Reboot
There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness."
From The Federalist:
"Rather than advocating more federal involvement in education, President Bush should work toward reducing or abolishing the federal Department of Education and returning education to the state, local, and family level as provided by the Constitution. The president should announce efforts to repeal the many regulations and mandates governing education and free states from their addiction to federal funds by ending federal subsidies to schools." -- David Salisbury
russmo.com - Wild Ride - cartoon commentary on GW's state of the union address. Hehe.
Michael Gilson De Lemos at Laissez Faire Electronic Times - The Weapon Beyond War: An Alternative to State Warmongering and Plunder - libertarian thought. A long and interesting article. [rrnd]
Claire Wolfe at Backwoods Home Magazine - Sex, Drugs, and Good Deeds: Being Boldly Bad in a Good Cause - Live your principles. Some advice on breaking the law when your heart says you must.
So okay, the universe will go on spinning toward entropy and destruction. But what if you -- just you alone -- broke the law when you knew the law was wrong? What if you -- just you alone -- took risky-but-principled action when others wouldn't? What if you defied danger to do what you knew to be right -- even if you believed you had very little chance of "changing the world"? (Sorry, I'm beginning to sound like Broadway Don Quixote here: "To fight the unbeatable foe ... to run where the brave dare not go." But you understand.)
Since this is a column about freedom and the Outlaw life, what if you broke the law when the law got in the way of freedom?
Thomas L. Knapp at Rational Review - Situation Report: A Rubicon of sorts - with the reincarnation of Freedom News Daily one might think that Rational Review News Digest would be extraneous. Not so, says Mr. Knapp. Then he asks for donations and says that half of what we donate will be used to forgive the debt to the RRND editors from the Henry Hazlitt Foundation. If we erase all the debt, half of any remaining donations will be donated to Henry Hazlitt.
Press Democrat News Services - Jurors in federal pot case call for new trial, issue apology to Rosenthal - A San Francisco jury convicted Ed Rosenthal of growing marijuana because the judge barred his defense team from informing them that he was growing it for medical use under California's Proposition 215. Now that they have learned this, some of the jurors are asking for a retrial. [rrnd]
Vin Suprynowicz at Sierra Times - This Bus Goes Nowhere - why the Shuttle should be scuttled. Why it should have never gotten off the ground. [rrnd]
John Bottoms at Strike the Root - It's Time to Reboot the System - and how! [rrnd]
So how do you reboot the State? Well, when enough people see the need, it's a relatively simple matter, like in Poland , the Czech Republic , and East Germany . Sometimes, an outside power does it for you, as the US and Russia did to Germany and Japan 50 years ago, but that's not very likely for the world's sole superpower, and is destructive as well. To reboot the State, all you have to do is pull the plug, and watch it collapse like a house of cards, or a vampire with a wooden stake through its heart.
Joe Quandt at Antiwar.com - An Iraqi Dissident Speaks Out Against War - a perspective on the coming war from a brave Iraqi.
"President Sukarno of Indonesia once said, 'We silence the enemies of freedom.'"
Ghazwan Al-Mukhti slumps back in his chair, silently gauging the effect of that absurdly ironic statement on his listeners.
And Ghazwan is an Iraqi who lives his ironies: a denouncer of Baath regime inequities who continues to live in Iraq; a man who worked hard to provide for his family and his retirement, only to have his assets frozen in foreign banks as a result of U.N. Resolution 687; a heart attack-age guy who's trying to quit smoking, but liberally helps himself to my cigarettes all through 2 separate conversations; a well spoken professional who peppers his gravel-voiced diatribes with pungent American profanities.
...
We discuss Halabja, the Kurdish town where Saddam supposedly "gassed his own people". It is a card that the Bush administration plays often because it plays well with the American press and public. In fact, the gassing of the town occurred during a battle between Iraqis and Iranians at the end of their 8-year war. A U.S. Military College report at the time found that most of the Kurds there had died of cyanide, a gas used exclusively by the Iranian army. A Roger Trilling article in New York City's Village Voice, 5/1/02, confirmed this.
