The Second Nor'easter of 2001

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Tue, 06 Mar 2001 13:00:00 GMT

We got a foot of snow last night. Below is the image of our cars and house. I had already opened the rear door of the Odyssey to get out Victoria's snow pants. Click on the picture for a page with this one and 5 others, including my kids.

Amber Kronberg - Saturday, March 3, 2001: I use this space primarily for personal therapy. It's where I'm allowed to say anything I need to, which these days often means dumping lots of anger. Looks like Ms. Kronberg does this too. Amber, don't write pretty lies on your weblog. Keep telling your truth. No matter how ugly. No matter how difficult. No matter how beautiful.

I have spent enough of my life putting on the peaches and cream face for appearance sake. I have hidden bruises and black eyes and horror behind the cover girl look.
No more.
This is MY space. I pay for this with MY money. Yes. MINE. I write things here in stolen moments between being the breadwinner and the mommy and the capable daughter.

According to the Marijuana Policy Project, there is a new medical marijuana bill in the New York Assembly. I wrote the following letter to my state senator and assemblyman:

Please support Assembly Bill 5878, which will remove penalties for patients who use marijuana with their doctors' approval.
Medical decisions belong with doctors and patients. The state has no place in this relationship.
When you're done with that...
The war on drugs has nothing to do with drugs. It is a war on freedom. A war on the bill of rights. A war on America's soul. End it.
In the words of Vin Suprynowicz, this does not mean that "Marijuana should be available by prescription." It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion.
Stop putting money into the pockets of organized criminals. End the war. Today.

Charley Reese at the Orlando Sentinel - Southerners cotton to car racing: Mr. Reese comments on the death of Dale Earnhardt, and the recommendations of some northerners that we change stock-car racing to somehow make it safe. Guess what? Life ain't safe. Nobody gets out of it alive. Get used to it. [lew]

OK. I confess. I had a huge belly laugh when so many people discovered that stock-car racing is dangerous.

Patrick Michaels at the Cato Institute - Talk the Talk, but Don't Drive the Car: republicans, not greens, are buying the Honda Insight. [market]

Trying to figure out why the Greens aren't buying is difficult. Unlike a lot of cars, Insight meets its EPA mileage figures. The Agency gives a combined city-highway efficiency for this model at 65mpg (61 city, 70 highway). Seventy-seven owners on Insightcentral.net have an average of 63.0. My lifetime mpg, shown by the flashy onboard computer, is 67.2. Recently it gave me 70.5 from rural Virginia to Washington, averaging around seven miles above the speed limit on 160 miles of federal and interstate highways.
Maybe they don't like the fact that it's a two-seater, but many of my Green pals are unmarried, childless or drive alone. Anyway, the "average" car has 1.4 occupants. Maybe they don't like the fact that its short wheelbase makes it a bit choppy, but, hey, these people eat kale and smile.

There's a new issue of The Libertarian Enterprise:

