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Deroy Murdock at Frontpage Magazine - Guns Save Lives; Hate Crime Laws Don't: Had Matthew Shephard been armed, he might be alive today. Had James Byrd been armed, he might be alive today. And the list goes on... [kaba]
People don't save people. Guns save people.
Joseph Sobran at LewRockwell.com - Don't Cut Taxes -- Abolish Them!: Ahhhhh. A breath of fresh air in the morning. [lew]
Chattel slavery in this country was abolished in 1865 by the Thirteenth Amendment. But tax slavery was instituted in 1913 by the Sixteenth Amendment, which gave the federal government limitless power to tax incomes. That is the chief reason most of us now work nearly half the year just to pay taxes.We are so inured to it that we don't raise the fundamental questions: By what right does government tax us in the first place? How much can we be justly said to owe the government? Is there any point at which taxation becomes tyrannical? And have we reached or passed that point?
ABC News - Waste and Incompetence in Washington: John Stossel investigates the government, all of it, on Saturday, January 27, at 10pm eastern time on ABC. [market]
Charities complain that government rules make it tougher to help people. Today, "if Jesus Christ wanted to start Christianity, he wouldn't be able to do it," says Mimi Silbert, who runs a mutual aid network in San Francisco, "because there are too many regulations."
Steve Trinward at Liberzine - Just say no to Ashcroft: We should oppose John Ashcroft's attorney general nomination, but not for the reasons being touted by liberal groups. He'll continue the dismemberment of the Bill of Rights, along with the other Washington swine who routinely ignore their oaths to protect and defend the constitution. [market]
Ashcroft is a staunch law-enforcer, and would assume Grand Inquisitor status on drug war enforcement and extension, harsher penalties for non-violent acts, and other issues of statist power over individual liberties. This is the real danger of his impending confirmation as Attorney General: his commitment to autocratic law-enforcement is exactly the wrong attribute for someone attempting to reverse the course of his predecessor.
Three new articles in The Libertarian series by Vin Suprynowicz:
- Now they've made it all wilderness and there's no deer left - Nevada used to have plenty of deer and tortoises when the ranchers killed the predators. Now that it's "wilderness" again, the populations are much lower. But try to convince the regulators of that fact.
- New medical privacy rules are vague and dangerous - Guess who
profits from the new medical "privacy" rules? Lawyers, of course.
Yes, privacy is wonderful. If Congress wants to help, they could start with a strictly enforced provision that any non-Social Security government worker who so much as asks for your Social Security number -- a completely optional designation issued only to those who volunteer to let the central government do their retirement savings for them, which the Congress promised on their sacred honor would be completely optional and voluntary, a secret between you and your Social Security worker, and would never be allowed to become a "national ID number" as known in fascists states -- that any government employee who so much as asks for that number in front of two witnesses, or who demands to see a "photo ID" in any way linked to such a number, shall be hauled away in chains, jailed before nightfall, and held in prison for no less than three years.
- The hypocrisy of the morally anointed - Vin comments on Jesse
Jackson's new daughter.
Or do such Politically Correct rules not apply here -- do the press and public issue an automatic "Get Out of Jail Free" card ... so long as the culprit is a left-leaning, pro-Big-Government, collectivist Democrat?
Bob Lewis at InfoWorld - IS Survival Guide: Mr. Lewis makes some predictions about technology in 2001, and mixes in some politics I don't normally see in an IT magazine:
Other correspondents expressed concern that I had inappropriately strayed into political commentary in an IT publication. Fear not. Leadership is a frequent topic in this column, so I will continue to draw on current events to illustrate those issues, and I also will remain bipartisan when I disparage our so-called political leadership. In other words, I won't ever mention that more than $40 million worth of investigation successfully proved Bill Clinton cheated on his wife and lied about it in court without also mentioning that his two predecessors -- Reagan and Bush senior -- sanctioned the sale of illicit drugs to American citizens to finance an illegal war against the legitimate government of Nicaragua....
Every time you hear someone say, "We do whatever it takes," you're hearing an echo of Bobby Knight, because sometimes, "whatever it takes" is -- or should be -- completely unacceptable. I'm guessing Americans have reached their limit and are ready to say, "We don't want you to do whatever it takes. We insist that you respect some boundaries and win only if you can stay inside them."
Or maybe it's just a hope.
Henry Norr at the San Francisco Chronicle - ThinkFree Delivering on Java's Promise: ThinkFree Office is available for download. Mr. Norr likes it, though he doubts that their pricing model will be palatable to computer users. [cafe]
