And speaking of Oil prices.

From ScrappleFace:

When the U.S. Supreme Court reconvenes on the first Monday in October, the nine Justices may consider whether the Constitutional preamble clause “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity” guarantees an individual right to drill for oil.

More here.

Here's a question for all you folks out on the tubes: If you own a piece of property, do you have the right to drill for oil on your property, or for that matter do anything you please with that property? If so, why?

Did you know that 650,000 minors get alcohol from their parents? Sweet zombie Jesus! God forbid parents responsibly introduce alcohol to their own children at an age they think it's proper to do so.

We wouldn't want any responsible drinkers running around the streets, now would we?
Besides, what would the media and politicians have to bitch about? Guns? Oil prices? The price of tea in China? Okay, so they'd still have a lot to piss and moan about, but, you get my point.

And here we have a sensible article from Time magazine about drinking with your kids and doing it responsibly.

Here's a little snippet:

Today news stories offer grim accounts of high school parties that end in gruesome wrecks and of college kids killing themselves by consuming, say, 100 shots in as many minutes. Last year the Surgeon General issued a "call to action" to prevent underage drinking; the National Institutes of Health issued a similar one in 2002.

The calls to action make it sound as if America's high schools have become one enormous kegger, but in fact alcohol use among high school students has fallen dramatically. The Monitoring the Future surveys conducted by the University of Michigan show that in 1991, 81% of eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders had had at least one drink in their lives; by last year, the figure was only 58%. Roughly 47% of this cohort had been drunk at least once in 1991; in 2007 only 38% had ever been drunk. On college campuses, meanwhile, the ranks of nondrinkers are rising steadily. In 1980 only 18% of college students surveyed for Monitoring the Future said they had not had a drink in the past month; by 2006 the proportion had risen to 35%.

And yet the typical college president can offer sad anecdotes about students dead from alcohol poisoning. Those deaths are still so rare that it's impossible to prove they are increasing. But according to Henry Wechsler of the Harvard School of Public Health, 26% of college kids who drink say they have forgotten where they were or what they did at least once; the figure was 18% for college men in the late 1940s, according to the seminal 1953 book Drinking in College. We think of the midcentury as a gin-soaked era, but when the Drinking in College authors asked students whether they had suffered an "accident or injury" as a result of alcohol (without defining precisely whether that meant only physical injury or also alcohol poisoning), only 6% of drinkers said they had. The figure has now more than doubled, to 13%.

So the data indicate there are fewer young drinkers, but a greater proportion of them are hard-core drinkers. Parents have helped create this paradox. Many parents seem torn between two competing impulses: officially, most say in surveys that they oppose any drinking by those under 21. But unofficially many also seem to think kids will be kids--after all, not so long ago, they were themselves drinking as teens. A few of these parents have even allowed their kids to have big drunken parties at home.

But there is a better way. At first it sounds a little nutty, but you might consider drinking with your kids. Incongruously, the way to produce fewer problem drinkers is to create more drinkers overall--that is, to begin to create a culture in which alcohol is not an alluring risk but part of quotidian family life. Of course, that's a mostly European approach to alcohol, but there's reason to think it could work here. And it may be the best way to solve the binge-drinking problem.

*Okay, so it was a large snippet. So sue me.

And you probably shouldn't open this in front of your kids either.

Today we see the Supreme Court finally admit that the second amendment is an individual right along with the rest of the bill of rights. So all of you gun nuts (I'm one too) rejoice.

Although I feel kind of bad for the poor gun control advocates. Their logic may have been flawed and they may have used emotional manipulation to get their favorite pieces of legislation passed, but dammit, they're nice decent people...........Aah, who am I kidding? A gun control advocate is just like any other power hungry, megalomaniac out there.

And the arguments have been the same for god knows how long. Don't you guy's think maybe you should change up your reasoning a little.

