End the War on Freedom

I found it really hard to get any work done yesterday. I talked to two other people who had the same problem. Odd.

Played with Radio Userland a little. It shows promise as a way to move End the War on Freedom to billstclair.com. I have significant work to do to make that happen, since I don't want the out-of-the-box blog that RU provides, but I like the idea of getting all my bits on a service I pay for.

Got this in office email:

Doesn't Pay To Cheat

A Charlotte, NC, man having purchased a case of very rare, very expensive cigars insured them against fire among other things. Within a month, having smoked his entire stockpile of cigars and without having made even his first premium payment on the policy, the man filed a claim against the insurance company.

In his claim, the man stated the cigars were lost "in a series of small fires". The insurance company refused to pay, citing the obvious reason that the man had consumed the cigars in the normal fashion. The man sued.... and won.

In delivering the ruling the judge agreeing that the claim was frivolous, stated nevertheless that the man held a policy from the company in which it had warranted that the cigars were insurable and also guaranteed that it would insure against fire, without defining what it considered to be "unacceptable fire", and was obligated to pay the claim. Rather than endure a lengthy and costly appeal process the insurance company accepted the ruling and paid the man $15,000 for the rare cigars he lost in "the fires".

After the man cashed the check, however, the insurance company had him arrested on 24 counts of arson. With his own insurance claim and testimony from the previous case being used against him, the man was convicted of intentionally burning his insured property and sentenced to 24 months in jail and a $24,000 fine.

Richard S. Ehrlich at Laissez Faire City Times - The Phosphorus Bomb Aboard Thai Air: a bomb blew up the plane that Thailand's Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was going to take to an anti-drug conference. Thaksin is planning to impose the death penalty on drug traffickers, many of whom operate out of neighboring Burma. [grabbe]

Uzi Mahnaimi at The Sunday Times - Sharon set to legalise torture: Ariel Sharon is expected to push through the Knesset a law that would allow the use of "moderate physical pressure" during interrogation. Slimeball. It's illegal because its previous use caused death. It's illegal because torture has no place in a civilized country. Ever. [grabbe]

Ron Paul's Texas Straight Talk - Bush Tax Plan Only One Piece of the Tax Cut Puzzle: Dr. No voted "Yes"!

Those opposing the tax cut said that it would "cost the government too much" and hurt the economy. The truth of the matter is that the economy is hurt when the government takes money out of the paychecks of private citizens that they would otherwise spend, save or invest. The government has never created anything, much less economic prosperity. The government can only take from one and give to another.

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Of course, the ultimate goal is the entire elimination of the federal income tax. Regardless of the rate reductions in the Bush plan, the IRS remains an uncontrolled bureaucracy. People have become so disillusioned by its current structure that support for a flat tax or a national sales tax has finally gained momentum. It is important to remember that the federal government operated for more than 130 years without an income tax. It is time to return to a simple, fair method of funding the federal government. An elimination of the income tax, however, would require a drastic reduction of spending in Washington. A responsible federal government that obeyed the limits placed on it by the Constitution could easily operate on a much smaller budget.

Vin Suprynowicz at the Las Vegas Review-Journal - Police-state measure attacks parental rights: In Amerika, your kids belong to the government. They only loan them to you as long as you behave like a good subject. There's a new bill in the Nevada legislature that will give report cards to parents on how well they're taking care of their children from the teachers' perspective. Time to pull your kids out of the government schools, raze the buildings, and salt the earth where they used to stand. [market]

The presumption in America today -- first for the poor, but increasingly for all of us -- is that our children belong to the state. The state allows those children to remain "out on loan" to their natural birth parents only so long as you meet all the government's requirements: Every vaccination recommended by the major pharmaceutical firms, no matter how dangerous or statistically useless. No guns in the house; no strange faith-healing religious beliefs. And you'd better make sure your kid reports to the local government youth propaganda camp from the age of 6 ... or is it 5 now? ... so the local educrats get their subsidies based on a full complement of little butts to warm the seats.

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My advice? Do not call or write your senator or representative to urge defeat of this measure. It'll just get back-doored later on. Nope: They've shown us what they intend, and there's only one solution left:

Pull your kids out of the government schools. Home-school every child.

James Dao at the New York Times - New Gun Control Politics: A Whimper, Not a Bang : now that the victim disarmament crowd has lost their shill in the White House, the democrats have realized that anti-gun rhetoric is losing them elections. [market]

"Gun control," lamented Steve Cobble, director of Campaign for a Progressive Future, a liberal political action committee, "has become the shorthand for why Democrats don't do well."

H.R.31, the Citizens' Self-Defense Act of 2001, affirms the right of citizens to defend themselves from threats to their safety. Some states have been charging people with felonies for shooting their attackers. This bill makes sure they have legal recourse in such cases. GOA's most recent postcard campaign asks representatives to cosponsor this bill. If you still believe in talking to your congress critters, ask them to cosponsor H.R.31. Ron Paul does.

Military Corruption - Female Sergeant Dead from Anthrax Shot - When Will Pentagon End This Madness? A formerly healthy woman died four weeks after completing a series of antrax shots. Why does the military immunize against anthrax? Follow the money... [sierra]

Tim O'Shea at Sierra Times - Autism and Mercury: The San Diego Conference: There are more autistic kids these days. Mr. O'Shea explores the connection between vaccines and autism. A rambling article with no clear conclusion, but it appears likely that autism is caused by either mercury in vaccines or by the MMR (Mumps, Measles, & Rubella) vaccine. [sierra]

I tried the Java 3DFly Through beta that I pointed at yesterday. On my 350Mhz notebook, it works but is too slow to use effectively. I got the OpenGL version of Java 3D. I assume that the Java code is just a thin layer over the built-in graphics, but it's still too slow. I'm don't know if my machine has hardware accelleration for OpenGL. Maybe the DirectX version would work better for me...

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