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REASON * April 1998

License to Grill
How the Clintons invited Ken Starr into their private lives.

By Virginia Postrel

Like just about everyone else in America, I believe Bill Clinton had a sexual affair--if not dictionary-definition "sexual relations"--with intern Monica Lewinsky. I think it's likely, though by no means a sure thing, that he lied about that affair in a sworn deposition. And I wouldn't put it past him to suborn perjury or obstruct justice, though the evidence at this writing is very murky on those serious charges.

The president has what is popularly known as a zipper problem. He appears to like the sort of women who are unlikely to head health care task forces or jet off to Davos, Switzerland, to lecture the world on the morally corrupting effects of capitalism. Given both power and charisma, Clinton seems to have ample opportunity to act on his impulses. And though it's unlikely that Lewinsky will be his final fling, he manages to hold his marriage together and even inspire ferocious loyalty in his wife. Power and charisma probably have something to do with that feat too.

Clinton also lies all the time--so much that he often appears unable to tell he's doing it. His State of the Union address was full of what Washington Post columnist James Glassman rightly calls "big, brazen, and undeniable" lies, starting with "two whoppers": that "we have the smallest government in 35 years" and that Clinton wants to spend any budget surplus on Social Security rather than new programs. The government has shrunk (modestly) by only one measure, the number of federal employees; it spends, taxes, and regulates more than ever. And Clinton is proposing so many new spending programs--without offsetting cuts--that he can't fund them without substantial new taxes on cigarettes and corporate income. Given his lies about policy, and about his past, it's not surprising that even his political allies disbelieve him about Monica Lewinsky.

Nonetheless, Clinton does not deserve his current round of legal troubles. To be publicly humiliated as a moral weakling, lacking both judgment and self-control--that he deserves. To be distrusted by both intimates and the general public--he deserves that too. But for sexual pecadillos and routine lies to lead to possible high crimes and misdemeanors takes more than just Clinton's personal flaws. It takes very bad policy.

There is one sense in which the president deserves what has happened to him: He and his political allies are the people who made it possible, who created the legal mechanisms by which his private life became a matter of public, legal record. In that bitter irony lies the one hopeful aspect of L'Affaire Monica. It may, finally, create a consensus to rein in legal excesses that threaten not just Bill Clinton but the liberties of all Americans. But if Republicans are seduced by scandal and Democrats by dreams of vengeance, it may make matters worse.

The "crisis in the White House" begins with the Independent Counsel Statute. From the start, many Republicans opposed that law for corroding the constitutional division of powers. Back then, of course, presidents were Republicans, so the opposition was easy to ascribe to partisan motives. But in 1994, when the statute was up for reauthorization, a Democrat was in the White House, and his party controlled Congress. The most vocal opposition still came from conservative Republicans, who turned out to be remarkably principled.

They were utterly

And it relates to current events! See the bottom of this article.

He is protecting your ass and thats the thanks you give him

He is protecting you from what?
Weapons of mass destruction?
The Boogey Man?
Terrorism? [A terroristic method of governing or of resisting a government.]

Cool!, I feel really really good to know that my government does not "protect my ass" the way Bush is doing it with you =o)

A very interesting piece about security on airports can be found here

So when are the people stand up and make some more tea in Boston? Or do you believe that the second amendment was just so you go squirrel hunting?

Looking at http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constituti on.billofrights.html and I wonder which ones still are working amendments.

1. Sort of
2. Sort of
3. Yes
4. Nope
5. Nope
6. Sorry, no
7. Not sure
8. No
9. Not sure
10. Well, they say "or", so I would say yes on a technicality.

Tinkering with such a mammoth natural process is daunting, but in fact about 400 medium-sized coal-fired power plants give off enough sulfur in a year to do the job for the whole Earth. (This in itself suggests just how much we are already perturbing the planet.) There are problems with using coal: Arguing that more air pollution is good for Mother Earth sounds intuitively wrong. Coal plants sit on land, and the clouds would be most effective over the oceans. A savvy international strategy leaps to mind: Subsidize electricity-dependent industry on isolated Pacific islands, and ship them the messiest, sulfur-rich coal...
A more boring approach, worked out by the National Academy of Sciences panel, envisions a fleet of coal-burning ships which heap sulfur directly into their furnaces. ... The ships spew great ribbons of sulfur vapor far out at sea, where nobody can complain, and cloud corridors form obediently behind. It would be best to use these sulfur clouds to augment the edges of existing overcast regions, swelling them and increasing the lifetime of natural clouds. The continuously burning sulfur freighters would follow weather patterns, guided by weather satellite data.
The biggest political risk here lies with shifts in the weather. The entire campaign would increase the sulfur droplet content in our air by about 25 percent. Probably this would cause no significant trouble, with most of the sulfur raining out into the oceans, which have enormous buffering capacity. Keeping the freighters a week's sailing distance from land would probably save us from scare headlines about sudden acid rains on farmers' heads, since about 30 percent of the sulfur should rain out each day.

Here's an article from 1997 discussing some of the other potential climate-altering things-to-do (some ideas being more grandiose and absurd than others). One of the things they hilighted here was simple global warming mitigation attempts like, say, painting rooftops white and adding recycled glass to standard asphalt to make it slightly more reflective. These not only reflect sunlight directly, but they generally result in cooler cities which need less energy (keeping carbon dioxide out of circulation to begin with). I'd really love to see something like this campaigned for, instead of just the traditional SUVs-are-t3h-3v1l business.

Huh? At 1500 feet, water is as hard as brick.

