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The Schmoo Group - RSA Party Planner: The RSA public-key cryptopgraphy patent expires on September 20. There will be partying in cyberspace, and at a few locations in meatspace as well. [picks]
Alwin Hawkins at ViewFromTheHeart - No Myth: look for "Vaccination Conspiracy" for some feedback on my pointer to and quotes from whale.to yesterday. Mr. Hawkins is in the conventional, vaccines are useful, camp. He has lots of company. I wouldn't mind it, except most of those people think they have a right to impose their beliefs on the rest of us by forcing our kids to be injected with poisons. I don't care how you treat your own kids, just keep your hands off of mine. I don't know if Mr. Hawkins believes in state-mandated vaccination, but I'll be surprised if he doesn't.
I watched my son go through pertussis (whooping cough). It was not fun. Will he breathe in this time? I also watched him recover from strep and a couple of ear infections. No medication necessary except homeopathics. Guess what? He hardly ever gets sick now. This was not the experience in my mother's house, where every time our tonsils got infected we got a shot of penicillin. Cured us every time, in three days. Gee, was that because of the penicillin or because tonsillitis is a three day disease? They got infected a lot, too, likley because of the penicillin. Don't get me wrong. Antibiotics sometimes save lives. But the reason we're getting so many strains of resistant bacteria these days is because we've way overused them.
Well, now I've called down the medical police on my head. Wail away guys. I made this decision a long time back.
Sierra Times - What is Citizens Of America? a grass-roots organization that runs print and radio ads emotionally supporting the right to keep and bear arms for self defense. COA does good work. [sierra]
Colonel Dan at Sierra Times - When Governments Lie About Guns: Governments lie about guns because the truth would never convince anyone to do what they want. Exactly the opposite. [sierra]
"Those who hammer their guns into plows will plow for those who do not." -- Thomas Jefferson"Our task of creating a socialist America can only succeed when those who would resist us have been totally disarmed." -- Sara Brady, Chairman, Handgun Control, to Sen. Howard Metzanbaum, The National Educator, January 1994, Page 3.
"Waiting periods are only a step. Registration is only a step. The prohibition of firearms is the goal." -- Janet Reno, December 10th, 1993 [Associated Press]
Henry Bowman at Sierra Times - The Second Amendment Solution: Mr. Bowman reminds us of 6 court cases that supported the fundamental individual right to keep and bear arms for self defense. [sierra]
From time to time the anti's propose repealing the Second Amendment. Should you find yourself facing a left-wing, warm-and-fuzzy bedwetter espousing this view, educate them to the fact that the entire Bill of Rights is immune from such action, since the inclusion of the Bill of Rights was a prerequisite for nine of the thirteen colonies pratifying the new Constitution in the period 1787-1791. But for the inclusion of the Bill of Rights, there would be no Constitution.If the whiner persists in this vein, just tell him that you would agree to amending the Second Amendment so as to make it consistent with the doctrines and beliefs of the Founders, to wit: "Save for lunatics and violent felons, as so adjudged by a competent court of jurisdiction, the right of the people individually and collectively to keep and bear arms for any purpose whatsoever is and shall remain inviolate. This amendment applies to weapons of any form, and specifically includes such weapons as are currently in use by the military forces of the United States or any other sovereign state."
This rewording is completely in accord with the views of the Founders. When you hear that Jefferson, Madison, et al could not have intended for citizens to own machine guns because such things didn't exist in their time, ask the speaker if his thinking also applies to the banning of radio and television from protection under the First Amendment for like reasons.
