Douglas Adams, RIP

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sun, 13 May 2001 12:00:00 GMT

Happy Mothers Day!

The Second Amendment Sisters are sponsoring Armed Informed Mothers Rallies all over the coutry today. Protect a mother you love. Attend a rally to support your right to keep and bear arms.

CNN - Hitch Hiker author Adams dies - Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a five volume trilogy, is dead of a heart attack at the young age of 49. Remember, the secret to flying is to fall down and miss the ground. There's a Slashdot thread, including "So is the answer 49 then?" from d2ksla. Nope, the answer is 42. The New York Times has the AP obituary . Nice comments from John McCabe at loony.org. There are also comments over at douglasadams.com on his last post there on April 25, concerning his newly installed Mac OSX (he liked it). Don't panic, and remember to bring a towel. [script]

Vin Suprynowicz at Sierra Times - Jury Nullification: All they can do is stomp their feet and say 'We don't like it' - commentary on the latest bit of tyranny by the Kalifornia supreme court. The bottom line of getting jurors to snitch on folks who aren't properly toeing the state line will be jurors who refuse to convict, but won't say why, i.e. hung juries. It may also cause the nazis to require only 9 of 12 yea votes to stomp out a patriot. At this point, IMHO, we'll be forced to create our own parallel court system and defend ourselves against the rotten conventional courts.

Richard Smith at the Privacy Foundation - My FBI File - Big Brother is watching you. ChoicePoint, Inc. has sold dossiers to the f.b.i. on everybody in their credit history file. Mr. Smith's file included lots of bad information. You can't opt out. You can get a copy of your report here. Tell your browser to find "$20", the price you'll pay to get it. Mr. Smith's file was 60 pages long. [unknown grabbe]

Memo to the FBI: The ChoicePoint dossier for my household contains more misinformation than correct information. I'm not sure how someone looking over these reports could use them in any meaningful way without already knowing a good deal about myself and my wife.

NORML - Bush's New DEA Chief No "Compassionate Conservative" - gw has chosen Asa Hutchinson to run the d.e.a. This guy looks even worse than Walters, the new drug czar. He's a supporter of 10 year sentences for posting drug info on the internet, wants to further militarize the drug war in South America, opposes any use of medical marijuana, including research. A true blue fascist pig. [unknown]

Peter Gorman at High Times - Meltdown at Cannabis Culture - Mark Emery, the publisher of Cannabis Culture magazine, sells hemp seeds via Mark Emery Direct. Don't complain too much about the quality of his seeds. Though he has yet to narc on anyone, he could. He has the information. Cannabis Culture wants you to Overgrow the Government. [unknown]

Jeff Elkins at LewRockwell.com - The Drug War Intensifies; John Walters: Drug Warrior - The imprints of the jack boots will get deeper and more numerous if John Walters becomes the new drug czar. [lew]

Waters, a disciple of former "Drug Czar" and Washington talk show clown, William Bennett, will be in charge the White House effort to intensify the Federal anti-drug focus on law enforcement and interdiction. Translation: more militarized police, more loss of personal liberty, an increased military presence in South America and more prisoners in American Gulags.

Jeff Elkins at LewRockwell.com - Free Market Penicillin? - Mr. Elkins thinks we should free prescription drugs from the medical cartel's clutches and return them to the free market. I agree. In spades. He and I will both still go to a physician for advice on ailments we don't recognize, but we will no longer need to ask (and pay) for a permission slip to treat the nth onset of our spring allergies. [lew]

Additionally, there is a growing movement among pharmacists to free medications from the shackles of the physician's prescription. Pharmacists are highly educated in their craft, with an advanced masters degree as the entry point for the profession and doctorates not at all uncommon. They feel that they are eminently qualified to advise patients and prescribe medications. The general medical practitioner is a middleman, they say.
I agree. I'll go a step further than the pharmacists though, and suggest that we should be able to purchase our Zyrtec, Penicillin or Morphine from a 7-11 where there is not a pharmacist in sight. Place them on the shelves right alongside the Smith Bros. Cough Drops.
As radical as this sounds, it was the common state of affairs prior to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 and the Harrison Act of 1914. Prior to the enactment of these infamous pieces of legislation, it was the right of any American citizen to self-medicate themselves. So it should be today as well.

Michael Mitchell at KeepAndBearArms.com - Seduced by Prevention - a good account of why preventative laws, laws that criminalize one or more of the pre-cursors to a crime, are a really bad idea. [kaba]

False is the idea of utility that would take fire from men because it burns, or water because one may drown in it... Laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... -- Thomas Jefferson

...

Since "preventive" laws run counter to basic behavioral models, they will never be effective tools in preventing criminal activity. They can, however, be extremely successful in subverting civil liberties and increasing governmental power. How so? They invert the presumption of innocence.

Joseph Eisenschmidt at Louisville Independent Media Center - Grand Jurors chosen randomly? Not! - a note from someone without a clue about grand juries. A grand jury exists to decide if there is sufficient evidence to indict someone, i.e. bring them to trial. If the grand jury says no, no trial happens. Grand juries operate in secret, and are selected at random from the population. Or that's how it's supposed to be. They also have subpoena powers. The U.S. constitution guarantees that noone can be brought to trial for a criminal offense unless a grand jury indicts them. Linda Hamilton's case never appeared before a grand jury. The primary reason I'm linking to this post is another response from proff daddy. I don't know if he really has a working assassination politics (AP) system, but it's interesting to imagine such a world. Since the conventional justice system has been proven time and again to not apply to legislators, cops, and judges, we badly need another way to deal with them. I find AP to be distasteful, but I find it much worse that these guys are routinely getting away with murder.

Chaos Manor Mail - Saturday, May 12, 2001 - some discussion of Orbital Power Satellites and a correction on Jerry's numbers in the last mail I linked to. Nuclear waste is two aspirin pills per person per year. Jerry still thinks it's not a problem to get rid of. Will likely move here next week.

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Quotes

Government doesn't work. Never did. Never will. Can't. But there are lots of good people. Love them.

-- Bill St. Clair

The Atlanta Declaration

Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

-- L. Neil Smith

Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

-- L. Neil Smith

A Penalty Clause for the Bill of Rights

Any official, appointed or elected, at any level of government, who attempts, through legislative act or other means, to nullify, evade, or avoid the provisions of the first ten amendments to this Constitution, or of the Thirteenth Amendment, shall be summarily removed from office, and, upon conviction, deprived of all pay and benefits including pension, and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

-- L. Neil Smith

Based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.

-- John Lott, commenting on the National Academy of Sciences report on gun control laws.

Who is a libertarian?

Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap")

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."

-- L. Neil Smith

(Formerly called the "Non-Aggression Principle", or "NAP")

Why Did It Have to be... Guns?

Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

-- L. Neil Smith

Concise

"Tell me," I was once asked, "What do you think about gun control? Give me the short answer." To which I replied, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."

-- Mike Vanderboegh

Also from The Atlanta Declaration:

... like going to the bathroom, breathing, eating, sleeping, or making love, it turns out that self-defense is a bodily function one cannot safely or effectively delegate to a second party.

-- L. Neil Smith

This does not mean that "Marijuana should be available by prescription." It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion.

-- Vin Suprynowicz

If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law.

-- Edward Abbey

The state can only survive as long as a majority is programmed to believe that theft isn't wrong if it's called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping isn't wrong if it's called arrest, that mass murder isn't wrong if it's called war.

-- Bill St. Clair