I believe in personal freedom. I am the sole owner of my body, mind and spirit.

I will not be numbered, indexed, monitored or cataloged.

I have an eternal responsibility to my own soul to break all bonds ever forged upon me by force. I will repudiate and remove from my life all links in any chain of authoritarian ownership or control.

I believe in freedom for others. I will never initiate any act of force or fraud against another.

To be fully human and fully moral we must be free to dream, strive, explore, experiment, think, travel, believe, speak, risk, fail, succeed, defend ourselves, make choices, accept responsibility, and grow. Always to grow.

I will reach for the future. The only barrier I will permit to stand between my soul and the stars is time.

From the Agitator:

George Will urges the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down an Illinois law that may be the next step in post-bailout, post-Kelo America: direct transfer of the profits of successful industries to the accounts of those that are failing. The Illinois law attempts to prop up the state’s sagging horse racing industry by requiring the state’s four most profitable casinos to simply hand over 3 percent of gross receipts to Illinois’ horse racing tracks. The bill was recently upheld by the state’s supreme court.

From Cato @ Liberty:

As Tad DeHaven mentioned the other day, CNN reported recently that business owners and residents on Hawaii’s Kauai island got together and made repairs to a state park — in eight days — that the state had said would cost $4 million and might not get done for months. Businesses were losing money since people couldn’t visit the park, so they decided to take matters into their own hands.

Sorry for the lack of posts, ladies and gents. It's been a busy few months.
Here's a little something to tide you over.


(Thanks to The Agitator)

From the fine folks @ BoingBoing.net:
Just in time for Banned Books Week, here's Philip "Golden Compass" Pullman on why book bans -- especially religiously inspired book bans -- are so futile and wrong:

Because they never learn. The inevitable result of trying to ban something – book, film, play, pop song, whatever – is that far more people want to get hold of it than would ever have done if it were left alone. Why don't the censors realise this?...

In fact, when it comes to banning books, religion is the worst reason of the lot. Religion, uncontaminated by power, can be the source of a great deal of private solace, artistic inspiration, and moral wisdom. But when it gets its hands on the levers of political or social authority, it goes rotten very quickly indeed. The rank stench of oppression wafts from every authoritarian church, chapel, temple, mosque, or synagogue – from every place of worship where the priests have the power to meddle in the social and intellectual lives of their flocks, from every presidential palace or prime ministerial office where civil leaders have to pander to religious ones...

My basic objection to religion is not that it isn't true; I like plenty of things that aren't true. It's that religion grants its adherents malign, intoxicating and morally corrosive sensations. Destroying intellectual freedom is always evil, but only religion makes doing evil feel quite so good.

From the Line is Here:

Really, you don’t say? Economic advantages and disadvantages that are applied through government regulation can lead to ethnic unrest? Wealth redistribution along ethnic lines makes people testy and prone to take out their frustrations on other ethnic groups?

That is just amazing!

In all honesty, it is nice to see a study that highlights this, although anyone who pays attention to African and Balkan politics and conflicts would have been able to tell you this without a study

.

It's like they planned it this way all along.

From TheNewspaper.com:

Private companies in the US are hoping to use red light cameras and speed cameras as the basis for a nationwide surveillance network similar to one that will be active next year in the UK. Redflex and American Traffic Solutions (ATS), the top two photo enforcement providers in the US, are quietly shopping new motorist tracking options to prospective state and local government clients. Redflex explained the company's latest developments in an August 7 meeting with Homestead, Florida officials.

"We are moving into areas such as homeland security on a national level and on a local level," Redflex regional director Cherif Elsadek said. "Optical character recognition is our next roll out which will be coming out in a few months -- probably about five months or so."

The technology would be integrated with the Australian company's existing red light camera and speed camera systems. It allows officials to keep full video records of passing motorists and their passengers, limited only by available hard drive space and the types of cameras installed. To gain public acceptance, the surveillance program is being initially sold as an aid for police looking to solve Amber Alert cases and locate stolen cars.

"Imagine if you had 1500 or 2000 cameras out there that could look out for the partial plate or full plate number across the 21 states where we do business today," Elsadek said. "This is the next step for our technology."

From Cato@Liberty:

In a study released today by the Cato Institute, economist and Cato adjunct scholar Shirley Svorny says no:

In the United States, the authority to regulate medical professionals lies with the states. To practice within a state, clinicians must obtain a license from that state’s government. State statutes dictate standards for licensing and disciplining medical professionals. They also list tasks clinicians are allowed to perform. One view is that state licensing of medical professionals assures quality.

