End the War on Freedom

"I'm expecting that some people who are die-hards will die hard." -- Jefferson Parish (Louisiana) council President Aaron Broussard

From codrea:

"If somebody wants to know which Americans own guns, the answer ought to be: assume all of us--and conduct yourself accordingly." -- David Codrea

# Jack Duggan at LewRockwell.com - Superdome of Shame - on the criminal delay of refugee entrance into the Louisiana Superdome so that they could be searched. [lew]

Think about it. They can allow in 30,000 screaming fans with fifty-dollar bills and costly NFL tickets in their hands in a few minutes, but poor black people fleeing for their lives, four hours. Four HOURS!

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This is the real story of the Louisiana Superdome. Hurricane Katrina can certainly destroy the environs of the Louisiana and her neighboring states, but that can all be rebuilt. What will never be rebuilt is the dignity of the poorest citizens of that region, since the government acted with a greater destructive force than a hurricane. The lamp of freedom has been blown out by force-five bureaucrats, their sycophants and their head-embedded media enablers who will insure that it will never get re-ignited. For our own good, of course.

# John von Radowitz at The Scotsman - Study says coffee delivers more health benefits than fruit and veg - more anti-oxidants, that is. [grabbe]

Studies have associated coffee drinking with a reduced risk of liver and colon cancer, type two diabetes and Parkinson's disease. But Prof Vinson urged moderation, recommending that people drink only one or two cups per day. He added: "Unfortunately, consumers are still not eating enough fruits and vegetables, which are better for you from an overall nutritional point of view."

# Brad Edmonds at LewRockwell.com - Eating at McDonald's Is Good for You - McDonalds, Burger King, and other fast food restaurants provide plenty of healthy food. As when you shop at the supermarket, it's up to you to choose what you eat. [lew]

# Laurence M. Vance at The Ludwig von Mises Institute - The State Conquers the Parking Lot - some thoughts on two ways to provide handicapped parking, the free market way and the government violation of private property way. [lew]

# William Raspberry at The Washington Post - The Gambling Addict - wouldn't be so bad if it were coins, instead of lives, that Bushnev is gambling away. Good essay. [smith2004]

"You're starting to sound like those neocon pals of yours. All we had to do, they said, was make a killing here at the Baghdad Bullion -- 'shock and awe,' they put it -- and the casino would cave. And not only that but the other casinos, seeing our power, would cave, too. They even claimed to have figured out a way that we wouldn't have to use our own money to do it. Well, George, it didn't work. The casino seems more dangerous than it ever was, and it is now attracting a bunch of really bad guys from all over the world."

# Lee Shelton at Strike the Root - More Pro-War Hypocrisy - When Clinton wanted to take U.S. troops to Bosnia, Republicans complained loudly, but none of them were labelled unpatriotic. Fast-forward to today. Those who complain about Bushnev's war for terror are accused of treason. Balderdash. [root]

I just have one question: If winning the "war on terror" means losing our freedom, then what exactly are we fighting for?

# Larry Elder at Human Events - New Film Counters Michael Moore on Guns, History, Politcs - Mr. Elder hawks his film, Michael & Me. Here's Amazon's description: [tcfrefugees]

Michael Moore is a talented, provocative filmmaker, who challenged America's so-called gun culture in "Bowling For Columbine." Television and radio talk-show host Larry Elder tried-for a year-and-a-half-to interview Michael Moore. Larry wanted to ask him one basic question: "You tell us how many gun deaths there are in America, but how many Americans are alive because they were able to use a gun for self-defense?" Moore concludes that America has "too many guns." But does it? Larry made this film in an attempt to answer that question. Political pundits divide the country into blue states and red states. The red states feel alienated by the likes of liberal demagogues like Michael Moore. Many Americans own firearms, don't support additional gun control laws, live in one of some 34 states that allow citizens to carry concealed weapons, and support the Second Amendment. This film speaks to them. For these people, this film might be "The Passion"...of the Second Amendment.

# William J. Wagener at LewRockwell.com - Bush's War Crimes - Harvey Tharp, a former U.S. Navy JAG officer, resigned form the navy and is travelling the country telling people that George W. Bush is guilty of war crimes. [lew]

# Cory Doctorow at dashes.org - Microsoft Research DRM talk - this is over a year old, but still relevant. Why digital rights management (DRM) systems don't work, are bad for society, are bad for business, are bad for artists, and are a bad business move for Microsoft. Long, but well worth the time. [cafe]

This is the worst of all the ideas embodied by DRM: that people who make record-players should be able to spec whose records you can listen to, and that people who make records should have a veto over the design of record-players.

We've never had this principle: in fact, we've always had just the reverse. Think about all the things that can be plugged into a parallel or serial interface, which were never envisioned by their inventors. Our strong economy and rapid innovation are byproducts of the ability of anyone to make anything that plugs into anything else: from the Flo-bee electric razor that snaps onto the end of your vacuum-hose to the octopus spilling out of your car's dashboard lighter socket, standard interfaces that anyone can build for are what makes billionaires out of nerds.

The courts affirm this again and again. It used to be illegal to plug anything that didn't come from AT&T into your phone-jack. They claimed that this was for the safety of the network, but really it was about propping up this little penny-ante racket that AT&T had in charging you a rental fee for your phone until you'd paid for it a thousand times over.

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Here are the two most important things to know about computers and the Internet:

1. A computer is a machine for rearranging bits
2. The Internet is a machine for moving bits from one place to another very cheaply and quickly

Any new medium that takes hold on the Internet and with computers will embrace these two facts, not regret them. A newspaper press is a machine for spitting out cheap and smeary newsprint at speed: if you try to make it output fine art lithos, you'll get junk. If you try to make it output newspapers, you'll get the basis for a free society.

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Whenever a new technology has disrupted copyright, we've changed copyright. Copyright isn't an ethical proposition, it's a utlititarian one. There's nothing *moral* about paying a composer tuppence for the piano-roll rights, there's nothing *immoral* about not paying Hollywood for the right to videotape a movie off your TV. They're just the best way of balancing out so that people's physical property rights in their VCRs and phonographs are respected and so that creators get enough of a dangling carrot to go on making shows and music and books and paintings.

Technology that disrupts copyright does so because it simplifies and cheapens creation, reproduction and distribution. The existing copyright businesses exploit inefficiencies in the old production, reproduction and distribution system, and they'll be weakened by the new technology. But new technology always gives us more art with a wider reach: that's what tech is *for*.