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What peace did the UN keep in East Timor? Under the UN agreements, massacres were commonplace. Only when regional governments got involved did things improve, and even now the UN is working to prevent justice for those who were involved and to limit the ability of the new government to defend itself -- see here for more on UN sabotage of the East Timorese independence movement, and current UN attempts to keep the new nation from being able to keep order or defend itself.

Unfortunately, your information is about a decade and a half out of date. Both France and England now have violent-crime rates significantly above that in the US -- indeed that in Paris is now 50% higher than in New York City, and in particular, England as a whole has seen a skyrocketing rate of gun crime since finalizing the ban on all handguns in 1996.

For more on this, see here or here. And remember -- criminals will get guns. The only question is whether they will be alone in having them...

Nice sig man. It takes allot of brains to come up with ethnic cleansing as a solution to the middle east problems, which is what the author of the article you linked calls for. That article is filled with racist, xenophobic, antisemitic filth. Bitching about how we the tax payers pay for Palestinian refugee camps is humorous as orders of magnitude more money go from the tax payers to Israel for example.

Would calling for the ethnic cleansing of Israelis from the middle east be an equally good solution... no way in hell!

That racist article that you linked never considers the fact that the arab world has been molested by western nations for the past couple hundred years. All of which has led to political and societal instability. Turning around and blaming it on the Arab race is disgusting! Go burn your crosses elsewhere, bigot.

Let's look at those two points:

`victimless' crimes -- while I'm sure we have some agreement here (don't forget that just about the only mainstream arguments for legalization of, eg, Marijuana are coming from conservative publications like National Review and the Wall Street Journal), I said `most free', not `perfectly free'. The nations of Europe, with their prior restraint on the press, lack of protections for free speech, and tendency to murder those with unpopular opinions certainly don't make the grade.

most democratic -- certainly Europe, where more and more power is delegated to faceless beaurocrats in Brussels, and court decisions by the established, limited judicial systems of member nations can be struck down by a super-powerful European Court with no democratic mechanism of selection doesn't make the grade here either.

And finally a note on the electoral college -- you consider this anti-democratic, but it is there for a reason: in their wisdom, our Founding Fathers recognized that without such a mechanism, a few large states would govern the outcome of elections, and smaller states would have no voice at all. Doesn't sound very democratic, does it?

Well, as they say on tv, `we report, you decide'. I would argue that there is a strong liberal bias to much of the moderation which goes on here, you seem to feel that there is not. I dare say the readers of our posts can decide that for themselves, taking this thread and others as their guide.

As to your bit about intolerance, I would argue that it misses a key point. Modern `I feel your pain' liberalism, with its morass of identity politics, anti-Americanism, and subjectivist morality, has little use for rational argument and the respect for civil discourse which was a proud tradition of the liberalism of the past. From our college campuses, to our network news, liberals increasingly see labels and smears as a replacement for reason. Conservatism, with its central emphasis on reason and on individual rights, is less guilty of this.

Hint: when was the last time you saw a small group of conservative protesters use insults, violence or threats of violence to shut down a liberal speech, event, or newspaper? It happens to conservatives all the time -- see here, or here, or here or here or here.

Well, as they say on tv, `we report, you decide'. I would argue that there is a strong liberal bias to much of the moderation which goes on here, you seem to feel that there is not. I dare say the readers of our posts can decide that for themselves, taking this thread and others as their guide.

As to your bit about intolerance, I would argue that it misses a key point. Modern `I feel your pain' liberalism, with its morass of identity politics, anti-Americanism, and subjectivist morality, has little use for rational argument and the respect for civil discourse which was a proud tradition of the liberalism of the past. From our college campuses, to our network news, liberals increasingly see labels and smears as a replacement for reason. Conservatism, with its central emphasis on reason and on individual rights, is less guilty of this.

Hint: when was the last time you saw a small group of conservative protesters use insults, violence or threats of violence to shut down a liberal speech, event, or newspaper? It happens to conservatives all the time -- see here, or here, or here or here or here.

And for a good reason.

Witness the narrowminded religious nut we have almost at the top of our very own government. It gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside to know when the U.S. Attorney General, who is responsible for protecting our civil rights, says that Calico Cats are the sign of the devil or has the time to worry about a bare-breasted statue in his Justice Department office building.

And don't forget the total nutcases like Pat Robertson or Ann Coulter ("We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.")

I tried to hold on to my views on government regulation, but then the DMCA happened. Then SSSCA, etc. etc. etc.

