The Delphi Technique
For your edification, House and Senate members "overseeing" intelligence are privy to some of the nation's most sensitive intelligence operations, but none of the members are subject to background investigations by the FBI, CIA, or DIA. They do take oaths of secrecy, but then they also take oaths to uphold the Constitution -- and, like the oaths to uphold their marriage vows, too few honor any of the above.
From Liberator Online:
Though my heart may be left-of-center, I have always known that the only economic system that works is a market economy...This is the only natural economy, the only kind that makes sense, the only one that can lead to prosperity, because it is the only one that reflects the nature of life itself. -- Václav Havel
Lynn M Stutter - The Delphi Technique. What Is It? - received via email. The Delphi Technique is a way to gain false agreement from a group. The facilitator uses it to convince the group that they have agreed on something when in fact they are greatly at odds. Explains how the technique works and how to counter it.
Discover Liberty is a new website created by the Advocates for Self Government to advertise their goal of presenting libertarian ideas to half a million Americans via 2,000 Operation Politically Homeless booths.
Sydney Morning Herald -
Portugal abandons hard line on drugs 
- Portugal has changed its
laws. Drug use is now considered a disease, not a crime. Sales are
still illegal, but use is not. Good start, but the black market caused
by sales prohibition is a huge part of the problem. The only way to
eliminate it is legalization of over-the-counter sales. [grabbe]
Russell Madden at Laissez Faire City Times - Hoisting the Flag - The House of Representatives has once again approved a flag-burning amendment: "The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States." Mr. Madden extols the problems with this amendment. Do what you will to a flag that belongs to you. It cannot be a crime. No victim. Hopefully the senate will once again do the right thing. I seem to recall reading that it won't even get to the senate floor this time 'round, but I'm not sure of that. It's H.J.Res.36.
The First Amendment was designed specifically to protect unpopular ideas and, specifically, expressions of those thoughts. Contempt, disdain, irreverence for the flag may not be nice. Neither is vulgarity, profanity, or debasement. Still, the First Amendment means squat if it protects only notions endorsed by the Great Unwashed.
If you don't like what others do or say, ostracize them, ignore them, argue with them, denounce them.
But don't cut off your own nose in a fruitless attempt to spite their faces.
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"The" flag is a symbol. Period. It is physically impossible to destroy an abstraction. Forgive me, but any person has the right to show contempt, disrespect, or any other attitude he prefers to a symbol.
Carlo Stagnaro at Laissez Faire City Times - Policeman's Advice: Stay Armed, Stay Free: An Interview with Joe Horn -
Gun control is one of the liberal altar gods. Like Caribbean Voodoo, it places the responsibility for the evil intent in a criminals heart in the gun, an object of metal, wood and plastic. This belief relieves them of focusing on accountability and responsibility of the miscreant. The liberals think evil and crime would not exist if there were no guns. Of course, they completely ignore that fact that violent crime happens with a plethora of weapons other than firearms and did long before firearms existed. Voodoo is the belief that inanimate objects have power to force humans to behave in a certain way against their will. To liberals, no one is responsible for what they do. The Liberals may not be sticking pins in dolls, but they believe in Voodoo. The Liberal gun control agenda is not rooted in social and community improvement. Simply stated: it is that they know they cannot impose their marxist/socialist rule upon armed citizens without a fight. It's really that simple. Their concern about crime is quite limited, in that all they want is to disarm the populace for their own agenda. It's not going to happen here.
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What do you think about the UN Conference on Small Arms?
I think that the UN needs a psychiatrist. Under their proposal, small arms that were smuggled to the resistance fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto, Greece, Yugoslavia, France and Russia in World War II would be illegal, while the guns in the hands of the nazi stormtroopers would be lawful. The UN stood by in Bosnia and let Serbs massacre Muslims. It stood by impotently in the Congo in the 50s while poeple were butchered and it stood by in Rwanda while 500,000 were butchered. What did all these victims have in common? They were unarmed. The UN is an anachronism of the 52 year old socialist wet dream of world domination by socialism. The United States reserves the right to drop arms to the enemies of our enemies and so do all the other sovereign nations of the West. The citizen who does not have the right of Armed self defense and resistance to tyranny has no other rights.
