Carla Howell for Massachusetts Governor

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Wed, 16 Oct 2002 12:00:00 GMT
Old Sweet Beggar

This
Path to God
Made me such an old sweet beggar.

I was starving until one night
My love tricked God Himself
To fall into my bowl.

Now Hafiz is infinitely rich,
But all I ever want to do

Is keep emptying out
My emerald-filled
Pockets

Upon
This tear-stained
World.

(The Subject Tonight Is Love, versions of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky)

I went to a fund-raiser for Carla Howell last night in western Massachusetts. She's running for governor and is pushing Question 1 to end the Massachusetts income tax. Pretty small turn-out, but it was a nice dinner, and she gave a pretty good speech. I last heard Ms. Howell speak at the Massachusetts Libertarian Party convention in April of 2000. That speech sounded over-rehearsed, almost wooden. Two campaigns worth of practice have greatly improved her speaking. She sounded much more natural last night. Nice to see Russ and Linda Hamilton and Ed and Eleanor Willie.

I submitted the following to a trt-ny email discussion:

I would actually prefer anarchy to the over-regulation we have today. Further, I believe from a theoretical stand-point that anarcho-capitalism is the best idea out there. But I don't expect to convince the masses, or most people on this list, of that any time soon. So I am willing to settle for the constitution, literally interpreted and rabidly enforced. Literally interpreted means that if it ain't explicitly mentioned in the constitution, you may make no laws about it. Vegetables are not mentioned. Rabidly enforced means that if you vote for or enforce an unconstitutional law, you go to jail for a long time.

Given my experience, I strongly recommend that people do NOT do drugs, of any kind. No cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana, jimsen weed, cocaine, heroin. None of it. It's bad for the soul. But unless abstinence is a personal choice, not coerced by government thugs, it has no meaning. Morality cannot be legislated. It doesn't work.

I believe that drugs should be completely deregulated, and along with that we should completely eliminate all forms of socialized medicine. If you mess yourself up, and you can't pay, you die in the street, unless you can convince someone to voluntarily help you. People who cannot sufficiently control their intake of psychoactive substances will rightfully remove themselves from the gene pool.

Personally, I think folks will be better off after drugs are deregulated. There will be an initial surge of experimentation, but after enough people see their friends die, most of them will stop. Currently, the most dangerous thing about illegal drugs is that they're illegal. Prohibition does more harm than any of the drugs, by an order of magnitude.

Darwin Awards - Gun-Totin' Granny - an urban legend, but a good one. A good response when thugs rape your grand-daughter. [samizdata]

Harry Browne at World Net Daily - Iraq: 'A war waiting for a pretext' - the problem ain't with Saddam Hussein, the problem is with U.S. foreign policy. Stop playing world police man, and the world will stop hating us.

Finally, this past Monday evening, we were to hear the full case for going to war against Iraq.

Unfortunately, all we heard Monday were more assertions -- with no offer to make public any "evidence" the Bush administration claims to have.

I don't expect George Bush to bore a room full of sycophants with photos and forensic evidence. But this long-awaited speech could have at least pointed to places where the administration's evidence is available for inspection. Instead, it was simply the same old tired litany of horror stories.

Jonathan D. Silver at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Arrest in East End sex assaults: Man shot Thursday morning identified by 6 female victims - Why women should be armed, always and everywhere. [rachel]

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