These are getting old:

• Guns kill people - Guns don't kill people. A gun can't fire itself or load itself. A gun is a tool like so many other things and like so many other thing can be used for good or ill. So strike one for one of the many pieces of flawed logic by gun control advocates.

• The second amendment is a collective right - First of all, rights can not be collective in nature, two people don't have more rights than one person. Secondly, the second amendment

  A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms,(emphasis is mine) shall not be infringed

  clearly states the individuality of the right to keep and bear arms.
  

and

• It'll lower crime rates - The fact of the matter is that communities that have a high gun ownership rate are usually much safer than those that do not. Think about it. What criminal is going to try and rob or rape someone who's packing heat and knows (presumably) how to use it? Criminals have a tendency to go after easy marks, those they perceive to be weak or timid. Also, gun control laws only really affect law abiding citizens. They don't prevent criminals from getting guns. Criminals will just go to a black market gun dealer

And here we have some of what the gun control nuts at the NY Times would like you to believe:

Thirty-thousand Americans are killed by guns every year — on the job, walking to school, at the shopping mall. The Supreme Court on Thursday all but ensured that even more Americans will die senselessly with its wrongheaded and dangerous ruling striking down key parts of the District of Columbia’s gun-control law.

In a radical break from 70 years of Supreme Court precedent, Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, declared that the Second Amendment guarantees individuals the right to bear arms for nonmilitary uses, even though the amendment clearly links the right to service in a “militia.” The ruling will give gun-rights advocates a powerful new legal tool to try to strike down gun-control laws across the nation.

This is a decision that will cost innocent lives, cause immeasurable pain and suffering and turn America into a more dangerous country. It will also diminish our standing in the world, sending yet another message that the United States values gun rights over human life.

More here.

And here is the landmark Supreme Court decision.

In honor and tribute to a legend of comedy and defender of the first amendment:









I didn't always agree with George Carlin's views, but I did always respect the man.
Some of his views on politics drove me absolutely insane, but he always made you think. And for that I am thankful.

Now I know this is probably the point where I'm supposed to say something like, "He's in a better place now". But, if his stand up material on the matter is any indication, I don't think he'd very much like that if he were alive.

Mr. Carlin is dead. And there is nothing worse in the world for a family member or friend to go through than to lose a loved one. We all have had or will have that experience one day. And it is my greatest hope that each and every one of you take some comfort in the fact that your lost loved ones lived their lives to the fullest extent they could.

My sincerest condolences go out to Mr. Carlin's family and friends.

note: This probably isn't the best I could do, but, this is the best I've got.

You’ve seen him plenty of times on sitcoms; he’s the dumb, bumbling, idiot dad/husband/boyfriend who's useless at everything but bringing home a paycheck. The message: Guys are dumb and women, being the superior sex, have to lead them around. This, of course, cues the laugh track.
Yet a survey from an organization called Children Now found that two-thirds of kid respondents described men on TV as angry, while respondents from another group’s survey said men were portrayed as corrupt on TV by a 17 to 1 margin. Clearly, this is no laughing matter.

See the ads here.

Here's an excellent story by the fine folks @ NeoLibertarian on the hypocrisy of liberals and other "progressives" when it comes to "cultural imperialism".

From NeoLibertarian:

Today’s object lessons are the importance of international treaties, consensus, and organizations and one of the bugaboos of the left, American cultural imperialism.

One of the consistent, and not always incorrect, themes of criticism of the Bush administration has been its tendency to ‘go it alone’ or more provocatively ‘cowboy’ its way through the world, scorning international associations and treaties and provoking international opinion.

A more general criticism, as in of the whole United States not just of the Bush Administration, is that America practices ‘cultural imperialism,’ i.e. supplanting local culture with our own. This is accepted as always bad, since evidently there is no bigger threat to cultures the world over than being able to get a decent hamburger, but I digress . . .

From the NY Times:

A couple of years ago, a Canadian magazine published an article arguing that the rise of Islam threatened Western values. The article’s tone was mocking and biting, but it said nothing that conservative magazines and blogs in the United States do not say every day without fear of legal reprisal.

