Peter McWilliams: American Hero

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sat, 16 Jun 2001 12:00:00 GMT

What Happens

What happens when your soul
Begins to awaken
Your eyes
And your heart
And the cells of your body
To the great Journey of Love?

First there is wonderful laughter
And probably precious tears

And a hundred sweet promises
And those heroic vows
No one can ever keep.

But still God is delighted and amused
You once tried to be a saint.

What happens when your soul
Begins to awake in this world

To our deep need to love
And serve the Friend?

O the Beloved
Will send you
One of His wonderful, wild companions ~
Like Hafiz.

(I Heard God Laughing: Renderings of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky)

From Quotes of the Day:

"If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside." -- Robert X. Cringely

and:

"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." -- Elbert Hubbard

DRCNet - Dedication: Peter McWilliams, One-Year Later - It's been a year since Peter McWilliams choked to death on his own vomit, sentenced to death without trial by a clueless federal judge. And cannabis is still illegal in Amerika.

Jury Nullification and the 2^nd Amendment is an article by Guy Smith. I liked it so much that I converted it from PDF to HTML. Mr Smith tells us what jury nullification is, gives a short history, and says how to apply to second amendment cases. The original PDF file is here. [kaba]

You have the ability to overturn any anti-gun law you want. All it takes is a bit of knowledge and a seat on a jury.

...

We have fought in the ballot box. We have fought in the legislature. We have fought in rally lines, town hall meetings, and the editorial pages. But we have ignored the ability to change the law using tools our founding fathers have given us! And it is a tool that the gun grabbers cannot overcome. Know it and if given the chance, exercise it.

Unknown News has moved to unknownnews.net. I updated my links page.

Will Cate - Friday, June 15, 2001 - Mr. Cate is one step closer to moving his site to willcate.com. He has some choice words about namezero.com. "... they actually seem to be in the business of buying YourName.com and selling it back to you for a profit." [will]

In other news, I'm pretty impressed with Bush's performance across the pond. Despite the non-stop cacaphony of those socialist, anarchist, pasty-white anti-everything buttwipe losers that have greeted him at every turn, he is cool as a cucumber.

Brent Simmons at inessential.com - Friday, June 15, 2001 - Brent comments on the first Microsoft-free Friday by telling us about running Opera, iCab, and OmniWeb on his Mac. OmniWeb remains his favorite browser. He usually uses MSIE on the Mac OS 9 system he was running yesterday. [brent]

Lawrence Lee at Tomalak's Realm - So It Goes - Mr. Lee has decided not to shut down Tomalak's Realm. Instead, he's going to work for Userland! [script]

Adamma Ince at The Village Voice - Preppin' for Prison: Cops in Schools Teach a Generation to Live in Jail - Giuliani has turned New York City schools into training grounds for prison life. Heil Rudy! [unknown]

Police presence has changed the coming-of-age experience for this generation of students. Last December, Martin Luther King Jr. High held its first school dance of the year. As the students partied and celebrated their freshman year, six safety agents and 10 armed police stood guard in the main entrance, overshadowing photos of Reverend King and a copy of his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

These kids go to schools with metal grates on the windows, steel doors, and surveillance cameras. When suspected of breaking a rule, they're held by officers, detained, and interrogated in rooms the students call "the cells."

...

Students have their own take on the police presence. "The po-po are like recruiters around here, only they don't want us for the NBA or the NFL. They want us for jail," says 16-year-old Tarell, who was recently kicked out of Prospect Heights High School for fighting and spent two days in jail.

"People don't understand what we go through," Tarell says. "You could be standing up chillin' with your friends, and they will roll up on you and start questioning you for no reason. They don't even do it in a nice way. It's like, 'Didn't I see you here before? Get your ass up on the wall and spread 'em.' Your first instinct is to run, but you know that will make it 10 times as bad."

Iowa Quad-City Times via MAPInc - Iowa Forfeiture Law Needs Fixing - an editorial stating that asset forfeiture should require criminal conviction. The writer still believes in the drug war, but has at least recognized that current theft-by-police practices are absurd.

John R. Lott at the L.A. Times - Zero Tolerance Equals Zero Thinking - A good short article on why zero-tolerance policies make no sense. [lew]

Fear over school shootings is legitimate, but common sense is needed. Since the most recent school shootings started in the fall of 1997, 32 students and three teachers have been shot to death at U.S. elementary or secondary schools, an annual rate of less than one death per 4 million students. This includes deaths from gang fights, robberies and accidents as well as from incidents such as at Columbine High School in Colorado. By contrast, during that same period, 53 students died playing high school football.

What are we really teaching children by zero tolerance? To see evil where none exists? Or that justice is arbitrary and authorities are waiting to get you?

Who is really out of control?

Will Knight at New Scientist - New software could automatically encrypt email and instant messages, and add a smoke screen of fake data - Nikola Bobic has a SourceForge project called Cryptobox. From the FAQ:

Cryptobox is a decentralized P2P (peer-to-peer) Internet messaging application which was designed with security, anonymity and privacy in mind.

Budi Kurniawan at O'Reilly Network - Comparing C# and Java - A clear exhibition of the fact that C# is Java with a few changes and additions. Another case of Microsoft's age-old habit: embrace and extend incompatibly. [mumble]

According to Dave Winer, the following header element will prevent the new version of IE from displaying its so-called "smart tags", unless the user has set the preference to always display them:

<meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="TRUE">

I added this to my page template, so you'll see it when you view source.

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Previous Posts:
Legalize Heroin
Hope
Pay more for better work? Sounds suspicious
State to squeak by on 'less money than we started with.' Heh, heh
Permission to post Vin's articles
Small Victory for the Fourth
Moore's Law Marches On
Nutrasweet: Monsanto's Little Gift to the World
Mary J. Ruwart: Next Commissioner of the f.d.a.?
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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