End the War on Freedom

An engineer from the hotel came to check out my broken internet connection. He swapped cables, even swapped the modem. We concluded that the problem was at the other end of the cable. He offered a move to another room. I'm now in the room next door, downloading at 600K baud. Yes!

Thanks to Zippylog for the link. Happy first birthday to your blog!

Lori Scott Fogleman at Baylor Public Relations - Former Attorney General Janet Reno To Speak At Baylor Sept. 13 - janet "will speak on ethics in public service. Realy. The kaba commentary says it very well: [kaba]

To Americans who know the truth about Waco, that's like having Hitler speak at a college outside Auschwitz on the topic of racial and ethnic tolerance. She's bold enough to also plan to "share some reflections on the 1993 Branch Davidian standoff near Waco." Anybody in or near Waco with a video camera wanna capture that one for us?

Kent Snyder at The Liberty Committee - H.J. Res. 41 Vote & Real Tax Relief -H.J.Res.41 was a constitutional amendment requireing a 2/3 majority of congress for any tax increase. It failed last week to garner the 2/3 majority of the house that it required, though it did get a simple majority. Ron Paul introduced H.J.Res.45, another constitutional amendment that would forbid the federal government from engaging in any enterprise not explicitly specified in the constitution. It also repeals the sixteenth amendment, and states that Congress shall no longer levy taxes on personal incomes, estates, and/or gifts. It gives Congress 3 years to shutter all the unconstitutional entities before turning off the plundered cash flow. It is sitting in the House Judiciary Committee with no cosponsors. You can ask your representative to cosponsor this legislation and ask your senators to introduce a senate version via the Liberty Committee's Liberty Action Center.

CCIF - John McCain and the Constitution - John McCain's bills are popular, but many are blatantly unconstitutional. [market]

The Constitution was written to provide a framework, an inviolable structure for the Republic that would persevere. The Bill of Rights was written in recognition that the politically popular course is sometimes, perhaps painfully, not the right course. For neither expediency nor exploitation can any of those tenets be cast aside. John McCain and many public servants like him need to ponder that.

Will Cate - Cellphones and Supermodels - Nikki Taylor, a woman who makes money by posing for photographs of her beautiful face, was recently the passenger in a car that was driven into a tree. Her face survived, but she has internal injuries. I wish her a speedy recovery. The car's driver was using a cell phone at the time of the crash, so the crash is being touted as "caused by a cell phone". Bull. A cell phone is an inanimate object. It can cause nothing. No new laws are even suggested by this incident, except to control freaks who refuse to take responsibility for their own actions.

Cellphones don't cause car crashes. Bad drivers do. Is this really so hard to grasp? I suppose so, in a culture where nothing is anybody's fault anymore.

James Bovard at the American Spectator - A Modest Proposal for Future Shootdowns - some advice for the powers that kill about how to handle the next murder of innocents by the gorillas of the war on freedom, er... some drugs. [market]

U.S. agencies need to prepare a contingency plan before the next disaster strikes. Television footage of the survivors and the dead mother may cause some Americans to have doubts about the drug war. Such coverage could easily be counter-weighed by a bevy of high profile domestic busts (including at least one Hollywood star and one overpaid athlete superstar), the appointment of a new drug czar who promises to finally "get tough" with drug users, and the emergency printing and distribution of ten million "Just Say No!" buttons to school children.

Ed Cobb at LewRockwell.com - Cheap Smokes - now that big tobacco has been forced to raise their prices to for the extortion payment, er... legal settlement, higher cigarette prices have lowered teen smoking. Not! The market has done it's job, and the tobacco companies that weren't sued are selling cheaper cigarettes than big tobacco offered before the lawsuits. The law of unintended consequences in action. [market]

Grandma always said that the road to Hell was paved with good intentions. I only hope she was right.

George Reisman at the Ludwig von Mises Institute - Avoid Blackouts Now - all kalifornia has to do to avert summer blackouts is allow the retail price of power to rise to market levels and ignore the misanthropes who block power plant construction. Initially, the price will skyrocket, but this will reduce demand, which will cause a reduction in the wholesale and retail prices. Some producers who were afraid of not being paid will also again be willing to sell power to California power retailers, thus increasing the supply and allowing further reduction of the retail price. As soon as more plants come online, more power will be available at a lower price than ever before. Simple economics. [market]

What hardly anyone realizes, however, is that the enormously high price of power in the wholesale market is a direct consequence of the retail price of power being set too low. The low retail price of power allows the quantity of power demanded to be large enough to require the use of extremely high-cost sources of supply to meet it. In fact, in such circumstances, the price may far exceed the costs of the very highest-cost producer able to be in the market. If, however, the retail price of power were higher--and, thus, the quantity of power demanded were lower--the resulting smaller supply of power that would need to be generated would be generated at a sharply lower cost and thus at a sharply lower wholesale price.

Crystal Epona via Stacey Bourdeau at Sierra Times - Born Free - Yow! [sierra]

I was born and raised in "The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave". At the time of my birth, the event was recorded by government certified staff of a government recognized hospital. My parents were required by the government to request a birth certificate to prove the event occured and a government issued number called a social security number to keep tract of me. I was subjected to government required injections of diseases throughout my toddler years by government certified nurses under direction of government certified doctors in preparation of compulsive schooling.

handguncontrolinc.org is a parody of Handgun Control, Inc.'s web site. A good one, too. Hehe. ["geekswithguns"]

Ali Kazimi at Everyone's a Critic - Listen Carefully, Show Some ID - one photo-journalist's account of the behavior of Quebec nazis near Laval University. [unknown]

The students had been warned a couple of days earlier that unmarked police vans were kidnapping people off the streets. Activist Jaggi Singh had been kidnapped a couple of days earlier by undercover police using a similar van. I had seen several such vans on city streets, but these ones here were clearly marked as Quebec Provincial Police vehicles.

Twenty police officers dressed in green fatigues - five from each van - jumped out and rushed the students. I managed to pull my camera out and pan across the vans. As I swung around, I found myself isolated from the students, who had rushed to form a defensive circle. The commanding officer, who looked and acted the part of a militia commander, saw me with the camera and approached. I kept calling out that I was an independent filmmaker.

Apple's newest iBook looks really neat. Starts at $1299. The fully loaded model that I would want costs $2299. [wes]

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