Have you ever even SEEN an MRE? It's encased in what is basically a balloon- heavy PVC plastic filled with air cushioning the landing. Plus, due to their rather bricky cross section and light weight, they've got a lower terminal velocity than the human body. It would take a hell of a lot more than that to make the food in them non-recoverable.

Helicopters don't tend to fly at 1500 feet AGL unless they're getting shot at also.

Well, I was thinking they were being shot at, but apparently I was wrong about that.

When you have a black market with something like a %2000 markup with no police protection, of course you will take protection into your own hands. It's no wonder that para-military groups have control of the Columbian drug trade with a basically unlimited budget and no governmental control...

It's disgusting that one of Dick Nixon's political ploys won him reelection yet caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people - and yet no one calls it what it is: morally wrong.

Returning to the topic: if they tried this in the US it wouldn't take long for us to have our own FARC.

They are already working on an independent state in northern Iraq. "reason" magazine had a good article a couple of months back which is online now,
The Kurds Go Their Own Way
Can freedom flower in Iraqi Kurdistan?

Oh, don't worry. They are well on their way to making free speech illegal. It's a good thing that Bruce didn't express his ideas right before the mid-term elections. It's a good thing that he wasn't speaking officially for a national organization that wasn't "educational".

Because speaking out against a candidate before the election is illegal now if you are paid to do so by those who work 9 to 5.

I'm just waiting for the first candidate to take advantage of this particular law. The one that the incumbents created to protect themselves from voters.

Can you imagine that the following ad will be illegal when elections are heating up:

"Republicans A,B,C,D ... and Democrat X sold you down the river. Favoring the 'donations' they received from Military Contractors over the safety and security of the people themselves; in fact, the very people that are sworn to protect the defend the Constitution - John McCain and Hillary Clinton - have voted repeatedly for the same police state laws that are destroying the very concept of participatory democracy in this country."

Now all I need is someone to agree with me and pay me to enter that little diatribe onto any form of mass communication (Internet too) and I spend 5 years in jail.

The name of this wonderful election law is "McCain-Feingold". Do you really want John McCain as President? Do you really want Hillary as President when she could have led the Democrats to stop the same type of war that she campaigned against during Vietnam? Were McCain or Feingold funded by commercial interests who would like to see less competition for powerful incumbent house seats? Has blatantly "Commercial Speech" been banned from the floor of the House or Senate? Why have the voters been banned from using the same techniques as lobbyists? Lobbyists, like Jack Abramhoff and his purchased representatives David Vitter and Jack Dela....

Ooops. Can I say that? Slashdot might be funded by a known group of pro-freedom types, bought and paid for by evil Dell advertising.

No. Free speech is in fine shape.

No problem here.

Move along.

Or read this...

http://www.reason.com/rauch/100704.shtml

but the level of corruption is still something alien to Americans

All the other things you mentioned wouldn't really bother me, but this turns out to be the deal-breaker. It's a shame, I've worked on projects with Indian companies where the deal was ultimately scuttled because multiple attempts to ship servers to India got stolen at customs (the DHL tracking site is funny that way).

For those interested in the subject, a good read is Why Poor Countries Are Poor.

Could it have something to do with a vote dealing with a ban on Internet gambling coming up in the legislature in the next couple weeks? Could it have something to do with the fact Carruthers has been a vocal opponent of the upcoming bill. Strange that. The man is arrested based on his involvement in running an Internet gambling company. Yet referencing the vote on banning Internet gambling requires using the future tense.

Perhaps using a 1961 law that only questionably relates to the Internet and even more questionably relates to an individual operating out of a different country is not quite so sound...

http://www.reason.com/sullum/072606.shtml

http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/09/sullum_ on_internet_gambling_ar.php

Maybe this has already been pointed out below, but this is far less grievous than an already grossly unconstitutional violation of due process, the worst being Asset Forfeiture Laws. Without even mention of a trial, authorities can seize whatever property you own as long as they can even marginally show that it might have aided in the Drug trade, a gross exploitation of an ancient Common Law precedent that property that had harmed someone could be seized before trial to aid in repaying the person harmed - i.e. a person gored by a neighbor's bull. Here is an example of a woman driving through Louisana whose Lincoln Towncar was seized by envious Louisana State Troopers (because, of course, law enforcement agencies who perform the seizures are allowed to keep what they sieze - what kind of ridiculous incentive structure is that?): http://perspicuity.net/MyEssays/PissedOff/tourist1 .html Some other despicable examples and proposed reform: http://reason.com/bi/bi-forf.shtml Between this new tendency towards misguided "crime prevention," asset forfeiture laws, and the disgusting muck-raking of the media, there no longer remains any semblance of innocent until proven guilty in our society.

I remember reading some Libertarian magazine (Reason) about Disney's war against the counterculture. They have all sorts of points, but the thing is, when people look at this Counterculture stuff, it's not something they're going to sympathize with and it probably isn't helping The Cause or anything like that.

According to reason magazine the superiority of QWERTY over Dvorak keyboards is based upon studies obviously funded by Dvorak himself.

Think of it this way: if a drug dealer is robbed, s/he cannot call the police to help without being arrested and spending years in jail - so in order to protect that huge profit margin they must take steps to protect themselves.

Every time I have money to spend on pot and can't find it (withdrawal symptoms? Anxiety, insomnia. That's it. And I'll smoke a gram a day if I have it.) I spend an hour or so writing a letter to a member of congress telling them why they should support legalisation. I recommend this therapy to all the other potheads, it's a great way to occupy your mind.

Another interesting tidbit: from some quick googling it appears that marijuana sells for about 20x the price of silver (in my hometown an ounce of MJ goes for about $250, silver seems to be around $12/oz!) It's a fucking weed!!

