our knees, perish rather than live as slaves.
Finally, we have come together to warn those who would hold cheap our values, our estates and our lives . They will be judged by their own standard, and measured with their own yardstick . We will repay eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, and life for life.
OpenJMS is an open source implementation of Sun Microsystems's Java Message Service API 1.0.2 Specification. exolab is also the provider of OpenEJB, Castor, and Tyrex. They promise to tell us about OpenORB on June 26. [meat]
Rep. James Traficant via The Federalist concerning the recent Supreme Court ruling banning student-led prayer before school football games:
The Supreme Court says pornography is OK and it is OK to burn the flag, that communists can work in our defense plants, that it is OK to teach witchcraft in our schools and that it is OK for our students to write papers about the devil. But the Supreme Court says it is illegal to write papers about Jesus, it is illegal to pray in school, and now the Supreme Court says it is even illegal to pray before a football game. .. I thought the Founders intended to create a Supreme Court, not the Supreme Being. Think about that statement. I yield back a Supreme Court that is so politically correct they are downright stupid, so stupid they could throw themselves at the ground and miss.
Concerning the wrongful death suit currently taking place in Texas, the Federalist editors say:
The Davidians were a less-than-orthodox cult group, but there was no more justification for the assault on their compound than there was for the consequential assault on the Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City -- end of story!
Electronic Freedom Foundation - The Blue Ribbon Campaign for Online Free Speech: This started back before the Communications Decency Act was declared unconstitutional. It is now a page containing news on legislation that threatens online free speech. It of course mentions the Bankruptcy Reform Act, the Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Act, the Ecstasy Anti-Proliferation Act (which is finally at Thomas as S.2612), and the Club Drug Anti-Proliferation Act.
In honor of all these laws which prohibit instructions on drug-making, I'm gonna tell you all how to make free-base cocaine, otherwise known as crack. This is not the method used by people who deal large quantities of crack. They cook it with baking soda, or something like that. This is a method that works real well for making a small quantity, e.g. a gram.
- Buy some cocaine hydrochloride, the snortable white powder.
- Dissolve one gram of cocaine hydrochloride in a gram or two of distilled water in a test tube.
- Add a few drops of ammonia. Make sure you use pure ammonia, not the kind with added perfumes or detergents. The base should precipitate out of the solution as a white powder on the bottom of the test tube.
- Heat the mixture over a butane torch until the base melts. It doesn't need to be very hot, in particular, the water will not get anywhere near boiling.
- Let it cool. You can help this by putting the test tube into a glass of cool water.
- Pour off the water.
- Drop the now solidified base onto a piece of blotter paper.
- There are a number of ways to smoke the result. My favorite is virtually impossible to teach via writing. Someone needs to show it to you. It involves melting the base on a hot spoon and sucking over it with a turkey baster. This lowers the pressure and causes the liquid to instantly evaporate. Expanding in the turkey baster cools it down so it doesn't burn your throat and lungs. If you try to do it without expert coaching, you will probably end up with the inside of your turkey baster coated with now useless base (well, not quite useless: you can wash it off with alcohol and let the alcohol evaporate).
- I should warn you that overdosing on base is very easy to do. Your heart will stop and you will die. I don't recommend it.
- I haven't done this since 1982. Two months of regular base use nearly killed me. Then God rescued me. I was lucky. You might not be. Conclusion: don't do this.