What do you mean here -- that you were in favor of government regulation, until even more regulation, in the form of DMCA and (proposed) SSSCA/CBDTPA/whatever, you changed your mind?

That seems to contradict the rest of what you say, though perhaps you assumed that, even though the SSSCA/CBDTPA is primarily backed by Democrat Senator Fritz Hollings and railed against by the conservative National Review in "The Un-New Democrat" in its 2002-04-22 issue, since it "favors some businesses", it must necessarily reflect the capitalist approach to government.

If I get the gist of what you're trying to say, it's that you trusted the general "lie to children" that Republicanism/corporatism/capitalism, not Democratism/socialism/government, is the One True Way to Utopia, or some approximation thereof.

As a "lie to children", that's an overly simplified way of looking at things, though I tend to believe it's at least a bit safer than the reverse, if actual freedom is your bag.

In my view, the reality is that it is a human tendency to (among other things) attempt to direct others' lives, that the Republican/corporate/capitalist worldview has a much stronger historical record of taking that into account by favoring systems that resist the greater excesses of such tyrannical impulses than the other worldview, and that, even assuming I'm right up to now, the practice of resisting tyranny must be continually exercised even against those who preach the Republican/corporate/capitalist worldview.

In short, while any theology, orthodoxy, religion, or claptrap can and will be hijacked by those seeking to control the lives of those who believe in it as well as those who might be more easily controlled by such a hijacking despite their not believing in it, most of what modern American liberalism stands for is a wholesale embrace of the tyranny of a small elite over the rest of humanity. That's borne out by their choice of issues, almost all of which come with the explicit or implicit baggage of "here's how we'll fix it by increasing government size, regulatory oversight, etc.". Compare that to right-wing advocacy, e.g. Rush Limbaugh, who almost constantly preaches lowering taxes, reducing regulation, celebrating the ability of people to make their own choices. (Even the most individualistic element of leftism over the past decades -- "reproductive rights" -- became, inevitably, twisted into a government mandate to tax citizens so as to fund abortions not only within the US but abroad, not to mention the overreaching prohibitions sought against those trying to inform pregnant women of the actual effects of having an abortion.)

Sure, some leftists would, in their fantasies, eliminate corporations, businesses, etc., but make no mistake: they are perfectly willing to cater to such entities to acquire power, as has ever been the case with governments, and certainly their individual members who gain political office rarely turn up their noses at doing the bidding for a few businesses at the expense of the market as a whole (especially since such individuals rarely place the 100% wholesale elimination of corporations high on their personal list of "things to do before I die").

As one small example: much fuss has been made over Enron, but a) every American had a choice, on an ongoing basis, whether to work for them, invest in them, hire Arthur Andersen or believe what it says in its auditing, and the market has already punished many of the players far more quickly than any government oversight committee could imagine doing in its wildest fantasies, and b) it's hard to imagine any accounting gimmick employed by Enron that hasn't been, and continues to be, employed in the financing of Social Security, out of which we do not have a choice to opt, and which has a governing organization that can put off the inevitable bankruptcy of the system by simply changing the rules (increasing retirement age), increasing taxes, and so on, since, unlike Enron and most corporations, the federal government has the guns and repeatedly shows its willingness to use them to remind citizens of its power.

But do "liberals", who rail against "evil corporations", actively rally against the financial shenanigans, enforced at gunpoint, of the Social Security system? Does Congress focus its energy on freeing individual Americans to decide for themselves whether, how, and to what extent to invest in their own retirement, choices they had, and continue to have, when it comes to investing in corporations like Enron? Of course not, because neither activity would increase the power of the wannabe-tyrants over the people. So their "evil corporate giants" act is exposed for what it is: a fraud, carefully calculated to convince the public to exchange their freedom of choice regarding their investments and employment for increased, enforced, government mandates regarding investment and employment. And who will get to make those government choices? Why, the elites who are in power, of course -- not those "big evil corporate executives"; rather, something much, much worse.

None of this makes me a fan of Enron, Microsoft, or Cisco, but, then, I generally avoid MS products, didn't (to my direct knowledge) invest in Enron, and haven't bought Cisco products.

I have yet to discover any comparably easy way to avoid being targeted by the federal government to make up for its shortfalls in ethical, moral, financial, and legal practices past, present, and future.

So while I applaud your attentiveness to the hypocracies and oversimplifications of the "right", as well as your alertness to not be drawn into accepting solutions proposed by the "left" simply because you've suddenly discovered that the business world isn't rosy, I'd like to suggest one more little-talked-about fact.