[....]
The Home-Schooling Revolution

"School is like starting life with a 12-year jail sentence in which bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned." Those are the words of John Taylor Gatto, who was named New York state's Teacher of the Year in 1991. Today he is one of the most forceful voices for one of the most powerful movements in American education -- home schooling. In home schooling, kids opt out of traditional school to take control of their own education and to learn with the help of parents, tutors, and peers. Home schooling is free agency for the under-18 set. And it's about to break through the surface of our national life.

As recently as 1980, home schooling was illegal in most states. In the early 1980s, no more than 15,000 students learned this way. But Christian conservatives, unhappy with schools they considered God-free zones and eager to teach their kids themselves, pressed for changes. Laws fell, and home schooling surged. By 1990, there were as many as 300,000 American home-schoolers. By 1993, home schooling was legal in all 50 states. Since then, home schooling has swum into the mainstream -- paddled there by secular parents dissatisfied with low-quality, and even dangerous, schools. In the first half of the 1990s, the home-schooling population more than doubled. Today some 1.7 million children are home-schoolers, their ranks growing as much as 15 percent each year. Factor in turnover, and one in 10 American kids under 18 has gotten part of his or her schooling at home.

Home schooling has become perhaps the largest and most successful education reform movement of the last two decades:

*While barely 3 percent of American schoolchildren are now home-schoolers, that represents a surprisingly large dent in the public school monopoly -- especially compared with private schools. For every four kids in private school, there's one youngster learning at home. The home-schooling population is roughly equal to all the school-age children in Pennsylvania.

*According to The Wall Street J

My in-laws bought my daughter (now nearing 18) a personalized laser-printed book with her and family's names in it. That was like 15 years ago. Of course, the pictures were stock. And last year Reason Magazine http://www.reason.com/0406/fe.dm.database.shtml sported a front cover with a satellite photo centered on the subscriber's house. The link goes to an article in that issue by Declan McCullagh. Of course, as a sibling post here points out, it's hard to say what's valid and what's not. On my copy was a picture of the local post office where I have a box.

Economies of scale definitely bring down prices. Price is one aspect that a consumer uses when buying an item, quality is another. A smaller company may perhaps offer more quality, or maybe not. Are you telling me that when a company produces a cheaper and better product and a consumer chooses to buy it that that's a bad thing? Oh wait they're a really big company too... but wait the size issue doesn't really factor into this augment at all. Who cares how big or small they are. Let me reiterate, when a company, any company, produces a cheaper and better product then a consumer chooses to buy it.

You want the real world? Two Nobel prize winning economists with opposite theories, guess who won? (Hint: It wasn't socialism/communism) http://reason.com/hayekint.shtml

sorry but UK fatalities caused by gun crime in 03-04 70 (source bbc), US fatalites 30,000+ (wikipedia).. in contrast the number of under 14's in the US killed accidentally by guns is around 70- carrying guns dosn't make you safer it makes you an idiot.

This is just th efirst paragraph from an article in "Reason magazine"

Gun Control's Twisted Outcome

Restricting firearms has helped make England more crime-ridden than the U.S.
By Joyce Lee Malcolm

On a June evening two years ago, Dan Rather made many stiff British upper lips quiver by reporting that England had a crime problem and that, apart from murder, "theirs is worse than ours." The response was swift and sharp. "Have a Nice Daydream," The Mirror, a London daily, shot back, reporting: "Britain reacted with fury and disbelief last night to claims by American newsmen that crime and violence are worse here than in the US." But sandwiched between the article's battery of official denials -- "totally misleading," "a huge over-simplification," "astounding and outrageous" -- and a compilation of lurid crimes from "the wild west culture on the other side of the Atlantic where every other car is carrying a gun," The Mirror conceded that the CBS anchorman was correct. Except for murder and rape, it admitted, "Britain has overtaken the US for all major crimes."

sorry but UK fatalities caused by gun crime in 03-04 70 (source bbc), US fatalites 30,000+ (wikipedia).. in contrast the number of under 14's in the US killed accidentally by guns is around 70- carrying guns dosn't make you safer it makes you an idiot.

This is just th efirst paragraph from an article in "Reason magazine"

Gun Control's Twisted Outcome

Restricting firearms has helped make England more crime-ridden than the U.S.
By Joyce Lee Malcolm

On a June evening two years ago, Dan Rather made many stiff British upper lips quiver by reporting that England had a crime problem and that, apart from murder, "theirs is worse than ours." The response was swift and sharp. "Have a Nice Daydream," The Mirror, a London daily, shot back, reporting: "Britain reacted with fury and disbelief last night to claims by American newsmen that crime and violence are worse here than in the US." But sandwiched between the article's battery of official denials -- "totally misleading," "a huge over-simplification," "astounding and outrageous" -- and a compilation of lurid crimes from "the wild west culture on the other side of the Atlantic where every other car is carrying a gun," The Mirror conceded that the CBS anchorman was correct. Except for murder and rape, it admitted, "Britain has overtaken the US for all major crimes."

If you want to read a lot of other interesing Libertarian stuff, check out Reason magazine.

Funny, whenever I hear or read about someone else's asthmatic experience, I instinctively gasp for breath.

One of the common confusions in this topic results from the ambiguous word "public", which I try to avoid. "Government" or "state" are much more clear. Government property belongs to everyone, so we fight for control over it. This means smoking rules in government offices, and prayer and the pledge of allegiance in government schools. There is a saying that good fences make good neighbors--there would be a good deal less political rancor if we privatized government property and depoliticized the debate. However, as this discussion thread has shown, there will always be people who want to tell you what you can and can't do with your private property.

