Ides of March, 2004
Soothsayer: Caesar!
Caesar: Ha! who calls?
Casca: Bid every noise be still: peace yet again!
Caesar: Who is it in the press that calls on me? I hear a tongue, shriller than all the music, Cry 'Caesar!' Speak; Caesar is turn'd to hear.
Soothsayer: Beware the ides of March.
Caesar: --What man is that?
Marcus Brutus: A soothsayer bids you beware the ides of March.
Caesar: Set him before me; let me see his face.
Cassius: Fellow, come from the throng; look upon Caesar.
Caesar: What say'st thou to me now? speak once again.
Soothsayer: Beware the ides of March.
Caesar: He is a dreamer; let us leave him: pass.
# Vin Suprynowicz at The Las Vegas Review-Journal - Repeal every law enacted since 1912 - Bravo!
The case is similar as we begin to examine why the United States has by far the highest incarceration rate in the world. Take the case of Martha Stewart. They couldn't charge her with selling her stock when her broker told her it was going to fall in value, since that's not illegal. Instead, they convicted her of telling the FBI that's not the reason she sold her stock. This is the kind of thing for which Americans now go to prison.
So if you find a sucker to buy your used car for twice the Blue Book value, you can't go to jail because it's not a crime. If a cop asks you whether you sold your car for twice its Blue Book Value and you say, "Sure I did. Whatcha gonna do about it?" you can't go to jail, because that's not a crime. But if you tell a federal cop, "No; I sold that car for exactly what's it's worth" ... you can go to jail for 20 years.
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For starters, we could reduce our prison populations by about two-thirds simply by retroactively repealing every law enacted since 1912.
Was murder illegal by 1912? Of course. Rape? Of course. Kidnapping, armed robbery, bunko fraud? All serious criminal behaviors had been outlawed by 1912. So why have the number of lawbooks on the shelf multiplied tenfold in the past 92 years?
Release everyone jailed on a drug law (unknown before 1916), for income tax evasion (impossible before 1913), for any kind of illegal possession of or commerce in firearms (laws unimagined a century ago), or for violating any kind of regulatory scheme or edict erected since 1912, and the federal prisons would be virtually empty, while even the state pens would probably see their populations cut in half.
Now declare that -- instead of having their guns taken away and being considered for prosecution -- any law-abiding citizen who shoots and kills (or at least permanently cripples) a felon during his commission of a felony will be given a free Browning Automatic Rifle and a $30,000 government reward (the current cost of jailing the culprit for a year while he awaits trial), be declared immune from any civil lawsuit, and will additionally be given a tickertape parade and a medal.
# Garry Reed, the Loose Cannon Libertarian - The Pledge of a Grievance -
Writing on Lew Rockwell.com, Bob Wallace doesn't stop at the "under God" line but takes on all 31 words. The pledge is socialist propaganda, he says, written by one Francis Bellamy who thought it would be a truly wondrous thing if all school children could be made into state-controlled Muppets. And Rex Curry, an exception to the "first kill all the lawyers" rule (he's a litigator for the libertarian Institute for Justice) likes to collect pre-WWII photos of American school kiddies proclaiming their pledges with Nazi-like raised arm salutes.
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And then the ACLU chipped in with this: "By forcing an individual to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, it violates the ideals of justice and liberty that the flag is meant to represent."
Now we're getting there. Extracting a government loyalty oath from public school children is legalized extortion. Public schools are institutions of coercion. Students are coerced to attend them. Parents are coerced to pay for them. A compulsory pledge has no more legal or moral authority than a confession tortured from a criminal suspect, no more validity than a military oath extracted from a conscript, no more legitimacy than a promise made to a burglar not to call the cops for two hours after your jewelry walks out your front door in his pockets.
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THE PLEDGE OF A GRIEVANCE
I pledge a grievance against politicians
Of the Imperial State of America.
I support The Republic, against which they stand,
Two Parties imitating gods, indistinguishable,
Against liberty, for injustice to all.
# Eric A. Smith - An Emergency Call-to-Arms: A Five-Step Battle Plan for YOUR Future - received via email. A call to defeat the Busheviks by fighting for a paper trail on electronic voting machines. Encourages support of H.R. 2239, the "Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003", H.R. 1986, "To extend the period for temporary mortgage and rental payments under the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act from 18 months to 24 months for victims of the terrorist attacks on the United States that occurred on September 11, 2001", and, especially, H.R. 2045, the "Ten Commandments Defense Act of 2003". Strange company for folks who want to elect Mr. Kerry. It'll be a hard election. Either Bush or Kerry would be a disaster for the country. Hard to say which would be worse. Still, a paper trail for electronic voting machines seems to me to be a good idea, and H.R. 2045 is a reasonable statement of my interpretation of the first amendment. Has a really good list of email addresses for people who work at some of the country's biggest media outlets. Worth posting on the web just to fill the in-boxes of folks at the New York Times and Washington Post with spam. Hehe. The rest of it is typical socialist crap.
This is a call to arms to you -- as an American and a custodian of your nation's future. Please act as if your life depends on it -- it well might.
We have been led down a dark, perilous road.
The journey has touched us all, from mothers and fathers burying children in a war over nonexistent WMD, to firefighters and policemen promised vital funds only to be cheated and asked to work for free. Millions of Americans have been cut loose as corporations exploit foreign workers on the cheap and CEOs gorge themselves on riches unprecedented in history. While Americans take second and even third jobs just feed their families, the Bush Administration has poured America's wealth into the greedy hands of defense contractors and tax-dodging megacorporations, notorious companies like (#1 Bush donator Kenneth Lay's) Enron or Cheney's wartime ripoff-artists at Halliburton.
Our environment, safety, economy, national security, labor protection and Constitutionally-guaranteed rights have all been gutted and left to die in a worker-hostile economy.
