000830.html

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Wed, 30 Aug 2000 12:00:00 GMT

[small lunch-time update here and at end]

Michael "Lance" Newby is back at My Cluttered Desk. Welcome back, Lance!

Heard on The Writer's Almanac on NPR this morning:

All science is either physics or stamp collecting. -- Ernest Rutherford

I don't want my children fed or clothed by the State, but I would prefer that to their being educated by the State. -- Max Victor Belz, Iowa grain dealer

Surfing is so much more pleasant now that I've turned off "Synchonous DNS" in Opera. It used to lock up while doing DNS lookups. Now it does them in the background, so I can click away.

Yesterday at the club, while walking on the treadmill, I saw algore commenting on how much better his plan for medicare prescription drugs was than GW's. I imagined a cartoon comparing the two. algore's version shows Uncle Sam pointing a gun at "Taxpayers". Both of "Taxpayers" pants pocket liners are pulled out as he hands over his money. The GW version is exactly the same except only one pants pocket liner is pulled out.

Cryptome - MPAA Notice to Cryptome on DeCSS 3: They're after John Young now. I think they will wish they had never bugged him.

AP via Freedom Forum - Confederate flag-flying is 'constitutional right,' says Piggie Park owner: Maurice Bessinger, the barbecue owner I reported about the other day, who recently took down the American flag from his restaurants and replaced it with the state and Confederate flags, is being told he must pay for a $20 60-day permit to fly any banner other than the U.S. and state flags. He is being fined $500 a day by the city. He's not paying, and is threatening to sue the city. [unknown]

AP via Freedom Forum - Confederate flag flies permit-free over Piggie Park restaurant: He won! The city council is changing the sign ordinance.

AP via Nando Times - L.A. Police Department can be sued under racketeering laws, judge rules: Hehe. The RICO laws were created to attack organized crime. How fitting! Now if we can just turn them against the really big crime syndicate, Congress. [market]

J.D. Tuccille at CivilLiberty.About.Com - Educational incarceration: it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish public schools from prisons. [market]

My colleague Bill Bickel, About.com's Crime Guide, has targeted zero-tolerance policies in something of a personal crusade. Says he, "[a] twelve-year-old boy threatening to kill classmates and then bringing a loaded gun to school ... is a serious threat. Five-year-olds pointing their fingers at one another and saying 'Bang' is not. Granted, you don't know where those fingers might have been, but let's temper vigilance with some common sense, okay?"

bob lonsberry - Sorry, Ma'am, I Tied Your Tubes: a doctor sterilized a welfare mom while doing a c-section on her fourth kid. Problem is, she explicitly told him not to. The authorities have slapped his wrist. Mr. Lonsberry thinks he should go to jail. I agree.

AP via Yahoo News - Medical Marijuana Distribution Nixed: the Supremes overturned the 9th district court's ruling that the Oakland Cannabis Buyer's Cooperative could distribute medicine to the sick. Breyer disqualified himself. Only Stevens dissented. Shame on them. [wnd]

Linda Bowles at WorldNetDaily - Who owns your money? Compares GW's tax cut with algore's spending. This essay is at WorldNetDaily. Guess who she likes. GW's plan is definitely the better one. Now just add a few trillion to the tax cut, and it'll be golden. [wnd]

At the heart of American capitalism is the principle that what a man earns by his creativity and effort, no matter how much or little, is his own. It is not the property of government, and no other citizen, no matter how needy, has a claim or a right to it. This is one of the core principles that made America the most prosperous nation the world has ever known. It is a principle based on individual sovereignty and freedom.
This principle is under assault by powerful government forces.

Alex Pham at the Boston Globe - By day, they're mild-mannered engineers: By night, they're geeks with guns: Linux enthusiasts are taking time out from hacking to send a few rounds down range.

Eric Raymond, founder of the Geeks With Guns group, summed it up best. "Linux is about getting freedom," Raymond said. "Personal firearms are about keeping it."
...
Asked whether society would be better off if there were simply no guns, [Michael] Pelletier remarks with the incredulous look of an engineer being asked to do the impossible, "You can't uninvent technology." [kaba]

KeepAndBearArms.com - Handgun Control, Inc. Dictionary: Hehe. [kaba]

BILL OF RIGHTS - A piece of parchment written by dead white males, that is either worthless or sacred, depending on whether the portion under consideration agrees with us.
...
HESTON, Charlton - An obscure, little-known actor who once had a minor role in a movie about the Bible; has been known to espouse the pro-gun propaganda of the NRA. Probably a student of Soviet disinformation techniques.
...
TRUTH - Anything Handgun Control, Inc. says (see "Pravda"). Call us, we'll tell you what to think. Or better yet, keep your mouth shut and just send more money.

Milt Borchert at KeepAndBearArms.com - The Cage: a parable for our times. [kaba]

George Szamuely at Antiwar.com - Whore on Drugs: following the money into the latest "anti-drug" crusade into Columbia. [lew]

No, the latest round in America's melodramatic {@war on drugs} has nothing whatsoever to do with drugs. It is about corporations with substantial investments in Colombia lobbying the U.S. government to step in and take over the country on their behalf.

Alexander Cockburn at New York Press - Wild Justice: The Cops vs. Simon Rodia: commentary on the police state as exhibited at the democratic convention. When this kind of stuff happens in China or Russia, we call it a human rights violation. [lew]

Everything turned out okay for the Democrats in the end. Al Gore got his postconvention bounce in the polls. Hollywood unbelted millions for the Democratic National Committee. Bill Clinton fired the opening salvoes of his 2004 campaign and raised a few bucks for his library. But mostly it was an opportunity for the LAPD to show what life will be like in the police state just round the corner.

"TinyVM is a Java based replacement firmware for the Lego Mindstorms RCX microcontroller." Wow! Java for Mindstorms. Threads. No garbage collector. Haven't tried it. [cafe]

doIRC in an IRC client written in Java. This version works in Java 1.1 and up. doIRC version 2 will require Java 1.2. [meat]

Ray Thomas at Sierra Times - Libertarians Can Win: Uses Sheriff Bill Masters of Teluride, Colorado as an example of the fact that libertarian candidates can win local races. That the libertarians should focus their energy and their money on these local races, not on the presidential race. If Harry Browne were to become that snowball in hell, he'd be impeached in the first month. [sierra]

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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