>This would include in my opinion baseball stadiums

Which raises the question of why our tax dollars are subsidizing stadiums. Bread and circuses for the masses, and millions of dollars for the rich:
http://www.reason.com/sullum/111204.shtml
http://www.cato.org/research/articles/bandow-03101 9.html

>It's also funny how the bar/restaurant traffic has severely declined
>in the Phoenix metro area in those cities with smoking bans.

I've heard about that, and I really don't understand it, but then I still can't understand how people can put such poison in their bodies.

Occasional exposure to second-hand smoke is harmless. Link.

If you don't want to help protect American Civil Liberties, don't join,

Either you want to help protect civil liberties, or you don't join the ACLU.

Putting all that aside, I don't want to dwell on constitutional analysis, because our view has never been that civil liberties are necessarily coextensive with constitutional rights. Conversely, I guess the fact that something is mentioned in the Constitution doesn't necessarily mean that it is a fundamental civil liberty.

Unless we magically isolated the "lying" part of the brain, using fMRI to detect lies is a load of dung. Way slower to react than lie detectors, and a horrible image resolution. I'm not saying it's entirely impossible, I just severely doubt the possibility of determining guilt by brain lobe activation levels.


What does it matter, as long as the lie enforcement official in charge says that the machine proves you're lying, and are therefore guilty of whatever crimes you may (or may not yet) have been charged with.

Even though dogs can't articulate suspicision, they give law enforcement officers probable cause to search you.

"Putting all that aside, I don't want to dwell on constitutional analysis, because our view has never been that civil liberties are necessarily coextensive with constitutional rights. Conversely, I guess the fact that something is mentioned in the Constitution doesn't necessarily mean that it is a fundamental civil liberty."

The idea that Iraq had ties with al-Qaeda is, and always had been, a Bush lie.

          http://instapundit.com/archives/026895.php

          http://instapundit.com/archives/016030.php

The idea that Iraq had a WMD program is, and always has been, a Bush lie.

          http://www.cnn.com/US/9812/16/clinton.iraq.speech/

The only thing that Clinton lied about was having sex, which he didn't actually have.

          http://reason.com/9804/ed.vp.shtml

Big Bother is watching you.

          http://partners.nytimes.com/library/national/regio nal/061700ny-col-tierney.html

Violating the privacy of bank customers is a Bush plot

          http://www.reason.com/hod/jb072604.shtml

Exploiting terrorism for political purposes is something that the previous president didn't do (since his only failings were sexual).

          http://reason.com/9507/VIPedit.jul.shtml

I say to you...there is nothing patriotic about hating your country, or pretending that you can love your country but despise your government.

            http://www.clintonfoundation.org/legacy/050595-spe ech-by-president-at-michigan-state.htm

We recognized, once again, that we can't love our country and hate our government.

          http://www.cnn.com/US/9512/budget/12-29/pm/transcr ipt.html

But do not condemn people who work for the government. That's the kind of mentality that produced Oklahoma City.

          http://www.clintonfoundation.org/legacy/060195-spe ech-by-president-at-billings-mt-town-hall-meeting. htm

I don't want to dwell on constitutional analysis, because our view has never been that civil liberties are necessarily coextensive with constitutional rights. Conversely, I guess the fact that something is mentioned in the Constitution doesn't necessarily mean that it is a fundamental civil liberty.

          http://reason.com/Strossen.shtml

The idea that Iraq had ties with al-Qaeda is, and always had been, a Bush lie.

          http://instapundit.com/archives/026895.php

          http://instapundit.com/archives/016030.php

The idea that Iraq had a WMD program is, and always has been, a Bush lie.

          http://www.cnn.com/US/9812/16/clinton.iraq.speech/

The only thing that Clinton lied about was having sex, which he didn't actually have.

          http://reason.com/9804/ed.vp.shtml

Big Bother is watching you.

          http://partners.nytimes.com/library/national/regio nal/061700ny-col-tierney.html

Violating the privacy of bank customers is a Bush plot

          http://www.reason.com/hod/jb072604.shtml

Exploiting terrorism for political purposes is something that the previous president didn't do (since his only failings were sexual).

          http://reason.com/9507/VIPedit.jul.shtml

I say to you...there is nothing patriotic about hating your country, or pretending that you can love your country but despise your government.

            http://www.clintonfoundation.org/legacy/050595-spe ech-by-president-at-michigan-state.htm

We recognized, once again, that we can't love our country and hate our government.

          http://www.cnn.com/US/9512/budget/12-29/pm/transcr ipt.html

But do not condemn people who work for the government. That's the kind of mentality that produced Oklahoma City.

          http://www.clintonfoundation.org/legacy/060195-spe ech-by-president-at-billings-mt-town-hall-meeting. htm

I don't want to dwell on constitutional analysis, because our view has never been that civil liberties are necessarily coextensive with constitutional rights. Conversely, I guess the fact that something is mentioned in the Constitution doesn't necessarily mean that it is a fundamental civil liberty.

          http://reason.com/Strossen.shtml

The idea that Iraq had ties with al-Qaeda is, and always had been, a Bush lie.

          http://instapundit.com/archives/026895.php

          http://instapundit.com/archives/016030.php

The idea that Iraq had a WMD program is, and always has been, a Bush lie.

          http://www.cnn.com/US/9812/16/clinton.iraq.speech/

The only thing that Clinton lied about was having sex, which he didn't actually have.

          http://reason.com/9804/ed.vp.shtml

Big Bother is watching you.

