Good to be King
"Ten states have legalized the use of marijuana for medical purposes. The Bush administration will be before the U.S. Supreme Court today (Monday) arguing that federal laws prohibiting such uses overrule any state laws. The Bush administration is arguing that these state laws set back the war on drugs.
"The war on drugs needs some setbacks. In fact, the war on drugs needs to be ended ... the sooner the better. It accomplishes almost nothing while criminalizing some poor sap who is trying to make life a little easier for his wife suffering from terminal cancer."
-- Talk show host Neal Boortz
# Kim du Toit - Lessons Of The 20th Century - excerpted from Joe Huffman's Civil Disobediance page. Mirrored here. Glorious! [kimdutoit]
# Michael Badnarik - Good to be King: The Foundation of Our Constitutional Freedom - my copy of Mr. Badnarik's book arrived yesterday. I read the first 70 pages last night. Great stuff! Clear, concise, easy to read. Liberty spoken here. You can read Chapter 2, Rights vs Privileges (PDF) at Michael's web site.
The most important concept in this book is the difference between rights and priveleges. For that reason, this chapter can be downloaded from my web site at no charge, and may be reproduced and distributed without writtem permission, as long as it si copied intact and without modification. A right is defined by Black's Law Dictionary as "a power, privelege, (sic) faculty, or demand, inherent in one person and incident upon another... the powers of free action." Please note that rights are "inherent" in a person. This means that it is physically impossible for rights to be extracted from a person by any means.
# Garry Reed, The Loose Cannon Libertarian - The Tasteless Screeners Awards - tales from the Terrorist Sekurity Agency.
The Transportation Security Administration, that federal bureaucracy that keeps the peripatetic public safe from attack by fingernail file-flailing fanatics, threw itself a half-million dollar awards ceremony at the Grand Hyatt in DC. Expenses included $81,000 for plaques, $500 for cheese displays and $200,000 for travel and lodging. Senior executives awarded themselves bonuses averaging $16,000 apiece while one employee was presented a "lifetime achievement award" (the TSA is two years old).
While other libertarians expressed outrage at this wanton waste of taxpayer's money, this humble columnist went undercover, posing as a $90,000 a year Cosmetics Case Inspection Specialist, to bring you the following report. (All award nominees, it turns out, appeared in news articles easily accessible on the Internet.)