That is, the business/corporate/capitalist world explicitly depends on widespread rational, critical, commentary on business, markets, investment strategies, and so on. While some capitalists seek to limit speech, they rarely do so when it comes to speech about a competitor's failings. They don't generally protect each other.

Whereas, pretty much to the extent any government takes up liberal/socialist/communist theology, it becomes hostage to the idea that "what the people don't know won't hurt them" and, further, often seeks to protect fellow left-leaning governments from suffering the effects of exposure of their own faults as well.

(Keep in mind that it's the left-wing media that has trouble distinguishing "terrorists" from "freedom fighters", and it's left-wing governments that have the clearer history of imprisoning people for simply pointing out failures of the government and its orthodoxy. To the left, someone who firebombs a ski lodge in the name of environmentalism is more likely to be named a "freedom fighter" than is someone who criticizes government regulation; for the latter, they use phrases like "right-wing zealot" to describe them, when they can't simply imprison them to shut them up like the Soviets used to.)

Similarly, even Congressional members at odds with each other politically will sometimes rally 'round each other, protecting the "public" from information that might embarrass "the assembly" -- that is, put their collective presumptive right to rule at risk in the public's view.

I've looked at it from an information-theory point of view and from an engineering point of view, as well as a Biblical point of view, and, as far as I can tell, the model of individual initiative, which allows for choosing your own profession, running your own business, with a minimum of government intervention, beats a highly-regulatory government hands down, when it comes to the long run and the population as a whole.

None of this means you are automatically protected, by having a Republican/corporate/capitalist world, against corrupt people in power, whether that power is the highly limited kind found in corporate boardrooms, or the firepower-enforced kind found in government.

What does protect you against corporate corruption is, mainly, competition and choice, something only a few governments have tended to do a good job at ensuring is maintained with a minimum of interference. (Given the vast array of practical choices I have here in the USA, I'd guess the US government has done one of the best jobs in the history, especially given all the other stuff its had to deal with, e.g. world wars and the like. But I haven't spent any time in Taiwan, for example; perhaps it could do better.)

What protects you against government corruption is political advocacy, the vote, and the right to keep and bear arms. The American Left (joined by "Republicans" such as Senator John McCain) explicitly attack your right to engage in (e.g. by funding) political advocacy in the form of Campaign Finance Reform, claim the second is a loss due to the Florida 2000 Presidential debacle, and have, as have all left-leaning governments in history I believe, been long engaged in the elimination of the third, in the form of gun control.

Since no corporation can be as menacing as a government without being, in effect, a government, it all comes down to choosing whether and how to vigorously oppose corruption in government, which includes opposing corrupting influences, including the human tendency to try to control, or regulate, other peoples' lives.

If you don't make good use of the first two methods (political advocacy and the vote) to accomplish this, you'll likely end up either losing your freedom, having to exercise the third option (take up arms), or having the third option exercised against you -- remember how poor right-wing Christians fared during the Clinton "anti-gun" era, e.g. Waco and little Elian Gonzalez, and try to figure out exactly what threats those situations posed to the government that required such extreme uses of force -- the kind of force the left rails against when it is exercised against left-wing terrorists, or militant Muslim terrorists who have long allied themselves with left-wing entities such as the Soviet Union and the claim that "poverty is the root cause of terrorism" -- and then try to reconcile that with the coddling of terrorists, including the early release of known, convicted left-wing terrorists, by that same Clinton administration.

Let's face it -- what the left chooses to use as political footballs (such as catchphrases) rarely pans out when the so-called reasoning it uses is applied to lots of obviously similar situations. As the old saying goes, "The problem with communism is communism; the problem with capitalism is capitalists"; in my experience, you have to fight the left's prescriptions, whereas you generally need only fight the right's implementations.

But you must always fight for freedom, and, in this world, while that sometimes seems to require violence, we're especially privileged (in the USA anyway) to be able to fight so effectively without engaging in violence or the imposition of our wills on others, thanks to the political system we have. No system of government (short of God's own government) can do the fighting for you, but history shows that some systems allow, even encourage, ordinary people to become extraordinary fighters for freedom more than others, and the Constitutionally-limited United States Government is, to my limited knowledge, unsurpassed in this regard.

There have been a number of studies on alternative sources of stem cells, like those in umbilical cord blood and bone marrow, that have shown more promising results than tests with embryonic cells. Unfortunately, they have been underreported by the mainstream press, who for the most part politically favors ebryonic stem cell research (ESCR). This summer and fall there were a series of insightful articles on the topic on the National Review's web site. One such article is here: http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-smit h012802.shtml For others, go to nationalreview.com and search for "stem cell."

