Gov. Timothy M. Kaine on Monday closed the loophole in state law that allowed the Virginia Tech gunman to pass a federal background check and buy the weapons used in the massacre.
Kaine issued an executive order requiring that a database of people banned from buying guns include anyone who is found to be dangerous and ordered to undergo involuntary mental health treatment.
It’s not particularly annoying, but it’s still an expansion of state power, done in the name of nannystatist fearmongering. “OMG KOREAN ZERG RUSH NEVAR FORGETT!!!11eleventyone!” Yeah, this is bullshit.
When Israel’s oldest kibbutz, Degania, announced that it was giving up its socialist ideals and going private–members could own homes and earn salaries based on how hard they worked–few other than the kibbutzniks themselves were happy. For many Israelis, Degania was a symbol of rosier days, a Zionist idyll of honest work and camaraderie. But for those who called it home, the kibbutz had become an anachronism as rusty as the battered farm tools on display for tourists. Today, the younger generation of kibbutzniks pines for individualism. Tamara Gal-Sarai gazes out over the kibbutz lawn until her eyes settle on the blue-white shimmer of the Sea of Galilee. “The Israeli press blames us for killing their utopia,” she says. “It was as if we’d destroyed a national treasure.”
At the very least, this is an argument for volitarianism, for allowing any sort of thing so long as all actions are voluntary. When all actions are voluntary, transition is easier. They essentially switched their economy from a Soviet model to a capitalist one, but because everything was voluntary from the very beginning, it was far easier.
Whoa – Michelle and Aaron Russo have recently sent me notice that some serious draconian legislation is underway in Washington. The Food and Drug Administration Revitalization Act (S1082), has already passed a Senate subcommittee and is heading for an eventual floor vote. I’m a firm believer in keeping Big Pharma out of my body. I opt for more natural choices when it comes to my health. This is Big Brothers attempt to stomp out your right to take vitamins and supplements! Think about how this will affect the natural foods industry and the comapnies that manufacture distribute and sell natural products. As someone who uses a vast array of said products I am very alarmed.
What can I do to make my voice heard? As an avid Whole Foods shopper I hate to think of a world with no choices (but that’s what it’s coming to). We have seen ephedra banned – what’s next? And will it be a wipe out of the entire natural foods industry with one swift stroke of a pen? How can we let our voice be heard? Has time run out? http://help.senate.gov/Hearings/2007_04_18_E/S1082.pdf
Aside from my silly fantasies of ’shroom love and trampoline bouncing, I think Stanhope has a little something. Please enjoy Stanhope’s “freedom rant” courtesy of You Tube.
Doug Stanhope will be officially announcing his candidacy on Sirius Channel 100 on May 3,2007.
Via a mass email that I received earlier today:
April 25, 2007
Announcing my candidacy on May 3rd, 2007 on Stern and MySpace. Stay tuned and get involved.
~Stanhope
I happen to have a huge crush on Doug Stanhope. I have a thing for guys that are hot, like to drink, identify with libertarianism and make me laugh. Stanhope has this in common with my super sexy husband. I could never figure out why women were so obsessed (or still obsessed) with Bill Clinton. Is it cool to say that Stanhope could be the “New Clinton”? Frankly, Clinton is too cavalier for my tastes. One thing is certain, girls like me will go wild!
UPDATE: I just found the post below on Stanhopes website. I think H.L. Mencken would like his forthcoming manner. I love it when people come right out and say what they think! Did I mention that I have a thing for rebels? This is getting more exciting by the minute!
Dear Government -
This is your last warning.
I’m all set to announce my candidacy for President in 2008 on May 3rd. I’m giving you one last offer to settle out of court.
If you consent to let me and a few friends into the New World Order, we will agree to give up this inevitable takeover.
Honestly, people can’t remain this inactive against an increasingly totalitarian government forever. Anytime now they will get tired of you suffocating them and they’ll rise up against you.
We can usurp the coming revolution but it’s gonna cost you.
You have until May 3rd, 2007 to extend me an invitation to the Illuminati, Skull & Bones and wherever else you shitheads go to get beer after 2 am.
Otherwise, I’m going legit on the Libertarian ticket and you pricks are going to start seeing people get wise, get up and start kicking you in your oppressive asses.
Ed and Elaine Brown have been holed up in their Plainfield, NH house for months, daring federal law enforcement to bother them. While normally that’s not a problem, since I don’t want federal law enforcement to bother me at home either, Ed and Elaine Brown have been not only convicted of federal crimes, but also sentenced to prison for those crimes. They have also repeatedly referred to the outcome of any attempt to take them into custody as another “Waco”, and have openly stated that they will kill anyone who tries to take them into lawful custody. Now, that’s a problem.
Elaine is a very successful dentist (or at least she was, until all this happened). Ed is usually described as a “retired exterminator”. Basically, he lives off his wealthy wife, which I guess is nice work if you can get it. However, if Ed and Elaine Brown were young financially disadvantaged African-Americans, they’d have been toast long ago. See, my problem with this situation has nothing to do with the Browns’ convictions per se – and in fact, the nature of their conviction is irrelevant to me – but rather my concern is that everyone is supposed to be equal under the law. Obviously, though, that is not the case.
This whole mess started years ago, when Ed and Elaine decided there was no law which requires them to pay federal income taxes. So, they didn’t, and quite predictably the IRS came a-knockin’. They had failed to file or pay taxes on over $1.3 million in income, and refused to pay or even discuss payment when the government demanded its money, so they were criminally prosecuted. They then tried to buy their way out of trouble by offering to pay the back taxes, but it was too late. Read the rest of this entry »
Moving closer to a veto showdown with President Bush, the House late Wednesday narrowly approved a bill funding the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that sets a goal of withdrawing U.S. combat forces from Iraq next year.
