This Day in 1873: The Boston Tea Party
"The three best things in life are a good landing, a good orgasm, and, a good bowel movement. The night carrier landing is one of the few opportunities in life where you get to experience all three at the same time." (Author unknown, but someone who's been there)and:
"You know that your landing gear is up and locked when it takes full power to taxi to the terminal."
From TaxableIncome.Net:
"If you make the truth your own, no one can take it from you." -- Larken Rose
George Hewes at The History Place - Boston Tea Party: Eyewitness Account by a Participant - 230 years ago today, from the pen of one who was there.
Claire Wolfe at Backwoods Home Magazine - The Great Pig Raffle - Hardyville raffles off a pig to raise money for an animal shelter. PETA and all the other good-for-nothings-unable-to-mind-their-own-business went wild. And a good time was had by all (well, all that were capable of having a good time). [claire]
James Bovard at The American Conservative - "Free-Speech Zone": The administration quarantines dissent - Mr. Bush and Mr. Ashcroft. Get one thing clear. The entire country is a free-speech zone. Every square foot. [claire]
When Bush came to the Pittsburgh area on Labor Day 2002, 65-year-old retired steel worker Bill Neel was there to greet him with a sign proclaiming, "The Bush family must surely love the poor, they made so many of us." The local police, at the Secret Service's behest, set up a "designated free-speech zone" on a baseball field surrounded by a chain-link fence a third of a mile from the location of Bush's speech. The police cleared the path of the motorcade of all critical signs, though folks with pro-Bush signs were permitted to line the president's path. Neel refused to go to the designated area and was arrested for disorderly conduct; the police also confiscated his sign. Neel later commented, "As far as I'm concerned, the whole country is a free speech zone. If the Bush administration has its way, anyone who criticizes them will be out of sight and out of mind."
At Neel's trial, police detective John Ianachione testified that the Secret Service told local police to confine "people that were there making a statement pretty much against the president and his views" in a so-called free speech area. Paul Wolf, one of the top officials in the Allegheny County Police Department, told Salon that the Secret Service "come in and do a site survey, and say, 'Here's a place where the people can be, and we'd like to have any protesters put in a place that is able to be secured.'" Pennsylvania district judge Shirley Rowe Trkula threw out the disorderly conduct charge against Neel, declaring, "I believe this is America. Whatever happened to 'I don't agree with you, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it'?"
...
The feds have offered some bizarre rationales for hog-tying protesters. Secret Service agent Brian Marr explained to National Public Radio, "These individuals may be so involved with trying to shout their support or non-support that inadvertently they may walk out into the motorcade route and be injured. And that is really the reason why we set these places up, so we can make sure that they have the right of free speech, but, two, we want to be sure that they are able to go home at the end of the evening and not be injured in any way." Except for having their constitutional rights shredded.
Marr's comments are a mockery of this country's rich heritage of vigorous protests. Somehow, all of a sudden, after George W. Bush became president people became so stupid that federal agents had to cage them to prevent them from walking out in front of speeding vehicles.
Yours Truly at The Shreveport Times - School system insane for expelling student - their title. The local paper printed my letter about the Lousiana student who was expelled for possessing an Advil. There are also a few other letters about this case today. Here's mine, as they printed it:
Posted on December 15, 2003
School system insane for expelling student
Bill St. Clair
New Lebanon, N.Y.
I read, in the Internet version of The Times, about the expulsion of Amanda Stiles from Parkway High School for possession of an Advil tablet. Another strike by the zero intelligence Nazis.
My son is 11. He has allergies and mild asthma. He manages, with very little help from his parents, to take his Claritin and use his inhaler as necessary. A 16-year-old girl is perfectly capable of using an over-the-counter pain medication, and is perfectly justified in carrying it with her whenever and wherever she desires. Anyone who thinks otherwise is just plain dumb. Or insane. Or evil.
And I won't even dwell on what anyone was doing searching her purse without a warrant.
It seems to me that no one involved in the expulsion of Ms. Stiles has any business in any profession requiring judgment or responsibility. But maybe in the long run her expulsion will be a good thing. It gets her away from the meddling stupidity of the local school administration.
Steven Yates at LewRockwell.com - The Coming Internet Power Grab - The commU.N.ists want to take over the internet. Threatens their power, doncha know. [scopeny]
Brad Edmonds at LewRockwell.com - Why Abolishing Government Would Not Bring Chaos - Mr. Edmonds answers common questions about how an anarcho-capitalist society would deal with police, military, corporations, and justice and assures us that such a society does not assume that people are basically good, nor is it a utopia. [smith2004]
I wrote recently that government should be abolished. Among the responses to the article were objections of the sort shared by most who encounter for the first time the prospect of living without forcible government. The most common objections are fundamentally similar to each other: Violence would rule the day; corporations would run over us little people; foreign governments would invade; big neighborhoods would pillage small neighborhoods; etc. The books I linked in the previous article answer these objections, but since most of us (myself included) might not buy a book online -- and then be sure to read it -- every single time we surf the net, I'll address those objections briefly here, and provide links to online articles wherever possible.
The pervasiveness of these objections makes it worth addressing them, as does the fact that it seems counterintuitive to assert that abolishing government would bring more peace, security, and abundance -- just as it seems counterintuitive that the way to reduce gun violence is to allow everybody to own guns.
