Six/Four
Men must be governed by God, or they will be ruled by tyrants. -- William Penn
From an Assault Web sig:
You have rights atecedent to all earthly governments; rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the Great Legislator of the Universe. -- John Adams.
Absolutely Celebrity Network has lots of pictures of lots of lovely ladies, mostly movie stars. PG rated as far as I looked, but some of these ladies are XXX bundled up in a winter parka and snow pants. Includes pop-up and pop-behind ads, so don't click if you dislike that kind of thing.
Mark Preston at Roll Call - Byrd to Fight Homeland Bill - good. [smith2004]
Byrd, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said he is concerned Congress is moving too quickly in an effort to approve the new department, a pace he argued puts the legislative branch at risk of ceding more of its power to the White House.
"It would be my duty to do whatever I could to support and defend the Constitution, and I have no hesitancy in doing it," Byrd said in an interview this week. "I don't like to throw around the word filibuster. I hope we won't come to that."
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"The bill is not all that good a bill," Byrd said. "I support creating a Department of Homeland Security, but I don't support giving the department ... extraordinary powers most of the other departments do not have. There are proposals in the bill that are not good proposals from the standpoint of the Constitution."
Ron Paul in the House of Representatives via LewRockwell.com - Has Capitalism Failed? - Of course not. Our current problems, just like the problems in the 1930s were caused by government.
In the 1930s, it was quite popular to condemn the greed of capitalism, the gold standard, lack of regulation, and a lack government insurance on bank deposits for the disaster. Businessmen became the scapegoat. Changes were made as a result, and the welfare/warfare state was institutionalized. Easy credit became the holy grail of monetary policy, especially under Alan Greenspan, "the ultimate Maestro." Today, despite the presumed protection from these government programs built into the system, we find ourselves in a bigger mess than ever before. The bubble is bigger, the boom lasted longer, and the gold price has been deliberately undermined as an economic signal. Monetary inflation continues at a rate never seen before in a frantic effort to prop up stock prices and continue the housing bubble, while avoiding the consequences that inevitably come from easy credit. This is all done because we are unwilling to acknowledge that current policy is only setting the stage for a huge drop in the value of the dollar. Everyone fears it, but no one wants to deal with it.
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Capitalism should not be condemned, since we haven't had capitalism. A system of capitalism presumes sound money, not fiat money manipulated by a central bank. Capitalism cherishes voluntary contracts and interest rates that are determined by savings, not credit creation by a central bank. It's not capitalism when the system is plagued with incomprehensible rules regarding mergers, acquisitions, and stock sales, along with wage controls, price controls, protectionism, corporate subsidies, international management of trade, complex and punishing corporate taxes, privileged government contracts to the military -- industrial complex, and a foreign policy controlled by corporate interests and overseas investments. Add to this centralized federal mismanagement of farming, education, medicine, insurance, banking and welfare. This is not capitalism!
To condemn free-market capitalism because of anything going on today makes no sense. There is no evidence that capitalism exists today. We are deeply involved in an interventionist-planned economy that allows major benefits to accrue to the politically connected of both political spectrums. One may condemn the fraud and the current system, but it must be called by its proper names -- Keynesian inflationism, interventionism, and corporatism.
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If we were to choose freedom and capitalism, we would restore our dollar to a commodity or a gold standard. Federal spending would be reduced, income taxes would be lowered, and no taxes would be levied upon savings, dividends, and capital gains. Regulations would be reduced, special-interest subsidies would be stopped, and no protectionist measures would be permitted. Our foreign policy would change, and we would bring our troops home.
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Capitalism didn't give us this crisis of confidence now existing in the corporate world. The lack of free markets and sound money did. Congress does have a role to play, but it's not proactive. Congress' job is to get out of the way.
Larry Neumeister of AP via The Nando Times - Judge rules holding Sept. 11 witnesses constitutional - it's about bloody well time! [kaba]
AP via Newsday - National 'Debt Clock' Restarted - New York City's national debt clock had been turned off because the debt was decreasing. Well, it's on the rise again, big time, so Douglas Durst has powered up the clock again. The debt is at $6.12 trillion, nearly $600 billion more than when he shut down the clock two years ago. [kaba]
Noah Shachtman at Wired - A New Code for Anonymous Web Use - The "Six/Four" system of anonymous web browsing will be announced at the H2K2 hacker conference in New York City. This system uses a string of proxy servers, each of which knows only about its two neighbors, to allow anonymous, encrypted, access to the internet. Code will be posted at the Hacktivismo Projects page.
John Henson, chief scientist of the peer-to-peer software maker Open Cola, added, "It's at least a first crack at a working model of the next phase of the Internet -- secure communications by trusted peers over an untrusted network."
