End the War on Freedom

Jeff Elkins at LewRockwell.com - The Dead Cry Out - Brett Benson, the prosecuting attorney for Boundary County, Idaho, announced last week that he was filing a motion to dismiss charges against Lon T. Horiuchi for the murders of Vicki and Sammy Weaver (the charges were actually for manslaughter as I remember, but what he did was cold-blooded murder in the first degree). Mr. Horiuchi, by your actions you long ago resigned from membership in the human race. And with that you gave up your right to life. I'm not in the business of collecting on such debts, but if someone else does it, I will applaud. Loudly. Mr. Benson, for shame. [lew]

"The Ruby Ridge incident was a tragedy that deeply affected and divided many of the citizens of this county and country. It is our hope that this decision will begin the healing process that is so long overdue and so much deserved." Benson opined in his press release.

What Benson has done is pour acid on the still open wound of Ruby Ridge. And rather than cauterizing this terrible wound, it will inflame it, further increasing our distrust of all government, local, state and federal. In letting murderer Horiuchi walk free, Benson has done no favors for freedom; he had the clear opportunity to shine the light of day on the federal monster but has squandered it. Again, one must ask the question: Cui Bono? Not the citizens of Boundary County, Idaho nor the citizens of the United States.

wood s lot is an interesting looking blog. Found in my referers log.

Dave Winer just says no to Internet Explorer. He's using Opera now. Hey Dave, welcome to greener pastures. He's complaining about Opera consuming 20 percent of his CPU cycles while idling. My reading of his screenshot is that 20% of 6% = 1.25% of his machine. A bit more than ideal, but certainly no huge problem. The Windows Task Manager on my machine shows the "System Idle Process" at 99 percent of CPU, and Opera at 00 along with most of the rest of the processes. [script]

Raymond Cushing at AlterNet.Org - Pot Shrinks Tumors; Government Knew in '74 - In February of 2000, researchers in Madrid announced that they had destroyed incurable brain tumors in rats by injecting them with THC, the active ingredient in cannabis. I don't remember hearing about this story. Apparently it happenned before in 1974 in Virginia, but the d.e.a. quickly shut down that research. Where do they find these people? [cures-not-wars]

There's a new issue of The Libertarian Enterprise, "Cancel Dad's NRA Membership!"

• Letter from Daniel J. Boone - comments on the religious service held in honor of McVeigh's execution:

  What in the name of Thor's goats' scrotum lice is there to celebrate about yet another government-sponsored and publicly-funded murder, in this age that has seen so many tens of millions?

• One man hungers. A nation prays. by Bob Schulz - Mr. Schulz has delivered a letter to president Bush demanding that his administration answer questions about the illegality of the income tax as currently enforced by the i.r.s. On July 1, he intends to "begin a fast which will continue until he dies or until IRS Commissioner Charles O. Rossotti delivers to him a list of the government's experts who will meet on September 18, 2001, in a public forum, at the National Press Club in Washington DC, with tax law researchers from the tax honesty movement, to argue against the conclusions of those researchers." The GiveMeLiberty.org version of this article, containing a link to the letter to gw, is here.
• Letter from Jack Jerome - Mr. Jerome has personally experienced the death of property rights in Amerika. He bought some land which crosses a power line right-of-way and is getting flak from the neighbors for fencing it in. Seems they think their kids have a right to drive their ATV's along the power line.
• What Part of "Shall Not Be Infringed" Do You Not Understand? by GrassRoots North Carolina - The n.r.a. has sold out North Carolina residents by supporting a bill that prevents cities from suing gun manufacturers, but also requires registration of private gun shows. More land-mine legislation...
• LibBits - There are three good stories here, but I especially liked this comment from John Taylor:

  Tim McVeigh says that the deaths of 19 children in the Murrah Building were collateral damage.
  
  Madeleine Albright says that the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children during our embargo was a price worth paying.
  
  Where's the difference? Why isn't Mad Madeline riding the lightning?

