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My son Christopher had a birthday party last Saturday. Pictures are here. Eight wild boys and my daughter.
And I took 3 pictures of our new dog. Cute. He still doesn't have a name. Send ideas to bill@billstclair.com. I'm still not real happy about him, though my white hot anger of last Monday has cooled.
I wrote the following letter and sent it out to my state senator and representative via the the Medical Marijuana Project, mpp.org. I know, I know. Sending letters to congress critters is useless. What can I say, I enjoy writing them. I do it for myself.
Cannabis, often misnamed marijuana, is a useful medicine. It also has no fatal dose, they can't kill rabbits with it no matter how hard they try. Hence it is safer than most over-the-counter drugs.Cannabis should be approved as an over-the-counter medicine, available to all adults. At the very least, it should be approved as a prescription medicine, another standard member of the pharmocopia available to competent medical professionals.
Please sponsor legislation to make this happen.
I crashed before the news, so here I am at 3 in the morning looking for DC protest info. There are lots of pictures at Declan McCullagh's page, mccullagh.org. dc.indymedia.org has lots of stories, pictures, and videos. And the freepers have a bunch of stories and commentary (warning, dangerous time-sink ahead): Protesters Boo Bush Inauguration, Nine Arrested, Transcript of President Bush's Inaugural speech (a good speech, though mostly standard American patriotic fluff, IMHO), Hillary, Shumer Staffers Bash "Bush" In The Streets, Thousands Take To Streets in Largest Inauguration Protests Since 1973, Freepers gather at Parade (a few pictures).
AP via FreeRepublic -
Clinton Pardons List: He pardoned Susan McDougal, Patty Hearst,
and his brother, Roger Clinton. He didn't pardon Michael Milkin,
Leonard Peltier, or Webster Hubbell. It's a long list, 36 commutations
and 140 pardons. Other stories at
Excite and the
Washington Post 
.
Remember: If he pardons Hubbell--Webb is no longer entitled to a Fifth A. privilege with regard to anything he knows about...RIADY, who has not completed his guilty plea yet, a subject of which was not included in the Independent Counsel's charge...for which Clinton can still be indicted.
26 Posted on 01/20/2001 12:06:36 PST by heywoode
AP via newsday.com - Biographic Sketches From Pardon List: The list above just has the names. This provides more info about some of them. Freeper commentary here.
Andre Goldman at Laissez Faire City Times - Justice Without Force, Part 4, The Growth of Democratic Fascism: A good discussion of why believers in freedom are few, many people are psychologically unable to believe that they can be free. Then a good discussion of the harms of knee-jerk legislation, though he doesn't use that term. He concludes that the only way to be free in the short term is to separate from society, economically and legally, to become a permanent traveller (PT) or a sovereign individual. His goal is to create a free-market justice system so that the free society will have some of the security of the slaves: theft insurance, assault insurance, State interference insurance.
Most people simply can't accept freedom because it would take away many of their safety mechanisms. They feel safer to be dependent on other people, to believe in fate, and in a God who makes bad and good things happen to them. They feel ill-suited to face reality one-on-one, being responsible for their own lives. This is the expected result when innocent, dependent, powerless children are born into a world where intelligent creatures slaughter each other daily, and where the explanations they are given make little or no sense....
So, let us begin by understanding that we are not going to get huge masses to move quickly in our direction. They are simply unable. Their children may be, but they are not. It would be ignorant and cruel for us to force freedom upon them.
...
Legislation is the legal fetish of the age. To most people, legislation IS law. It was not always so. Legislation reduces the sphere of human activities: Law discovers what is just. The concept of legislation is now mixed with the idea of "the rule of law", and the result is that most people think that more laws will make them safer, and will make life better. More legislation does not make more justice; usually the result is quite the opposite.
Carlo Stagnaro at Laissez Faire City - Smoking Truths, An Interview with Gian Turci: good discussion on why smoking prohibition should be up to the owners of "public" establishments, not the state. The pharmaceutical industry stands to gain from smoking prohibition. Smoking may not be as harmful as it is made out to be.
And what about public places? Anti-smoking activists say second-hand smoke "kills" your neighbors. Even if it was true, do you think it could justify government intervention in bars, restaurants and other places where people peacefully meet?Firstly, it is not true that second-hand smoke "kills" or "hurts" your neighbours. And second, even assuming it does, the owner of the facility is the only one who can decide what policy to adopt in his place. Calling "public" a restaurant or a bar, and enforcing laws to impose policies on private establishments betrays the contempt that "progressive" governments have for the sovereignty of private property. Up to recently, that contempt had a name: communism. Now it is called "public health".
...
There is absolutely no substance to the assertion that passive smoke is the cause of any of the diseases attributed to it, from asthma to cancer, to allergy, to SIDS. The "dangers" of passive smoke are 100% junk science. Period. Out of 101 studies on passive smoke to date, only two minor ones have shown some slight elevation of risk. The other ones showed nothing. When the WHO set out to prove the dangers of ETS (passive smoke) with the second-largest study in the history of the passive smoke-and-cancer saga (the largest could not prove anything), the result was no association -- and even a protective effect of passive smoke on the non smoker, for it stimulates the body's natural defenses. The study was quickly buried, and ignored by the mass media. When the North Carolina federal court established that the EPA's classification of ETS as a carcinogen was the result of a colossal fraud, and ordered its declassification, the EPA refused to comply, the judge was officially put in a "list of enemies" by a large anti-smoking group (though he ruled against the tobacco industry in another case the year before), and the event was once again virtually ignored by the mass media. I could go on forever, but I don't want to bore you.
Michael Gilson De Lemos at Laissez Faire City Times - Does Smoking Prevent Cancer?: the author spoke years ago with a distinguished cancer specialist.
He noted two studies from the first chapter of a Spanish best-seller Mediterranean Diet. While done in Greece, similar studies existed in Japan and Spain. They showed Greek and Mediterranean pure Tobacco cigarettes had no apparent effect. Multi-pack a day Greek smokers outlived Americans by about a decade. But they did suggest that the typical Mediterranean Greek life-style, including healthy Olive oil, wine, farm grown meat, fish oil (like Japan) and fresh foods, and a daily routine including a nap and a good 3-mile walk, was critical. Young Greeks, though smoking less, had alarming rises in cancer. The differences? Increasingly eating processed, high milk-fat, and high-antibiotic meat from mass farms--and smoking additive-laden American cigarettes. This was happening across Europe.
Jim Peron at Laissez Faire City Times - Math Without Numbers, The Economic Problem of Socialism: a good reminder of why the labor theory of value is bogus and why socialism is guaranteed to fail because it ignores the market value of commodities. Reminds me of the simple fix to California's power problems. Let the price of electricity float to its market value. In the short term the price will rise, likely precipitously. This will reduce demand, and engender production of new generation facilities, which will lower the price. Had they figured this solution out earlier, the problem would never have happenned. Now it's inevitable.
Well, I'd better try and get some more sleep.