The final vote on the $124 billion funding bill was 218-208, with two members voting present. The tally was largely along party lines, with just two Republicans voting for it and 13 Democrats voting against.
The Senate will take up the bill Thursday morning, setting up a likely confrontation with Bush, who has repeatedly vowed to veto any appropriations measure that contains a timetable for withdrawing troops.
My favorite part? I think the Democrats may be shrewder than anyone’s given them credit for so far by dragging this out. Check out the last paragraph:
Without the additional appropriations, the Pentagon will soon have to begin shifting money and deferring some projects to find the funds to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, although just when that situation might become critical is a matter of dispute between the White House and Democrats in Congress.
It is within the realm of possibility that the Democrats will end funding not by outright denying funding, but by letting the issue slide until Bush is forced to beg them for the terms they’re offering now. The Democrats have it in their history of denying budgets and appropriations bills to the point where the government shut down twice under Clinton, so it’s possible. Plus, they’d come out looking like the good guys to everyone concerned: “We WANTED to give Bush his money for his war, but he wouldn’t be reasonable, and now look where we are. So because he wouldn’t say yes, the Pentagon had to bring the troops home. Oh well.”
All righty, blogosphere. Let’s get him elected! I don’t even know what the fuck he’s running for, but fuck! He knows his shit, he’s not drooling on the carpet, and he’s a Libertarian! Go go go!
In this week’s “radio address” (recorded a little late, as the candidate spent the weekend on the road) Steve discusses the status of his presidential campaign:
This weekend, I attended the California Libertarian Party’s state convention, where I was joined by four other presidential candidates for an evening of speeches and questions from the audience. It was a fantastic gathering, and I was happy to be able to spend some quality time with Libertarians from around my great state.
It was also an opportunity for me to talk with some of my closest friends about where this presidential campaign is going and what it holds for the future.
The California Libertarian Party held its annual state convention in San Ramon, California, April 20-22. On Saturday evening, five candidates seeking the party’s presidential nomination addressed the attendees. Each of the five was given 30 minutes. A random procedure dictated the order. The five candidates, in the order in which they spoke, were Steve Kubby, Dave Hollist, Mike Jingozian, Daniel Imperato, and Wayne Allyn Root. Candidate Christine Smith had been expected, but she did not appear. George Phillies did not appear, but campaign literature on his behalf was circulated. Also, campaign literature was circulated, urging that Karen Kwiatkowski (who says she only wants the vice-presidential nomination) be drafted for president.
Steve Kubby, speaking first, displayed skill as an orator. He also allowed time for questions. Kubby, of course, has been a member of the Libertarian Party for at least a decade, and was the California party’s gubernatorial candidate in 1998. He responded to a question about immigration policy by saying he favors open borders. He introduced his campaign treasurer, who was in the audience. He stressed that long-time Libertarian Party activist Tom Knapp is acting as his campaign manager, even though Knapp doesn’t use that title.
paul) Tom, I know you at least were using the title…is that no longer the case? Not that I care that much about titles, just slightly curious.
Dave Hollist, a California Libertarian who has sought the party’s presidential nomination twice before, started to use his 30 minutes by showing a video of himself making a speech. The sound quality was poor. After ten minutes, state party chair Aaron Starr interrupted the video presentation and persuaded Hollist that the video was a bad idea, so Hollist then spoke for himself for ten minutes more. He criticized the other presidential candidates for not proposing an immediate end to taxation, and suggested that his idea for contract insurance could replace the lost tax revenue.
Mike Jingozian spoke next. He is an Oregon businessman who is fairly new to the Libertarian Party. His presentation was devoted almost entirely to an attack on the failed policies of the Republican and Democratic Parties. He had circulated copies of his campaign literature which labels him an “independent candidate for president”. He took questions. Asked about the label, he said he is a Libertarian but that the “independent” label is designed to draw the attention of voters who might not be as interested if he didn’t use that label. His answers probably didn’t dispel a feeling among the audience that he may not be sufficiently in sync with party core beliefs.
Wayne Allyn Root spoke last. He lives in Las Vegas, is CEO of a company that gives advice to people who bet on sports outcomes, and hosts the Fox TV network show The Winning Edge. Like Kubby, he displayed impressive oratorical skills. He gave more information about his past political life than the other candidates had done. He said his father had helped establish the New York Conservative Party. He said that his own personal heroes are Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. He is also new to the Libertarian Party. He emphasized his skills with television, and revealed that a cameraman who had been filming all day long is working for him, and that the filming is for a proposed Reality TV Show about his quest for the Libertarian nomination. He didn’t take questions, since his presentation consumed his full allotment of 30 minutes.
My mother always taught me that “two wrongs do not make a right”. With all the attention surrounding the whole Don Imus controversy, I still don’t know what people were all up in arms over. Don Imus got what he deserved but was it alright for him to say “nappy headed hos” when rappers say “ho, bitch and nigger” all the time?
I’m a huge fan of hip-hop which is different than this crap, I mean rap, that’s out now. I owned a copy of “Straight Outta Compton” by NWA, and “Nasty As They Wanna Be” by the Two Live Crew, which probably are the two most controversial rap albums before Eminem stepped into the rap world. In fact, Two Live Crew was the first rap group to voluntarily put out TWO versions of their albums. Russell Simmons, brother of Reverend RUN from RUN DMC and hip hop executive, “recommended eliminating the words “bitch,” “ho” and “nigger” from the recording industry, considering them “extreme curse words.”