Much of the world hated us when we weren't running away from it.

For example

Syrian Radio blared before the 1967 war, "The Arab seas and the fish in them will feed on the Americans' rotting imperialist bodies." Thirty-five years before Mr. Atta's work on 9/11, Radio Cairo trumped Syrian calumny with the macabre but now prescient warning, "Millions of Arabs are preparing to blow up all of America's interests, all of America's installations, and your entire existence, America." The same big lies that we see today on al Jazeera were the everyday stuff of the latter 1960s -- when official government radio stations blared out daily untruths that Americans had bombed Arab countries during the Six Day War and so prevented a "sure" Muslim victory.

Where are the telescreens?
FBI and CIA spyware in the forms of Magic Lantern, Carnivore and Echelon just for starters. Your computer may not be forced to be on all the time, but it sure is two-way and it sure is possible for it to be used to spy on you and probably is via carnivore every time you send or receive email.

The secret police everywhere? The most obvious example of the increased powers of the secret police is the mendaciously named "USA PATRIOT Act" which has been criticized from the right, the left and just about every other leaning as well.

The cameras that monitor my every move?
Tampa, Boston, Orlando, Washington DC are all places with cameras in public areas like sports arenas, streets and airports watching and recording everyone that passes in their field of view. Then there are the traffic cameras that have been installed all across the nation from DC to Hawaii. Plus, don't forget, big business's contribution to Big Brother's campaign - the survelliance camera which you can count on recording your every move inside (and out) of almost any corporate owned retail establishment. That one doesn't even need a link they are so ubiquitous.

So, you see see, even your vain attempt to set up a strawman does not do the problem justice. We are a nation of cowards who long ago sacrificied our liberties for a few ineffective promises of security - if anything the terrorist attack on 9/11 is proof of that. So what do we let our government do? Even more of the same ineffective, yet terribly stiffling, practices that hurt the common man and do so very little to prevent further attacks. Previously each sacrifice was just one small change, hardly anything to be concerned about, but since 9/11 in the degree of the slope has taken a huge curve downward.

P.S. If you think the class of politicians and lawyers are even close to being equal citizens of the state with the average Joe, you are the raving lunatic. Either that, or a member of the privilged elite yourself with a blind eye towards the real state of the nation. If you can't believe that, just take a look at the benefits of being a member of the ruling class in Washington - no mandatory social security - they have their own plan with better returns and more guarantees - they are exempt from the federal fair labor practices laws - they have (good!)health insurance for life as well as a huge pension for life, even after serving only one term. It's a nice gig if you can get it.

Next time, why not post a link to the original article rather than post it in its entirety here? For those interested, the article seems to have originally appeard here.

Maybe I'm just getting old and aware of the passage of time, but I've wound up whittling down the number of TV shows I watch to a select few and getting nearly all my news from online, my local newspaper, and a magazine. This despite the fact that I have a very nice satellite dish and HDTV PCI card. There's just too many other things I want to do. The TV stays off for many days of the week, and I don't miss it. (Darn the WB and UPN for making decent shows! Even Enterprise has gotten good lately.) What's disturbing is the contrast with the rest of my family, who despite lacking the technotoys I have spend far more time in front of the tube. It's unbelievable how much crap my brother watches.

This from a guy who's not very sociable.

Now, take my Internet feed away and I'm going to hurt somebody...

...spending whole minutes in slow-mo reaction shots was a bit silly.

I saw one review that said "I wish there were fewer scenes of Frodo staring into the camera like Jodie Foster in Nell (or Contact, or a half-dozen other movies where Foster seems to think that intense, wide-eyed staring is what the academy is looking for)"

The thing that bothered me (and might be related to your complaint about long slow-mo reactions) was what I thought was an over-use of awe inspiring special effects - Not where it was appropriate like the battle scenes in Moria but in segues. Especially all that zooming about up and down the tower of orthanc and into the fantastical (and a little fake & hokey looking) caves and crevices beneath it. By over doing it by so much in such inconsequential scenes Jackson had no way other than just making it longer to make an impact during the really pivotal scenes. I wish he had used a lighter hand which would have not only improved the scenes affected by making them appropriately more subtle but also would have improved the scenes with all the FX that would be improved and given more impact by the contrast.

But that is really my only complaint and it is mere nitpicking. Many of the things that bothered other people didn't bother me at all. It is a movie after all which is a very different storytelling media and many of the changes were necessary and good for the story in movie form. I don't mind dropping Tom Bombadil or Arwen replacing Glorfindel and moving the love story between Arwen and Aragorn out of the Appendix at the back of ROTK and into the main storyline.