          http://partners.nytimes.com/library/national/regio nal/061700ny-col-tierney.html

Violating the privacy of bank customers is a Bush plot

          http://www.reason.com/hod/jb072604.shtml

Exploiting terrorism for political purposes is something that the previous president didn't do (since his only failings were sexual).

          http://reason.com/9507/VIPedit.jul.shtml

I say to you...there is nothing patriotic about hating your country, or pretending that you can love your country but despise your government.

            http://www.clintonfoundation.org/legacy/050595-spe ech-by-president-at-michigan-state.htm

We recognized, once again, that we can't love our country and hate our government.

          http://www.cnn.com/US/9512/budget/12-29/pm/transcr ipt.html

But do not condemn people who work for the government. That's the kind of mentality that produced Oklahoma City.

          http://www.clintonfoundation.org/legacy/060195-spe ech-by-president-at-billings-mt-town-hall-meeting. htm

I don't want to dwell on constitutional analysis, because our view has never been that civil liberties are necessarily coextensive with constitutional rights. Conversely, I guess the fact that something is mentioned in the Constitution doesn't necessarily mean that it is a fundamental civil liberty.

          http://reason.com/Strossen.shtml

The idea that Iraq had ties with al-Qaeda is, and always had been, a Bush lie.

          http://instapundit.com/archives/026895.php

          http://instapundit.com/archives/016030.php

The idea that Iraq had a WMD program is, and always has been, a Bush lie.

          http://www.cnn.com/US/9812/16/clinton.iraq.speech/

The only thing that Clinton lied about was having sex, which he didn't actually have.

          http://reason.com/9804/ed.vp.shtml

Big Bother is watching you.

          http://partners.nytimes.com/library/national/regio nal/061700ny-col-tierney.html

Violating the privacy of bank customers is a Bush plot

          http://www.reason.com/hod/jb072604.shtml

Exploiting terrorism for political purposes is something that the previous president didn't do (since his only failings were sexual).

          http://reason.com/9507/VIPedit.jul.shtml

I say to you...there is nothing patriotic about hating your country, or pretending that you can love your country but despise your government.

            http://www.clintonfoundation.org/legacy/050595-spe ech-by-president-at-michigan-state.htm

We recognized, once again, that we can't love our country and hate our government.

          http://www.cnn.com/US/9512/budget/12-29/pm/transcr ipt.html

But do not condemn people who work for the government. That's the kind of mentality that produced Oklahoma City.

          http://www.clintonfoundation.org/legacy/060195-spe ech-by-president-at-billings-mt-town-hall-meeting. htm

I don't want to dwell on constitutional analysis, because our view has never been that civil liberties are necessarily coextensive with constitutional rights. Conversely, I guess the fact that something is mentioned in the Constitution doesn't necessarily mean that it is a fundamental civil liberty.

          http://reason.com/Strossen.shtml

There are plenty of other organizations willing to defend your 2nd amendment rights. The ACLU is a private association, it can defend rights however it sees fit.

Planned Parenthood and NARAL do a good job of defending the Abortion Amendment, yet this doesn't stop the ACLU from devoting resources to abortion rights.

The ACLU also duplicates the work of the NAACP, etc.

Yet when someone points out that the ACLU refused to defend the Second Amendment, somebody always points out that "The ACLU doesn't need to do that, because other organizations do," as though it was some great insight.

Can we just stop pretending that the ACLU cares about Constitutional rights, even if they are occasionally on the right side of some issues?

"Putting all that aside, I don't want to dwell on constitutional analysis, because our view has never been that civil liberties are necessarily coextensive with constitutional rights. Conversely, I guess the fact that something is mentioned in the Constitution doesn't necessarily mean that it is a fundamental civil liberty."

-Nadine Strossen, President of the ACLU
"Life, Liberty, and the ACLU" (Reason, October 1994)

There are plenty of other organizations willing to defend your 2nd amendment rights. The ACLU is a private association, it can defend rights however it sees fit.

Planned Parenthood and NARAL do a good job of defending the Abortion Amendment, yet this doesn't stop the ACLU from devoting resources to abortion rights.

The ACLU also duplicates the work of the NAACP, etc.

Yet when someone points out that the ACLU refused to defend the Second Amendment, somebody always points out that "The ACLU doesn't need to do that, because other organizations do," as though it was some great insight.

Can we just stop pretending that the ACLU cares about Constitutional rights, even if they are occasionally on the right side of some issues?

"Putting all that aside, I don't want to dwell on constitutional analysis, because our view has never been that civil liberties are necessarily coextensive with constitutional rights. Conversely, I guess the fact that something is mentioned in the Constitution doesn't necessarily mean that it is a fundamental civil liberty."

-Nadine Strossen, President of the ACLU
"Life, Liberty, and the ACLU" (Reason, October 1994)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1440764.stm
http://www.reason.com/0211/fe.jm.gun.shtml
http://www.infowars.com/articles/ps/gun_ban_utopia _creates_crime.htm. http://www.gunblast.com/British_Crime_Soars.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/607623.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lott

Now, I fully expect you to dismiss most of these links out of hand because they come from 'biased' sources. I also fully expect that you will not do even the bare minimum of research nessesary to form a coherant opinion on your own, beyond the kneejerk post above mine. I myself have only posted the most interesting links from the front page of the Google search I conducted, and I know better sources exist. So really, I suppose I can't be disappointed this way, nor have I wasted too much time.

*dude*. I'd call myself a left-wing whackjob, but these days I'm in favor of libertarians, old-school Republicans who actually believe in not spending money and not passing laws to control people's lives -- I'd probably vote for Reagan at this point. Instead I'm faced with two parties who both want to pass laws to protect me from unlikely dangers, and maximize their corporate donors' profit margins to my detriment.