The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal will soon rule on whether the cover story of the October 23, 2006, issue of Maclean’s magazine violated a provincial hate speech law.

This series of articles examines commonplace aspects of the American justice system that are actually unique in the world.

Things are different here. The magazine is on trial.

Two members of the Canadian Islamic Congress say the magazine, Maclean’s, Canada’s leading newsweekly, violated a provincial hate speech law by stirring up hatred against Muslims. They say the magazine should be forbidden from saying similar things, forced to publish a rebuttal and made to compensate Muslims for injuring their “dignity, feelings and self-respect.”

The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal, which held five days of hearings on those questions here last week, will soon rule on whether Maclean’s violated the law. As spectators lined up for the afternoon session last week, an argument broke out.

“It’s hate speech!” yelled one man.

“It’s free speech!” yelled another.

In the United States, that debate has been settled. Under the First Amendment, newspapers and magazines can say what they like about minorities and religions — even false, provocative or hateful things — without legal consequence.

The Maclean’s article, “The Future Belongs to Islam,” was an excerpt from a book by Mark Steyn called “America Alone” (Regnery, 2006). The title was fitting: The United States, in its treatment of hate speech, as in so many other areas of the law, takes a distinctive legal path.

More here.
This is one of the many things that makes America and Americans exceptional.
Americans take a very individualistic view towards our rights ( there's one exception that comes to mind, but that's for another time), especially our rights to free speech. We believe in the Marketplace of Ideas and that for the most part good ideas are the ones that are the most widely adopted.
The article is a little ambiguous as to what the author's stance is regarding free speech, but seems pretty balanced as far as I can tell. But then again that's up to you to decide.

Oh, and just for the record, I am not a fan of the NY Times. Their reporting is entirely too slanted and has a definite liberal bias. And they've endorsed the restriction of speech in the past when they supported the McCain/Feingold campaign finance reform legislation.

Which would explain my surprise when I read the above article.

Then again, the NY Times has been known to do some decent reporting in the past.

Here's hoping that the Times can become the unbiased and reliable news source they've always claimed they were.

You Decide!

An excellent rant detailing the differences between these two philosophies comes our way from Robb Allen over at The Line is Here:

I shouldn’t blog angry, but if I took the time to calm down before I wrote anything, you’d get biannual posts and like it.

So, this morning I’m talking with a friend at work. Said friend (we’ll call him “Sally”) is a flaming Democrat. Sally tends to be fairly even headed and not a complete socialist twat, but he still has that core belief that for every problem, the is an equal and opposite government program to fix it.

To Sally, the government is a benign entity that only can be corrupted by Republicans. If only Democrats were in charge, nothing bad would ever happen, hence, it is totally permissible to submit every last facet of your life to Uncle Sam’s caring and compassionate scrutiny.

Yet he thinks that the government shouldn’t butt into your home life. Go figure.

More here.

Could it be possible that libertarians may have some serious clout when it comes to this year's presidential election?
Could be.............could be.

From an article in the New York Times:

So maybe it isn’t very “live and let live” for libertarians to assemble en masse in the hopes of exerting power. But some libertarians, feeling a little heady after their party’s national convention last weekend, are making a bold claim: this is the year their voting bloc will hold some serious sway in American politics.

“We are in the beginning of a libertarian moment,” said Nick Gillespie, editor of Reason, the libertarian monthly.

Meeting in Denver, the Libertarian Party chose as its new standard-bearer Bob Barr, the former four-term Republican congressman from Georgia who has already been branded a spoiler by Sean Hannity, the conservative commentator from Fox News.

The most well-known libertarian figure, the Republican Ron Paul, has a book at the top of the best-seller list and has raised millions on the Internet while gathering 1.1 million votes in the primaries and caucuses so far. (In the libertarian strongholds of Idaho, Washington State, Montana and North Dakota, he got more than 20 percent of the Republican vote.)

