End the War on Freedom

From kaba:

"It is difficult to maintain the illusion that we are interpreting a Constitution, rather than inventing one." -- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scalia, in his minority dissenting opinion in Nebraska vs. Carhart

From trt-ny:

"A young woman was about to finish her first year of college. She considered herself to be a very liberal Democrat, but her father was a staunch Republican. One day she was challenging her father on his beliefs and his opposition to high taxes and welfare programs. He stopped her and asked how she was doing in school. She answered that she had a 4.0 GPA, but it was really tough. She had to study all the time and never had time to go out and party. She didn't have time for a boyfriend and didn't really have many college friends because of spending all her time studying. On top of that, the part-time job her father insisted she keep left absolutely no time for anything else. He asked, 'How is your friend Mary?' She replied that Mary was barely getting by. She had a 2.0 GPA, never studied, but was very popular on campus, didn't have a job, and went to all the parties. She was always complaining about not having any money, but didn't want to work. Why, she often didn't show up for classes because she was hung over. Dad then asked his daughter why she didn't go to the Dean's office and request that 1.0 be taken off her 4.0 and given it to her friend who only had a 2.0. That way they would both have a respectable 3.0 GPA. Then, she could also give her friend half the money she'd earned from her job so that her friend would no longer be broke. The daughter angrily fired back, 'That wouldn't be fair. I worked really hard for my grades and money, and Mary just loafs. Why should her laziness and irresponsibility be rewarded with half of what I've worked for?' The father slowly smiled and said, 'Welcome to the Republican Party'." -- Unattributed

From muth:

"The next time you call an airline or your travel agent to book a flight, tell them you want a flight with an armed pilot. When customers start demanding armed pilots in the cockpit the airline industry will pressure the Transportation Security Administration to make it happen." -- Dave Undis

Scott Bieser at Rational Review - Welcome to Ohio - cartoon commentary on Hunter's arrest. Not funny.

# Sunni Maravillosa at Liberty Round Table - How to donate funds to Hunter's legal defense - there are currently three ways: check via snail mail to KABA, e-gold to Claire Wolfe, or PayPal to an account set up for this purpose by Claire and her webmistress, Debra Ricketts. Donate today! [lrtdiscuss]

# Note the "Free Hunter" banner at the top of the left column. If you like it, I encourage you to use it on your web site. Here's some HTML that you can copy and paste:

<table><tr><td>
<center>
<b><font color="red">
FREE<br>
<a href="http://www.libertyroundtable.org/projects/freehunter/">
<img src="http://billstclair.com/blog/freehunter2.jpg" width="98" height="160"></a><br>
HUNTER
</font></b>
</center>
</td></tr></table>

# I read Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code on Sunday. It was a gift from my mother. Good story. Interesting thesis, that Jesus and Mary Magdelene were married and had children, and that their bloodline still survives. Also interesting, for me, that one of the surnames in that blood line was Saint Clair (before they changed it to hide from the Church). Hehe. Fiction, but based on fact.

# OWK at The Claire Files - Twas a night in late August - a Night Before Christmas take-off about a SWAT raid. Hehe. [clairefiles]

# Lara Hayhurst at The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - The fish that threatened national security - I've seen a bunch of links to this over the past week, so I finally read it. Hilarious, if you ignore the bizarre and inhuman behavior of the Taking Scissors Away goons. [smith2004]

# The Hal Turner Show - Overthrowing the United States Federal Government: Sadly, an Idea Whose Time Has Come? - I believe this is partially tongue-in-cheek, but maybe not. [smith2004]

Suppose, just for the sake of argument, that not all of the Congress and Supreme Court need to be removed. The House of Representatives consists of 435 members. The Senate consists of 100 members. But not all of them are "problem."

For the purpose of this discussion, let's say that only half of the US House and half of the US Senate are "problems" That's a total of 267 "problems" in Congress. Obviously, there are 5 "problems" on the Supreme Court. 267 + 5 = 272 total "problems.

Imagine if you will, teams of 5 committed citizens each, who were fed up with these "problems."

272 x 5 = 1,360 committed citizens needed to resolve these "problems."

Do you think that in America, a nation of 280,000,000 people, there are 1,360 committed citizens willing to put it all on the line to "correct" these "problems" and thus save the nation? I do.