Jim Crispino at Sierra Times - Another David Defeats Another Goliath - About 500 protesters showed up near the commU.N.ist building in New York on Saturday, July 14. 500 protesters defending the rights of 80 million U.S. gun owners. For the pro-gun culture, this was a large protest. [sas]
It matters little, the exact number of participants that gather. What matters is how that number compares to the norm. 20,000 left wing radicals tearing up a city is the norm for that group. 20 peaceful gun owners is the norm for the gun-rights group. When 2,000,000 left wing radicals tear up a city, they may get taken seriously. When 500 or 1000 gun owners show up, they DO get taken seriously.
The 20,000 left wing radicals represent almost their entire group. The 20 gun owners are representing 80 million others. That fact is not overlooked in Washington. They knew that the 500 in NYC on the 14th, meant that the 80 million are very very wary of the UN agenda. Agreeing to the two paragraphs which would erode U.S sovereignty and 2nd amendment rights, would have been political suicide.
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Gun owners need to wake up to the fact that they are a very powerful force in politics. If 500 can stop the NWO, at least temporarily, imagine what 500,000 could do? Constitutional restoration would no longer be a dream. It would be a reality.
Eric Lichtblau at the Los Angeles Times - Gun Policy Faces Major Bush Revamp - The Brady Bunch is running scared. Good. [sas]
But gun control advocates maintain that if the Justice Department succeeds in broadening the protection of the 2nd Amendment, putting an individual's right to own a gun on par with freedom of religion or speech, it would threaten other gun laws. Regulations requiring background checks on buyers, limiting the number of monthly gun purchases or banning assault weapons could then be thrown out as unconstitutional, some argue.
DanceSafe Benefit in St. Louis Raided By Police, Class Action Suit Pending - The ACLU plans to bring a class action suit against St. Louis police for their raid of a Potosi, Missouri rave. Welcome to police state Amerika.
First came the helicopters," [St. Louis DanceSafe head Arthur] Cook told DRCNet. "Then the cops roared up with 20 or 30 police cars, a police van, a prison bus, two ambulances, two fire trucks and some drug-sniffing dogs. They made everyone sit in a circle while they ransacked the place, before searching everybody and then eventually telling people they were free to leave."
But police were not able to prevent Cook from using his cell phone to notify the ACLU and local media as the bust went down, nor were they able to find the drug haul they seemed to expect. "People heard different cops yelling things like 'we've got to find something' as the search yielded few results," Cook said. "They didn't find much, but they did manage to pepper spray two friendly puppies who got too close to their drug dogs."
The Economist - Stumbling in the dark - This is the introduction to a survey of illegal drugs. I haven't read the other articles: How did we get here?, Big business, Choose your poison, The harm done, Stopping it, Collateral damage, Better ways, Set it free, Offer to readers, Sources.
At the heart of the debate on drugs lies a moral question: what duty does the state have to protect individual citizens from harming themselves? The Economist has always taken a libertarian approach. It stands with John Stuart Mill, whose famous essay "On Liberty" argued that:The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.This survey broadly endorses that view. But it tempers liberalism with pragmatism. Mill was not running for election. Attitudes towards drug-taking may be changing, but it will be a long time before most voters are comfortable with a policy that involves only remonstration and reason. People fret about protecting youngsters, a group that Mill himself accepted might need special protection. They fret, too, that drug-takers may not be truly "sovereign" if they become addicted. And some aspects of drug-taking do indeed harm others. So a first priority is to look for measures that reduce the harm drugs do, both to users and to society at large.
The Economist - The case for legalisation - the writer thinks that legalizing drugs would cause consumption to rise, but still thinks its a good idea. "Legalise to regulate". [grabbe]
To legalise will not be easy. Drug-taking entails risks, and societies are increasingly risk-averse. But the role of government should be to prevent the most chaotic drug-users from harming others--by robbing or by driving while drugged, for instance--and to regulate drug markets to ensure minimum quality and safe distribution. The first task is hard if law enforcers are preoccupied with stopping all drug use; the second, impossible as long as drugs are illegal. A legal market is the best guarantee that drug-taking will be no more dangerous than drinking alcohol or smoking tobacco. And, just as countries rightly tolerate those two vices, so they should tolerate those who sell and take drugs.
Robin Gross at the Electronic Freedom F0undation - EFF Rejoins "Free Dmitry" Protests After Meeting with US Attorney's Office - The feds have not yet released Dmitry Sklyarov. More protests are planned for Monday, July 30. This is from the EFF's U.S. v. Sklyarov archive [newsforge]
