End the War on Freedom

I saw the movie Blow yesterday afternoon. I wrote My Response to Blow immediately after returning home from the theater.

Some of you are probably thinking, "He did this to himself. He broke the law, and now he has to pay." Bull. The law is an ass. He transported plant extracts to people who wanted them, satisfying their desires. I'm sure some of them abused these plant extracts, and ruined or ended their lives. Was that his fault? No. He didn't point a gun at anybody and force them to ingest anything. They were happy to pay him lots of money for the opportunity to do it. "But he got them addicted," you say. No. There is no addictive substance on the face of the planet...

Angus has moved his blogging to yoshware.com. [mind]

Meg at not.so.soft - A Story - I won't excerpt this one. Go read it. Wonderful. [notsosoft]

Dave Barry at the Miami Herald - A few nice words about IRS on way to Leavenworth - would be funny if there were anything funny about the i.r.s. protection racket. [lew]

So these were some of the humorous ``digs'' I had planned to take at the IRS this year in my annual tax column. But then, on the VERY MORNING that I was going to write this column, an amazing coincidence occurred: I got a letter from the IRS, informing me that I have been chosen for an audit. I swear I am not making this up. This letter does not have the same fun tone as the IRS Internet site. As I understand it, as a layperson, it basically states that the IRS wants me to produce every document that has ever existed, including the original Magna Carta.

Boy that sucked - From a railroad news group. A large tank car was being steam cleaned and the top hatch was closed too soon. Of course the steam condensed and the result is..... Jul04_01.jpg Jul04_02.jpg ["brad"]

crashbar3 at eBay - Atlas Missile Site near Cheyenne, WY - I have no idea if this is serious. ["brad"]

Atlas Missile Site near Cheyenne, WY. Approx 1 hour from Denver off I-80. 340 acres. Buildings include 3 silos, command/control building, radio building w. tower & other out-buildings. Fuel & water tanks, two large wells, water delivery infrastructure.

This unique property has tremendous potential as an industrial site, co-housing development, or private, secure retreat. The silos are above ground type, and are huge, hardened concrete structures. (Missiles sat in them horizontally, roofs rolled back, and missiles were raised upright for launch). Each silo is approximately 11,000 sq. ft. Each silo has an overhead crane in place in the main (missile) bay, which measures approximately 150 x 30. Roofs can still be rolled back when connected to an electric motor, and they do not leak. Silo's have numerous bays, each of which is a separate concrete room. The Command and Control building has several subterranean levels. Entire 340 acre site is surrounded by high security grade chain-link fencing, of which all except for approximately 2000 feet is intact. The missing fence is rolled up and stored, and goes with the property.

The property has the following known environmental hazards: Much of the plumbing and heating pipes and duct work are insulated with asbestos. This insulation is 95% intact. There is a diesel fuel spill in the vicinity of the diesel fuel storage tank. There are numerous (150 - 200) junk vehicles stored at the site, with undetermined parts value &/or collector's value. There are approximately 40,000 tires on the property, half of which have been secured into bales containing 50 tires each. Based on preliminary inquiry, this property is eligible for F.U.D.S. ('Formerly Used Defense Site') cleanup funds to cover the remediation of any environmental problems associated with the U.S. government's use of the property.

Terms: Purchaser will take the property and all improvements as is, where is, and subject to a $50,000 DEQ lien on the property which can be lifted by disposing of the tires in satisfactory manner. Other liens &/or outstanding liabilities will be satisfied from the purchase price. Purchaser will pay for closing and title insurance. This parcel is priced at the approximate value of the bare land, and contains several million dollars worth of improvements. Serious inquiries only, please.

Linda Hamilton - Troopers Out of Control - Linda says that Mass. state troopers are hassling Berkshire Eagle employees who have written articles supporting her. She then asks what you've done to help her and others being ground under their jack boots.

There's a new article in The Libertarian series by Vin Suprynowicz:

• "Dump the income tax" - The unintended consequences of a not-to-exceed-seven-percent tax on the rich. All of a sudden, the rich had no income. Or they spent their money on art donations instead of steel factories. It's time to trash the income tax and replace it with... nothing.

  The "emperor's new clothes" for the mewling collectivists who still endlessly whine that any tax cut will "unfairly benefit the rich" (read: unfairly reduce the amount of loot I get to allocate for my vote-buying)?
  
  The one thing these class warriors don't want anyone to notice is that - after decades of lobbying for loopholes - the rich can shelter so much of their income today that their accountants often recommend they pass up a few deductions just "for appearance sake." When Standard Oil heir Nelson Rockefeller appeared before the Senate for confirmation as vice president in the 1970s, he was asked what he'd paid the previous year in income taxes. Mr. Rockefeller replied that he had not paid a thing. The Congressional Record does not record the way his fellow millionaires in the Senate responded, but there are recurrent reports that the senators cheered.

DefendYourPrivacy.com - How the government plans to destroy your medical privacy - gw has proved that he's no better than komrade klinton. He allowed the rapist-blessedly-no-longer-in-chief's medical privacy invasion rules, promulgated by h.h.s. secretary tommy thompson, to go into affect yesterday. If you like bugging your congress critter, you can support Ron Paul's H.J.Res.38, which makes this ruling null and void, via DefendYourPrivacy.com and/or The Liberty Committee's H.J.Res.38 page.

