July 9, 2001: National Firearm Purchase Day
God
Disguised
As a myriad things and
Playing a game
Of tag
Has kissed you and said,
"You're it --
I mean, you're Really IT!"
Now
It does not matter
What you believe or feel
For something wonderful,
Major-league Wonderful
Is someday going
To
Happen.
randomonium has a new look. Nice work Monde!
From Mara Leveritt's What You Can Do page:
First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win. --Gandhi
From The Federalist:
Faith-based initiatives, and only faith-based initiatives, can be truly charitable. It is urgent that believers ask themselves what government funded faith-based initiatives will really be based on, and whether there will be room left for charity when the money has driven the name of God away. If the government wants to advance the cause of charity, it should simply work harder to get out of the way of a spirit-filled people already eager to do the work of the Lord. Abolish the income tax, and watch the citizens of America -- unbribed -- use their own money to remind the world that America, itself, is a faith-based institution. --Alan Keyes
John Ward Anderson at the Washington Post -
For This Iranian Filmmaker, a Harrowing Airport Scene 
- The
immigration and naturalization nazis of the United American Socialist
Republics handcuffed an Iranian filmmaker and chained him to a bench
overnight because he didn't have a transit visa and refused to be
fingerprinted. Funny thing, his films are about atrocities committed
by the Iranian government. [xray]
"It was torture the way they were taking me to the plane with the handcuffs and belt," he said. "That was the most humiliating part. While I was in custody, I felt I was being treated like a criminal when I wasn't one, and that gave me room to resist, and it was a beautiful feeling. But I couldn't explain to the people on the plane who I was and what had happened to me. Perhaps they thought I was a smuggler or had just been released from prison. But I really wanted them to know that I was not what they thought."I remember it was cloudy outside, and when the plane took off, I saw Miss Liberty and it seemed very funny," he said. "I was thinking whether that symbol was alive, if there was a human spirit behind it, or if no one had any sense of what freedom was."
Richard W. Stevens at JPFO - U.N. Burns Guns on July 9: Your Rights Are Next - July 9 is commU.N.ist "small arms destruction day". They're planning to open their gun-banning conference with bonfires around the world. [jpfo]
lowbridge at Free Republic - TO ARMS! July 9 is hereby declared National Firearm Purchase Day! - The freepers respond in style to the U.N.'s gun burning day. Lots of good images on this page. [kaba]
JPFO - A Plan for the UN's Gun Burning Party - JPFO is selling commU.N.ist targets. They suggest shooting them full of holes and sending them to your congress critters. I ordered 50 targets. [jpfo]
There's a new issue of The Libertarian Enterprise, "Decoration Day":
- Letter from Brian Claypool - Saf-T-Hammer bought Smith & Wesson a while back. Mr. Claypool wonders how they managed it financially. He thinks they're going to change to selling weapons exclusively to law enforcement.
-
Letter from Keith Shugarts - a possibly intended consequence of
the successful completion of an anti-ballistic missile system:
absolute control of private space flight.
I ask you indulgence for a moment. Transport yourself some years from now when an audacious entrepreneur is able to acquire from the former Soviet the rights to launch a vehicle into space to begin mining the asteroid belt that exists a "short" distance from earth and is possessed of what could be imaginably a very rich supply of very pure alloys (not to mention Carbonaceous Chondrite) and Emerson Ngu. We have seen how NASA reacted to the selling of a seat by the Russians to a "space tourist", just imagine the uproar that will come about when a private individual wishes to launch a privately owned space vehicle into space. The apoplexy experience by the governments of the world would send ripples throughout the international community like Rush Limbaugh doing a cannonball into a pool of Jell-O. The UN would claim that space cannot be bought and sold but owned by all and therefore demand that the entrepreneur stop this foolish endeavor. Or imagine if you will, an entrepreneur wanted to set up a "resort" on the Moon or Mars. The United States would then used the threat of shooting down this maverick's rocket before he would be able to liftoff to stop the "exploitation" of space - atleast the "exploitation" of space by individuals instead of governments and kings.
-
Supreme Court, You're Fired! by L. Neil Smith - Commentary on the
insanity coming out of our courts these days, in particular
Kalifornia's decree that juries may not judge the law and the
Supremes' seatbelt & medical cannabis decisions.