It seems to me that an operation using teams of five assigned to each "problem" could gather information on the assigned persons. It is easy to find out things like daily schedules, public appearances, travel routes to and from work, etc.. Once the data was collected and analyzed a time and date could be set for "solving" these "problems.

Then, one night, perhaps in the wee hours of the morning, these heavily armed teams of five committed citizens each would move. . I envision a surgically precise, lightning strike: Front doors kicked-in, entry, locating the target, solving the problem and out within 90 seconds. Within minutes, all 272 "problems" would be "solved."

...

For the record, I voluntarily renounce and repudiate the use of force and violence to effect political or social change. I refuse to utilize force or violence in all circumstances when the use of such force or violence would be unlawful. Just for laughs . . . . . . Who agrees with me?

# bob lonsberry - I Hear You Knocking, But You Can't Come In - great piece on our responsibility to defend our homes against criminal entry. If this guy had broken into my house, he would have received a load or two of 00 buck, not a few rounds from a .22. I doubt he would have survived.

You've got to ask yourself: If it was your window this guy had been coming through Friday night, what would have happened?

What would have happened to you and your family?

Could you have protected yourself?

For many people, the answer is no.

Unfortunately, the criminals know that. We live in a day that encourages and expects weakness. We push dependence instead of self-reliance, and that permeates every aspect of our lives. We are conditioned to call for help, not to help ourselves. We expect the criminal to be strong and ourselves to be weak. We are taught to be victims, not victors.

That's what the guy coming through the window this weekend was counting on. That's what the guy who may come through your window is counting on. That's what all criminal predation is predicated on.

The assumption that we won't fight back.

That we will comply like sheep.

# Paul Graham - What You Can't Say - an exploration of heresy. What it is, and what to do about it. [smith2004]

When you find something you can't say, what do you do with it? My advice is, don't say it. Or at least, pick your battles.

Suppose in the future there is a movement to ban the color yellow. Proposals to paint anything yellow are denounced as "yellowist", as is anyone suspected of liking the color. People who like orange are tolerated but viewed with suspicion. Suppose you realize there is nothing wrong with yellow. If you go around saying this, you'll be denounced as a yellowist too, and you'll find yourself having a lot of arguments with anti-yellowists. If your aim in life is to rehabilitate the color yellow, that may be what you want. But if you're mostly interested in other questions, being labelled as a yellowist will just be a distraction. Argue with idiots, and you become an idiot.

The most important thing is to be able to think what you want, not to say what you want. And if you feel you have to say everything you think, it may inhibit you from thinking improper thoughts. I think it's better to follow the opposite policy. Draw a sharp line between your thoughts and your speech. Inside your head, anything is allowed. Within my head I make a point of encouraging the most outrageous thoughts I can imagine. But, as in a secret society, nothing that happens within the building should be told to outsiders. The first rule of Fight Club is, you do not talk about Fight Club.

...

If the anti-yellowists seem to be getting out of hand and you want to fight back, there are ways to do it without getting yourself accused of being a yellowist. Like skirmishers in an ancient army, you want to avoid directly engaging the main body of the enemy's troops. Better to harass them with arrows from a distance.

One way to do this is to ratchet the debate up one level of abstraction. If you argue against censorship in general, you can avoid being accused of whatever heresy is contained in the book or film that someone is trying to censor. You can attack labels with meta-labels: labels that refer to the use of labels to prevent discussion. The spread of the term "political correctness" meant the beginning of the end of political correctness, because it enabled one to attack the phenomenon as a whole without being accused of any of the specific heresies it sought to suppress.

...

When people are bad at math, they know it, because they get the wrong answers on tests. But when people are bad at open-mindedness they don't know it. In fact they tend to think the opposite. Remember, it's the nature of fashion to be invisible. It wouldn't work otherwise. Fashion doesn't seem like fashion to someone in the grip of it. It just seems like the right thing to do. It's only by looking from a distance that we see oscillations in people's idea of the right thing to do, and can identify them as fashions.