Ron Paul's Texas Straight Talk - Medical Privacy Threatened by Federal Health Bureaucrats - the house neglected to act last week on Dr. Paul's H.J.Res.38 Hence, Klinton's medical "privacy" rules go into effect. Dr. Paul reminds us of the dangers of these regulations and reminds us that there is still time to prevent them from becoming legally enforceable.

The most dangerous aspect of the new regulations is the implementation of a national medical record database. All health care providers, including private physicians, insurance companies, and HMOs, will be forced to use a standard data format for patient records. Once standardized information is entered into a networked government database, it will be virtually impossible to prevent widespread dissemination of that information. If the federal government really seeks to protect medical privacy, why it is so eager to have its citizens' medical records easily available in one centralized database? The truth is that a centralized database will make it far easier for both government agencies and private companies to access your health records.

There's a new article in The Libertarian series by Vin Suprynowicz:

• Budget-cutting as political drama - the Las Vegas police chief is following in the footsteps of Komrade Klinton and the Clark County Schools superintendant. When denied a tax, er... budget increase by the voters, he makes political theater by threatening to cut popular programs. Instead, all three could have picked plenty of unnecessary "services" for the ax.

  If the chief wishes to end busy work which ties up thousands of hours of officer time without noticeably enhancing anyone's safety, why doesn't he just announce his officers will no longer enforce any minor traffic or speeding laws -- excepting reckless driving and hit-and-run -- and will no longer bother to bust anyone for possessing small quantities of marijuana?
  
  Perhaps because he knows the response to such sensible manpower-saving suggestions would be for most of Henderson's voters to shrug and say, "Sounds reasonable to us."

Washington Post - Just How Solid Is That Center? - The Nolan Chart (aka World's Smallest Political Quiz) hits the mainstream! [advocates]

Declan McCullagh at Wired - Cartoon Site Can't Be Squatted - The Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that five variations of the domain name joecartoon.com violated the 1999 Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act. I tried gwenythpaltrow.com, another of the now criminal's near misses, and got about 10 windows in my browser. It was hard to get them to go away. Most annoying. Not recommended. Slashdot discussion is here. [wired]

Free Software Foundation Press Release - GNU Compiler Collection Version 3.0 Is Released: Includes Support for Java and IA-64 - A major GCC release. Java compilation to native code is One of a myriad of new features on the GCC 3.0 New Features page: [newsforge]

The GNU Compiler for the Java(TM) language (GCJ) is now integrated and supported, including the run-time library containing most common non-GUI Java classes, a bytecode interpreter, and the Boehm conservative garbage collector. Many bugs have been fixed. GCJ can compile Java source or Java bytecodes to either native code or Java class files, and supports native methods written in either the standard JNI or the more efficient and convenient CNI.

The July 2001 issue of Popular Science has a short article on blogging on page 27. It mentions www.diaryland.com and www.blogger.com, but does not mention Manila or any other blogging tools. A bit behind the times, to put it mildly. And a condescending conclusion... They want address and daytime phone to accompany comments to letters@popsci.com. I didn't write to them. J.R.Q. looks from the colophon (p. 7) to be John R. Quain, one of their contributing editors. Here's the whole article, transcribed by yours truly (couldn't find it on their web site):

T R E N D S

First Web Cams, Now Blogging A NEW WORD HAS ENTERED the computer lexicon to describe what may be the next big thing on the web: blogging. Think of it as the Dear Diary of the digital age, except that authors on the Net record their everyday personal experiences online for all to see. A contraction of the words Web and logs, blogs include everything from introspective rants to Web links, pictures, even video.

It is the latest Net trend, with free on-line posting sites such as www.diaryland.com and www.blogger.com. Pyra Labs, the folks behind www.blogger.com, offers software that automates entering and updating your daily logs and claims to have more than 150,000 users. So is blogging catching on because it's the Web's version of reality shows like "Survivor"? Perhaps. But, more likely, it's because laid-off dot-commers now have a lot of free time.—J.R.Q.

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