Tomorrow: Mail Anti-War Postcards to GW
Most people would rather die than think; in fact, they do so. -- Bertrand Russell
From smith2004:
An old man lived alone in Minnesota. He wanted to spade his potato garden, but it was very hard work. His only son, who would have helped him, was in Prison. The old man wrote a letter to his son and mentioned his predicament.
Shortly, he received this reply, "For HEAVEN'S SAKE Dad, don't dig up the garden. that's where I buried the GUNS!!"
At 4 A.M. the next morning, a dozen police showed up and dug up the entire garden, without finding any guns.
Confused, the old man wrote another note to his son telling him what happened, and asked him what to do next. His son's reply was: "Now plant your potatoes, Dad. It's the best I could do at this time."
I updated my local copy of BlogMax to auto-generate the month page. Note the link on "August" in the calendar in the upper-right-hand corner of this page. I'll upload this change soon, in sha' allah.
Penn Jillette at The Cato Institute - Make the Terrorists Do the Profiling - the "louder,bigger half of the magic/comedy team of Penn & Teller" toes the libertarian line on airplane security. Get rid of the entire "security" apparatus so that the terrorists need to figure out who's carrying should they decide to attempt a hijack. [smith2004]
Warren Tilson at anti-state.com - Freedom Insurance - an interesting non-violent idea for making it expensive to enforce political "crimes". [anti-state]
What I am proposing is a system of insurance that if you are arrested on some political crime (gun law, drug law, sex law, tax law, immigration law, or commercial law etc. violation) lawyers will be dispatched as well as activists and propagandists.
...
One of the first things that the activist will do is find out all they can about the arresting officer(s) and the prosecutor. They will then organize peaceful protests at the residences of these people, the ads will mention these people by name and ask if they know anything about freedom or the Constitution or their oaths to the Constitution. In addition their families will be sought out and asked questions such as: "Do you support your husband when he violates the rights of others?" "Did you know your daughter was acting illegally and in violation of the Constitution she has sworn to uphold?"
The idea here is to get it in to the heads of the people who enforce these laws that it just is too much trouble to bother with. Arrest someone with an FI card and he is looking at months of living hell for him and his family and friends. After awhile, if this idea is successful the mere presence of a FI bumper sticker will get the driver of that vehicle a pass or the owner of that store a pass or that prostitute a pass and so on. The more that cops lay off FI policy holders will ensure that more and more people will join and in this way the state will be undercut.
The quote below is from the
Families Against Violence Advocacy Network (FAVAN) via
trt-ny. FAVAN is
anti-gun, but that isn't featured on their home page, and they
don't appear to be advocating using government guns to enforce their
ideas. Actually, some of the ideas on their gun page are good. They
just haven't realized that there are valid defensive uses of violence.
There are true pacifists in the world, and I honor their commitment,
but that is not a path that most of us can follow. I tinkered
with the idea of being a pacifist when I was younger, but now that I
have kids, I realize that I would treat anyone who threatened my kids
like a mosquito: squash him.
I do my best, when I'm not raving mad, to pay attention to the
message, no matter who the messenger, and I think the postcard idea
below is a good one. Starting a war with Iraq, or any country, is
not a good idea. I know, the administration is talking about
Iraq's accumulation of "weapons of mass destruction". Doctor heal
thyself. If that were a reason to invade somebody's country, the
U.S. should expect an invasion soon. And when will we invade Pakistan?
China? (Oh, I forgot. China would whoop our butt. We can only bully
small countries). So mail those postcards tomorrow.
Postcard to Protest War Against Iraq
President Bush is considering starting a war by invading Iraq. Many of us do not believe that this is the right thing to do. (An unknown numbers of lives, two hundred thousand American troops and sixty billion dollars.) In an effort to make our point of view heard, I am suggesting that we encourage as many citizens as possible to mail a post card to the White House asking him not to start another war. If we all mail our cards, or letters, on the same day it will have maximum impact. Hopefully we may receive news coverage. The important thing is to have as many people as possible engaged in the project. So I am asking you to forward this e-mail to as many people as you can. This will take less that five minutes of your time.
With luck we can reach millions of people within the next two weeks. If we all mail our cards on or about August 15 we may be in time to influence the situation. If we all reach five people with eleven forwardings it will reach forty eight million people. The chain letter effect. I am asking you to use twenty-three cents and ten minutes to help stop a war.
PLEASE forward this email today to at least five people today. Time is running out.
Mail to:
President George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington DC 20500
Ron Paul at LewRockwell.com - Don't Aggress Against Iraq - Dr. Paul said very well back in March why we shouldn't initiate a war with Iraq. His article is still spot on today. [trt-ny]
Brendan Miniter at The Wall Street Journal - The Posse Comitatus Problem - The Journal ought to be ashamed for publishing this fascist crap. Posse Comitatus must stay as it is. We don't need no steenking soldiers policing our streets. Allowing them there would complete the transition of our once proud constitutional republic into the world's biggest banana republic. [smith2004 kaba]
Adam Nossiter at The Washington Post -
Tough Judge Shocks New Orleans With His Own Indictment: Ex-Prosecutor
Faces Federal Drug Charge 
- the FBI got it right this time. One
crooked Lousiana judge is headed to camp fed. I hope they're right
friendly to him in there. BOGU! [kaba]
It didn't work. Something harsher was needed. Judge Bodenheimer, tough- guy dispenser of justice in the white-flight suburbs, pronounced the pipsqueak's downfall: "You know, this boy, you know, the sad part, he ain't got a shot, he ain't got a chance." And then the judge signed off on a plan, beautifully simple, that inscribes a new chapter in the annals of Louisiana sleaze, according to a federal indictment: plant illegal drugs in the man's pickup truck, then have him arrested.
"You know, he ain't gonna know what's hit him," chuckled Bodenheimer, a son of the rough-edged 9th Ward of New Orleans, according to transcripts of an FBI wiretap of his phone.
Barry Siegel at The LA Times - Student's Future on a Knife's Edge - A well-told version of the story of Taylor Hess' expulsion from and re-admission to L.D. Bell High School in Hurst, Texas. I linked back in March to articles about this in the Fort-Worth Star Telegram, and sent letters to the paper and Principal Jim Short, but this is a good telling of the entire story. Guess I'm part of the "antigovernment, right-to-bear-arms crowd". Proud of it, too. Registration required. The email address you give them must be correct, or you won't be able to finish the registration. Eugene Volokh's comments here. [kaba]
By 10 that morning, the onslaught had begun, mostly directed at Short. Phone calls, e-mails, radio talk shows, TV cameras, CNN, NBC--from all quarters, pundits and outraged citizens were lambasting him. He'd never imagined being the subject of radio talk shows; he'd never grasped the full might of the Internet.
Zero tolerance is a cop-out. Here my tax dollars are paying a principal to not use his judgment ... Ludicrous ... I am so disgusted ... Not only insane, but cruel and unnecessary ... Any administrator who supports this should resign immediately....
Other messages scared Short even more. The loudest voices came not from civil libertarians but from the antigovernment, right-to-bear-arms crowd. Free men are armed, slaves are disarmed. The Constitution guarantees the right of the people to bear arms ... You're just a bunch of left-wing nazi indoctrinators ... Take away the arms and you break a nation.
Opera Press Releases - Browse with confidence: Opera Implements OpenSSL Fixes - Opera 6.05 implements "changes in OpenSSL made public on Aug. 7, 2002 by the CERT Coordination Center (CERT/CC) as well as other bugfixes." Available now. Microsoft will probably do this soon, but Opera beat them to it. [pournelle]