Michael Kinsley, writing in Time magazine last fall, predicted that voters with libertarian leanings are going to be “an increasingly powerful force in politics.” The auguries come even from Hollywood, where a film adaptation of the libertarian writer Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged” is planned for release next year starring Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, both of whom are said to be Rand fans.

The Libertarian Party faithful expressed their hopes that if Mr. Barr can tap into the well of Ron Paul supporters, it could be their biggest election yet.

More here.

Is climate change, or global warming or whatever you want to call it, real?
I think that the cyclical nature of weather and climate make global "warming" inevitable. But, I also think that the notion that humanity is to blame for climate change is simplistic and for the most part untested.

I will gladly jump on the global warming band wagon if it can be proven (objectively) with out a shadow of a doubt that global warming is caused by humans.

But here's the rub; I don't want to be forced at figurative gun point to blindly accept that global warming is: a) a crisis of immense magnitude, and b) caused solely by human activity. It goes against the very principles of persuasion and scientific observation.

With that said here's an interesting piece by Charles Krauthammer over @ Townhall.com


*Note: The story I've linked to is a little old but points out some good points about environmentalism and it's parallels to communism.

The Internet, that miraculous series of tubes, is a wonderful, relatively new platform that allows everyone to have a voice, much like in the days of yore when news was spread by word-of-mouth. To date, the Internet has remained blissfully free of government regulation. Its backbone resting in the private sector, requiring no licensing for use, and is seemingly beyond the reach of those who would like government regulation of online behavior such as "hate" speech, obscenity, and too much control by a few corporations.

So everyone should be thrilled that the Internet can deliver unprecedented levels of free speech, right?

Maybe not.

From Pajamas Media:

In a recent editorial, the NY Times welcomed federal regulation of the Internet under the benign-sounding cause “net neutrality,” warning us that Internet service providers might suppress ideas they do not like. The Times ignores the fact that the First Amendment is designed to protect us
against suppression of ideas by the government, not the private sector, which has neither the power nor the motive to suppress ideas.

Moreover, as the Las Vegas Review-Journal tells us, “Net neutrality is a solution in search of a problem.” It has not been given a chance to surface, much less an opportunity for the marketplace to fix this hypothetical problem. It is a weak reason to allow the irreversible step of government regulation.

Another party that is uncomfortable with free speech on the Internet is the Orwellianly-named group “Free Press.” They are pushing for the FCC to regulate the Internet similar to the way it regulates broadcast TV, calling for a national (read “government”) broadband policy to regulate price, speed, and availability. They also want the government to provide municipal broadband service to everybody, even though this model has already collapsed in the marketplace.

And of course, the U.N. and its many dictatorships is no fan of free speech on the Internet. Last November, the United Nations’ Internet Governance Forum (IGF) held its second annual meeting with a not-so-hidden agenda for a U.N. takeover of the U.S.’ private sector control of core Internet systems.

More here.

Can a 13 yr old girl be a sexual predator when her victims are of legal age?

Read this and decide for yourself.

Here's a movement that wants to make an openly worn handgun as common an accessory as an iPod or cell phone. And it isn't a bunch of kooks or nuts that are doing this either.

From the LA Times article on the subject:

For years, Kevin Jensen carried a pistol everywhere he went, tucked in a shoulder holster beneath his clothes.

In hot weather the holster was almost unbearable. Pressed against Jensen's skin, the firearm was heavy and uncomfortable. Hiding the weapon made him feel like a criminal.

Then one evening he stumbled across a site that urged gun owners to do something revolutionary: Carry your gun openly for the world to see as you go about your business.

In most states there's no law against that.

Jensen thought about it and decided to give it a try. A couple of days later, his gun was visible, hanging from a black holster strapped around his hip as he walked into a Costco. His heart raced as he ordered a Polish dog at the counter. No one called the police. No one stopped him.