Stephen Humphries at the Christian Science Monitor - The tragedy of the commons revisited: Private property rights may be the key to conservation: Nice to see this bit of libertarian wisdom on the pages of the Christian Science Monitor. [market]
Fox News - The O'Reilly Factor, August 22, 2000: A partial transcript of Micheal Reagan's interview with Harry Browne. [market]
REAGAN: When people think of Libertarian Party, you know what they think? They think, "Oh- oh, legalization of drugs. My god, drugs will be coming across the border. Our kids are going to hell in a hand basket. I don't want a Libertarian as president if they're going to legalize drugs."BROWNE: Well, all the things you said were going to be so terrible are going on right now. We legalize drugs and the pharmaceutical companies take over the drug business and there are no more criminal gangs being financed by the drug business. We let a million people out of prison who have never done any harm to anybody else and make room for the murderers, rapists and child molesters who should be in prison but can't get in because of the pot smokers. We legalize drugs and we're no longer going to have the Bill of Rights shredded up by people who are using the drug war as an excuse to destroy the Constitution. We legalize drugs and you're no longer going to have police corruption and law enforcement corruption of the kind we've had over the last 20 or 30 years. Legalizing drugs is going to do all the same good things that legalizing alcohol did in 1933.
...
REAGAN: So Harry Browne, your first day in office, what is the executive order you sign?
BROWNE: Oh, it's going to be a -- oh, a number of them. Rip up the regulations on executive orders that previous presidents have put there, pardon all the non-violent drug offenders and make room in the prisons for the violent people, issue an executive order disarming all the capital guards who are guarding the congressmen, and tell them that we will rearm those people once Congress passes laws that reinstate your right to keep and bear arms and defend yourself. And I'll bet they'll do it in four or five minutes.
J.D. Tuccille at CivilLiberty.About.Com - The link to free speech: Mr. Tuccille comments on the recent decision against 2600 Magazine. [market]
Judge Kaplan may think he's the savior of copyright, but his order banning Internet links makes him a bench-warming foe of free speech.
L. Neil Smith at KeepAndBearArms.com - The American Lenin: I think I've read this before, but it bears re-reading, again and again. You can tell a libertarian from a liberal by asking about the first and second amendments. Telling a libertarian from a conservative is only a little harder, just ask about Lincoln. Libertarians know that he was America's Lenin. Conservatives worship him. [kaba]
Suppose a woman -- with plenty of personal faults herself, let that be stipulated -- desired to leave her husband: partly because he made a regular practice, in order to go out and get drunk, of stealing money she had earned herself by raising chickens or taking in laundry; and partly because he'd already demonstrated a proclivity for domestic violence the first time she'd complained about his stealing.Now, when he stood in the doorway and beat her to a bloody pulp to keep her home, would we memorialize him as a hero? Or would we treat him like a dangerous lunatic who should be locked up, if for no other reason, then for trying to maintain the appearance of a relationship where there wasn't a relationship any more? What value, we would ask, does he find in continuing to possess her in an involuntary association, when her heart and mind had left him long ago?
...
In the end, Lincoln didn't unite this country -- that can't be done by force -- he divided it along lines of an unspeakably ugly hatred and resentment that continue to exist almost a century and a half after they were drawn. If Lincoln could have been put on trial in Nuremburg for war crimes, he'd have received the same sentence as the highest-ranking Nazis.
Brian Puckett at KeepAndBearArms.com - NRA Management Turns Against Second Amendment: this is old news, but very well said. [kaba]
For those who are still baffled or in denial, let me put it in terms that anyone can understand: the NRA management is no longer calling for the REPEAL of unconstitutional gun laws, they are calling for their ENFORCEMENT. Exactly what part of that do you not understand?
Bobbie Towbin and Bob Glass at KeepAndBearArms.com - Colorado TRT Activist to/from Anti Defamation League: 150-200 Colorado members of the Tyranny Response Team attended attended a Boulder City Council meeting. Some of them wore the yellow Star of David emblazened with the words GUN OWNER. They used a picture of the nazis murdering naked women to draw attention to the results of gun control. This article is a short letter from Mr. Towbin of the ADL asking Mr. Glass to refrain from wearing the yellow star, and a long reply from Mr. Glass telling him why he will not so refrain. [kaba]
