End the War on Freedom

From Quotes of the Day:

I'm not a real movie star. I've still got the same wife I started out with twenty-eight years ago. -- Will Rogers

From "Sunbeams" in the September 2001 issue of The Sun:

In this very breath that we take now lies the secret that all great teachers try to tell us. -- Peter Matthiessen

and:

I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something, and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the one thing I can do. -- Edward Everett Hale

and:

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity. -- Henry David Thoreau

Mike Shelton at the Orange County Register - Hard Decisions - cartoon commentary on Janet Reno's run for governor of Florida. Oooh.

John Bergstrom's Attack Cartoons - The Chung-Condit Interview - the part you didn't hear. Hehe.

John Bergstrom's Attack Cartoons - Slavery Reparations - cartoon commentary on Sudan's role in the recent commU.N.ist conference in Africa. Spot on.

russmo.com - Trigger Guard - cartoon commentary on protecting kids from firearms accidents. Hohohohohohoho. [market]

Thanks to genehack for the link to BlogMax. And thanks to Bill Humphries' More Like This Weblog for echoing that link.

Siege-Engine.com - History Channel Chunk: 2001 - pictures from the History Channel's visit to Delaware. Slingshots, trebuchets, ballistas, torsion machines, air cannons. They flung lots of pumpkins, beer kegs, and other projectiles at a parked truck. [brianf]

John Derbyshire at National Review - Attorney General Janet Ashcroft? - The f.b.i. does it again. Another "standoff". Two more peaceful Americans dead. Janet Ashcroft indeed! Looks to me like you've gotta decide up front how to deal with these animals. Either you surrender quickly, hoping that they won't shoot you anyway, or you shoot them on site, the instant they step foot on your property. The latter won't leave you alive unless you've put together a good militia company to come to your aid on short notice. And they actually come. I've mirrored Rainbow Farm's purpose page here. Their web site probably won't last for long now that the farm's owners are pushing up daisies compliments of Uncle Sam. [grabbe]

Another concert, last June, featured Merle Haggard, an old favorite of mine. (Sample quote, for those who don't know the man: "Look at the past 25 years -- we went downhill, and if people don't realize it, they don't have their [expletive] eyes on ... In 1960, when I came out of prison as an ex-convict, I had more freedom under parolee supervision than there's available to an average citizen in America right now... God almighty, what have we done to each other?")

...

Tom Crosslin was not the type to yield meekly. There quickly developed one of those "standoffs" we are so familiar with now, in which heavily-armed and trained agents of the nation and the state surround a citizen who has declined to bend over and squeal like a pig for their amusement. You might suppose that the obvious tactic for the authorities in such a case would be to cut off the suspect's electricity and water, hunker down, and wait him out. This never seems to happen. Spotting Crosslin walking across his property with a long gun in his hand, an FBI man shot him dead. Rohm met a similar fate at the hands of a state trooper the next day. In both cases we are told, by the authorities, that the man "pointed his gun at the officers."

Dennis E. Powell at Linux Today - DoJ Decision Is Good for Linux - Mr. Powell appears to believe that it will be good for the software industry to force Micro$oft to divulge its APIs and file formats and to forbid them freedom to contract with their suppliers as they please. Not! Big Not! I'm no Microsoft fan, but they have done nothing but regular business practices. I have seen no evidence of force or fraud. Allowing the d.o.j. to get away with this is a very bad precedent. Mark my words. Let this go on, and before long we'll be filing government forms about every piece of software we write. If you don't like Micro$oft, beat them in the marketplace. Don't let the feds put their filthy hands into the pie. [newsforge]

Lew Rockwell at LewRockwell.com - Let Them Merge - Mr. Rockwell uses the merger of HP and Compaq to extol the virtues of Laissez Faire capitalism. [lew]

Labor concerns are constantly intruding their way into management. The civil-rights police tell managers and owners whom they must hire and fire, how wages must be allocated by race and sex, and even what the job requirements of particular positions are. DC believes itself to have veto power over every labor-related decision in every firm.

The result is terrible bureaucracy and inefficiency, such that owners have to think as much about their government masters as their customers. Whereas private enterprise is based on the principle of voluntarism -- everyone who participates does so because he or she wants to -- these sorts of interventions are based on coercing people into doing things they otherwise would not. Interventionism is about telling people what they can or cannot do with their own property, and enforcing these decisions at the point of a gun.

Massad Ayoob at Backwoods Home Magazine - Sight and sound enhancement - Using a flashlight while shooting, either with the non-trigger hand or attached to the weapon. Active hearing protection ("Wolf Ears"). The Armor of New Hampshire division of the Ayoob Group (added to my Arms Manufacturers page) sells these products.

Backwoods Home Magazine no longer provides their entire issue on-line. In particular, Claire Wolfe's newest article, "Beware the Great Guru of Freedom", isn't there. Duffy's strategy worked on me. I subscribed.

Dave Duffy at Backwoods Home Magazine - Freedom, guns, & boycotts - When Ace Hardware used Rosie O'Donnell to advertise their paint, it took two days of boycott to make them see the error of their ways. Mr. Duffy was part of that boycott, even though it meant closing his account at the local hardware store run by a fellow small business owner. He reopened the account as soon as Ace distanced itself from Rosie. Boycotts work. Especially when enjoined by 80 million gun owners.

Steve Kubby at DrugSense.org - Free in B.C. - Exclaims the freedom and low cost of living in British Colombia, Canada. Why? Less goverment intervention, according to Mr. Kubby. [drugsense]

Here on the Sunshine Coast, where my family and I have moved, there is no drug war and only six RCMP officers to protect 20,000 residents. There is no CHP, DEA, FBI or any other law enforcement, save our one lone sheriff, who only delivers summons and court papers and is not allowed to make arrests. All court cases are heard in a single courtroom, located above a building supply store.

Declan McCullagh at Wired - New Copyright Bill Heading to DC - the recording industry in colusion with senator Fritz Hollings is attempting to one-up their own DMCA law. What a pile of horse manure. [politech]

The Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA), scheduled to be introduced by Hollings, backs up this requirement with teeth: It would be a civil offense to create or sell any kind of computer equipment that "does not include and utilize certified security technologies" approved by the federal government.

Gun Owners of America - Calls Needed to Sink Another Anti-gun Schumer Amendment - GOA expects Chucky Schumer to propose an amendment to S.1215, the FY 2002 Appropriations bill for the departments of Commerce, Justice, & State. The amendment will extend to 90 days the time the f.b.i. holds Brady bill information, effectively turning it into a gun owners registration system. GOA recommends calling your senator, and provides pre-written text to read. Chucky is my senator. I've already written him emails telling him he should swing for treason. Maybe I'll call his office anyway. Just to see what kind of response I get from the weenie who answers the phone.

Lego Mindstorms - CubeSolver_1b - a Lego robot that, with the help of a camera and brains in a PC, solves the Rubik's cube. Slashdot discussion here. I liked the following comment from Rosco P. Coltrane: [/.]

This Lego machine is great, but it's an overkill : anybody who has played with a Rubik's Cube knows the best way to solve it is to peel off all the colored stickers and glue them back on in the right order.

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