End the War on Freedom

"The government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." -- Ronald Reagan

# Joan Chittister at The National Catholic Reporter - What the rest of the world watched on Inauguration Day - while Americans' were listening to Bushnev extol "freed'm", Europeans (and those of us who get our news on the web) were looking at the picture below (image from Warblogging). [smith2004]

Dublin, on U.S. Inauguration Day, didn't seem to notice. Oh, they played a few clips that night of the American president saying, "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands."

But that was not their lead story.

The picture on the front page of The Irish Times was a large four-color picture of a small Iraqi girl. Her little body was a coil of steel. She sat knees up, cowering, screaming madly into the dark night. Her white clothes and spread hands and small tight face were blood-spattered. The blood was the blood of her father and mother, shot through the car window in Tal Afar by American soldiers while she sat beside her parents in the car, her four brothers and sisters in the back seat.

A series of pictures of the incident played on the inside page, as well. A 12-year-old brother, wounded in the fray, falls face down out of the car when the car door opens, the pictures show. In another, a soldier decked out in battle gear, holds a large automatic weapon on the four children, all potential enemies, all possible suicide bombers, apparently, as they cling traumatized to one another in the back seat and the child on the ground goes on screaming in her parent's blood.

No promise of "freedom" rings in the cutline on this picture. No joy of liberty underlies the terror on these faces here.

...

There are about 25 million people in Iraq. Over half of them are under the age of 15. Of the over 100,000 civilians dead in this war, then, over half of them are children. We are killing children. The children are our enemy. And we are defeating them.

"I'll tell you why I voted for George Bush," a friend of mine said. "I voted for George Bush because he had the courage to do what Al Gore and John Kerry would never have done."

I've been thinking about that one.

Osama Bin Laden is still alive. Sadam Hussein is still alive. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is still alive. Baghdad, Mosul and Fallujah are burning. But my government has the courage to kill children or their parents. And I'm supposed to be impressed.

# Declan McCullagh at News.com - Congress proposes tax on all Net, data connections - looks like your internet connection will cost just a little bit more, to pay for the Spanish American war and all, you know. If only those who take Mr. Reagan as their hero would act on his rhetoric (quoted above). [clairefiles]

The congressional report comes not long after the Internal Revenue Service and Treasury Department said they were considering how the Spanish American War tax should be reinterpreted "to reflect changes in technology" used in "telephonic or telephonic quality communications." Tech companies including Microsoft, Intel and Skype slammed that idea in a September letter, asking the IRS to "refrain from any attempt to extend the excise tax to VoIP services."

The discussion in the tax committee's report, however, ventures far beyond VoIP. "Extending the tax to all communications requires taxing Internet access, bandwidth capacity, and the transmission of cable and satellite television," it says.

# David Codrea - The War on Guns - Mr. Codrea has a new weblog. Looking forward to it.

# Sunni Maravillosa at The Price of Liberty - Mexican Medicine: A Freer Market at Work - a report of Sunni's trip across the border to fetch some medicines and some common sense advice should you decide to do the same. [sunni]

The Mexican government had no presence at the border -- absolutely none. We simply walked in to the country. Upon doing so, we were immediately aurally assaulted by a cacophony of voices calling, imploring, urging us to visit this pharmacy, or that doctor. Every Mexican, it seemed, had an "opinion", likely fostered by some coin crossing his palm, as to what pharmacia was best. Vendors lined the streets, selling all manner of items, from leather goods to knives to clothing and pottery. They, too, hawked their wares vociferously.

I chose the largest pharmacy in the town, after stepping into a few to see how they were run. All were organized just like every pharmacy I'd been to in Mexico -- clean, neat, and well-staffed. I asked for the items I wanted; I received factory sealed boxes with expiration dates that were sufficiently distant for me. The pharmacy offered, for an additional fee, a consultation that would provide me with prescriptions for the medicines I wanted; I declined that service. (That's to help decrease the likelihood that the U.S. border thugs will steal one's pharmaceuticals when returning to this "land of the free.") I paid for the items -- in dollars -- then stepped to the other side of the building, where a large selection of liquors was available at very low prices.

Re-entering the U.S. was a potentially tricky proposition, especially for me. The border thugs kept a watchful eye on individuals crossing the border, we knew, but we couldn't tell in advance how watchful those eyes were. Having a long record of speaking against the state behind me, I wondered what might happen if they were to ask me for ID, and check it in their computers ... Those concerns turned out to be unfounded, as the guard merely asked what I had in my shopping bag (the medicines were well hidden away) and didn't even bother to listen to my answer, as he was anticipating hassling the obviously non-American woman behind me in line. (Sure enough, his delighted, loud, "Aha!" told me she'd have to produce her papers.)

# richm at Netcraft - Google Is Now A Domain Registrar - another box checked for one-stop net tools shopping. [clairefiles]