Simmons, co-founder of the Def Jam label and a driving force behind hip-hop’s huge commercial success, called for voluntary restrictions on the words and setting up an industry watchdog to recommend guidelines for lyrical and visual standards. “We recommend that the recording and broadcast industries voluntarily remove/bleep/delete the misogynistic words ‘bitch’ and ‘ho’ and the racially offensive word ‘nigger’,” Simmons and Benjamin Chavis, co-chairmen of the advocacy group Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, said in a statement.
The idea is good but it will never fly for a few reasons. Curse words sell albums, especially in rap and metal. Middle income white teens make up about 70 percent of all rap sales and many of these teens love to emulate rappers because they think their own culture is boring. KRS-One in his song “MC’s Act Like They Don’t Know” said,
“Now we got white kids callin’ themselves niggas
The tables turned as the crosses burned
Remember You Must Learn”
The hip-hop culture is so big, that if they cleaned up the lyrics, they might as well start buying Cowboy Troy records. Read the rest of this entry »
It isn’t often that a single Senate subcommittee hearing puts on the table a half-dozen nightmarish scenarios that hardly anyone in Washington is worrying about.
Or, when it does, that hardly anyone pays attention.
But that is what quietly unfolded when former Sen. Sam Nunn, the Georgia Democrat, recently appeared for just over an hour before the Senate Armed Services subcommittee.
…
He gave the U.S. and Russia a score of 5 out of 10 on making progress in eliminating nuclear materials. He said that as other nations become nuclear capable, the number drops. Progress on rounding up loose, radiological matter — non-weapons-grade material that is the stuff of dirty bombs — is even worse. He said the score drops to 4 out of 10 when it comes to destroying chemical weapons. (He happily noted that Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Belarus all destroyed their stockpiles.)
He said Moscow and Washington were much further behind in jointly working to eliminate biological weapons from their arsenals. The Russians, he explained, are not cooperating on that front and security in other nations is even harder to guarantee. On that score, he said, “I’d say we were about 1 out of 10.”
Tee Barkdull is a presidential candidate for The American Party. In fact, it appears he created that party, and that he is its one and only member. You can see his completely amateurish website here. His website is for the most part boring, but the misspellings alone make it worth the visit.
The sad thing is that Tee has some interesting ideas, but he is such a complete and utter jerkwad that none of those ideas will ever be taken seriously unless someone else decides to promote them.
Then again, some of his ideas are certifiably insane.
Basically, Tee’s main qualification is that he was elected president of his local VFW where, if his website and blog comments are any indication, he drinks to excess. He spent years in the military, but it doesn’t appear he was either an officer, or a gentleman. In fact, as far as I can tell, he was a low-level enlisted man for his entire 20-year military career – his website shows a photo of a corporal’s insignia – and he admits he worked mostly in supply (which, for anyone who has never been in the military, means that he has the intelligence of a slug). He also claims he is well educated, not because he has a degree in anything (although he claims to have a “Doctrine in Common Sense”) , but because he figured out how to put gas in his car and food on the table.
Today I went to meetup.com and discovered that there is once again a Libertarian group, which by the way is not active and has never met. When I first moved to Dallas back in early 2004 I tried to moderate the group, I met a few folks but nothing ever got off the ground. But one thing is certain, I know how to spell Libertarian and even though I make mistakes sometimes I did my best to represent the party. Today I signed up for the Collin County Libertarian Group and received this *alarming* message in my yahoo inbox:
Welcome to Collin County Liberitarians! Your Organizer is
WallStreet.
He or she says:
—————————————————————
Welcome to the Republican & New Liberitarian Meet up group.
Feel free to post on the boards and make friends with our
memebers.
We are looking forward to meeting you and your ideas.
Saul
This message is disturbing on several levels. First of all, this guy doesn’t know how to spell “Libertarian” and he refers to the group as Republican and “new” Libertarian. He also cannot spell the word “members”, he makes libertarians seem like dumbasses. After seeing this I have to wonder if he is some kind of Republican hack hell bent on keeping this group inactive. I’m sure if we look around we will see other instances like this. Please tell me, am I over-reacting about this? Here is the link
Okay, I know a lot of people make their living by doing telemarketing. Even my own son did it for a while (although he absolutely hated it). It’s an honest living, as long as they aren’t doing telemarketing for a scam. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t annoy me, though. My phone number has always been unlisted and unpublished. I put all my phones on the no-call list, including my cell, to no avail. I finally just got rid of my home phone, because they were driving me crazy.
So you can imagine my amusement when I ran across a recording wherein someone probably scared some poor “you have just qualified for a free….” telemarketer out of the industry forever. I have to laugh every time I hear it.
In a twist on the old “the devil made me do it” claim, members of Westboro Baptist Church claim that the Virginia Tech massacre was an act of God. Why would God do that? Well, apparently because people like me have been making fun of the Westboro Baptist Church ‘tards (best known as godhatesfags.com) for a little too long.
Sam Konkin apparently wrote a fairly extensive history of the Libertarian Party… pretty fucking biased, but still interesting to read. You can check it out here. Of course, it looks like another, more… um… mainstream history’s been published, and it’s on my Christmas list. “Radicals for Capitalism” by Brian Doherty looks pretty sweet.
Seeing both these things recently sort of brought me to think about the history of the movement. Certainly we’ve been around for a while by now, and we’ve had our share of successes to claim: we ended the draft, we ended stagflation, and more recently we destroyed the GOP’s stranglehold on government in 2006. We’re a plucky movement and we’re still growing, and if you look at historical trends this is about where the progressives were before the Democrats co-opted all their shit.
