End the War on Freedom

"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws." -- Ayn Rand

From survivalarts:

"This I believe: That the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: The freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: Any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual." -- John Steinbeck

Kevin Tuma - Racism - cartoon commentary on the Lott thing. Oooooh.

Doug via Kim du Toit - Public Service Announcement - how to dispose of surplus ammo. Hehe. [kimdutoit]

Mors Semper Tyrannis is a blog by "Patrick". Looks interesting. Added to the links page.

L. Neil Smith at The Libertarian Enterprise - Let Him Who Desires Peace ... - some advice on preserving the peace: "End conscription, End taxation. Disarm the government, arm the people." [tle]

There were two points I didn't get to then. Following the end of conscription, any politician or bureaucrat who tries resurrecting it, no matter what "crisis" or "emergency" he cites to justify it, should be hanged. Also, conscription initiated or maintained by any country in the world should be considered an act of war against all others.

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Fifty years ago, sheriff's deputies and city police officers were required to supply their own weapons. The idea was that weapons were personal -- meant for self-defense in a dangerous profession -- not to be used for compelling compliance with the law. Laws were fewer then, more sensible, more constitutional. Most people were inclined to obey them for the sake of maintaining civilization.

Certainly no federal employee should be allowed to go armed in the line of duty. If they have a legitimate complaint against a person, they should have to apply to the local sheriff for aid in contacting that person in a civil manner, during business hours. This would remove the vicarious excitement from police "reality" shows -- wearing masks, wielding machineguns, smashing doors in the middle of the night, screaming obscenties, terrorizing women and children -- I would regard that as a worthwhile secondary benefit.

William Stone, III at The Libertarian Enterprise - The President Is Insane - certifiably so. [tle]

The individual in the office is largely irrelevant. The chief executive has been insane since the ink was wet on the Constitution, though it's clear that in the last century they've become increasingly paranoid and psychotic. Nor is insanity specific to the United States: every President, Prime Minister, and King since the dawn of time has shared the delusion.

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Clearly, the President is a prisoner of his office.

Further, in order for the Secret Service to adequately guard the President, they must know his whereabouts and activities twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for four to eight YEARS.

Do you want to know why Bill Clinton was so keen to keep the Secret Service from testifying before the Grand Jury? Because they knew exactly what he was up to. They had to, in order to protect him.

Think of it: the President is watched and monitored -- for security reasons -- 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. No wonder King George III has absolutely no qualms about subjecting the rest of us to the kind of constant surveillance that he endures: he's so inured to it himself that he doesn't understand that it's totally immoral.

The Libertarian Enterprise - Letter from John the Bastard - rips apart Brian Gross' ridiculous reasoning against legalizing drugs. [tle]

The Libertarian Enterprise - Letter from Joe Kultgen - a look at the economics of legalizing drugs. [tle]

Would we have more drug users if it were legal? Maybe, but not for long. Some kid trying drugs today experiences the short term rush with no understanding of the long term cost. If people choose to kill themselves with cheap plentiful drugs, the process will take months and cost pennies instead of years and cost kilobucks. It would be a much more effective deterrent than, "you might get caught and go to jail". (3)

Of course we'll never see repeal of the drug laws under our present government. The drug interdiction business is a multi-billion dollar industry and not even the wildest optimist thinks less money is being spent on the drugs themselves. Too many people have a financial interest in keeping things just the way they are.

James J Odle at The Libertarian Enterprise - Drugs {Ahhh!}: A Ballsy Maxi-min Solution - why drugs should be legal in a libertarian society, and how to minimize the social costs. [tle]

Returning to drugs, there are problems that are so intractable that asking the government to solve them is like attempting to chop a snake off the head of Medusa. You know, Medusa - Greek mythological character, woman with a head of snakes - chop off one snake, two more snakes grow back in its place? That's what happens with the Drug War. It just makes everything worse.

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Libertarians have no interest in creating a police state for everybody simply because one or two percent of the population might want to do something stupid with their lives.

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OK. You can all call me a cold blooded, heartless bastard, now.

James G. Maynard at The Libertarian Enterprise - The Soft Underbelly of American Politics - why libertarians should focus on local, off-year, elections. [tle]

Glenn Reynolds - Review Essay: of Dissent and Discretion - PDF. A review of Jury Nullification: The Evolution of a Doctrine by Clay S. Conrad. Prosecutors routinely nullify proper retribution by allowing defendents to plea bargain. But they and judges get their panties in a bunch when jurors excercise their right and duty to judge the law as well as the alleged law breaker. [samizdata]

Jury nullification has probably existed in some form for as long as there have been juries, which means it dates at least to the twelfth century and the Assize of Clarendon, when jury trials became mandatory in criminal matters after Pope Innocent III barred clergy from participating in trials by ordeal. [FN3] Conrad, however, says that juries became important protectors of individual rights only in the seventeenth century, when they began to resist the depredations of the Star Chamber and when they showed reluctance to enforce the so-called "Bloody Codes" that imposed the death penalty even for minor offenses.

