End the War on Freedom

Amber Kronberg - Monday, May 7, 2001 - Amber took Holli, her ten-year-old daughter, to a Beltaine party north of LA. They both had a glorious time. "The night's festivities defy description." She says that some people would tell her that this was no place for a ten year old. Ms. Kronberg, only you and Holli are equipped to decide what you and Holli are prepared for. Ain't nobody else's business, either. Blessed Be! [eden]

Harry Browne at WorldNetDaily - Missing the point in the Kerrey controversy - everyone's giving Bob Kerrey a hard time for admitting to having unintentionally killed civilians in Viet Nam. But they're missing the point. Why was he there? What business did the United States have in Viet Nam? Said differently: "War! What is it good for. Absolutely nothing." A stunning piece of writing by Harry Browne. Don't miss it.

War is the worst obscenity government can inflict upon its subjects. It makes every other political crime -- corruption, bribery, favoritism, vote-buying, graft, dishonesty -- seem petty.

Ron Paul's Texas Straight Talk - The Case Against the Income Tax - why America should not have and does not need an income tax. Dr. Paul has introduced the Liberty Amendment, H.J.Res.45, to abolish the income tax. If you still believe in such things, ask your congress critter to cosponsor this bill.

Yet don't we need an income tax to fund the important functions of the federal government? You may be surprised to know that the income tax accounts for only approximately one-third of federal revenue. Only 10 years ago, the federal budget was roughly one-third less than it is today. Surely we could find ways to cut spending back to 1990 levels, especially when the Treasury has single year tax surpluses for the past several years. So perhaps the idea of an America without an income tax is not so radical after all.

Linton Weeks at the Washington Post - Coming Soon, Epilogue by Gore Vidal - Gore Vidal is one of five people picked by Timothy McVeigh to witness his execution on May 16. Vidal plans to write about the execution in Vanity Fair. Some are complaining about this. Mr. Vidal has "never been concerned about public opinion." Other than his killing of innocents, Mr. Vidal appears to like Mr. McVeigh. [lew]

Vidal said he would leave it to his questioner to remind readers of the federal government's 1993 raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Tex. -- which left 80 people dead, including 22 children -- and its 1992 raid at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in which the FBI killed the wife and child of separatist Randy Weaver. After all, Vidal told the reporter, you live in "the United States of Amnesia."

"I had hoped to go out and interview him," Vidal said of McVeigh. "I'm not a journalist. I haven't interviewed anyone since Barry Goldwater in 1964." But last month Attorney General John Ashcroft decreed that inmates on death row cannot give face-to-face interviews.

Such a decision "was worthy of the Third Reich," Vidal complained. "How this can come out of the head of an attorney general who is a nobody is beyond me. It seems unconstitutional."

Gore Vidal at Vanity Fair via DrugSense - The War at Home - This was first printed in November, 1998. Still relevant, unfortunately. This article was referenced in the one above, so I looked it up. Mr Vidal makes the mistake of thinking that campaign financing reform can stop the madness. Only reducing the federal dole, by at least a factor of ten, will reduce these tyrants' power. This article started Mr. Vidal's relationship with Mr. McVeigh. They exchanged a few letters.

Drugs. If they did not exist our governors would have invented them in order to prohibit them and so make much of the population vulnerable to arrest, imprisonment, seizure of property, and so on. In 1970, I wrote in The New York Times, of all uncongenial places,

It is possible to stop most drug addiction in the United States within a very short time. Simply make all drugs available and sell them at cost. Label each drug with a precise description of what effect- good or bad--the drug will have on the taker. This will require heroic honesty. Don't say that marijuana is addictive or dangerous when it is neither, as millions of people know--unlike "speed," which kills most unpleasantly, or heroin, which can be addictive and difficult to kick. Along with exhortation and warning, it might be good for our citizens to recall (or learn for the first time) that the United States was the creation of men who believed that each person has the right to do what he wants with his own life as long as he does not interfere with his neighbors' pursuit of happiness (that his neighbor's idea of happiness is persecuting others does confuse matters a bit).

I suspect that what I wrote 28 years ago is every bit as unacceptable now as it was then, with the added problem of irritable ladies who object to my sexism in putting the case solely in masculine terms, as did the sexist founders.

I also noted the failure of the prohibition of alcohol from 1919 to 1933. And the crime wave that Prohibition set in motion so like the one today since "both the Bureau of Narcotics and the Mafia want strong laws against the sale and use of drugs because if drugs are sold at cost there would be no money in them for anyone." Will anything sensible be done I wondered? "The American people are as devoted to the idea of sin and its punishment as they are to making money--and fighting drugs is nearly as big a business as pushing them. Since the combination of sin and money is irresistible (particularly to the professional politician), the situation will only grow worse." I suppose, if nothing else, I was a pretty good prophet.

...

Currently, according to Kopel and Blackman, U.S. and some state laws go like this: whenever a police officer is permitted, with or without judicial approval, to investigate a potential crime, the officer may seize and keep as much property associated with the alleged criminal as the police officer considers appropriate. Although forfeiture is predicated on the property's being used in a crime, there shall be no requirement that the owner be convicted of a crime. It shall be irrelevant that the person was acquitted of the crime on which the seizure was based, or was never charged with any offense. Plainly, Judge Kafka was presiding in 1987 (United States v. Sandini) when this deranged formula for theft by police was made law: "The innocence of the owner is irrelevant," declared the court. "It is enough that the property was involved in a violation to which forfeiture attaches."

...

For Timothy McVeigh, the A.T.F. became the symbol of oppression and murder. Since he was now suffering from an exaggerated sense of justice, not a common American trait, he went to war pretty much on his own and ended up slaughtering more innocents than the Feds had at Waco. Did he know what he was doing when he blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City because it contained the hated bureau? McVeigh remained silent throughout his trial. Finally, as he was about to be sentenced, the court asked him if he would like to speak. He did. He rose and said, "I wish to use the words of Justice Brandeis dissenting in Olmstead to speak for me. He wrote, 'Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or ill, it teaches the whole people by its example.'" Then McVeigh was sentenced to death by the government.

Jen McCaffery at The Roanoke Times - Appeals court affirms ruling in Roanoke case; Officers denied immunity - some good news for the fourth amendment. [market]

Rick Montgomery at The Kansas City Star - Zero-tolerance punishments have gone too far, ABA says - finally some reason is being injected into the craziness over arresting and suspending students for pranks and mistakes. [market]

The New York Post via Washington Weekly - Mark Fuhrman to Investigate Death of Vince Foster - Fuhrman is probably not the man to do this invetigation, but I do hope someone finds Mr. Foster's murderer. [ww]

Jeremy Sapienza at LewRockwell.com - The Fraud of 'Intellectual Property' - why Mr. Sapienza will never buy another CD. I'm still undecided about intellectual property. Damned if you do and damned if you don't from my perspective. Includes a new mug shot of Mr. Sapienza. Much nicer, IMHO. [lew]

David Colker at the LA Times - Seven Days of Spam - a writer spent a week responding to all the amazing offers in the 107 spam messages he received (lucky him to receive so little of it), and discovered why it's called "junk" mail. [xray]

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