The Washington state bill is part of a growing rebellion against an expensive federal mandate that the American Civil Liberties Union says would threaten personal privacy. The new state law says Washington will not implement the new Real ID system unless: Uncle Sam foots the bill, the government takes steps to ensure that privacy and data security concerns are addressed and the system doesn’t place unreasonable costs or record keeping burdens on the average citizen.”This is another unfunded mandate from the federal government and, even worse, it doesn’t protect the privacy of the citizens of Washington,” Gregoire said in signing the bill.”Washington will not spend the $250 million without a guarantee of privacy and federal funds to help fund it.” Montana’s law blocks the state from implementing the national rules.
There already is a list of unfunded mandates that the state have to comply with including the No Child Left Behind Act. The federal government and their over-bloated debt and budgets have shifted these costs to the states in order to pay for a police action over in Iraq. Read the rest of this entry »
Here is some mental tobacco for you to chew on – “In order to flourish and survive, we must trust our fellow humans”. A trusting and open society is also a safer, healthier and flourishing society. Despite the fact that several of us may have jobs where we deal with people of poor quality, I believe that the population, as a whole is more worthy of trust than we are led to believe. You may be thinking that I am being too optimistic here, but please consider what I have to say.
When you drive, you are placing your trust in your fellow man. You expect people to follow the rules of the road and operate their vehicles in a safe manner. When you drive, not only are you are placing trust in your fellow humans; you are also placing trust in “the great unknown”. When traveling you are placing trust in your pilot, hotel staff, taxi driver, mechanics,concierge etc. Each time you dine at a restaurant or shop at a supermarket, you are placing trust in the providers of those goods and services. Think about all of the transactions you make on just a daily basis. Unless you are a hermit and are completely self-sufficient, you must rely on the goods and services of others. Read the rest of this entry »
A few folks have asked me why I support LP Presidential Candidate Kent McManigal. After all, I don’t agree with everything he says and he’s unlikely to get the nomination, but the truth is that Kent is a fascinating individual, a true individualist who has so much more to offer us than politics. He just published an insightful article on Strike the Root, which he calls “A Deep Breath of Freedom” . Here is an excerpt:
I have not really spent much time until now thinking about why freedom is so important to me. I love freedom for the same reason I love oxygen: Both are necessary for life. Government is like a fire in a small room, burning up the oxygen and making me fight to get to the fresh air outside. When the Declaration of Independence speaks of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” I think it is simply repeating itself for emphasis. The three things are so tightly bound together that I don’t think they can be separated.
Most of my thoughts of freedom center around the outdoors. Freedom to me is the ability to enjoy life and not worry about laws or regulations. Freedom is not the opportunity to take advantage of or hurt anyone. Those kind of twisted desires bring their own chains, even if you don’t get caught.
There are many times in my life where I have felt limitless freedom, such as the day I spent sitting on the edge of a cliff, in the roots of an ancient tree. I watched the clouds drifting slowly past far below me, hawks riding the air currents beneath the clouds. I could see the river glistening in the distance and tiny houses that I understood were very important to people I didn’t know, people who were the whole world to someone. For that day, I felt as though I were a part of their world, yet isolated from it. On days like that, freedom is a physical presence.
There are also the days of peeling the bark from poles destined to be new lodge poles for my tipi. Seeing the bark curl away from my drawknife and smelling the freshly exposed wood, there is no way to adequately describe the experience. I immerse myself in it so deeply that I chew bits of the bark to more fully become a part of the tree.
Sorry it’s late. Been busy with work. Tom, let me know if we can sign you up here so you can post these when I don’t have time.
In this week’s “radio address,” Steve Kubby commemorates Tax Day 2007 with a campaign promise:
Over the last few years, politicians in the “major” parties have put forward a number of ideas for “reforming” the income tax, or for replacing it with some other tax. What you seldom hear these politicians discuss is actual, significant cuts in government revenue from taxation. They like to talk about lower taxes, but not if it means cutting back on their power.
Libertarians see it differently: We don’t just want to cut your taxes if we can do so without cutting the size, scope or power of government. We want to cut taxes AND shrink government. Not just shrink its rate of growth, but shrink its ACTUAL size. My pledge to you is simple:
If elected president, I will immediately ask Congress to repeal the income tax. Not “reform” it. Not “re-structure” it. Not replace it with another tax that takes just as much money out of your pocket. Just do away with it — entirely. If Congress won’t do that — and I admit that they probably won’t want to — I’ll pull out my veto pen and start knocking down budget bills that don’t include massive cuts on both the tax side and the spending side of the government ledger.
Yesterday, 32 people and one psychopath died in what, to my knowledge, was the worst tragedy to befall a college campus since the federal government killed four students at Kent State University in 1970. As the one psychopath killed his 32 victims (as well as injured many more) with guns, the “gun control” lobby is taking advantage of people’s emotional horror to persuade people that guns are evil.
As horrible as the killings were, we can’t let our emotions get in the way of reason when it comes to public policy. Virginia Tech is, ostensibly, a “gun free zone”. In fact, in 2006, an official at the university praised the defeat of a bill in the state legislature that would have forbidden the university from preventing students with concealed carry licenses from carrying their weapons on campus, saying
this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus.
Unfortunately, no matter how it made them feel, it made them defenseless against a psychopath who, like most people you really wouldn’t want to have a gun, didn’t care about the rules. Read the rest of this entry »
I always get pissed off when people feel the need to distill every conflict, disagreement, or nasty look into two sides: Democrats vs. Republicans, 9/11 “sheeple” vs. nutjobs, black vs. white, male vs. female, terrorists vs. Americans. What they’re really distilling everything down to is good vs. evil, with whatever side they’re most like being the good one. Suddenly if I’m against welfare or affirmative action I hate minorities, if I’m against the war in Iraq I support terrorism, if I don’t think Building Seven was imploded, I might as well be fellating George Bush.