# Burton S. Blumert at LewRockwell.com - Rockwell's Masterpiece - a review of Lew Rockwell's new book, Speaking of Liberty ($25 + $7.25 S&H). Not yet available from Amazon or Barnes and Noble. [lew]

This is Rockwell at his best. The Rockwell who muffles "loud-mouthed" statist, talk-show hosts. The Rockwell who turns commie environmentalists green. The Rockwell all the neocons, from David Frum to Bill Bennett, hate and fear. The Rockwell who is quick and funny -- and deadly -- when tossed into the lion's den. The Rockwell who brings a steel-edged consistency to the defense of liberty.

Speaking of Liberty is pure Rockwell. The essays cover a huge diversity of topics, but are united by a set of fixed principles: the corruption of politics, the universality and immutability of the ideas of freedom, the centrality of sound money and free enterprise, the moral imperative of peace and trade, the importance of hope and tenacity in the struggle for liberty, and the need for everyone to join the intellectual fight.

# Ron Paul's Texas Straight Talk - Return of the Great Social Security Giveaway - some fools in Congress are considering awarding social security benefits to Mexican citizens, counting their work in Mexico. I kid you not. Sheesh.

# Charley Reese - Credibility And Virginity - Why Mr. Reese doesn't trust the Busheviks about Mad Cow disease.

What President Bush does not understand (don't worry, I'm not going through the whole list) is that credibility, like virginity, cannot be recovered once it's lost.

He thinks it's unimportant that he took the country to war based on the false claim that Saddam Hussein had amassed large amounts of chemical and biological weapons and was on the verge of handing them to terrorists. His attitude is: "Hey, what's your problem? We got rid of a bad guy."

...

As of now, hamburger I don't grind myself and all other processed meats are off the menu. I would advise you to take the same steps.

# Vin Suprynowicz at The Las Vegas Review-Journal - Forced out of Canada? - on the imminent expulsion from Canada of Steve Kubby, possibly as soon as January 15. Given the intention of the Kalifornia DA, Bill Lockyer, this will amount to a death sentence for Mr. Kubby. I sent the following message to Mr. Lockyer via the California Public Inquiry Unit's contact page:

Definition of Constructive Notice, Black's Law Dictionary, 3rd Edition, page 1258, "Constructive Notice is information or knowledge of a fact imputed by law to a person; although he may not actually have it, because he could have discovered the fact by proper diligence, and his situation was such as to cast upon him the duty of inquiring into it. Constructive Notice is a presumption of law, making it impossible for one to deny the matter concerning which notice is given."

CONSTRUCTIVE NOTICE: Mr. Lockyer. This notice is to inform you that Mr. Steve Kubby may soon be expelled from Canada, where he has been living to escape imprisonment by the state of California for the crime of possessing the dried stem of an hallucinogenic mushroom or peyote button (police were never sure which). He requires daily medication with cannabis (aka marijuana) to control his adrenal cancer. If you allow him to be imprisoned and allow the prison to deny him his medicine, he will die. You will then be responsible for his murder.

I received the following, likely automated, reply:

Date: Mon, 05 Jan 2004 20:57:21 -0800
From: "PIU" <PIU@doj.ca.gov>
Reply-To: PIU@doj.ca.gov
To: <bill@billstclair.com>
Subject: Re: Web Mail to Public Inquiry (Your Email to the Attorney General)

Thank you for your e-mail message. Attorney General Bill Lockyer appreciates that you have taken the time to keep him informed of your opinions and the issues that are important to you. Your comments help to alert him to matters of public concern.

Your e-mail has been directed to members of Mr. Lockyer's staff who assist constituents and report concerns, comments, and ideas to him daily.

We will respond via U.S. mail to e-mails which include your name and postal address. If you did not include your name and postal address in your original e-mail, please re-send it including this information. If your concern is best handled by an agency other than the California Department of Justice, you will be advised via U.S. mail and provided referral information. We will make every effort to respond promptly.

Please note that we do not accept e-mail attachments. Your full correspondence should be included within the text of your e-mail.

Again, thank you for writing to Attorney General Lockyer. He values your comments and views


CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This communication with its contents may contain confidential and/or legally privileged information. It is solely for the use of the intended recipient(s). Unauthorized interception, review, use or disclosure is prohibited and may violate applicable laws including the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender and destroy all copies of the communication.

Add comment Edit post Add post