Well if you believe in government not spending money and not passing laws that control people's lives, ie the Libertarian platform, then you wouldn't want to vote for Reagan. Reagan increased government spending quite a bit and was busy with controlling people's lives too. Up until the current occupant of the White House, Bush Jr, Reagan did more to create a hugh national deficit. After Nixon, he also cracked down hard on the fake "War on Drugs" more than others. I don't recall what issue, but last year the Libertarian magazine Reason had an article on Reagan's record and how it compared to libertarian ideals. He fell flat, about the only good thing he did was reduce taxes. But spending went up, leading to that deficit.

Virtually all full sized GM pickups with side tanks had the tanks positioned OUTSIDE the frame rails until quite recently (86?). This means on a side impact the tanks can rupture/leak, causing people to potentially die a fiery death in relatively minor accidents. GM decided it was cheaper to pay the claims than issue a recall, since the fix would have been expensive to do. Since they're classed as trucks, they don't have to adhere to the same safety standards cars do (also true of minivans and suv FYI).

You're leaving out the bit where the producers of Dateline NBC, in a bit of creative "investigative journalism," taped some model-rocket engines to the gas tank of a Chevy truck, lit off the engines, and taped the resulting fireball. I suspect the "problem" isn't nearly as severe as you've been led to believe. If there's a liner inside the tank (I don't know if there is, but lack of such a liner was the root of the exploding-Pinto problem), most collisions with it aren't going to result in leaks and/or fires.

You might be interested in this article:

Safety advocates and plaintiffs' attorneys claim that 1973 to 1987 G.M. fullsize pickup trucks are "rolling firebombs" because their gas tanks are mounted between the frame and the exterior panels. The Nader-founded Center for Auto Safety wants the feds to force G.M. to recall these trucks, which could cost the company some $500 million.

In a Wall Street Journal column, litigation analyst Walter Olson compared the fatal-crash records of full-size G.M. pickups with those of other vehicles. He found that G.M. trucks were about 10-percent safer than the average passenger car, 50 percent safer than compact pickups, and almost identical in safety to their closest competitors, full- size Ford pickups.

In February, G.M. Iost a $105-million jury verdict in a case involving a fatal side crash. Yet the Georgia 17-year- old whose truck caught fire was hit by a drunk driving nearly 70 miles per hour. G.M. attorneys argued (to no avail) that the teenager probably died before any fire started.

[...]

NBC might as well have been the Nader Broadcasting Corporation on November 17. For its Dateline NBC segment on G.M. pickups, the network hired a trial lawyers' advocacy group to crash the trucks. Testers overfilled one truck's gas tank, used a nonstandard gas cap that popped off on impact, and strapped remote-controlled model-rocket engines to the truck's frame to guarantee a fire.

How did we learn this? Old-fashioned investigative reporting-the free press in action. Pete Pesterre, editor of Popular Hot Rodding, got a tip from a reader that the tests were rigged. Pesterre tracked down the firefighters who witnessed the tests, contacted G.M. attorneys, and helped the company piece together the deception NBC had foisted upon its viewers.

Confessions of a Welfare Queen. Goes into the insanity behind the National Flood Insurance Program...

Monsanto demanded and got fees from farmers who ended up with genetically altered crops from cross polarization, not because they planted them

They definitely weren't cross polarized, but maybe they weren't cross pollinated either...

-h-

DDT and its breakdown products are toxic to embryos and can disrupt calcium absorption thereby impairing egg-shell quality [2]...

...In general, however, DDT in small quantities has very little effect on birds; its primary metabolite, DDE, has a much greater impact. DDT and DDE have little impact on some non-predatory birds, such as the chicken.

Still, the researchers just had a correlation between DDT and eggshell thinning. So they did what good scientists should do--they experimented. Joel Bitman at the U.S. Department of Agriculture fed Japanese quail a diet laced with DDT. His study, "DDT Induces a Decrease in Eggshell Calcium," published in Nature on October 4, 1969, found that the quail dosed with DDT had eggshells that were about 10 percent thinner than those of undosed quail. However, Bitman's findings were eventually overturned because he had also fed his quail a low-calcium diet. When the quail were fed normal amounts of calcium, the thinning effect disappeared. Studies published in Poultry Science found chicken eggs almost completely unaffected by high dosages of DDT.

It's not DDT per se that is thought to do the damage to eggshells, but a DDT metabolite known as DDE.

Here is your reference: Wisconsin Senator Robert W. Kasten Jr., Judge Jim Gray, Libertarian opponent to CA Sen. Barbara Boxer, Wyoming Senator Craig Thomas in a Senate statement, The Reason Magazine, and probably more.

Repeat after me:

1) Terrorism is an inconsiquential threat.
2) Every law passed since 9/11 is part of a grab for power.
3) Profit.


2) Every law passed since 4/19 is part of a grab for power.

"[Gore] started working towards a goal before others joined in, and that is obviously true in this case."

Gore start working toward what? Creating the internet? Before others joined in? And this is "Obviously true"? Your sources?

Or read here: http://reason.com/9905/ed.vp.source.shtml

Second, in 1985 the National Science Foundation agreed to fund a "backbone" network among five supercomputer sites. Academic institutions could connect to the backbone if they organized regional networks of their own; the NSF provided two-year grants to cover the regional networks' startup expenses, after which universities paid their own way. Combined with the communications power of TCP/IP, this NSFNet boosted the number of interconnected computers to critical mass. It displaced ARPANET as the driving force in the development of a worldwide network of interlinked computers.