People then exacerbate this by deciding that if they are closer to one side or the other, to take part in the debate they have to go all the way, so that people go from “I wonder whether things might not be as they seem” to “DUDE GET AWAY FROM THE CHEMTRAILS OMGWTFHAX.” It’s easier that way, seeing things in a strictly contrasted context, but it also requires blinding yourself to things you don’t want to think about.
What people never want to admit to is that there aren’t good guys and bad guys; there are a lot of people that operate at varying levels of suck. No, Ron Paul isn’t deserving of hero-worship. Does this make him un-Libertarian, or make me a horrible person for supporting him? No, but that also doesn’t mean I think he’s the paragon of libertarian virtue.
It never ceases to astound me how many people think that just because I’m supporting a nominal Republican, I’m a horrible person. They’re falling for the same tricks that their bumper sticks purport to dismantle; they believe that it’s the LP vs. the Republicrats, and that anybody carrying a tagline that doesn’t begin with L is a horrible person.
Not only are there more than two sides, there are more than three or four sides too – there are infinite sides, or at least as many sides as there are people alive in the world. Attempting to categorize people in two will only lead to further discrimination and further idiocy. Please stop doing it.
Iconoclastic novelist, essayist and humanist Kurt Vonnegut Jr has died, at the age of 84. While Vonnegut was many times described as a libertarian socialist (putting him in a category with such groups as the ACLU and Food Not Bombs), he was the writer whose work most strongly influenced my left libertarian beliefs. The loss of his wry wit and great intellect is a loss to us all.
For anyone not familiar with Vonnegut, he was without question one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. Penning such classics as Slaughterhouse Five and Breakfast of Champions, Vonnegut mixed science fiction, sarcasm, black humor, and keen insight to force us to confront the commonality of mankind. His “bad guys” were never people, but governments and situations. His characters were each “a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.”
Vonnegut spoke out against war, despite his belief that WWII was necessary. In Slaughterhouse Five, named after the underground meat-packing cellar in which he was held as a POW during the bombing of Dresden, he confronted a truth that most would like to overlook when he wrote, “You know we’ve had to imagine the war here, and we have imagined that it was being fought by aging men like ourselves. We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock. ‘My God, my God—’ I said to myself. ‘It’s the Children’s Crusade.’” His Slaughterhouse Five catchphrase “So it goes”, an ironic reference to death, was adopted by protesters during Vietnam. Read the rest of this entry »
That, or you can pay them $100, an increase from the previous $30 marriage license fee. From the Dallas Morning News:
A bill by Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, raises the cost of marriage licenses from $30 to $100 and requires engaged couples to take an eight-hour class on marriage if they don’t want to pay the fee. Poor couples can apply for a scholarship to the class.
Now, I’m sure the State would prefer the $70, but if not, you can take this nice class, which also isn’t free.
While Googling Rep. Chisum to see if he had any connections with the proprietors of this class, I found this memo, which he sent out on February 9th. I wish I was making this up:
Indisputable evidence – long hidden but now available to everyone – demonstrates conclusively that so-called “secular evolution science” is the Big-Bang 15-billion-year alternative “creation scenario” of the Pharisee religion. This scenario is derived concept-for-concept from Rabbinic writings in the mystic “holy book” Kabbala dating back at least two millennia. (emphasis his)
So since evolution is a Jewish conspiracy, it clearly violates the Establishment Clause to teach it in public schools. The evidence for this is contained in links to fixedearth.com In other words, CRAZYTIME.
I’ve already emailed the Gray County, Texas LP about this memo, so that they can use it against Chisum in 2008.
As of late, my mind has been frequently flooded with childhood “flashbacks”. Being the woman that I am, I over analyze just about everything, and each memory holds so much insight as to how I have progressed from child to adult. Almost each time, I am reminded of how great it is to be young and idealistic. As a child, I was naïve. In my opinion, to be naïve as a child is to have a carefree and enjoyable childhood.
One warm spring afternoon I remember leaving my beloved South St. Louis Private school for the day. As usual, I was happy to be going home. As I entered my mother’s car I spotted an obese man smiling and handing out balloons. Several kids surrounded this man and it looked like he was giving out toys and balloons. “Mommy, can I go over to get a balloon with the other kids?” Boy was I excited, if I had to guess I was probably 5 or 6 years old. My mother replied to my request with a firm “No.” I did not understand why I was unable to get a balloon like the other kids. “You cannot get a balloon from that man because he is working for a politician.” I did not understand the meaning of what she said. “What is a politician?” I inquired, “A politician is someone who is running for office, most of the time they are up to no good.” I remember my mother told me that they were giving little kids like me balloons in the hopes that we would one day vote for them when we became adults. I don’t remember being too disappointed going home empty handed that afternoon. However, the importance of what my mother was trying to teach me did not fully register with my little girl brain until I recently stumbled upon this memory hidden in a vault inside my mind.
In this week’s “radio address,” Steve Kubby explains why it’s a bad idea for Libertarians to support those other parties:
I’ve heard from a number of you that you’re not supporting the Libertarian Party or its presidential candidate in 2008. That, instead, you’re giving your money and support to a candidate for another party’s presidential nomination.
When you support a candidate, you support that candidate’s party. And as fine a man as Ron Paul is, his party is simply not worthy of your support. He may be a libertarian, but his party is not libertarian and it’s not going to become libertarian, no matter how much money you throw at it.
