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William J. Clinton at whitehouse.gov - Veto of the "Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001": Wow! Klinton actually did the right thing. [xray]
Today, I am disapproving H.R. 4392, the "Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001," because of one badly flawed provision that would have made a felony of unauthorized disclosures of classified information. Although well inten-tioned, that provision is overbroad and may unnecessarily chill legitimate activities that are at the heart of a democracy....
The problem is compounded because this provision was passed without benefit of public hearings -- a particular concern given that it is the public that this law seeks ultimately to protect. The Administration shares the process burden since its delibera-tions lacked the thoroughness this provision warranted, which in turn led to a failure to apprise the Congress of the concerns I am expressing today.
Mark Steyn at the London Telegraph via Washington Weekly - The Esquire Magazine Interview and Cover Photo of Clinton: commentary on the photo accompanying Esquire's Exit Interview with the rapist-in-chief (yes, the picture is there; no I didn't read the interview). [ww]
But more revealing - in every sense - than the interview, was the cover photo: a Monica's-eye view of Bill sitting down, legs wide open, the end of his tie pointing to his zipper like a "Select Desired Item Here" arrow on a vending machine, and a strangely satisfied smirk on his face. Come and get it, baby. He's the President and we are all his interns.
Norm Olson at KeepAndBearArms.Com - Why I'm voting for Al Gore: another patriot who wants Gore to win so that the revolution will start earlier. [kaba]
New articles in The Libertarian series by Vin Suprynowicz:
- Autumn, 1942: It came down to one Marine, and one ship - A nice
telling of the story of Guadalcanal.
But who remembers, today, how close-run a thing it was -- the ridge held by a single Marine, the battle won by the last American ship?
In the autumn of 1942.
- The king's men are doing fine - the perks of being a county
government employee in Nevada.
Hey, the hours may be short and the pay may be high, but how do you like my free truck?
...
Instead of going through all these fruitless motions, maybe the County Commission should just have those 60 top-level supervisors drive their Big Wheels down past Mr. Burnette's office once a year, where he can stand on the sidewalk as each fancy Ford Expedition and Chevy Tahoe cruises past, shaking his finger and sternly warning them, "Bad truck! Bad SUV! You've been very, very wasteful!"
Then, their bad vehicles duly chastised, everyone can drive home and continue using their free $30,000 extended-cab heavy-duty luxury county vehicles for pizza runs and family trips to the lake, while the taxpayers who paid the bills wait in line down at the DMV to shell out for the "privilege" of being allowed to drive the battered eight-year-old compacts they bought with their own paychecks, until the next "audit." (No wonder these public servants no longer like to be called "public servants" -- it does indeed start to sound like we've got that whole thing backwards.)
- An Important Invitation from Vin Suprynowicz - Vin tells us that he takes over as editor of Financial Privacy Report on November 1, and invites us to subscribe. He's planning a sequel to Send in the Waco Killers, and they're publishing Lever Action, a collection of L. Neil Smith's non-fiction essays.
- Getting by with a little help from his friends - concerning the questionable practices of Michael McDonald, a Las Vegas City Council member who the district attorney has declined to prosecute.
- The 'secrecy' noose tightens - commentary on the new "official
secrets act", which recently slipped through congress. It should
be called the "Whistle-Blower Criminalization Act of 2000",
IMNSHO. If passed, it will send journalists to jail for contempt of
court when they refuse to reveal their sources. [Klinton vetoed it,
see above].
Proponents say the law will help stop security leaks. But current law already makes it a crime to disclose without authorization "national defense" information with the intention of aiding a foreign power or harming the United States.
Sorry, but I'm not buying this rationale any more than are Reps. Barr, Hyde, and Conyers. In peacetime, with no major military adversary on the horizon, an administration that has overruled its own advisers to OK sales of militarily sensitive information to the Red Chinese -- an administration which can't even be bothered to keep the doors locked at Los Alamos -- is not a very good fit for this particular set of sheep's clothing.
- Beware the pennies on your eyes - The Southern Nevada Water
Authority was authorized in 1997 to assess well owners a $30 annual
fee to fund a groundwater management program. Now they're refusing to
release the list of people they assessed to an organization that wants
to rally the owners to fight the tax. This is a clear violation of
Nevada's open records laws.
The initial problem was that $30 fee, of course. Are they planning to charge 30 bucks to anyone who sinks a hole for a fencepost down near the Las Vegas Wash and and strikes mud? How about kids digging in the back yard? If these clowns can now tax private wells in the desert, how long will it be before they start charging a "breathing tax" to fund government efforts to supposedly clean up the valley's air? This is dangerous nonsense.
Besides, it's the municipal water systems which have done most of the drawing down of the valley's water table over the decades -- if anything, the government should be paying private well owners for the degradation of their water rights, not the other way around.
- 'Where we'd have the Haves and the Have-nots' - good commentary
on the war on freedom, er... some drugs, and on the lost concept of
governments of limited power in the context of candidate endorsement
interviews at the Las Vegas Review-Journal. If you read only one of
Vin's articles today, make it this one.
So the kids, already dragooned under threat of jail for mom and dad if they don't report to the mandatory government propaganda camp nearest them, now further see their Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure neatly sidestepped as they're requested to "voluntarily" sign please-take-my-pee "contracts," with those who refuse to sign being sent home in ignominy while other kids get to go on field trips and play soccer after school and act in the school play.
...
"What is the purpose of state government?" I asked Ms. Stanfill.
"To be sure we're doing what the people are wanting, running the state business, that we're introducing laws that should be voted on by the people," she replied. "You're there for the people; at the state level you're introducing the bills."
Not a sentence, not a word (needless to say) about just governments being instituted among men to secure for us our God-given rights and liberties.
...
I'm sure most of their neighbors would testify these are both fine folk who love their children and are always willing to bring cookies to the bake sale.
But so too were the faceless clerks and functionaries who kept the trains running on time in Italy and Germany in the 1930s, pleasant and uncomplicated folk who loved their dogs and brought flowers to church on Sunday. They did their jobs, and never gave a thought to which trains were headed where, or who had been loaded aboard.