In this important sense, "the Internet" dates not to 1969 but to the early 1980s. Gore enters the picture a bit later--in 1987, when he supported a drive by universities to expand funding for NSFNet.


Re: your reference to Bush & Co -- "oh, look over there!"

Well, there is a use to outsourcing/offshoring. Mainly, if you don't offshore or outsource many tasks, people from other more advanced or productive jobs will have to do the grunt work jobs. Your mythical man month theory may apply to certain advanced software dev. But business logic is pretty damn easy and there are qualified workers outside the US who can do it. US unemployment stands at 5-ish percent. All the goods you see coming from China, require millions of people to manufacture. So, if you want to force everything to buy onshore products, be prepared for a reduction in quality of life and reduced access to modern technologies. In other words, live with the services of the sixties, where the average person didnt have a home computer (i understand it had not been invented but today there is a support structure behind it and content/software that requires workers), less people had cars, life sucked if you're a minority, and there won't be the people to run so many channels of TV like we have today. Be prepared to work harder, for less.

http://reason.com/9904/bk.mf.more.shtml

"A half-gallon of milk cost the average worker 10 minutes of labor in 1970, 8.7 minutes in 1980, and only seven minutes in 1997 the latest year for which data are available. A gallon of gasoline cost 11 minutes in 1950 and now goes for less than half that. But these declines are nothing compared to some price drops. A scratchy-sounding three-minute coast-to-coast phone call cost an incredible 90 hours of work back in 1910; today it costs less than two minutes of work time. A hundred kilowatt-hours of electricity, which cost a shocking 107 hours of worker time in 1900, cost a bit over an hour by 1960; today the cost is less than 45 minutes.

"A typical American at the turn of the century spent $76 out of every $100 on food, clothing, and shelter," Cox and Alm write. "By the 1990s, this portion had fallen to $37 of every $100." Just since the 1970s, food and beverage costs have fallen from over 19 percent to about 15 percent, notwithstanding that we're eating out and bringing home preprepared food more."

Ok? Well i doubt logic matters when hate is involved. People should be allowed to pay foreigners for work if they so choose. Some open source products like Linux originated or get deve;opment assistance for free from outside the US .. do they "steal" jobs from here? After all companies in the US pay domestic workers to contribute to open source and they would have lost a paycheck by not getting to code a particular feature?

911 wasn't a failure of surveillance. It was a failure of interpretation and commmunication.

And political correctness woven into policy. CIA & FBI weren't allowed to talk to each other. Might impose on some foreigner's civil rights. Damn you, Bill Clinton.

Over the years, political correctness and fear of bad press have woven their way into the bureaucracy of the FBI.

http://www.reason.com/links/links033006.shtml

The sanctions were the real killer, and the water system (which was fine until we bombed it in Gulf War I) is still killing tens of thousands of children and others every year. Perhaps 1 million children under the age of 5 have died due to bad water and malnutrition since Gulf War I.

The Iraqi under-5 mortality rate was 50 in 1990 and 125 in 2005. 122,000 Iraqi children under 5 died in 2005. (UNICEF
That is at least 512,000 excess child deaths since 1999 when UNICEF estimated there had been at least 500,000 excess child deaths since sanctions began.

The Politics of Dead Children"The other, far more credible source of the 500,000 number is a pair of 1999 UNICEF studies that estimated the under-5 mortality rates of both Iraqi regions based on interviews with a total of 40,000 households."

Is killing over a million infants, preschoolers and kindergarteners worth it? Maybe you should do that calculations again.

Picture a square mile of child graves.

Picture a solid pile of tiny bodies five hundred feet by five hundred feet and four feet high.

It makes me sick to know that my country has done this and continues to do this. This is a crime against humanity in the most revolting possible form, and all those who supported war and sanctions have the blood of a million children on their hands.

Brazil's oil needs are vastly smaller than the US. As reason.com says,

"Replacing one-third of our gasoline consumption with ethanol, as Brazil has done, would reduce oil imports--but "energy independence" would remain a mirage."

More from: http://www.reason.com/rb/rb051206.shtml

"Let's look at the elements of the Brazilian miracle and see if it is possible for the United States to replicate it. First, Brazil's economy is one-tenth the size of ours, and Brazil's motor fleet is about 100 vehicles per 1,000 people. Brazil's cars and trucks consume about 15 billion gallons of motor fuels annually. Also, Brazil produces 1.7 million barrels of oil per day, enough to fulfill about 90 percent of the country's daily requirements. Finally, Brazil produces 4.5 billion gallons of ethanol from sugar cane and blends it with gasoline in a 20 percent ethanol/80 percent gasoline mixture to burn in flex fuel automobiles.

In contrast, there are 765 vehicles per 1000 people in the U.S. consuming about 150 billion gallons of gasoline per year. The United States already produces about 4.5 billion gallons of ethanol (about the same as Brazil) which meets only about 3 percent of U.S. transport fuel needs. The U.S. pumps about 5 million barrels of oil per day domestically and imports another 15 million barrels daily."

Read: http://www.reason.com/rb/rb010704.shtml for a simplified history on the subject.

This is the first thing I've heard contrary to the "fact" that DDT causes thin shells.

It's not a question of ALL birds it about a small number of sensitive species.