SANTA ANA, Calif. – Staffing was so inadequate at a California senior center that a rat crawled into an Alzheimer’s patient’s mouth and died there before staff noticed, a lawsuit claims.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday on behalf of 90-year-old Sigmund Bock, alleges that administrators at the Paragon Gardens Assisted Living and Memory Care Community in Mission Viejo overbooked their facility to receive corporate bonuses, but cut back on staff to increase profits.
“The facility so literally ignored the needs of their residents … as to allow vermin in the form of a rat to become lodged in the mouth of Sigmund Bock and die therein,” the lawsuit alleges.
Melody Chatelle, a spokeswoman for Sunwest Management Inc., the Oregon-based company that operates Paragon, denied the allegations.
“We take care of our residents, and find this negative publicity to be a disheartening affront to our professional caregivers and most especially to our residents and their loved ones,” she said.
Of course, the nursing home claims they did nothing wrong, but apparently a staff member observed that patient sharing candy with a rat earlier that day, but thought nothing of it and did nothing to stop it.
This is not the first time that particular nursing home has gotten into trouble, either. Apparently they almost got their ticket pulled when a 71-year-old dementia patient wandered off last year. Tragically, that patient has never been found.
This kind of stuff just majorly pisses me off. Nursing homes like that one must choose their staff by leaving them alone in a room with a small puppy, to make sure they’ll torture it.
On a recent Saturday morning, Grace Roeber was on her morning walk, iPod in her ear and weights in-hand. Like everyone we talked to in the development, she’s edgy about what she sees: The fires, the foreclosures, and the big empty houses.
She tells of “scammers” her neighbors have spotted who don’t live in houses, but nonetheless appear to be using them on occasion.
All of this doesn’t wash with her property tax bills, which go up every year, propelled by the bloated book values of homes already on tax rolls.
“So you put this all together and what does that tell you?” she asked. “Something’s going on. And our property values are being jacked up, and I’m paying taxes on a value that I’ll never realize if I want to sell.”
This situation is in no way unique to the neighborhood the article is about (in Cedar Hill, southwest of Dallas, Texas), at least not in the general sense. Essentially, lots of houses are burning, lots of properties are being forclosed, and lots are simply abandoned. Now, the burning thing is just weird, so I’ll ignore that. But what really gets me going about this is that property owners are getting charged for having big empty houses on their block:
“[Tax authorities] base the taxes on the highest-valued property on the block,” Mosely said. “And they just sort of govern it down from there.”
That’s right, it doesn’t matter how much your property is worth; you’re getting taxed the maximum the government can imagine.
Orlando police have unbelievably arrested 21-year-old Eric Montanez, an activist with the charity “Food Not Bombs”, for feeding 30 homeless people in downtown Orlando.
A city ordinance, supported by businesses which claim the homeless frighten away customers, prevents feeding more than 25 homeless persons within two miles of Orlando City Hall. The law does allow charities to feed more than 25 people at a time with a special permit, but only allows two such special permits per year. Perhaps they feel charitable only on Christmas and Thanksgiving?
I’ve been in downtown Orlando. It’s no different from any other large city, insofar as the homeless population is concerned. It’s also nothing special, and chances are this ordinance has little to do with the homeless frightening customers, and everything to do with the people who work downtown not wanting to deal with them.
Police videotaped Montanez as he fed the needy some stew from a large kettle. They later arrested him and charged him with a misdemeanor for violating the ordinance, and took a sample of the stew as evidence. A police spokesperson said that Montanez is the first person to be arrested under the controversial law.
Frankly, I hope he prevails in court, and that the law is found to be unconstitutional. After all, it is a restriction on the First Amendment right to peaceably assemble. Besides, charities historically have done a much better job of caring for the needy, but that wouldn’t let the government have quite so much control, would it? The charities go where the needy are, and in most cases, they’re downtown. The government needs to butt out, and let the charities do what they do best.
I also have to wonder if there is any connection between this action and the name of the charity, “Food Not Bombs”. There may be more to this than meets the eye.
Income taxes, we all hate them and love to see them abolished. One thing is for sure about Libertarians…we want at least lower taxes and anyone is advocates the opposite simply isn’t a libertarian. However, there are a brave few souls who will defy paying income taxes and risk getting caught by the government. We all have our own battles we can win but many of us will not go this radical in our ongoing fight against what is wrong!
My friend and fellow Libertarian,Arthur Farnsworth was sentenced to 27 months in federal minimum security prison yesterday on tax evasion. I’ve known Arthur since 1996, when I moved to Bucks County,PA and joined the local libertarian group there. He was always unwaivering about his positions and true to his beliefs.
I just hope that his time in prison doesn’t break him his spirits down. I hope he has his unwavering beliefs about the income tax after he is released. We need more people who are willing to fight for whats right no matter what.
BUT! We don’t have to agree on everything. Stick two libertarians in a room, give them something to argue about, and they’ll come out of that room with THREE different opinions.
I gotta admit, I’m a really big fan of Penn & Teller’s “Bullshit.” What they do in there is take on something that’s usually bogus, and then beat the snot out of it with logic and facts. I was in this thread, reading this post, when it occurred to me that rocking this shit “Bullshit” style instead of doing a flamewar might be appropriate.
Let’s review. The wankers in Butler County, Ohio want to put deadbeat dads on pizza boxes. Now, my mom’s first husband was a regular deadbeat, and continues to suck to this very day. Deadbeat dads can go to hell and die. So let’s be very, very clear on this that I’m really not saying that deadbeat behavior is okay. But this government action is crossing the line.
