A Beautiful Mind

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sun, 07 Apr 2002 12:00:00 GMT

I saw A Beautiful Mind last night. Glorious film. Many tears. Nearly bawled out loud in the theater. Good acting by Russell Crowe.

Jennifer Van Bergen at truthout - Repeal the USA Patriot Act Part VI: National Security & Civil Liberty - the final installment of the series. Ms. Van Bergen is at least slightly confused since she labels the United States form of government as "democracy". Democracy is two men and a woman voting on who will have sex with whom. America is not a democracy. It is a constitutional republic that is quickly morphing into an empire.

As Parts III and IV of this series show, the ability to use secret evidence opens the door for wide abuse of civil rights. Under the USA Patriot Act, although the Supreme Court has rejected indefinite detention of aliens in deportation, an alien can be detained his entire life on the basis of evidence he has no opportunity to meet or refute. This is appalling and unacceptable in a democratic society.

...

In closing, it is worth quoting the words of a senator speaking before one of our early congresses. On June 21, 1798, the last day of the congressional debates on the Alien and Sedition Acts, Senator Edward Livingston spoke the following words to the Senate:

"If we are ready to violate the Constitution, will the people submit to our unauthorized acts? Sir, they ought not to submit; they would deserve the chains that these measures are forging for them. The country will swarm with informers, spies, delators, and all the odious reptile tribe that breed in the sunshine of despotic power ... The hours of the most unsuspected confidence, the intimacies of friendship, or the recesses of domestic retirement, afford no security. The companion whom you trust, the friend in whom you must confide, the domestic who waits in your chamber, are all tempted to betray your imprudent and unguarded follies; to misrepresent your words; to convey them, distorted by calumny, to the secret tribunal where jealousy presides - where fear officiates as accuser, and suspicion is the only evidence that is heard ... Do not let us be told that we are to excite a fervor against a foreign aggression to establish a tyranny at home; that like the arch traitor we cry "Hail Columbia" at the moment we are betraying her to destruction; that we sing "Happy Land," when we are plunging it in ruin and disgrace; and that we are absurd enough to call ourselves free and enlightened while we advocate principles that would have disgraced the age of Gothic barbarity."

Wisconsin State Journal - Student suspended for bringing knife for project - Christian Schmidt, a sixth grader, brought a serated knife to school so that he could cut apart an onion for a science project. Letter time again. Cherokee Middle School, 4301 Cherokee Drive, Madison, Wisconsin, 608-204-1240. Karen M. Seno, principal, kseno@madison.k12.wi.us. Valencia F. Douglas, superintendant, vdouglas@madison.k12.wi.us. Letters to the editor of the Wisconsin State Journal go to wsjopine@madison.com. [mind]

Date: Sun, 07 Apr 2002 15:45:40 -0400
To: vdouglas@madison.k12.wi.us (Superintendant Valencia F. Douglas), kseno@madison.k12.wi.us (Principal Karen M. Seno), wsjopine@madison.com (Editor of the Wisconsin State Journal)
From: "Bill St. Clair" <bill@billstclair.com>
Subject: Zero Tolerance Strikes Again
Cc: bill@billstclair.com (Bill St. Clair)

I read in the web version of the Wisconsin State Journal the story of the expulsion of Christian Schmidt for bringing a knife to Cherokee Middle School with the intention of cutting an onion apart. Hunh? Expelled for cutting on onion? Bizarre!

When I was a kid, nearly every 12-year-old boy carried a knife in his pocket, always. Most of us went regularly to the rifle range with our fathers. We were looking forward to hunting deer, with a high-powered rifle, at the age of 14. It was very rare for anyone to get hurt.

I'm not sure exactly what's changed, but I think in large part kids are less responsible today because you expect them to be that way. Tell them they can't be trusted with a kitchen knife, and they won't trust you either. Respect and trust them, expect them to be responsible, and they'll make you proud.

Zero tolerance rules are made and enforced by zero intelligence people. Stop it.

Bill St. Clair
bill@billstclair.com

Association of Computing Machinery - Letter to Senator Hollings - S.2048, the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA) is a really bad idea and it can't work. But you knew that. [cowlix]

Virtually every significant computing device in use today transmits, copies, or displays digital information. While the CBDTPA- imposed restrictions seek to prevent copyrighted work from being copied from one place on a disk or the network to another, the far-reaching restrictions would also interfere with literally thousands of other legal, non-infringing uses of digital computing...

...

This interference is certain under the CBDTPA because there is no way to reliably distinguish protected content from everything else. In addition, this overly broad approach seeks to criminalize many activities rather than narrowly focusing on infringement with criminal intent.

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Government doesn't work. Never did. Never will. Can't. But there are lots of good people. Love them.

-- Bill St. Clair

The Atlanta Declaration

Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

-- L. Neil Smith

Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

-- L. Neil Smith

A Penalty Clause for the Bill of Rights

Any official, appointed or elected, at any level of government, who attempts, through legislative act or other means, to nullify, evade, or avoid the provisions of the first ten amendments to this Constitution, or of the Thirteenth Amendment, shall be summarily removed from office, and, upon conviction, deprived of all pay and benefits including pension, and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

-- L. Neil Smith

Based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.

-- John Lott, commenting on the National Academy of Sciences report on gun control laws.

Who is a libertarian?

Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap")

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."

-- L. Neil Smith

(Formerly called the "Non-Aggression Principle", or "NAP")

Why Did It Have to be... Guns?

Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

-- L. Neil Smith

Concise

"Tell me," I was once asked, "What do you think about gun control? Give me the short answer." To which I replied, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."

-- Mike Vanderboegh

Also from The Atlanta Declaration:

... like going to the bathroom, breathing, eating, sleeping, or making love, it turns out that self-defense is a bodily function one cannot safely or effectively delegate to a second party.

-- L. Neil Smith

This does not mean that "Marijuana should be available by prescription." It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion.

-- Vin Suprynowicz

If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law.

-- Edward Abbey

The state can only survive as long as a majority is programmed to believe that theft isn't wrong if it's called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping isn't wrong if it's called arrest, that mass murder isn't wrong if it's called war.

-- Bill St. Clair