001225.html
There's a new article in The Libertarian series by Vin Suprynowicz:
- 'I'll be home for Christmas, you can plan on me' - Vin wishes us
a Merry Christmas with a reminder of how much better we have it than the
soldiers in WWII when at least three still-popular Christmas songs
were penned.
Here is a day for friends and family, for again celebrating our freedoms and the bounty they create. For make no mistake, the notion that armed men can enforce some uniform brand of "compassion" by mandating the redistribution from those who have earned "too much" to those with less, has been tried now for most of a century across half the globe ... and has universally collapsed in a pitiful heap of poverty, devastation, denial, and finger-pointing.
Charley Reese at the Orlando Sentinel - Don't blow it all out of proportion: Mr. Reese recommends a couple of small changes in the voting laws.
One reform that should be made is for the rest of the states to award their electoral votes on a proportional basis, based on which candidate wins in each congressional district.Had that been the case (only two states do this) George W. Bush would have won by an electoral-vote landslide. The winner-take-all system favors candidates who can appeal to the masses in big cities. Bush, for example, won some of the upstate New York districts, but Al Gore's big margin in New York City tipped the state to his column.
...
[In Florida,] It seems to me that the best way is to say that if the machine in use can't read the ballot, the vote doesn't count. That would reduce contests to determining only if the machine is defective. It would place squarely on the back of the individual voter the responsibility to read and follow the instructions exactly.
Other than that, I don't see that the recent unpleasantness calls for any great changes. This election, from a statistical standpoint, was a tie and that is a reflection of both the circumstances and the blandness of the two candidates.
Michelle Malkin at TownHall.com - Pardon Clinton? Just say no! apparently some of the DC "pod people" are recommending that GW pardon Komrade Klinton. Don't even think about it.
Where is Nancy Reagan when you need her? Just say no. N-O. Bush should not pardon Clinton. The healers and handshakers of the GOP argue that it would be an act of "compassionate conservatism" for Bush to pre-emptively pardon Clinton before independent counsel Robert Ray has a chance to decide whether to indict him. But where exactly is the conservatism in short-circuiting the rule of law and abandoning investigative efforts to hold the First Perjurer fully accountable for his felonious actions?
Burton S. Blumert at LewRockwell.com - From the Office of the Publisher: LewRockwell.com has two weeks of cash left. The publisher is requesting donations to keep them on the air. [lew]
Jeremy Sapienza at LewRockwell.com - Age of Consent Conspiracy Theories: Why is it that young people who are old enough to vote, drive, shoot, rent, and be conscripted for legalized mass murder cannot drink or smoke? [lew]
Let's begin with military service. Why is it that the government has decided that you are old enough, at 17, to have your limbs blown off in a country whose name you cannot pronounce correctly, and that you may murder in masses the inhabitants of a particular country, but you cannot puff on a lit paper tube filled with dried, non-hallucinogenic leaves? Because their aim is not to protect you from harm. In this scenario you are one of two objects: a warrior getting loot and exerting power and influence in foreign countries and slaughtering anyone who objects, or a producer of wealth which they will eventually loot from you to finance further mass extranational murder sprees. As long as they can put you in one of the two categories, cannon fodder or host, they are content. If you refuse to be filed into one of the two groups, you are in danger of being annihilated by those whose wills you defy. The point is, you have to be alive for them to feed off you. They don't care so much if you die in the course of doing their bidding overseas. If you're doing that, you probably weren't such superstar entrepreneurial material anyhow....
But the ability to vote has nothing to do with whether one should be governed by others. None of us are morally beholden to any mandate of any government or any majority. It is wise to obey enforceable laws, nonetheless, because the bureaucrats have to legal right to relieve you of your life.