Christina Rowe seems to be a professional profiteer in the divorce industry. This places her slightly below the morality food chain from lawyers and your more advanced cockroaches. Now don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with capitalism-she’s obviously got a product that people want, and are willing to pay her money for. But making money exclusively off of encouraging the destruction of marriages, and the complete and total plundering of the penised party to that marriage? Fuck! At least lawyers can do contract law and shit. Read the rest of this entry »
Senate Leader Harry Reid finally has a grandiose idea, an idea Democrats will chicken out of. His idea: Since Bush is threatening to veto the bill which has a deadline to pull our troops out of Iraq;let’s introduce a bill to cut funding for the police action instead.
Mindful that they hold a shaky majority in Congress and that neither chamber has enough votes to override a presidential veto, Democrats are already thinking about the next step after Bush rejects their legislation.Reid said Monday that if that happens, he will join forces with Feingold, one of the party’s most liberal members who has long called to end the war by denying funding for it. Reid has previously stopped short of embracing Feingold’s position. When asked whether he would ever consider pulling funds for the troops, Reid said Congress would provide troops what they needed to be safe.
However, 154 neo-cons, I mean warmongering Eric Dondero types, oops House Republicans are sticking by their dictator, I really mean Fuhrer Bush, in opposition to any legislation dealing with a premature pullout of Iraq. Read the rest of this entry »
JACKSONVILLE, North Carolina. April 1 — Vice President Cheney delivered a speech early Sunday morning before a formation of soldiers at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. The speech was not publicized and the prepared remarks were intended to boost troop morale. The comments were fairly unremarkable except for one short comment near the end of the speech in which Mr. Cheney suggested that the Bush Administration may seek to challenge the 22nd amendment in the 2008 presidential election in an effort to ensure that the war in Iraq is successful.
Vice President Dick Cheney delivers a speech Saturday at Camp Lejeune, Jacksonville, North Carolina.
Mr. Cheney again cited the war in Iraq as a key component in the effort to combat terrorism, saying “The war in Iraq is such a crucial part of the greater war on terror that we currently have our legal advisors looking into the possibility that the 22nd Amendment may not apply in 2008.”
Because the speech was not publicized and was held on a secure military base, very few journalists were present, and none were able to ask questions about what the Vice President’s comments might mean. Repeated efforts to contact the Vice President’s Office to clarify the comment were unsuccessful.
The 22nd Amendment to the Constitution prohibits U.S. Presidents from running for a third term, stating “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice…“. The 22nd Amendment was passed in 1951 after President Franklin Roosevelt broke a tradition that dated back to George Washington, in which Presidents voluntarily refused to run for a third term.
Click to read the rest of the article by Philip McKrack of the New York Times.
I’ve said before that George Bush and Iran’s President Ahmendijlkasd are fairly similar: they’re both crazed fundamentalists, they both pursue a reckless foreign policy, they both work very hard to incite their population against bogeymen, then imprisoning some low-level samples for eventual prosecution in the distant future, etc. Who cares whether it’s Tehran or Guantanamo where the “enemy” is detained?
The infuriating televised “confessions” of the British sailors that Iran has been spewing all over the place rings another bell: remember when Khalid Chesthair Mohammed confessed to planning every terrorist attack since he was born? It’s almost impossible to believe that one man, no matter how evil and brilliant, is capable of planning all those acts. The general consensus seems to be that Mohammed was tortured to extract the ridiculous confessions, and even the most hardcore neocons have provided little plausible refutation.
Iran has managed to one-up the US, however. They got their bogeymen to confess on TV, looking physically well – ie, not tortured. In other words, the imprisoned British were either drugged (unlikely) or scared half to death. The mere fact that Iran didn’t visibly torture its captives doesn’t make its actions right, but when Iran is looking morally superior to the US, there’s a big problem.
First let me get the basics out of the way – my opinions are my own and are in NO way the responsibility of this site. I suspect the majority of the authors disagree with me at least on this, so don’t blame them.
Second, I did make an error and was unclear about one thing. Turnitin does not necessarily operate solely within the public school arena, so not every cent they make comes from taxes. However, every cent they get from public schools IS coerced from citizens. In this and future articles about plagiarism in general and Turnitin specifically, I will direct my comments to the public school arena.
Now to answer a few comments made on my previous article. Many people seemed to feel that students in public schools who were given writing assignments and then turned in plagiarism were commiting fraud, were not developing their ability to write creatively, are in breach of contract with the school’s honor policy, are stealing from the original author, are doing something “wrong” and in general are getting what they deserve. I will start with a few of the main issues and then address the libertarianism of plagiarism in general in a second article. Read the rest of this entry »
The newest idea in rounding up “deadbeat dads” is to display their photos and identifying information on pizza boxes. Each child support wanted poster in Butler County, Ohio depicts multiple men along with their last known address, age and date of birth, occupation, number of children, and amount owed.
I’m sorry, but as much as I think everybody should pony up to support their children, I think this plan could possibly do a great deal of emotional damage to the children whose fathers are pictured in such a public manner.
There is also the possibility that there is a legitimate reason why the person is behind on their support payments, as well as the rather chilling possibility that someone could be publicly outed as a “deadbeat” when they aren’t behind on their child support at all, thanks to the government system which very regularly has no idea who has paid or how much someone is behind.
No matter how I view it, it’s a bad idea. There’s too much margin for error, and an error in something of this nature could ruin someone’s life.
An Illinois woman mourns her two young daughters, swept to their deaths in Hurricane Katrina’s floodwaters. It’s a tragic and terrifying story. It’s also a lie.
An Alabama woman applies for disaster aid for hurricane damage. She files 28 claims for addresses in four states. It’s all a sham.
Two California men help stage Internet auctions designed to help Katrina relief organizations. Those, too, are bogus.
