Zinf
At bottom, the problem for the professional feminists is that most women, including [Leftist] ones, have stopped drawing their personal meaning and identity from being female. Most women draw their sustenance from being lawyers, doctors, writers, mothers, friends, scientists, teachers, Christians, Jews, Muslims, yoga enthusiasts, environmentalists, whatever. Women don't need to define themselves primarily as women, at least not in the 'oppressed by the patriarchy' sense, because they aren't oppressed anymore. It's the same problem socialists and Marxists and some trade unionists ran into when ordinary people refused to define themselves simply as 'workers'. -- Jonah Goldbergand:
Some 40 years ago in Hobart, Australia, a rapist on the run from the police sought refuge in the house of his parish priest. Father Rogers let him in. The man asked for sanctuary. Father Rogers' ministry began with a well-placed punch that knocked the man cold. Rogers then called the police and held the man until they arrived. Upon hearing this story ... one can only imagine in what different shape American Catholicism would be if just one bishop had done the same to just one priest seeking counseling and sanctuary for his molestation of children. -- Charles Krauthammer
Last Friday, I ordered the Sharpshooter Supply trigger for my Savage 111. It arrived yesterday, and I installed it last night. Sweet. I decided to go with the trigger because of an email I received from Fred Moreo who told me that the Timney trigger is a clone of the factory trigger with a weaker piano-wire spring. His trigger "is of 3 lever design, utilizing leverage and reduction of engaging force to achieve a lighter more reliable pull weight with less chance of slam fires." The factory trigger is a single piece of metal with a slot in it that engages the edge of another piece of metal that holds the bolt back. When I adjusted it last week I did not get a warm fuzzy feeling. Now to see if the new trigger makes any difference at the range...
Jim Lesczynski at Rash Magazine - A Militia Grows in Brooklyn - good commentary on response to Rabbi Lloyd by New York's "finest".
Fast-forward some 200 odd years later, when we are once again in a state of war. Rabbi Lloyd announces that he and his compatriots will exercise their sacred right and duty to defend the homeland with weapons. Opposing them, we have Commissioner Kelly arrogantly proclaiming that the militia's activities "will not be tolerated" and threatening them with arrest. In other words, by enforcing New York's arbitrary and unconstitutional gun laws, the commissioner is explicitly and deliberately undermining the security of a free state. The founding fathers had a word for such conduct: treason.
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It's not too hard to figure out why Bloomberg and Kelly would betray their oaths of office, in which they swore to uphold and defend the Constitution. Quite simply, they are afraid of Rabbi Lloyd and his allies. They fear a free and armed populace. The citizen patrols of Brooklyn are a threat to the terrorists, yes, but they represent even more of a threat to the men who rule us. That's the horrible truth that keeps Bloomberg and Kelly awake at night, just as it terrifies the bureaucrats in Washington who refuse to allow armed pilots, despite overwhelming public support. Once the Second Amendment is enforced by the people--the rightful sovereigns whose consent is needed for government to exist--then the whole unconstitutional jig is up. Before you know it, these armed rabble will start insisting on enforcement of the entire Bill of Rights. No more unconstitutional drug war. No more unconstitutional seizures of private property. No more unconstitutional searches of our persons, papers and effects, and so on. In short, it would restore the rightful pecking order of the people over the politicians. Sort of takes all the fun out of public office, doesn't it?
Alan K. Miller The Albany (NY) Times Union - Ashcroft is correct about right to bear arms - another pro-gun letter printed in the anti-gun TU. As you know, they've printed some of my pro-gun letters as well. They have not, however, printed any of my anti-drug-war letters.
Ron Paul's Texas Straight Talk - Imperial Transportation Bureaucrat Says Yes to Lavish Offices, No to Armed Pilots - Gee, I feel safer already. Not!
Undersecretary John Magaw, the chief of the new Transportation Security Administration, has been very busy lately. He just spent $410,000 of your tax dollars installing lavish fixtures in his new office suite at the Transportation department headquarters. The Washington Post reports that "With its plush carpeting, mahogany stained doors, crown molding, and state-of-the-art conference room equipped with $109,000 worth of audio equipment, it has struck some visitors as "a little bit over the top."" Incredibly, Magaw managed to spend about $132 per square foot on his new digs, more than the cost of new construction from scratch in the most expensive locations!
Nat Hentoff at The Village Voice - 'All of Us Are in Danger': The Sons and Daughters of Liberty - Northampton, MA has passed a resolution against the so-called USA PATRIOT act. Nice rhetoric, but they didn't put any teeth in it, likely because many Northampton residents believe that citizens should be disarmed. The original Sons of Liberty, to which Mr. Hentoff compares them, would be dismayed, to put it lightly. They should not "request" that the Bill of Rights be honored. They should demand it on penalty of death by hanging for high treason. [trt-ny]
One result of that meeting was a petition, signed by over 1000 Northamptonites, urging the town government to approve a "resolution to defend the Bill of Rights." Thanks to a persistent organizing drive, that resolution passed the Northampton city council by a unanimous vote on May 2. It targets not only the USA Patriot Act but also all subsequent actions by Ashcroft and others that "threaten key rights guaranteed to U.S. citizens and noncitizens by the Bill of Rights and the Massachusetts Constitution."
Among those key rights: "freedom of speech, assembly, and privacy; the right to counsel and due process in judicial proceedings; and protection from unreasonable searches and seizures."
The city of Northampton officially asks, from now on, that "federal and state law enforcement report to the local Human Rights Commission all local investigations undertaken under aegis of the [USA Patriot] Act and Orders; and that the community's congressional representatives actively monitor the implementation of the Act and Orders, and work to repeal those sections found unconstitutional."
Harry Browne at World Net Daily - Why I am a libertarian - a response to Joe Farah's article elucidating why Mr. Farah is not a libertarian.
Libertarians understand a very simple fact of life: Government doesn't work. It can't deliver the mail on time, it doesn't keep our cities safe, it doesn't educate our children properly. But people love to play a gigantic game of "let's pretend": Let's pretend the War on Poverty really does help poor people. Let's pretend the War on Drugs really does reduce drug abuse and crime. Let's pretend the right government program can keep the wrong people out of the country.
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Government is force, pure and simple. There's no way to sugar-coat that. And because government is force, it will attract the worst elements of society -- people who want to use government to avoid having to earn their living and to avoid having to persuade others to accept their ideas voluntarily.
And so libertarians don't want to leave the governing of our morals to society's basest members.
When Mr. Farah says that too few libertarians understand that "a laissez faire society can only be built in a culture of morality, righteousness and compassion," I think he has it backward. It is a society in which politicians possess power that could work only if morality, righteousness, and compassion were universal. Until such a culture exists, we need to keep all matters of morality, economics, and business practices away from the politicians.
Zinf is the new name for the Windows and Linux audio player formerly known as FreeAmp. Apparently they had problems with WinAmp's trademark, so they changed the name. It plays music files encoded as MP3, Ogg/Vorbis, WAV, or Audio CD. The latest stable version is 2.2. It works for me on my Ogg Vorbis music.