J.D. Tuccille at CivilLiberties.About.Com - Jim Bell's show trial - A good accounting of the trial and conviction of Jim Bell. He was forced to use a court-appointed attorney that he didn't want, was denied access to evidence, was denied the witnesses he wanted. Reporters were forbidden to name the jurors.

Now Bell has been convicted for -- get this -- stalking government arm-twisters.

Stalking? Well ... that's what they call it. Bell gathered the sort of information on them that they compiled on him -- and many, many other people -- for years. For that offense, the feds decided to send Bell away again, and they did everything in their power to fix the trial.

anonymous at Sierra Times - IRS Prosecutes Outspoken Dissident (Jim D. Bell Convicted on Two Counts) - another account of the kangaroo trial of Jim Bell for the crime of attempting to discover the addresses of i.r.s. agents. Heil Georgie. [sierra]

One thing is clear: the IRS is interested in putting Bell away for espousing the ideas in Assassination Politics. At least twice during the trial, in a manner reminiscent of Stalin-era Soviet courts, the prosecutor pointedly remarked that Bell has failed to recant his AP essay. The lesson is obvious: writing or saying anything that the IRS finds threatening will make a person a target to be dealt with by almost any means possible.

...

The law that made stalking federal agents a crime will continue to be used with increasing frequency. The law, enacted in 1996 and amended in 2000, has already been upheld in the Fourth and Eighth Federal District. Stalking itself is defined based on the slippery slope of intention, not on action, which brings up the specter of an increasing number of Stalinesque thought-crime trials in the future.

Camille Paglia at Salon - Our unimpressive president - puts down gw for his poor performance at reading his scripts for the Chinese. Talks at length about the Vagina Monologues, quoting Betty Dodson. Other feminists she likes, the passing of Maynard Mack, the academy awards.

Eve is no longer the disarming young woman delivering her monologues. She has become an evangelical minister shouting and gesturing and admonishing us to demand an end to violence against women, as the crowd roars in agreement. Toward the end of the evening, Eve asked everyone who'd ever been raped to stand up. There was a smattering of women standing where I was sitting. Then she asked for those women who had been beaten to stand. Many more stood up. Finally she asked all those to stand who knew any woman who'd been raped or beaten, which included most of the audience. I refused to stand as an insignificant protest, knowing she would never ask those of us who had never been raped or beaten and who loved having orgasms to stand.

...

Well, I grimly suppose I must make some comment about the Academy Awards, whose broadcast last month had all the excitement of a turgid river of molasses. That the peevishly pursed and clunky Russell Crowe and the goofy, grinning, stork-legged Julia Roberts now hold Oscars is one of the many tacky ironies of current popular culture. How far Hollywood has fallen from the era in which (as I recently remarked to my media class) Marlon Brando in "A Streetcar Named Desire" could lose the Oscar to Humphrey Bogart in "The African Queen."

Jerry Pournelle - Beware the Ides of April - Jerry's doing his taxes today. Brilliant commentary on the world's only remaining superpower. Will likely move here next week. [pournelle]

...But is being and acting like a superpower what we want? It's certainly closer to Empire than Republic, and there is a logic to Empire: it leads to rigid control, an attempt to hammer diverse peoples into submitting to laws brought from outside, and an abandonment of the principles of the Declaration which say that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Most of us now live under laws to which we did not consent and would not consent now. A superpower will continue that trend. It has to.

Jon Entine on Jerry Pournelle's mail page - Why Kenyans Win the Boston Marathon (And Why We're Afraid To Talk About It) - Kenyans have a genetic advantage as marathon runners. Genetics plays a part in human abilities. This is not a racist position, it is simple scientific fact. Get used to it. Will likely move here next week. [pournelle]

Despite overwhelming scientific evidence, the popular myth persists that there are no meaningful genetic differences. In his State of the Union address in 2000, President Clinton declared that "We are all, regardless of race, 99.9 percent the same," apparently trying allay fears about the potential misuse of data generated by advances in genetic science. Well, there is no detectable genetic difference between a wolf, a Labrador, and a poodle -- zero -- but no one would dare suggest that their body type and behavioral differences are cultural, rather than innate. Differences are grounded in gene sequences and proteins and are activated by obscure environmental triggers.

Dave Winer at Scripting News Saturday, April 14, 2001 - Dave discovers that the New York Times prints all the news that can be twisted to fit their ideology. [script]

After the article in the NY Times has sunk in, I no longer read the editorial page of the Times with any idea that there's a philosophy behind it, or any integrity. After the dust has settled, after talking with one of the other people who was interviewed by the Times for Monday's article, I know that in this case, the thesis, the "news" was entirely a Times invention. Glenn Fleishman, who I respect, makes excuses for them. I don't accept the excuses. The article was about my views. It wasn't an accurate reflection of my views, and there's no excuse for that.

Stephan Somogyi at ZDNet - Why you should be using FireWire - Mr. Somogyi waxes eloquent on IEEE 1394. [cafe]

FireWire is the next SCSI. Only Intel and a few other companies don't want you to know this.

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