End the War on Freedom

Chuck Asay via The Militant Libertarian - Health Care in Kerryland - cartoon example of how every government program makes worse the problem it was supposedly designed to fix. [militant]

# Christine Miserandino at But You Don't Look Sick? - The Spoon Theory - a woman with Lupus explains to her friend, in an easy-to-understand fashion, what it's like to have a limited amount of energy to live each day. Real. [smith2004]

# Victor Thorn - Elitist War Pimps - if you believe in war, send your own kids to die. Warning, extremely graphic photo of a headless body. [grabbe]

The modern-day definition of war seems fairly simple and straightforward: one country's ruling elite sends their poor to kill (and be killed by) the poor of another country's ruling elite.

# Kent Van Cleave - VoteBuddy - an idea for curing people of the fear of "throwing your vote away" in voting for a third party candidate. If you're voting for a candidate from one of the major parties as a protest against the other major party candidate, find a buddy who's voting for the other guy for the same reason and make an agreement to both vote for a third party candidate. Your votes for the republicrats would cancel out anyway, so you're not throwing away your votes by both switching to the guy you really want to vote for. Bravo, Mr. Van Cleave! His alternative, for those who don't like voting, is to cast a blank ballot, the No!Buddy™ option. He also has a page about Better Voting Methods, recommending that you promote changing the voting method in your state to Condorcet or approval voting (see the article for an explanation and links about both). I added a VoteBuddy banner to the left column under the Bill of Rights Enforcement banner. [tle]

# Ron Beatty at The Libertarian Enterprise - Survey of the Bill of Rights: Article 4 - no searches without a warrant. Period. Violations of this article for any reason in any amount are a sure sign of the advent of a police state. [tle]

# Lady Liberty at The Libertarian Enterprise - Your Fair Share - if we're going to have "public" property, it's only fair to let every group use it, or nobody. [tle]

It's sad that more people are apparently not capable of understanding that fair treatment for them also means fair treatment for others. If there are Boy Scouts or chess clubs permitted to meet after school hours on school grounds, then the Bible club, the Science Fiction club, and the Teen Firearms Safety club ought also be able to meet. If Christians can wear crosses, then witches should be allowed pentagrams. And if the NAACP can rent a room in a city or state facility, then so can the Republicans, Democrats, or PETA franchises for a given area.

There's only one other way that we can be entirely non-discriminatory, and that's to refuse permission to anyone or any group to use public facilities for anything other than the services that facility provides. And while that would certainly be equal treatment, it would undeniably be unfair. It would also be openly contemptuous of the First Amendment (simply because that's already true for any number of government policies these days--particularly on the federal level--doesn't mean we should encourage further inroads into one of our most precious freedoms).

# Jerry Pournelle - On Neoconservatism - a short history of Amerika's nazis. [pournelle]

The Neocons tend to put international interests first, and believe, I am sure sincerely, that the fate of the US is bound up with the fate of the Middle East; that salvation for the US can come only by saving Israel.

One can believe that without supporting the national greatness that the neocons have also espoused; and without supporting Sharon's Greater Israel. There was an uneasy peace for a long time between Israel and the Arab world, until the occupation; and Israel has always had the option of building a fence along the Green Line (with modifications for security) and unilaterally withdrawing. They could have given the land back to Jordan in exchange for a peace treaty. But the settlers and internal Israeli politics have prevented that and it will not happen.

But I cannot think that the US has a vital stake in that any longer. For the price of the Iraqi War I could have built 100 1000 megawatt nuclear fission plants fueled with the fissionables recovered from the dismantled weapons (fuel grade is 10% enriched; weapons grade is 90%; you get a Lot of Fuel from a bomb) as well as gone a long way to cheap access to orbit: energy independence. The neocons are terrified of US energy independence because they see rightly that the US not dependent on Middle East Oil will not keep troops over there.

...

Neo and old conservatives can agree that the War on Terror needs to be won; we can disagree on tactics, and whether pre-emption is a good idea, and if it is, where (I'd have put the effort into Afghanistan to finish that war before invading Iraq, I would, I would). These are matters for discussion.

But compromises on the notion of limited government are something else again. I'm all for national greatness if that means the Congress builds Shakespeare Theater and an Opera House in the District of Columbia (it has the undoubted Constitutional power to do such things) and returns us to a 500+ ship Navy; I am not for National Greatness if it means idiocies like "No Child Left Behind" and the Americans with Disabilities Act and thousands of other intrusions of Washington into the lives of the citizens. From what I read in Weekly Standard, there is no act of "National Greatness" its editors won't agree to.

# Tyranny Response Team - Fed Cops - the Gestapo starts cruising the streets in Colorado. Gag me with a spoon. Click one of the images for a full-resolution slide show.

Originally protection service that guarded federal property under the General Services Association (GSA) now cops (with arrest powers we assume since they are packing heat and driving vehicles with red and blue strobes). They are now part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Don't you feel safer now? These pictures were taken in Fort Collins, Co. the weekend of July 31, 2004.

# I found a box of 240 grain 0.431 inch diameter RNFP TruShot Bullets last night that I ordered a while back, but hadn't used up yet. I seated 50 of them in .44 magnum cases on top of 23.9 grains of H110 (and made another 50 rounds of my Cowboy action load). Plan to fire some of them today, weather permitting, finally testing my One Hole Sight at 50 yards.