Letter from David Calderwood - a response to Mike Huben's Non-Libertarian FAQ.
Human interaction can be coercive or voluntary. (Nature's coercion is NOT the same thing, so suggesting that my natural requirement for food is justification for coercing another for his food surplus is absurd.) Suffice it to say that I think people are happier, and the opportunities to pursue happiness are maximized, when coercion is minimized. Since government is institutionalized coercion (give me a break...laws don't ask, they tell and attach penalties for non-compliance...that's hardly voluntary), it follows that minimizing it is beneficial. And since government follows the same survival dictates as any parasite, it will always grow. Hence, limited government is an oxymoron.
...
One small area did jump out at me...your restatement of a "world's smallest political quiz," socialist-style. In asking should "people help each other," you suggested the libertarian would still answer Yes. I would opine that a socialist or communitarian would readily add the word "compelled" to that statement, making it anathema to a libertarian. Therein appears the difference between us... You appear to think society is bettered by a fine network of rules dictating behavior in many spheres of human life. A libertarian would see the difference between performing a kindness freely vs. doing what is deemed right by those in power under duress.
Lawmen Must Enforce "Constitutional Law", Not Outlaw Legislation by Sergei Borglum Hoff (former lawman) - Implores lawmen to enforce the constitution over unconstitutional laws. legislation.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Marshall proclaimed that "any act of the legislature, repugnant to the Constitution, is void", 1803, Marbury vs. Madison.
...
Contrary to the standards and intent of the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights, these so-called "gun control laws" should not be enforced as "laws" but instead, denounced as acts of "outlaw gun control legislation". Acts, by the Legislature, which are indeed repugnant to the Constitution. These unconstitutional legislative and judicial illegalities represent direct and treasonous assaults upon the men, women and children of this nation and our sovereign "Constitutional Republic". Without question, it is outlaw legislation that has no constitutional foundation and violates the most basic of all human rights - self-defense. This legislation, under the pretense of legitimate congressional action, must be immediately voided.
...
Lawmen, including prosecutors, are obliged to discern "Constitutional Law" from outlaw legislation. On all occasions, conscientious officers must refuse to enforce laws that are egregiously unconstitutional (Confiscation of Constitutionally protected firearms from honest fellow citizens). The success of law enforcement is dependent upon the goodwill of the people and a peaceful community is the result of an equal partnership between police and citizenry. Without reciprocal confidence, the consequences will be minor acts of dissension escalating into mass rebellion. Police are compelled to serve only the people and have no other master.

More quotes from The Emperor Wears no Clothes:

Starting in the 1860s, the Ganja Wallah Hasheesh Candy Company made maple sugar hashish candy, which soon became one of the most popular treats in America. For 40 years, it was sold over the counter and advertised in newspapers, as well as being listed in the catalogs of Sears-Roebuck, as a totally harmless, delicious, and fun candy.

Harry Browne at WorldNetDaily - The president speaks, but who is talking? Mr. Browne comments on the president's speech to Congress. From his perspective, it's hard to tell Klinton and GW apart. Same old big government. Same old daily shredding of the constitution.

What really has changed? How does George Bush differ from Bill Clinton?
Will George Bush get government out of your life? Quit prying into your bank account and your e-mail? Quit shredding the Constitution in the name of compassion or the Drug War -- or in a futile effort to make government-education and government-health care succeed?
No, he has no plans to restore any of your lost liberties. It's the same old "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you." George Bush is just Bill Clinton in drag.

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Quotes

Government doesn't work. Never did. Never will. Can't. But there are lots of good people. Love them.

-- Bill St. Clair

The Atlanta Declaration

Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

-- L. Neil Smith

Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

-- L. Neil Smith

A Penalty Clause for the Bill of Rights

Any official, appointed or elected, at any level of government, who attempts, through legislative act or other means, to nullify, evade, or avoid the provisions of the first ten amendments to this Constitution, or of the Thirteenth Amendment, shall be summarily removed from office, and, upon conviction, deprived of all pay and benefits including pension, and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

-- L. Neil Smith

Based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.

-- John Lott, commenting on the National Academy of Sciences report on gun control laws.

Who is a libertarian?

Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap")

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."

-- L. Neil Smith

(Formerly called the "Non-Aggression Principle", or "NAP")

Why Did It Have to be... Guns?

Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

-- L. Neil Smith

Concise

"Tell me," I was once asked, "What do you think about gun control? Give me the short answer." To which I replied, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."

-- Mike Vanderboegh

Also from The Atlanta Declaration:

... like going to the bathroom, breathing, eating, sleeping, or making love, it turns out that self-defense is a bodily function one cannot safely or effectively delegate to a second party.

-- L. Neil Smith

This does not mean that "Marijuana should be available by prescription." It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion.

-- Vin Suprynowicz

If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law.

-- Edward Abbey

The state can only survive as long as a majority is programmed to believe that theft isn't wrong if it's called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping isn't wrong if it's called arrest, that mass murder isn't wrong if it's called war.

-- Bill St. Clair