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The erosion of jury independence began with jurors' nullification of the unpopular Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. [FN20] The widespread unwillingness of juries to convict made that act difficult to enforce and prompted the beginnings of efforts to circumvent jury resistance. [FN21] This phenomenon of undermining jury independence because of their unwillingness to convict under laws they considered unjust, was accelerated by the prosecution of labor leaders in the late nineteenth century and by efforts (destructive but ineffective) to enforce Prohibition. [FN22] In each case, authorities saw the unwillingness of juries to convict as a reflection upon the juries, rather than upon the legitimacy of the laws they were enforcing. In each case, too, the response was to control the makeup and instruction of jury panels so as to maximize the likelihood of conviction, a trend that continues today in the practice of "death qualifying" jurors - a practice that, unsurprisingly, Conrad regards as deeply suspect.

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This very short historical summary leaves us at an interesting place. In truth, not many lawyers or scholars disagree with Conrad's thesis as a matter of law. It is widely agreed that juries have the power to refuse to convict - or, in civil cases, to refuse to render a verdict for the plaintiff - where they believe that the result would be unjust, or inconsistent with their view of what the law is or should be. Such experts as Levy, Judge David Bazelon, and John Henry Wigmore, certainly no wide-eyed fanatics of the Patriot Movement, all support this view. [FN29]

The real question is not whether juries can do this, but whether they should be told that they can do this. [FN30] And not just whether they can be told by courts or lawyers. As Conrad recounts, those who attempt to inform jurors of this truth by engaging in what certainly looks like classic First Amendment conduct, such as leafleting near courts, often find themselves targeted for suppression by prosecutors and judges when the subject of their leaflets is a jury's right to judge the law. [FN31] Well, that question, at least, should be easy. Suppression of such efforts is simply inconsistent with the First Amendment. That the essential thesis of jury-rights activists happens to be true is almost beside the point, since the First Amendment protects truth and error in equal degrees outside the context of libel. But certainly the truth of their thesis places the jury-rights activists in a moral position that is, like their legal position, superior to that of those who would silence them.

Fred on Everything - And Vindictiveness For All - kicked out of school for possession of a laser pointer. On the evening of society. [smith2004]

Consider the persecution of smokers-which is what it is. Yes, reasonable restrictions on smoking are, well, reasonable. To have a smoking section in a restaurant is an exercise in consideration, given that having a stream of smoke in one's eyes is unpleasant.

By contrast, putting signs in a subway saying that "second-hand smoke" shortens the lives of children, which it doesn't, with a picture of a piteous, helpless, wide-eyed child, is sheer hostility. So are laws banning smoking within fifteen feet of governmental buildings. The intention is not to provide for the common comfort, but to make smokers as miserable as possible.

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The feminization of society plays its part. On average, men prefer freedom to security; women, security to freedom. Women, having climbed into a male world in which they don't seem comfortable, seek laws, laws, laws to control every cause of angst. Men, hemmed in, feel trapped. Much of the tightening control seeks security-helmet laws for kids on bicycles, fear of smoke, seat-belt laws, ever-falling definitions of drunk driving, warning labels stating the universally known, the neurotic fear of laser pointers, the hostility of a female-run school system to competition and rough games beloved of boys.

Mark and Diane Wilson at Sierra Times - We Are Not Coming To Tennessee - because they're concerned with the safety of themselves and their two teenage children. [rrnd]

We are Texas residents. Mark, a retired Army first sergeant, is mayor pro tem of our small town; Diane is a disabled Army veteran and a telecommunications professional. We have two teenage children. We are making plans for our summer vacation; we want you to know why those plans will absolutely and completely omit Tennessee.

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Press releases assert that the actions of all officers participating in the "stop" have been examined, and that all have been officially cleared of misconduct and use of excessive force. Mocking those who oppose encroachment of official power into constitutional rights, many officials and elected leaders often say "If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about" from police activity. That myth has now been dispelled.

John Silveira at Backwoods Home Magazine - Book Review: Guns Save Lives - a review of Robert A. Waters' second book graphically portraying why regular Joes like you and me need to be armed. Always and everywhere. [rrnd]

Robert A. Waters has written his second book on people who have struck back using guns and saved themselves from criminals. His books are not about the philosophy of the gun debate or about statistics, though both are mentioned. In case after case you read about real people: women who wake up in the middle of the night to find strangers on top of them while their children sleep in the next room, elderly who wind up in hand-to-hand combat with crack addicts, or store owners who find the business end of a gun jammed in their faces. And there is no John Wayne, there is no cop waiting in the wings to save them. And all would have been lost, except for the moment when the citizen--make that average citizen--grabs a personal firearm, and in a turning-of-the-tables that rarely happens in the movies, he or she pulls the trigger and sends the miscreant on a well-deserved, one-way trip straight to hell. About the only time you see a cop in this book is when he shows up to take the report after the thug has been downed.

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Waters makes the case for personal gun ownership so obvious that only Sarah Brady or Bill Clinton can draw the wrong conclusions.

Rich Lowry at TownHall.com - ONDCP's anti-marijuana ad campaign - reefer madness returns from the dead, compliments of your stolen tax money. [rrnd]

In fact, alcohol is more likely than pot to be associated with all of the ONDCP tragedy scenarios, since it is a drug that tends to induce aggression rather than passivity. The ONDCP would never admit this because it raises the question of why pot is illegal and alcohol isn't.

Rather than rationalizing drug policy, ONDCP, under the leadership of Bush nominee John Walters, is more interested in demagogy. Last year's ads airing during the Super Bowl maintained that drugs users support terrorism. The illegal markets created by drug prohibition create this niche for outlaws in the first place, but never mind.

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