End the War on Freedom

Hampster Taxidermy: Remember your best friend forever. Requires Flash. Funny in a disgusting sort of way. [script]

Geeks With Guns - Guinea pig harem says 'hello Sooty': A guinea pig in Pontypridd, South Wales, is the proud father of 43 offspring following a single night of carousing with 24 female guinea pigs. [picks]

I've created a Frog Farm Mirror page over at billstclair.com, with the permission of Damaged Justice, the creator of those pages.

Patricia Neil at LewRockwell.com - If I Have to Pay Reparations for Slavery . . .: If Patti is going to be taxed to pay for slavery, she is damn well gonna get some slaves. The black market will take care of it. Only, what will she do with slaves?

It makes no logical sense to ask me to pay reparations for slavery unless I have personally indulged in slavery and caused some actual harm thereby. So if "free money" is to be made from my alleged "white guilt," I think it only fair that I have something to be guilty of. And I plan to be plenty guilty before I'd be willing to allow any government silly enough to call me its "subject" to take my money for reparations for slavery.

Privacy International - The 2001 US Big Brother Awards were given on March 7 at the Hyatt Regency in Cambridge, MA. Carnivore, ChoicePoint, City of Tampa, and the NSA got Orwell statues (below). Evan Hendricks and Julie Brill received Brandeis awards as champions of privacy.

Ruth Dunley at The Ottawa Citizen - Potter fans rally to boycott film: Warner Brothers has been attempting to get kids who run Harry Potter sites to turn over their domains. Fie! A boycott is underway of Warner's new Harry Potter film and of Coca-Cola, the "sole global marketing partner for the Harry Potter film", to the tune of $150 million (according to Defense Against the Dark Arts). DADA and PotterWar.org.uk are running the boycott. [unknown]

Declan McCullagh's politechbot.com - The U.S. Department of Justice has served me with a subpoena: Mr McCullagh has been subpoena'd to appear in Tacoma, WA on April 2 to testify in the trial of James Dalton Bell. He wrote two articles for Wired, and has been asked to bring them with him. He is considering whether he compl with the article demand and is looking for legal advice. [grabbe]

Declan McCullagh's politechbot.com - DOJ says Ashcroft approved my subpoena, Feds won't back down: a rather nice letter from Robb London, an "Assistant United States Attorney" saying that Mr. McCullagh was subpoena'd only to verify that Mr. Bell told him what the articles say. Federal rules of evidence require this unless Mr. Bell would accept a an affidavit, which he won't according to Mr. London. Jeff Gordon instructs Mr. McCullagh how to make travel arrangements so that he will be reimbursed for his expenses. ["politechbot"]

bob lonsberry - Freak Opens Fire in California School: the best analysis I've seen of the recent school shooting and all school shootings. Tens of millions of kids go to school every day. A few times a year one of them kills somebody. Considering those statistics, our schools are incredibly safe.

Which is why the comments of President Bush were wise.

He didn't wring his hands, he didn't wonder what was wrong with the country, he didn't call for new expenditures or some federal initiative.

He put the blame right where it belonged. On the hateful killer. He showed the shooter not as a counter-hero, but as a scum. The president called the boy's rampage a "disgraceful act of cowardice."

Which it was.

bob lonsberrty - A Note to the Boss: good advice for anyone who manages people.

So here are some tips.

Anger has no place on the job. If you find yourself angry with your employees, you are wrong. Yelling is never tolerable.

Neither is profanity, or threats, or mocking.

Your communication with your workers must be civil and appropriate. If you belittle people, or trip them up with words, you are wrong."

AP via freedomforum.org - Federal court raps Vermont judges for violating protester’s free-speech rights: sometimes the courts get it right. [market]

Jackie Hallifax of AP via Nando Times - AOL immune from porn lawsuit, Florida high court rules: I'm no fan of AOL, but if an ISP, any ISP, can be held liable for the actions of its customers, it's game over for the internet. The court got it right again. [market]

Lew Rockwell at LewRockwell.com - The Thing About Taxes: the IRS is going after business with schemes for paying less taxes, most of which are bogus. The right way to solve the problem, of course, is to lower taxes. 0% sounds like a good tax rate, eh? Let's end this protection racket for good. [market]

The users of these schemes have one thing in common: they want to avoid certain types of taxes and were scouring around for a means to do so that wouldn't get them in legal trouble. Tired of waiting for a tax cut from Washington, they worked to give one to themselves. The impulse is as valid as it is naive: Washington is awash in money and no one but a dogmatic socialist could believe that Americans aren't overtaxed.

...

The way to go about dealing with the demand side is to provide tax relief, and we are not talking about something so piddling as a ten-year plan to cut the increase in government revenue by a couple of percentage points. If we want to end the problem of tax-scam ripoffs, we have to end the biggest tax ripoff of all, which is the tax system itself.

...

The Tax Foundation offers another way to look at the problem: the number of hours per day working for government. In an eight hour day, 2 hours and 42 minutes are spent working for government. That’s more than we work for food, clothing, and housing combined. What’s more, there is no national emergency that could possibly be used to justify this. As Amity Shlaes says, the tax system is evidence of government greed and nothing else.

Richard W. Rahn at the Competitive Enterprise Institute - Why the War on Money Laundering Should be Aborted: a reasoned argument against money laundering laws. [market]

If you hesitate while trying to come up with a definition, you have begun to understand part of the problem. Money laundering is hard to define because it is not a crime like murder, robbery, or rape, where the evil act is clear. It is a crime of motive rather than activity. In fact, two different people can engage in the exact same set of activities, and one can be guilty of money laundering while the other is not. In fact, money laundering has only been illegal in the US since 1986, and it is not illegal in all countries.

Radio Userland is shipping. The personal version is free. Soon there will be a server version that will cost. I tried it for a little while. Lots to learn. Don't know if I'll ever get as fast with it as I am now with emacs/opera. It has one advantage that I could keep my database on my machine and upload my weblog to billstclair.com. I'll have to play with that. It doesn't interest me much unless I can figure out how to copy all of wws.editthispage.com to billstclair.com (easily).

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