LotR contains a great many dull fragments, even in the first (and best) volume (book one and two). Book three and five (the non-frodo books)are the worst of the bunch in this respect - they should have been cut down to 2/3 of their size. And I have not even mentioned all the awful songs in the book.

Also, LotT has deservedly been criticized for being very conservative. Tolkien's admiration for fixed social hierachies is obvious from LotR, and the subservient attitude of Sam for instance is more than I can stomach at times. (Yes I know it's supposed to be an old-fashioned epic, but I find it hard to admire a book that propagates values that I cannot respect.)

For your reading pleasure, the worst fragment of the worst chapter (The Houses of Healing) of the worst book (Book 5, first book of The Return of the King).

Then an old wife, Ioreth, the eldest of the women who served in that house, looking on the fair face of Faramir, wept, for all the people loved him. And she said: 'Alas! if he should die. Would that there were kings in Gondor, as there were once upon a time, they say! For it is said in old lore: The hands of a king are the hands of a healer. And so the rightful king could ever be known.'

Your link is bad! Try this.

Oracle convinces Gov to use national ID card

Microsoft signs deal to merge Oracle database with Passport and .Net services

Oracle controls the largest personal information collection ever.

Microsoft convinces Government that Windows is required on all computers to keep information confidential

Government forbids the use of any other OS

Of course some see them as opposites.

... Gates never lobbied for a law requiring that every person in the United States be forced to use Internet Explorer.

Take this article for example. Whenever somebody is standing on a pedastal screaming and somebody tells them to shut up, what do they say? They say that their "right to speak" is being violated. Which is usually interpreted as some kind of censorship. It's not.

t.

There you hit the nail on the head. They look good, never mind whether this will have any effect, let alone a salubrious one.

This is necessary first to calm the unthinkingly nervous, and second to cover their asses in the incredibly unlikely event that a terrorist does try to do harm.

This won't do much to calm the thinking nervous; a little thought will suggest that terrorists have upped their planning horizon far beyond the spur-of-the-moment 60's -- style ``carry in some guns and wing a few people and take some hostages and fly to Libya'' stuff that this would help with.

This policy wouldn't have hindered Timothy McVeigh, nor the unibomber, nor the September 11 hijackers, nor the next group of terrorists. What will discourage terrorists is swift, destructive retaliation against their cause, so that every terrorist act clearly sets back their cause.

I think that most of the domestic response to the recent events have been nothing but c.y.a. window dressing, with the same sort of logic and effectivness as gun control: none. See here and here and here and here among other references, for some ideas about that.

Treating honest folks like criminals only aids the criminals in the long run; it gives us the illusion that we are on the same side as them, because we and the criminals have a common enemy in the government. Take a look here for some discussion of how governments can go very wrong indeed.

Ah yes, "Arming America : The Origins of a National Gun Culture" by Michael A. Bellesiles. Well, perhaps you should check out:
Gun Control Book Based on Faulty Data
University asks historian to defend his research on gun ownership book
A gun-hating historian comes under heavy fire.
One of the worst cases of academic irresponsibility in memory.

Ah yes, "Arming America : The Origins of a National Gun Culture" by Michael A. Bellesiles. Well, perhaps you should check out:
Gun Control Book Based on Faulty Data
University asks historian to defend his research on gun ownership book
A gun-hating historian comes under heavy fire.
One of the worst cases of academic irresponsibility in memory.

I also bet you wont see this story repeated on CNN or the NY Times (significant quote below). Another side effect that the frenzy causes, that Katz didnt mention, is that it brings viewers back. The terrorism stories are, unfortunately, better for ratings than your regular sweeps-week crap, and although their reporting is important and (usually) somewhat accurate, dont think they wont overlook a true story or fact that might make people feel a little more secure quite yet...

