End the War on Freedom

Shooting My First Hand Load is the story of hand loading my first 20 cartridges, and firing 10 of them. I did the loading on Saturday morning with the help of my kids (they took turns pulling the press lever for the bullet seating operation) and fired the first 10 rounds yesterday. No pun intended with the title. I didn't think of the other interpretation when I wrote it. Hehe.

I talked to my Dad on the phone the day before he died (two weeks ago). At one point the conversation turned to hand-loading, something he did a lot of. He recommended a method to test fire a new load. I later read about this method in my Lee handloading book (which I bought packaged with the Anniversary Kit). Everyone I talked to said I shouldn't worry about my first load since I used the minimum powder charge, but given the circumstances of my learning about it, and also to honor my Dad's memory, I used his method to test the first cartridge.

The Libertarian Enterprise has a new issue, "Now That's Just Mean!" Articles I liked:

• The Mean Wittow Kid by L. Neil Smith - a parable for our times. Excellent!
• Letter from Jeff Colonnesi - a few alternatives to William Stone's dueling idea as restitution in a free society for crimes that cannot be repaid (such as murder).

  A more extreme form of "excommunication". One in which it would be publicly announced what crime the criminal had been found guilty of, and that as "restitution" for that crime, they gave up all of their rights as a human being. By definition, that would mean that people could use them for target practice as they walked down the street if they felt like it. This could be combined with a bounty for the return of their head ..... suitably preserved and mounted.

• Letter from Rob Gillespie - the WTC may have collapsed due to sub-standard building practices. Had the planes flown into the Empire State Building or the Sears Tower, it probably wouldn't have been nearly as devastating.
• The Sounds of Silence by L. Neil Smith - L. Neil has stopped listening to his normal crew of radio personalities because they all support GW's war in Afghanistan and his effort to strip us of the last vestiges of our civil rights. If L. Neil decides to do a radio show of his own, I'll listen. Hell, I might even send a donation.

  I always felt (and still do) that Rush [Limbaugh] more or less saved America from the Clintons by transforming them from whatever they had wanted to be in history and the public eye, into what they were: a pathetic, fun-house mirror image of Evita Peron and her consort, an incontinent, priapic, bloodthirsty, murderous, Stephen Kingish version of Bozo the Clown. These days, of course, I wonder who'll save us from George W. Bush.
  
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  I'm not interested in the war news, either, thank you. This isn't World War II where at least we confronted the Nazis and the Empire of Japan. It isn't even Korea or Vietnam. I know the news already, and so do you. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow, we bombed another impoverished Neolithic village to dust, and the Enemy is on the verge of collapse (exactly where he would have been if we'd never fired a single shot). Having suffered more from "friendly fire" than any enemy action, we will sooner or later create a government that suits us and conduct a "phased withdrawal" that will never end because it will never really begin.
  
  On the homefront, anyone who doesn't have one of the new computers that leaves an identifying cybermarker on whatever government-approved website he or she happens to visit, will be compelled to register his or her computer immediately with the Heimatsicherheitdienst -- the Office of Homeland Security -- purely in the interest of saving us all from terrorism, you understand. All hard drives will be scanned during the registration, and any offensive files will be erased. They'll put a white paper band around your monitor that says, "Sanitized for your protection".

• "Boss Tweed" Feminism by Wendy McElroy - both men and women tend to vote for male candidates, so if you've decided that "fairness" demands women in government, you've got to make sure you nominate enough of them.

  This affirmative action "rigging" system is already in operation in Kosovo, where the parliament functions under a U.N.-mandated quota guaranteeing women will constitute close to a third of its members. Every third candidate in the 2001 election had to be a woman. The gender quota system was combined with a system of "proportional representation," which basically meant that seats were allocated in proportion to the votes each party received. Many European nations embrace a quota system in nominating candidates, but Kosovo "guarantees" a high election of women whether or not people would have voted for them otherwise. In the November 2001 election, 28 percent of offices went to women.
  
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  Feminism is the belief that women and men should be treated as equals, but the definition of "equality" can differ widely. To individualist feminists, or ifeminists, equality means identical treatment under laws that protect person and property. It is an equality of rights, not of results. If women cast a ballot as men do, then women's political will has been actualized even if no females are elected.
  
  Because gender feminism defines equality in socio-economic terms, it seeks to reorganize society to redistribute political, economic and cultural power from men to women. This equality of results, not rights, leads to legal privileges for women, such as mandatory placement on ballots.

• What Should Happen To American Taliban Fighter John Walker Lindh? by Jack Duggan - I saw this somewhere else recently, but I don't think I linked to it that day. If you think the American who fought as one of the Taliban should be executed for treason, he'll have to wait in a mighty long line.

  Wanna try this Lindh kid for TREASON? Okay, America, go ahead. But FIRST, how about putting Bill Clinton and Al Gore on trial for their treason in their giving away the store to Communist China, including missile technology. Thanks to them, now China's nuclear missiles have been upgraded to state-of-the-art, so that they can fly farther and actually hit their targets. Because of this, they are now pointed at US! This was all too easy for the Chinese thugs; all it took was donating to the campaign chests of the leaders in the Whitewashedhouse.
  
  How about putting our great Congress and all their Constitutionally illicit alphabet soup agencies on trial? After all, it was they who allowed this all to happen through their inhumane foreign policies that murdered over half a million Muslim children and disarmed all the airline victims that died defenseless in the World Trade Center crash-bombings. The pilots and passengers of 9-11 had their civil right to self defense erased, just as were their lives, but you don't want to try THEIR killers because you elected them.
  
  Our great, elected leaders. How about THEIR treason, America? Going to hang THEM high? Or are you going to let the talking heads think for you, as usual?

• A Foolish War - Part Four: A Fickle Rumor Of Invasion by Keith Shugarts - apparently, William F. Buckley has come out for destroying liberty in the name of security. Mr. Shugarts slaps his hand good.

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