A Foot of Snow
"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators." -- P. J. O'Rourke
russmo.com - Behind Bars - cartoon commentary on the loss of privacy due to Homeland "Security". Clever.
We went to Williamstown yesterday afternoon after all. Only about four inches of snow had fallen by early afternoon. There was some nearly whiteout on the way there, but the roads weren't bad. Visibility was better on the way back, and the roads were well-plowed in Massachusetts, largely because we traveled most of the way behind a plow truck. In New York, there were about three inches of snow on the road, which our studded snow tires navigated without difficulty. It got deeper on the little roads near our house, with four to six inches on our driveway, but we made it. Cleaned probably eight inches off the top of the parked cars. An adventure! This morning there's a foot of snow on top of the picnic table outside.
Ron Paul's Texas Straight Talk - What Really Divides Us? - good discussion of the Trent Lott thing. Liberal "civil liberties" are really just racism in disguise.
In the aftermath of the Lott debacle, we must not allow the term "states' rights" to be smeared and distorted into code words for segregationist policies or racism. States' rights simply means the individual states should retain authority over all matters not expressly delegated to the federal government in Article I of the Constitution. Most of the worst excesses of big government can be traced to a disregard for states' rights, which means a disregard for the Ninth and Tenth amendments. The real reason liberals hate the concept of states' right has nothing to do with racism, but rather reflects a hostility toward anything that would act as a limit on the power of the federal government.
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The true antidote to racism is liberty. Liberty means having a limited, constitutional government devoted to the protection of individual rights rather than group claims. Liberty means free-market capitalism, which rewards individual achievement and competence, not skin color, gender, or ethnicity. In a free market, businesses that discriminate lose customers, goodwill, and valuable employees- while rational businesses flourish by choosing the most qualified employees and selling to all willing buyers. More importantly, in a free society every citizen gains a sense of himself as an individual, rather than developing a group or victim mentality. This leads to a sense of individual responsibility and personal pride, making skin color irrelevant. Rather than looking to government to correct what is essentially a sin of the heart, we should understand that reducing racism requires a shift from group thinking to an emphasis on individualism.
Kim du Toit - Crossing The Wilderness - catalogs the responses to Mr. du Toit's challenge of which rifle, handgun, and knives to take on a cross-country trip in 1650.
Brian Micklethwait at samizdata.net - Adjustable spectacles from an Oxford physics professor - £6 a pair and they last a lifetime - Great idea!
With normal glasses the lenses are made of solid glass. But Professor Silver's lenses are filled with liquid (silicon oil), and you can alter the focus of these lenses by pumping liquid into or out of them so that they expand or contract. You fiddle about with them until they are just right for you. And if your eyesight changes, which for most people means your eyesight getting worse, you can alter them, just by twiddling a couple of knobs on the side of the glasses. You only ever need one pair of glasses in your entire life, and you never need visit an optician in your entire life.
Thomas at geek.com - Segway banned from San Francisco sidewalks - strange.
The Firing Line - TFL's Final Days: And a Challenge to our Members - The Firing Line is ceasing operations on or about January 1, 2003. Rich Lucibella no longer has time to manage it. Mad Ogre says that there's a replacement in the works, and that he'll post the URL when it's up. Oleg Volk recommends thehighroad.org as a replacement forum. This thread contains recommendations of other RKBA forums. From Mr. Volk's introductory announcement at thehighroad.org: [madogre]
On Christmas Eve 2002, The High Road forum opened. As it joins the other fine forums on the Internet, I'd like to explain the vision behind it. You may find the sources of inspiration for this forum very familiar.
The High Road was established by a group of enthusiasts from The Firing Line (1998-2002), which was in its day the premier firearms forum on the Internet. We all benefited greatly from the accumulated wisdom and knowledge on that forum, which is still available in archived form. With this new forum, we hope to continue and improve upon the very high standards set there. The last four years brought us together. Now that we have gathered in strength, let's consider the future.
"Today, we carve our own omens" King Leonidas, at Thermopylae
This forum is dedicated to the advancement of our civil rights, including the essential right to keep and bear arms. While the absence of personal arms is a sure road to subjugation, merely having guns won't miraculously guarantee our civil rights. With that in mind, we ought to coordinate pro-RKBA activism with efforts to reduce the scope and the intensity of government control over our lives in general.
World Net Daily - Clintons 'most corrupt' of 2002: Judicial Watch's 'Dirty Dozen' also includes Freeh, Lott, Daschle - Hitlary edged out the Rapist formerly in Chief for Judicial Watch's most corrupt politician of 2002, listed in their Dirty Dozen: [trt-ny]
#1 Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY): Like a modern-day Gollum, Mrs. Clinton's quest for political brass rings frequently descends into evil, from Whitewater to FBI Filegate to Travelgate to taking over 2 million dollars in illegal contributions for her Senate campaign from Judicial Watch client Peter Paul. Judicial Watch's quest is to throw her ring into the judicial "Cracks of Doom."