The only mass deaths apparently connected with anthrax came from an accidental release of apparently about one trillion spores at the Sverdlovsk (now Yekatinerinburg) biological weapons compound in the former Soviet Union in 1979. Records show that of the 1.2 million residents of the city, only 66 perished.

the scariest thing to me right now, with kids in public schools, is all the enforced patriotism in times of conflict/war/whatever you want to call it. it happened during the gulf war, when school children were tying yellow ribbons around trees in my home town, and it's happening even more so now. i'm sure you all have heard about the madison, wisconsin school board's decision to try and buck state law requiring school children to recite the pledge of allegiance or sing the national anthem daily, but here's an account of the outcome of the whole thing, and here's a pretty representative editorial following the fireworks.

personally, it is terrifying the amount of blind patriotic and religious fervor i'm seeing in the aftermath of september 11, and most of it fully sanctioned by the government that is supposed to protect our freedoms of speech and religion. from bush's declaration of a "national day of prayer" where we saw every important political figure crammed into the national cathedral, to the billboards plastered across the country emblazoned with "god bless america", to all of the late night talk show hosts making cheap jabs at arabs and muslims, to every car, house, yard, and building in my city (milwaukee) sporting tattered american flags, it's starting to look like fanaticism.

fanaticism is dangerous. that's what started this whole mess in the first place, and our own fanaticism is what's going to make it worse.

No. This is not a matter of formal law, this is a matter of hidden law. These people are scum, they should be be boycotted and shunned, and any company they run should be treated the same.

The American view of democracy is quite unsettling:
The point here is that democracy is the best of all possible options -- when it is an option at all. But the truth is that, sometimes, democracy is as plausible an option as organizing the entire country into competing foosball teams.

There are other factors to consider:

• Bin Laden repeatedly denies being involved- this is contrary to the SOP
• There was an earlier post on /. that pointed to the cheering in the streets of Baghdad,
  • Iraq shooting down recon planes in the no fly zone
  • US bombing Iraqi sites
  CNN.com - Allies hit Iraq with 'self-defense' strike - February 16, 2001

• And I'll do a disservice by passing on conjecture (from Internet news):

• The first link has some interesting info (with no links) that tell a compelling story: Iraq->WTC

• And also, with claims from Israeli intel (full text requires subscription): Iraq->WTC
• Another Iraq->WTC

He also answers the most common questions about handguns on airplanes:

• Won't the bullets punch holes in the plane?
  A: with the right ammunition, NO. Frangible ammunition has a very, very low chance of penetrating the plane's skin or damaging its systems.
• But if the plane's skin is punctured, won't the plane crash?
  A: Probably not. Modern plans have redundant systems. The most important need would be to reduce altitude to ensure that the occupants could breath without supplemental oxygen.

There's more. Check out the article to find out.

Cryptography rights are the Second Amendment issue of the Internet. If you're going to write your congresscritter, that's a good point to make... tho perhaps not with Democrats. National Review has come down firmly on the side of being careful to maintain civil liberties, and folks like Bob Barr and Dick Armey (majority leader) in the House are well-known privacy nuts, so I'm not overly worried; the quote (yesterday?) by the House minority leader (Gephardt) was disconcerting, hopefully he'll listen to reps like Rivers (whose district is a stone's throw from mine).

Appropriate commentary here, dated yesterday:

The main source of our strength is our freedom and open society. The United States already has the most powerful military in the world. We don't need the symbolic jaw, jaw, jaw of more laws, but the will to use our existing war power.

Paul Weyrich, head of the Free Congress Foundation, aptly wrote: "The truth is that if we further emasculate our Constitution the terrorists will have achieved the greatest victory imaginable. Their triumph won't just be the thousands of people they killed, the triumph will be if they see our democratic institutions crumble. If President Bush can navigate a responsible course where we make an appropriate response to those who have perpetrated these unspeakable crimes while at the same time protecting our essential freedoms in the process he will end up being the greatest President of the modern age."

Another essay from yesterday, "Freedom First", is also a worthy read.

Appropriate commentary here, dated yesterday:

The main source of our strength is our freedom and open society. The United States already has the most powerful military in the world. We don't need the symbolic jaw, jaw, jaw of more laws, but the will to use our existing war power.

Paul Weyrich, head of the Free Congress Foundation, aptly wrote: "The truth is that if we further emasculate our Constitution the terrorists will have achieved the greatest victory imaginable. Their triumph won't just be the thousands of people they killed, the triumph will be if they see our democratic institutions crumble. If President Bush can navigate a responsible course where we make an appropriate response to those who have perpetrated these unspeakable crimes while at the same time protecting our essential freedoms in the process he will end up being the greatest President of the modern age."

Another essay from yesterday, "Freedom First", is also a worthy read.

Opinion stuff: National Review Online
The Economist
The best commentary I've picked up today.

This is the greatest attack on American soil in our history. The cost in life will overwhelm that of Pearl Harbor.

This attack of terrorism was a tremendous miscalculation on the part of its perpetrators. Just like the Japanese before WWII, they will have "awakened a sleeping giant."