More than 18 months after Hurricane Katrina decimated the Gulf Coast, authorities are chipping away at a mountain of fraud cases that, by some estimates, involve thousands of people who bilked the federal government and charities out of hundreds of millions of dollars intended to aid storm victims.
The full scope of Katrina fraud may never be known, but this much is clear: It stretches far beyond the Gulf Coast, like the hurricane evacuees themselves. So far, more than 600 people have been charged in federal cases in 22 states — from Florida to Oregon — and the District of Columbia.
The frauds range in value from a few thousand dollars to more than $700,000. Complaints are still pouring in and several thousand possible cases are in the pipeline — enough work to keep authorities busy for five to eight years, maybe more.
Political Futility / Endless Conflict / System Worship / Big Government Reagan / Leave Us Alone / Fall of Communism / Civil Disobedience / Anti Immigration Protectionist / Standing Armies / The Roads / Ron Paul Joins Us / Keene Visit / Immigration / Whiners? / Slavery / Public Exposure / Freedom
Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zones / Taking Risks / Freedom to Travel Activist Arrested Again / Drug War Deaths / Campaign Advertising / Acetone Gas Tank Bunk / Things Everyone Needs to Know / North Korea / License Plates / Salvia Prohibition
Shelly Roche joins us to discuss bringing women to liberty, her personal path to freedom, and more. / Govt Assuming Responsibility / Minarchy vs. Freedom / Using the System / Liberty-oriented Lawyers? / InjusticeEverywhere.com / Comfort Zones / Auditing the Fed / Agorism
UK Socialist Dental Care / Police Harassment and Standing Up For Your Rights / Socialist Health Care / Unemployment / Health Care Prior to Government Intervention / Black Man In KKK Robe Disrupts City Council Meeting / Miltary Man Refuses to Deploy / Swat Team Called to Back Yard Crew / Nightmare Story
Jim Babka joins us from Downsize DC / Failblog / Persuasion vs Arguing / Minimum Wage / Stamped Dollar Bills / Billing a Court? / Magic Incantations / Fully Informed Juries / Paytriot Scam Artists / More Extraordinary Claims Without Proof / Violent thugs don't care about words. / NH Hard Sell
Cutco Update / Disturbing Internet Speech Regulations Proposed / Government, Tool of Violence / Flag of Distress / Tax Freedom / Free Speech and Private Property / Excited Delerium / Unemployment / Abomination? / China and Freedom / Big Activist Weekend in NH / Police Chief Advocates Lowered Drinking Age / Medical Marijuana Failure / Guns and Canada / Las Ve […]
Mind Meld With Miles… Over Migas! Back in the day… when I was fresh out of high-school and working at Austin’s downtown public library, my boss had a party for me. To promote the little day-job shindig she’d created a flyer with a picture of Star Trek’s Jean Luc Picard all Borged-out with the caption, “Mind [...]
ANOMALY Magazine Welcome’s Brian Worsham! In late 2001, some friends and I were talking about our desire to see more and better quality paranormal and parapolitical TV shows on broadcast and cable television. We wanted our own Anomaly TV Network. We felt certain we had the drive, the skills, the equipment and the network of real [...]
Watching the ARGonauts Play If you’ve followed the Elfis Network from the beginning then you know of my early interest in Alternate Reality Gaming and their potential for “mucking up the works” for paranormal and parapolitical researchers. You may also know that my interests were rekindled in 2007 by the provocative hypotheses of blogger D […]
Anomaly TeleVision » Blog Archive » 60 Minutes - Mind Reading Tech 60 Minutes - Mind Reading (video) cnettv.cnet.com/2001-1_53-50004855.html How Technology May Soon “Read” Your Mind www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/12/31/60minutes/main4694713.shtml www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4697682n
Big news regarding evidence of evolution: Fossil Discovery Is Heralded In what could prove to be a landmark discovery, a leading paleontologist said scientists have dug up the 47 million-year-old fossil of an ancient primate whose features suggest it could be the common ancestor of all later monkeys, apes and humans. Anthropologists have long believed that h […]
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Ed and Elaine Brown have been holed up in their Plainfield, NH house for months, daring federal law enforcement to bother them. While normally that’s not a problem, since I don’t want federal law enforcement to bother me at home either, Ed and Elaine Brown have been not only convicted of federal crimes, but also sentenced to prison for those crimes. They have also repeatedly referred to the outcome of any attempt to take them into custody as another “Waco”, and have openly stated that they will kill anyone who tries to take them into lawful custody. Now, that’s a problem.
Tee Barkdull is a presidential candidate for The American Party. In fact, it appears he created that party, and that he is its one and only member. You can see his 
Okay, I know a lot of people make their living by doing telemarketing. Even my own son did it for a while (although he absolutely hated it). It’s an honest living, as long as they aren’t doing telemarketing for a scam. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t annoy me, though. My phone number has always been unlisted and unpublished. I put all my phones on the no-call list, including my cell, to no avail. I finally just got rid of my home phone, because they were driving me crazy.
A few folks have asked me why I support LP Presidential Candidate Kent McManigal. After all, I don’t agree with everything he says and he’s unlikely to get the nomination, but the truth is that Kent is a fascinating individual, a true individualist who has so much more to offer us than politics. He just published an insightful article on 
Iconoclastic novelist, essayist and humanist Kurt Vonnegut Jr has died, at the age of 84. While Vonnegut was many times described as a libertarian socialist (putting him in a category with such groups as the ACLU and Food Not Bombs), he was the writer whose work most strongly influenced my left libertarian beliefs. The loss of his wry wit and great intellect is a loss to us all.
