End the War on Freedom

Scott Bieser at Rational Review - Somalian Anarchy - cartoon lesson on the culture of Somalia and the impending disaster threatening it.

Kevin Tuma - Choke - cartoon commentary on the real reason for GW's problem with pretzels. Hehe.

russmo.com - Angling for a Tax Increase - another pretzel joke. HmHmHmHmHm.

Claire Wolfe at Roadhouse Sierra - Checkpoint Hardyville - fictional commentary on the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act and state drivers licenses as National ID. Claire is surprised to find an ID checkpoint on the way into Hardyville and uses it to rant on all the freedoms we're giving up in the name of security. O' course in Hardyville they run their checkpoint a little bit differently. Hahahahahaha. Worth the price of admission (Roadhouse Sierra is a pay service). [sierra]

John Bottoms at Strike the Root - Good Cop, Bad Cop and the National ID - I haven't printed any links to this story up to now, though I've seen lots of them over the last week. The AAMVA has decided to turn your state driver's license into a National ID. But they're not calling it that, so only the canaries in this coal mine are squawking. Squawk. Squawk. [grabbe]

"The government already collects data on you through your SSN, so why fear a National ID?" we hear from some naive Americans. But wherever you're required to present your new ID card, you'll be asking the state's permission to go about your business, and permission granted today may be rescinded tomorrow. When the new "smart" ID cards are in place, you'll need The Man's sayso to board a plane, rent a car, use the library, get a phone, buy a gun, do your banking, enter the US, leave the US, buy a house, get a loan, see the doctor, buy medicine, or enroll your child in school.

Americans can now breathe a sigh of relief that they live in the land of the free as they swipe their driver's license through the reader, place their finger in the slot provided for fingerprint scanning, and pray that their federal masters still consider them safe.

Thomas L. Knapp at Rational Review - Deus ex (Goldberg) Machina - a good explanation of the life of a typical congress critter. In response to Jonah Goldberg's criticism of libertarians, Mr. Knapp points out that the congress critters have created a Rube Goldberg contraption to which they keep adding more bells and whistles.

This is the life of one cog -- the typical U.S. Representative -- in the machine called "hyperpluralism," that American governance has become.

The surprising thing about hyperpluralism isn't that it creates a divide between legitimate public purpose and actual public policy. It isn't that it chews up, digests and assimilates even the most honest public servant, making him just another extension on a conveyor belt moving toward the incinerator of totalitarianism . It isn't even that it can produce only centralization of power and deliver that power only to those least likely to either eschew it or exercise it with extreme caution.

The surprising thing about hyperpluralism is that it works at all.

R. Lee Wrights at Rational Review - I Am a Criminal - Mr. Wrights has done nothing wrong, it's just that there are so many contradictory laws that you can't breathe nowadays without bumping into one of them. Why you can't even begin to know the law, much less abide by it. My take: it's time to stop making new laws and to repeal 99.99% of the existing laws. That'll reduce the 20,000 and some gun laws to 2. Still 2 too many in my book, but I'll compromise. This time.

My premise is simply that government, not only at the federal level but in particular at the state and local level, has grown so gorged and bloated that it has become virtually impossible for any of us to remain "law-abiding citizens." In order to be law-abiding, one must first know and understand the law. Now I ask you, in today's society how many people really know, let alone understand, "the law?" Moreover, how many policemen really know or, more importantly, understand the law? Do the lawyers and judges, who are charged with the protection of America's most sacred document, even understand the law? Judging from the number of appealed judgments these days, it would appear that even these "protectors of justice" are unable to effectively untangle the thicket of jurisprudence created by the endless loads of fertilizer produced by the various legislatures.

Charley Reese at Columbia Daily Tribune - Instead of attacking Iraq, U.S. should embrace it - why the U.S. should not attack Iraq. [lew]

Rather than attack Iraq, we should lift the sanctions and invite Iraq to rejoin the family of nations. After all, Saddam Hussein is the same man America once treated as an ally.

Edgar Steele at Sierra Times - Ye Know Not What Ye Do - America is the victim of a revolution, a slow-motion revolution. Only recently has the pace picked up enough to startle most folks. And it has picked up big time. [kaba]

The conversion of rights to authorized acts might at first appear to be no big thing; that is, until the control inherent to authorization is actually exercised. Thus, for example, gun registration becomes licensing becomes regulation becomes restriction becomes confiscation. And there are always good reasons given, usually even believed by those giving them at the time, for the initial inroads taken. Then others always find good reasons to expand those inroads.

...

The Declaration of Independence is but a bittersweet memory today. The Constitution and its amendments largely a dead letter, with only ceremonial significance. What we are today easily could have been the result of a revolution, given the marked change in government that has resulted. In fact, that is just what has taken place. It just took place so gradually that nobody really noticed or cared. It is only in the past few months that the pace has picked up so much that the transformation has become apparent.

California Aquaculture at University of California Davis - Unit Converters and Calculators - very useful page. I weigh grains a lot in my reloading, but don't have a good feeling for how big a grain is. The weight page tells me: 15.4 grains/gram, 437 grains/oz, 7000 grains/lb. This translates to about 300 .223 Remington cartridges per pound of powder using my current light loads (23 gr) or 3.6 pounds per 1000 max loads (25.5 gr) or 2200 max loads per 8 pounds of powder. Also, 1000 55 grain bullets weigh 55,000 grains or a little less than 8 pounds, reasonable to ship via UPS. The area page also easily answers a question I often ask myself, "How big is an acre". 640 acres per square mile. 4840 square yards per acre (a square about 70 yards on a side). The pages work via local scripts, so you can save a copy and use it off-line. Added to my links page as "Unit Converters".

Ephraim Schwartz at InfoWorld - Palm to unveil OS 5 with multitasking, multithreading capabilities - The next Palm handheld will be based on the ARM chip, with an emulator for the old 68000 code. Lots of current Palm stuff will break. Worth it to this Palm officianado, though I won't buy one till at least the second round of machines. My Palm Vx works fine. No use getting a new one until they work out the bugs. [wes]

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