000923.html
Jerry Pournelle - The last hours of the Kursk: a tongue-in-cheek account of why the Russian sub went down. Can you say Windoze? Hehe.
Ty Phillips at the Modesto Bee - AG to review child's shooting: Well, they're at least going through the motions of holding the killer cop to task for his dirty deed. Ths shotgun "accidentally discharged" and shot the 11-year-old boy while he lay face-down on the ground. So why was the gun pointed at him? Every gun owner knows that you don't ever point a gun at anyone that you don't intend to kill. [wnd]
Joel Miller at WorldNetDaily - Getting rooked: Mr. Miller comments on McCaffrey's recent decision to drug test student chess players. He also comments on California Rep. Tom Campbell's supposed softening of drug war rhetoric. Mr. Campbell wants (forced) treatment for users, but the death penalty for anyone who deals to children. Also, Columbia has started to use .50 caliber machine guns to fight its drug dealers. And some statistics on drug use in the military in 1999. [wnd]
"Research proves that mentoring youngsters and teaching them that games like chess can build resilience in the face of illegal drug use and other destructive temptations," writes McCaffrey, citing the federal Office of National Drug Control Policy and its drug-prevention program, Chesschild. "Drug testing is as appropriate for chess players as for shot-putters, or any competitors who use their heads as well as their hands."Of course. Most people who play the game of kings drop acid and shoot junk -- helps them with their game. Bishops can do a lot more than diagonal on LSD.
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The military is one of the most tightly regulated social environments in the entire U.S. -- and drug use is still uncontrollable. So what on earth, sensible people might wonder, makes the drug warriors think that they can control dope in the rest of society if they can't even control it in the military, of all places?
S. Fred Singer at The Straits Times - Global warming is not Man's doing: Mr. Singer claims that though carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels does have a small impact on global warming, the earth is doing most of the work all by itself with no help from us. [wnd]
So if human activities do lead to a slight warming of the climate in this century, it makes more sense to adapt and enjoy the warmer winters than bankrupt our economy and damage the economic system of the world.Joseph Sobran at LewRockwell.com - Do We Need the First Amendment? If liberals would read the first amendment anywhere near as carefully as they read the second, they'd realize that the federal government has no place banning prayers in schools. We should pay more attention to the tenth amendment. In case you've forgotten, the tenth amendment says: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." [wnd]
Of course all these church-state quarrels could be avoided if we separated school and state. No government - federal, state, or local - has any business molding children’s minds. Yet most people take for granted that the government is and must be responsible for education at every level, from pre-school to grad school....
While the First Amendment has become the subject of Talmudic elaborations, the Tenth Amendment has dwindled into a dead letter. The great principle of dividing and dispersing power - the very genius of the original American system - is at least as vital to freedom as the specific protections of the First Amendment; in fact it includes them, since if the federal government were confined to its enumerated powers it would have no authority to infringe freedom of religion, speech, press, and assembly. If we took the Tenth seriously, we wouldn't need the First.
But try explaining that to a liberal.
Jacob Sullum at Reason Magazine - Drugs of Choice: I read this in the paper mag a month or so ago ago. Nice to see it on-line. Reviews two books that make the claim that addiction, all addiction, is a choice. Drugs do not force anyone to do anything. This agrees with my experience. Drugs, like guns, are inanimate objects, whose meaning is defined by the people who use them. [wnd]
Indeed, for Schaler, "addictions are indispensable." Harking back to the original meaning of the term, he defines addiction as "a fondness for, or orientation toward, some thing or activity, because it has meaning, because it is considered valuable or even sacred." Addiction, then, is not inherently good or bad. "Addictions--and only addictions--can open us up to all that makes life rich and fulfilling," Schaler writes. "Yet addictions can also have appalling consequences. The moral is clear: Choose your addictions carefully!...Addictions we approve of are called 'virtues.' Addictions we disapprove of are called 'vices.'"
Myles Kantor at LewRockwell.com - Give 'em Hell, Harry! Clint Eastwood is being sued for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act. He charges more for the wheel-chair accessible rooms at his Mission Ranch hotel in Carmel, CA. As it should be. Those rooms cost a lot more to build, and get used a lot less. Supply and demand. Mr. Eastwood does not intend to settle. Good. Maybe we can get that piece of socialist trash declared unconstitutional. [lew]
James Bovard at The American Spectator - Clinton's Hate Crime Hypocrisy: hate crime laws put the government into the business of determining a criminals intent. A crime done with hateful intent is considered worse than your garden variety crime. Of course, the government gets to determine the intent, just as they determine that their own minions never act with hateful intent when committing crimes in their official uniforms. [lew]
If an Aryan Nation wacko had driven a bulldozer into a synagogue, collapsing the walls on the occupants, the feds would have issued press releases announcing prosecution even before the dust had settled. But when the FBI did the same thing at Waco, the Justice Department's hand-picked special counsel John Danforth concluded that the feds were merely trying to create "exit routes."If animal rights activists had blown up the only pharmaceutical factory in the U.S. producing a key drug to prevent an epidemic, the Clinton administration might have ordered the round-up of every registered pet lover in the country. But when the U.S. did the same thing in 1998 to a factory in the Sudan wrongly suspected of terrorist links, the White House shrugged it off as an innocent mistake.
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If disgruntled stockholders of a large tire company blew up CNN headquarters because it disliked CNN's slant, the Clinton administration might have proposed sweeping new legislation to justify preemptive raids on all stockholders groups. But when Clinton ordered NATO to bomb Serb TV headquarters during his war against Serbia -- an attack which killed 16 people -- he justified it by asserting that Serb television had been used to "spew hatred and to basically spread disinformation." And what are a few dead janitors compared to making a statement against hatred?
Patricia Neill at LewRockwell.com - The Hell with Democracy, Let's Hire a King: Patty's back. She proposes canning the whole American government, and hiring a king. She may be onto something. :) [lew]
This way, we could rid ourselves of that horridly expensive sham known as Congress, a useless blob of excrescence we could easily do without. And we could trash the entire judiciary while we're at it. Who needs that whole shell-game anyway? When was the last time either Congress or the judiciary did anything for Americans that was worthwhile? Let's ditch the entire thing....
In the midst of one of the worst political seasons ever, I toss this idea out there for discussion. Frankly, before we head into rank, real communism, I think feudalism is an option we could at least discuss.
Hah!
Sunday Herald News - Allies deliberately poisoned Iraq public water supply in Gulf War: Iraq is still sufferring with sewage-poisoned water 10 years after the Gulf War. This is a war crime. Professor Thomas J Nagy, Professor of Expert Systems at George Washington University intends to prosecute those responsible. [lew]
During allied bombing campaigns on Iraq the country's eight multi-purpose dams had been repeatedly hit, simultaneously wrecking flood control, municipal and industrial water storage, irrigation and hydroelectric power. Four of seven major pumping stations were destroyed, as were 31 municipal water and sewerage facilities - 20 in Baghdad, resulting in sewage pouring into the Tigris. Water purification plpants were incapacitated throughout Iraq.Article 54 of the Geneva Convention states: "It is prohibited to attack, destroy or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population" and includes foodstuffs, livestock and "drinking water supplies and irrigation works".
Declan McCullagh at Wired - Feds: Digital Cash Can Thwart Us: The Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, FinCEN, is complaining that digital cash will make their snooping more difficult. Good! [grabbe]