On the other hand, we have only begun to see the cost to ourselves. We'll survive, undoubtably, but there will be a great bill to pay. Our economy will plunge into Recession and may even flirt with Depression before this is over.

The National Review Online seems to be the first news organization to start with major opinion commentary. Check it out.

A colleague sent me this link.

The article was written about 1 hour after the attacks on the World Trade Center. I think the last paragraph sums things up very well:

"Let nobody think that Americans are incapable of facing this foe and
defeating him. Let nobody think that this country is any less able to
"face the naked days" than she was in 1861, in 1917, in 1941 and 1950.
We shall rise to this. We shall take our revenge. We shall absorb
these blows, and strike back a hundred times harder. Let America's
enemies crow today: Tomorrow they will tremble, and weep."

They should have done a remake of the original book, which todays movie budgets and technology would allow. And they should have picked someone other than Tim Burton to make it. In the novel the apes lived in a futuristic society with advanced technology. That I'd pay $8 to watch. Instead, I've ordered the novel, and after I've read that I'll rent the original flick.

Mark Wahlberg is no Charlton Heston. Ugh.

This is my favorite review of the movie. "Meanwhile, even though we are supposed to be rooting for the humans, Wahlberg throws out one-liners about how awful and relatively inferior we are. 'The smarter we get, the more violent our world becomes,' he says with all of the intensity you'd expect from a mechanic telling you to pick up your car on Tuesday. Indeed, when Wahlberg needs to issue a Henry V style loin-girding speech a la Mel Gibson in Braveheart, he instead sounds like he's yelling at a driver who's about to take his parking spot."

Steven Spielberg's new movie is really, really, really bad. It's bad in almost every way...

Here is an article stating that the Eskimos who actually live in the area support drilling, and based on past dealings with oil companies do not believe it would not harm the environment. But I'm sure you know more than they do.

I'd very much like to read a second source of this story, some organization other than CNN. Why? Read this story. Then read this overview of Jorge Mas Canosa, who founded MasTech which bought Sintel, and remember this line from the CNN story: "Next to his shack hung a poster of Che Guevara, the symbol of Marxist insurgency and early ally of Cuban leader Fidel Castro." CNN's nickname "Castro News Network" is well earned.

For this particular story, I'd prefer a source that isn't biased as hell in favor of leftist slavemasters and against the man who fought their favorite one.

More on Cuban persecution: here and here.

I'd very much like to read a second source of this story, some organization other than CNN. Why? Read this story. Then read this overview of Jorge Mas Canosa, who founded MasTech which bought Sintel, and remember this line from the CNN story: "Next to his shack hung a poster of Che Guevara, the symbol of Marxist insurgency and early ally of Cuban leader Fidel Castro." CNN's nickname "Castro News Network" is well earned.

For this particular story, I'd prefer a source that isn't biased as hell in favor of leftist slavemasters and against the man who fought their favorite one.

More on Cuban persecution: here and here.

I'd very much like to read a second source of this story, some organization other than CNN. Why? Read this story. Then read this overview of Jorge Mas Canosa, who founded MasTech which bought Sintel, and remember this line from the CNN story: "Next to his shack hung a poster of Che Guevara, the symbol of Marxist insurgency and early ally of Cuban leader Fidel Castro." CNN's nickname "Castro News Network" is well earned.

For this particular story, I'd prefer a source that isn't biased as hell in favor of leftist slavemasters and against the man who fought their favorite one.

More on Cuban persecution: here and here.

Doesn't that shit just make you wanna puke? $2 mil for her as part of a 3-way split (split between the plaintiffs law firms) of over $140 million. (yes, I know the link is to the National Review, but I can't find the original WSJ article).

Yeah, Erin's a regular fucking working-class hero, alright. That's Hollywood history for you.

2) Newt Gingrich was for ditching crypto controls several years ago, wrote a very nice two page essay in Boardwatch Magazine (which I still have). Newt, while no longer in office, is about as pro-technology as you can get. Meanwhile, it took massive bribes--er, "contributions" from Silicon Valley to get the Clintonistas to finally back off on those crypto regs.

3) Larry Ellison, Scott McNealy, and various other tech $billionaires bribed the Clinton Administration into declaring war against their competitor Microsoft. Up until then, SV was largely apolitical. Now everyone knows that if they don't make their "contributions" to the Democratic Party, bad things might happen to them.

4) Read Nat Hentoff's (libertarian First Amendment advocate) syndicated columns for more interesting info.

I see President Bush promoting filtering software and parental supervision as a means of countering 'net porn, which, by golly, is all he's been doing.

