Car Pranged, Wife OK
The most effective way to perpetrate evil on an industrial scale is to hand someone a book of procedures, convince them of the necessity of following them, and trick them into believing that this relieves them of their personal responsibility for so doing. -- geekWitha.45
# Perry de Havilland at samizdata.net - Welcome to the brave new Samizdata.net! - guess I haven't checked in since Sunday, naughty me, but there's a new look at samizdata.net, compliments of the dissident frogman. [samizdata]
Very gun ho
Posted by Philip Chaston
# GeekWithA.45 - The 4th Amendment, The TSA, and You - good analysis of why preflight searches, for anything but explosives, are unconstitutional and entirely evil. [geekwitha.45]
This seems like a good place to invoke my mantra:
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Until every aircraft in American airspace has a trustworthy armed American aboard, all domestic security initiatives are pretense, posturing, and bullshit.
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This also seems like a good place to reiterate another of my mantras:
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The 9/11attacks succeeded not because 5 evil men had box cutters. They succeeded because the passengers of the first 3 airplanes accepted bad official advice: " Comply with the hijackers and let professionals resolve the situation on the ground", which was in turn based on the fatally flawed premise that " Civilians are not qualified to handle the situation." (To be honest, I'm not going to fault them. Accepting that the world had completely changed in the 15 minutes they had available to them is a Herculean task.)
The everyday men and women of Flight 93 accounted themselves as heroes, first for grasping in short order that the world had changed, next for throwing off the chains they accepted on their minds, and finally for rising up, forming a plan, sallying forth, and laying waste to their attackers.
In the future, American airliners might be destroyed, but they will never again be commanded by our enemies.
# Mary Jordan at The Price of Liberty - Open Letter From Hunter's Mother - and the cops lose another supporter. Watch out guys. The hogs are very hungry. [price]
As to the state of Ohio. Be sure that none of Jeff's family will ever bother to come there after this incident.
In closing, let me assure you that anyone who knows Jeff will tell you he's a good guy. He has never hurt anyone in his life and is as loyal an American as you will find. I thought that this was America, where you were innocent until proven guilty, but in Ohio I guess you're just guilty. This is something that happens only on TV, not in real life. Wake up America and Ohio. What happened to "innocent until proven guilty"? What happened to "the good guy always comes out on top"?
Jeff stands to lose his job, his home and his good name thanks to an over zealous cop. His name, finances and integrity have been ruined and I, for one, will never again trust any cop to be an honest, upstanding person.
# Joel Spolsky - Please Sir May I Have a Linker? - why .NET will never make it as consumer, downloaded software.