Now Jensen carries his Glock 23 openly into his bank, restaurants and shopping centers. He wore the gun to a Ron Paul rally. He and his wife, Clachelle, drop off their 5-year-old daughter at elementary school with pistols hanging from their hip holsters, and have never received a complaint or a wary look.

Jensen said he tries not to flaunt his gun. "We don't want to show up and say, 'Hey, we're here, we're armed, get used to it,' " he said.

But he and others who publicly display their guns have a common purpose.

The Jensens are part of a fledgling movement to make a firearm as common an accessory as an iPod. Called "open carry" by its supporters, the movement has attracted grandparents, graduate students and lifelong gun enthusiasts like the Jensens.

"What we're trying to say is, 'Hey, we're normal people who carry guns,' " said Travis Deveraux, 36, of West Valley, a Salt Lake City suburb. Deveraux works for a credit card company and sometimes walks around town wearing a cowboy hat and packing a pistol in plain sight. "We want the public to understand it's not just cops who can carry guns."

More here.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I've finally gotten a twitter account.

I know, I know. You're asking yourselves,"How could you do this Prof.? I always thought you were more pure of heart than that."
Well, I'm not.

I'm just trying to increase my audience and introduce people to the ideas of limited government, personal responsibility, and skeptical atheism.
Granted, my audience here isn't large by any means, hell it's not even small for that fact.
But, I figure it can't hurt to at least try it out.

So, if you're interested, here's my twitter account. And I can assure you that if you think this blog updates sporadically wait until you get a load of my twitterings (is that even a word or did I just make it up?).

Until next time.

Here's a round-up of today's most interesting stories.


From Liberty Lover:
Jerry Taylor on SOLVING PUMP PAIN
and
HYPER-ACTIVE GOVERNMENT


From Reason's Out of Control blog:
Hey, You, Get Offa My Cloud!


From The Line is Here:
Private enterprise Rocks
and
Excellence in Education


From Reason's Hit and Run blog:
I Got a Letter From the Government the Other Day

*Quick note, posts will be arriving less erratically in the coming days.

Some excellent stories from Reason's Hit and Run blog:

What's the Matter with France?:

A.P. reports that French politicians across the political spectrum are outraged by a judge's decision (noted this morning by Katherine Mangu-Ward) to grant a recently married Muslim couple an annulment because the bride misrepresented herself as a virgin. "The ruling ending the Muslim couple's union," A.P. says, "has stunned France and raised concerns that the country's much-cherished secular values are losing ground to cultural traditions from its fast-growing immigrant communities." I don't get it, just as I did not understand why so many Frenchmen thought it was imperative to ban headscarves from schools. This case seems like a straightforward application of a contract, albeit one constrained by laws regulating marriage:

More here.

Permanent rEVOLution:

“We’ve seen how the politics of fear chip away at freedom at home,” he declares, sounding suddenly sure of himself. “Where are the defenders of freedom today? Where are our Thomas Jeffersons? Where are our Barry Goldwaters? There are a few defenders of freedom, but they are outnumbered, and they need our help.”

Singh has one particular defender of freedom in mind: Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas). It was Paul’s libertarian-minded presidential campaign that got Singh into politics, first as a donor, then as a Virginia volunteer, and now as a candidate for Congress. A month after watching Paul score 4.5 percent of the vote in the Virginia primary, Singh threw his hat into the ring for the 8th District congressional seat.

More here.

Eh, You Were Only Going to Use That Money on Your Own Fraud Anyway:

The US military has awarded an $80 million contract to a prominent Saudi financier who has been indicted by the US Justice Department. The contract to supply jet fuel to American bases in Afghanistan was awarded to the Attock Refinery Ltd, a Pakistani-based refinery owned by Gaith Pharaon. Pharaon is wanted in connection with his alleged role at the failed Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), and the CenTrust savings and loan scandal, which cost US tax payers $1.7 billion.

More here.

Just thought I'd share this with you all.