And we right-wingers have been heavy users of the 'net to get our political message past the liberal media censors (National Review, Town Hall, Matt Drudge, etc). We probably wouldn't have won this past election without the 'net and most of us know it.

Go read the National Review article on the subject. This is not caused by genuine deregulation.

19 December 2000: Add Congressional Record excerpts on Senate debate and text of Amendment 4366 to H.R. 46.

19 December 2000. Thanks to B.

http://www.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel121500.sh tml

The National Review

15 December 2000
[/RIP]

Kopel's National Review article on the same subject.

The Independence Institute -- Kopel's organization. Note that the link on this page has the following quote regarding the bill:

Note: the bill's sponsors have recently agreed to remove all objectionable items, except for the encryption provision

Check your sources. They may have reported this on NPR, but it is the Republican "opinion" on this. I heard it on Crossfire from some Republican congressman from Florida. There was no attribution, and more importantly, Buchanan was not ON the Florida ballot in 1996

Buchanan was certainly on the ballot in the Republican primary in 1996, and he received 8,788 votes, according to the National Review. Further, we use an almost identical ballot in Cook County Illinois, the Daleys home county. And the Florida ballot was printed in extra large print, especially for the benefit of the seniors. Not to mention, there are arrows pointing precisely to the appropriate hole to punch for the candidate.

I think we're seeing a case of Sore Loser Syndrome.

http://www.nationalreview.com/nr_comment/nr_commen t110900c.shtml

In 1996, after the Republican nomination was all-but sewn up for Bob Dole, Buchanan supporters in this area registered almost 9,000 votes for Pat. It was the primary, not the November election.

Remember also that any place that is split 64-36 in favor of Gore in Florida is likely heavy in the elderly population, making them highly unlikely to vote for Nader. Nader supports, by and large, are young. Buchanan supporters are people who still curse the day horseless carriages came to pass. It wouldn't be surprising to see a large group of GoPatGo'ers in certain pockets in Florida.

Also, can you post the URL for the third-party vote (pre-recount) in PBC? I'd like to see if Harry Browne's data is extraordinarily low compared to the rest of the state -- perhaps Browne supporters were confused and accidentally voted Gore. I doubt it, but I also doubt 3,000 Gore supporters voted Buchanan.

National Review (a conservative magazine for those that might not know) is saying that Bush should appoint some Democrats in his administration in order to avoid being called "His Fraudulency" as Rutherford Hayes was back in 1876.

I'm expecting at least localized outages. Particularly the drudgereport.com site, since Drudge has pledged to post the results of exit polling. Slate and National Review, which in the past have posted this only-available-to-the-press (i.e. not supposed to be released to the public) data, but have said they won't this time. This will cause a great deal of traffic at the Drudge site, which has been crashed in the past by some breaking stories. It wouldn't surprise me if that resulted in related 'spill-over' outages, like everyone trying to call a particular telephone exchange at one time.

I am puzzled at the acrobatics Gore defenders do, such as talking about creating something that already exists. Get this: you can't create something that already exists. Sure, it was "far from done" in 1986, but you might as well apply that phrase to 1996 or 2006. It is constantly evolving, but it already exists. And it existed as early as 1983, as even Cerf acknowledge. And this Internet did not suddenly vanish and a new one appear to replace it: we are using the same Internet. Sheesh. Is it so hard to accept the fact that the Internet existed years before any Gore's act of "creation"?

Finally, I am well aware of the Snopes article. But the fact is, it does not even come close to defending the avalanche of nonsense coming from Gore. Al Gore pretty much brought all this criticism on himself: if he could only refrain from lying, none of this would be relevant. As it is, an article touching on a few alleged exaggerations of Gore's exaggerations (delicious irony there) will not do much against the numerous lies on file in his own words since 1984.

In short, Gore's problem is an ontological one: you cannot initiate what has already started, and you cannot create what already exists. Yet this is precisely what Gore claimed, a claim that is so obviously undefendable. Unfortunately, he seemingly cannot stop pulling stuff out of the thin air, even when unpressured. Even at the first debate, he was claiming a nonexistent trip FEMA trip or lack of funding for a well-funded school.

The fact is, one will be hard pressed to defend a lifetime of lies, especially when that entails numerous documented fibs in his own words. The evidence is overwhelming, despite the feeble efforts of his defenders. Gore and Clinton are in a league of their own. What makes Gore worse is that while Clinton lies for self-preservation, Gore unnecessarily lies for self-aggrandization.