Wife Trouble
"Truth hurts, but silence kills." -- Archbishop Tutu
Alvin Dover & W. Tong at Boot Newt - The Bush Crime Family - sung to the tune of "The Addams Family". Hehe.
Bob Wallace at LewRockwell.com - My Retirement Plans - in the light of what the Fed continues to do to our money, Mr. Wallace reveals his alternative retirement plan, as a street bum. [lew]
It's best to not put all your eggs in one basket. Backup plans are always good. I don't like having this second plan for retirement, but since the creation of the unconstitutional Federal Reserve Bank the dollar has lost 95 percent of its value in less than 100 years, I think having my shopping cart is a good idea.
Now if only the government would cut all taxes by about 80 percent, get rid of about 80 percent of the job-destroying regulations, and stop destroying the value of our money by inflation, my -- and everyone else's -- income would skyrocket. I'd have plenty of money to shove away for retirement. Everyone else would, too.
Then I could buy an RV and travel the country after I retire. On the other hand, if someday you see a guy pushing a shopping cart down the street, dressed in duct-taped plastic garbage bags, and smoking a pipe, toss him a quarter.
Charley Reese - Mind Our Own Business - why the U.S. has no business telling North Korea, or Iraq, what weapons they may acquire for their self defense. [lew]
How would you feel if you woke up one morning and all the TV news outlets were blaring that Russia and China, in a joint declaration, had said that America's weapons of mass destruction were a threat to world peace, and unless they were destroyed, Russia and China would disarm the United States and change its government?
I expect it would make your cornflakes taste sour.
...
You know what's wrong with this world? We're trying to run it. Sometimes we act unilaterally, sometimes we use the United Nations as a cover, sometimes we use NATO, but the bottom line is we presume the right -- simply because we are powerful -- to intervene and to interfere in the internal affairs of other nations. So long as this remains true, there will never be peace in the world, and Americans will continue to lose their liberty as the country metamorphoses into a permanent war state.
Don't laugh at the North Koreans. Unless we reverse this trend, future Americans will be goose-stepping down Pennsylvania Avenue and shouting praises for their own Great Leader. Status quo is a myth. Governments are always moving either in the direction of freedom or in the direction of more power and more control. I don't have to tell you that there are no libertarians in the Bush administration.
This is not a new position for me. Back in 1991, I opposed all the restrictions imposed on Iraq. It would have been proper to exact a promise from Iraq to respect Kuwait's boundaries and even to pay reasonable reparations for actual damage done. But to tell Iraq what kinds of weapons it could have infringed on Iraqi sovereignty. It is from that infringement of Iraqi sovereignty that all the subsequent conflict -- and now, it appears, a new war -- flows. It was not then, and it is not now, any of our business what kinds of weapons Iraq has.
We have only one right in regard to other nations: the right to self-defense. Period. There are no more. Thus, our correct position would be to say to other nations: Build whatever weapons you want, but if you use them on us or threaten us with them, you'll wish you hadn't. It's none of our business what kind of government another nation has. The communist government in North Korea doesn't cause us any harm, nor does Saddam's dictatorship. Those are internal problems of the Korean and Iraqi people, respectively.
Raymond Arroyo at Opinion Journal - The Greatest Story, Newly Told - a report on the set of Mel Gibson's new movie, The Passion, about the trial and crucifiction of Christ. [lew]
"The Passion" is being shot in Aramaic, Latin and Hebrew with no subtitles--a point of honor for Mr. Gibson. "There is power and mystery in these dead languages, and this is what was spoken at the time," he says. The movie will rely on its visuals to tell the tale.
Geraldine Hawkins at Mass News - American Legal System Is Corrupt Beyond Recognition, Judge Tells Harvard Law School - but you knew that. [birdman]
The American legal system has been corrupted almost beyond recognition, Judge Edith Jones of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, told the Federalist Society of Harvard Law School on February 28.
She said that the question of what is morally right is routinely sacrificed to what is politically expedient. The change has come because legal philosophy has descended to nihilism.
"The integrity of law, its religious roots, its transcendent quality are disappearing. I saw the movie 'Chicago' with Richard Gere the other day. That's the way the public thinks about lawyers," she told the students.
"The first 100 years of American lawyers were trained on Blackstone, who wrote that: 'The law of nature ... dictated by God himself ... is binding ... in all counties and at all times; no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid derive all force and all their authority ... from this original.' The Framers created a government of limited power with this understanding of the rule of law - that it was dependent on transcendent religious obligation," said Jones.
Bruce A. Scruton at The Albany (NY) Times Union - Guard says he lost job in T-shirt flap - I was going to say, "Good", when I read this headline, but according to the guard, he was just following mall management orders when he signed the complaint leading to the arrest of the Downs' folks. Not that that makes his actions any better, but it appears to me that the mall manager is attempting to get himself and the mall out of their responsibility. [geneice]