But the California supreme court is far from alone in its insanity and stupidity. Just a couple of weeks ago, the Supreme Court of the United States decreed that it's perfectly all right for the police to jerk a woman from her car, twist her wrists behind her back, and lock them together with handcuffs -- in full view of her terrified children -- for the "crime" of failing to have used seatbelts in the prescribed manner.
Presumably, if she resists playing bondage games with the blue gang strenuously enough, they can shoot her dead, ultimately for having disobeyed a law designed (however erroneously) to save her life. One wonders what lesson that will teach the children who witness it.
There's a new article in The Libertarian series by Vin Suprynowicz:
- Liberty, as Sen. Calhoun said, is easier
to get than to keep - An updated version of Vin's classic Memorial
Day column of 1996. In Massachusetts, the home of the shot heard round
the world, the redcoats are working at making it happen again. Our
hard-won liberties are being attacked from many quarters.
Armed government forces "can never be formidable to the liberties of the people," Alexander Hamilton guaranteed in The Federalist No. 29, "while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their rights and those of their fellow citizens."
Ron Paul at Politechbot - Protecting Privacy and Preventing Misuse of Social Security Numbers - Dr. Paul addresses the House Ways and Means committee on HR220, the Identity Theft Protection Act of 2001. This bill assigns every American a new Social Security number and forbids the government from using it for any purpose other than Social Security. [grabbe]
Ron Paul's Texas Straight Talk - The Federal Education Morass - Congress last week increased the indoctrination, er... education department's budget by 22% to over $50 billion. Meanwhile, government school continue to get worse every year. It's time to return control to parents and local school boards. Dr. Paul has introduced bills to give education tax credits for educational expenses, donations, and teachers.
After more than 40 years of massive federal education spending, the inescapable conclusion is that federal control is failing. By any objective standards, our public schools are worse than ever. Policies regarding curricula and discipline, once set by local teachers and principals working closely with parents, are now established in Washington. Politically correct sensitivity training substitutes for rigorous coursework in liberal arts or practical vocations. Children learn phony self-esteem, rather than the importance of productive achievement. Teachers are prohibited from maintaining discipline. As a result, our high school graduates enter adulthood less educated and less prepared for responsibility than previous generations. Obviously, ever-increasing federal control over our schools has failed the nation's children and lowered educational standards.
Mara Leveritt at the Arkansas Times - Asa and me - The author of The Boys on the Tracks writes about Asa Hutchinson covering for Barry Seal's drug smuggling operation in Mena, Arkansas. Mr. Hutchinson is gw's pick for the new head of the d.e.a. Lovely. Ms. Leveritt's web site about the book, including lots of information she got from the f.b.i. is at www.maraleveritt.com. The book concerns the murder by police in 1987 of Don Henry and Kevin Ives and the subsequent coverup. I haven't read it.
Classmates of suspended scholar boycott graduation - Classmates of Lindsay Brown plan to boycott the Estero High School graduation from which she is being excluded. Bravo! [unknown]
The principal says he's just enforcing the school's "zero-tolerance" policy on weapons on school grounds. But Brown's friends think officials are going too far in enforcing the weapons ban. One girl says, "We won't walk unless she walks."
L. Neil Smith at CCOPS - Smart Guns are for Stupid People - Why so called "smart" guns are a really bad idea, unless your goal is really citizen disarmament. [jpfo]
A "smart" gun is different from a "smart" missile or a "smart" bomb. It doesn't help the shooter put a bullet precisely where he wants it. A "smart" gun is a weapon -- in some socialist Utopian dream -- that won't work for anybody but the person who is authorized to use it.
Brad Edmonds at LewRockwell.com - The McCain-Leiberman Bill Is Worse Than You've Heard - a good overview article on S.890. [lew]
There's still more; take a look for yourself. S. 890 is unfriendly to you and me yet friendly to the central government; it is unfriendly to the Constitution yet friendly to the worst of our national police; and once it's done it will never be undone. It is a giant leap towards our disarmament and subjugation.
Sun Microsystems - Prototype for JSR014: Adding Generics to the JavaTM Programming Language - a compiler that supports the new generic types planned for inclusion in JDK 1.5. The generated code runs in JDK 1.3. I don't plan to try it. [cafe]