"Anderson notes that DDT and DDE levels in nature have been falling for decades. Populations of bald eagles, peregrine falcons, ospreys, and brown pelicans have all bounced back. In 1969, researchers reported finding total DDT accumulations ranging from 5,000 ppm to 2,600 ppm in the fat of North American peregrine falcons. Today, one would typically find 50 ppm in raptors, according to Anderson. Such body burdens would yield only about 2.5 ppm in eggs. Anderson notes that there appears to be a threshold of one to three ppm for DDE in eggs below which there is no eggshell thinning in even sensitive bird species. Dusting DDT on the walls of houses in developing countries to control for mosquitoes seems unlikely to cross that threshold for birds.

Banning DDT saved thousands of raptors over the past 30 years, but outright bans and misguided fears about the pesticide cost the lives of millions of people who died of insect-borne diseases like malaria. The 500 million people who come down with malaria every year might well wonder what authoritarian made that decision."

Thousands of raptors should read 100's of thousands perhaps millions vs "Malaria afflicts between 300 million and 500 million people every year" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT) but I still agree with his conclusion. We should limit DDT's use and avoid wide spread spraying but it's fine in limited areas.

The Bush regime is currently trying to suffocate any movements that are active against it's highly inhuman and dirty practices to keep holding power in America yet are trying to fool the world about their support for democracy and free speech.

Really? An American president is trying to eliminate discourse? That's totally a new concept. Surely the Bush Administration is biggest threat to the constitution in American history.

Well at least we can get rid of this problem by voting Democrat, right? After all, they call themselves The Party Of Free Speech. They wouldn't lie, would they?

UNICEF puts the number of child deaths blamed on the 1990s embargo of Iraq by the US under crowd-favorite Bill Clinton at 500,000.
No, they don't. Neither did they ever. The nearest thing at all to that figure is Hussein's claim of 600,000 under-5 deaths.

Read this: http://www.reason.com/0203/fe.mw.the.shtml

http://reason.com/9804/ed.vp.shtml ...Nonetheless, Clinton does not deserve his current round of legal troubles. To be publicly humiliated as a moral weakling, lacking both judgment and self-control--that he deserves. To be distrusted by both intimates and the general public--he deserves that too. But for sexual pecadillos and routine lies to lead to possible high crimes and misdemeanors takes more than just Clinton's personal flaws. It takes very bad policy.

There is one sense in which the president deserves what has happened to him: He and his political allies are the people who made it possible, who created the legal mechanisms by which his private life became a matter of public, legal record. In that bitter irony lies the one hopeful aspect of L'Affaire Monica. It may, finally, create a consensus to rein in legal excesses that threaten not just Bill Clinton but the liberties of all Americans. But if Republicans are seduced by scandal and Democrats by dreams of vengeance, it may make matters worse.

The "crisis in the White House" begins with the Independent Counsel Statute. From the start, many Republicans opposed that law for corroding the constitutional division of powers. Back then, of course, presidents were Republicans, so the opposition was easy to ascribe to partisan motives. But in 1994, when the statute was up for reauthorization, a Democrat was in the White House, and his party controlled Congress. The most vocal opposition still came from conservative Republicans, who turned out to be remarkably principled.

They were utterly unsuccessful. The reauthorized statute was passed by the Democratic Congress and signed by President Clinton. So, as columnist and former Bush speechwriter Tony Snow notes, the law still "compels courts to appoint an independent counsel whenever somebody produces a saucy rumor." Apparently trusting that their friends would always be the ones wielding it, Clinton and his allies left nearly unlimited power in the hands of special prosecutors.... ...The vast expansion of criminal law--something the president failed to bring up in his State of the Union address, lest it undercut his shrinking-government lie--is among the most important, and most threatening, trends of recent years. But Monicagate is not built on criminal law. It arises from the expansion of a civil offense: sexual harassment.

Media-savvy but legally unsophisticated liberal commentators, such as radio talk show host Tom Leykis, make a passionate, and fairly persuasive, argument about Clinton's presumed affair: It may be bad, but it's a private matter. It's between Bill, Hillary, and Monica. It's none of our business. It certainly doesn't belong in court. "Why are we asking questions about the president's sex life?" asks Leykis. "Why is that relevant to anything? Why should the president be put in a position of having to lie about something that's none of our business in the first place?"

Why indeed? The tempting answer is, Because you asked for it. Demanded it. Screamed and yelled and waxed indignant. You dedicated the 1992 Democratic National Convention to the cause. Remember "The Year of the Woman"? It was a media frenzy. And the number one agenda item was a ban on any hint of sexuality in the workplace.

Writing cheap symbolism into real law is a dangerous thing to do. But Congress did it in 1994. Ratifying the view that sexual harassment is too serious a matter to be governed by normal legal constraints, the very same Democratic Congress that reauthorized the Independent Counsel statute rewrote

"We recognized, once again, that we can't love our country and hate
our government."
-The President of the United States
  Weekly Radio Address
  http://tinyurl.com/a2nwa

...I would like to say something to [those of you] who believe the
greatest threat to America comes not from terrorists from ... beyond
our borders, but from our own government.

I believe you have every right, indeed you have the responsibility, to
question our government when you disagree with its policies. And I
will do everything in my power to protect your right to do so.

But I also know there have been lawbreakers among those who espouse
your philosophy.... ...How dare you suggest that we in the freest nation on Earth live in
tyranny.... ...[T]here is nothing patriotic about hating your country, or
pretending that you can love your country but despise your
government.....

-The President of the United States
  Michigan State University (Spartan Stadium)
  http://tinyurl.com/bln3j

...So if somebody believes someone who is working for the government
has mistreated them, take it to the appropriate authority, make it
public if you want to, but be specific. But do not condemn people who
work for the government. That's the kind of mentality that produced
Oklahoma City....

-The President of the United States
  Billings, Montana
  http://tinyurl.com/a6bnr