In contrast, I argue here that licensure not only fails to protect consumers from incompetent physicians, but, by raising barriers to entry, makes health care more expensive and less accessible. Institutional oversight and a sophisticated network of private accrediting and certification organizations, all motivated by the need to protect reputations and avoid legal liability, offer whatever consumer protections exist today.

Consumers would benefit were states to eliminate professional licensing in medicine and leave education, credentialing, and scope-of-practice decisions entirely to the private sector and the courts.

If eliminating licensing is politically infeasible, some preliminary steps might be generally acceptable. States could increase workforce mobility by recognizing licenses issued by other states. For mid-level clinicians, eliminating education requirements beyond an initial degree would allow employers and consumers to select the appropriate level of expertise. At the very least, state legislators should be alert to the self-interest of medical professional organizations that may lie behind the licensing proposals brought to the legislature for approval.

From Jacob Sullum @ Reason's Hit & Run blog:

Yesterday the Washington Supreme Court ruled that the state's smoking ban applies to private clubs as well as businesses open to the general public. Washington's Clean Indoor Air Act, passed in 1985, exempts "private facilities which are occasionally open to the public except upon the occasions when [they are] open to the public." An initiative approved by voters in 2005 broadened the ban to cover "places of employment." American Legion Post 149 in Bremerton challenged the Kitsap County Board of Health's attempt to stop its members from smoking at the post home, where all seven employees are relatives of members and all but one smoke, arguing that the exemption for private facilities remained in force. A five-judge majority of the state Supreme Court disagreed. Four judges dissented, with one of them, Richard Sanders, concluding

that if the majority's interpretation of the law is correct, the law is unconstitutional:

I would hold the Act does not apply to the Post Home as a private facility. Alternatively, if the Post Home's status as a private facility does not limit the Act's application, I would hold the Act is void for vagueness; unduly interferes with the Post Home's right of intimate association; violates the Post Home's substantive due process rights absent actual proof of a real and substantial relation between secondhand smoke and workplace dangers; and violates equal protection by distinguishing between two classes of business without reasonable grounds.

That would be the day the Democrats and Republicans turned their backs on the Constitution of the United States.
From Reason Online's article on the subject:

We must, and we shall, set the tide running again in the cause of freedom. And this party, with its every action, every word, every breath, and every heartbeat, has but a single resolve, and that is freedom.
Barry Goldwater, accepting the 1964 Republican presidential nomination

This year's Republican National Convention had a different theme for each day. Monday was "Serving a Cause Greater than Self." Tuesday was "Service," Wednesday was "Reform," and Thursday was "Peace."

So what was missing? Only what used to be held up as the central ideal of the party. The heirs of Goldwater couldn't spare a day for freedom.

Neither could the Democrats. Their daily topics this year were "One Nation," "Renewing America's Promise," and "Securing America's Future." The party proclaimed "an agenda that emphasizes the security of our nation, strong economic growth, affordable health care for all Americans, retirement security, honest government, and civil rights." Expanding and upholding individual liberty? Not so much.

Forty-four years after Goldwater's declaration, it's clear that collectivism, not individualism, is the reigning creed of Republicans as well as Democrats. Individuals are not valuable and precious in their own right but as a means for those in power to achieve their grand ambitions.

You will scour the presidential nominees' acceptance speeches in vain for any hint that your life is rightfully your own, to be lived in accordance with your beliefs and desires and no one else's. The Founding Fathers set out to protect "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," but Barack Obama has a different idea.

The "essence of America's promise," he declared in Denver, is "individual responsibility and mutual responsibility"—rather than, say, individual freedom and mutual respect for rights. The "promise of America," he said, is "the fundamental belief that I am my brother's keeper; I am my sister's keeper."

In reality, that fundamental belief is what you might call the promise of socialism. What has set this country apart since its inception is not the notion of obligations but the notion of rights.

"All previous systems had regarded man as a sacrificial means to the ends of others, and society as an end in itself," wrote the novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand. "The United States regarded man as an end in himself, and society as a means to the peaceful, orderly, voluntary co-existence of individuals."

Words cannot describe. Just listen.



And here we have the lyrics:

From ABCNews.com:

People are (or will be) having sex all around America today. But that's nobody's business. Sex is a private matter, right? Except that local authorities sometimes say it is their business.

From the movie's website:

Based on the short story Harrison Bergeron by celebrated author Kurt Vonnegut, 2081 depicts a dystopian future in which, thanks to the 212th Amendment to the Constitution and the unceasing vigilance of the United States Handicapper General, everyone is finally equal... The strong wear weights, the beautiful wear masks and the intelligent wear earpieces that fire off loud noises to keep them from taking unfair advantage of their brains. It is a poetic tale of triumph and tragedy about a broken family, a brutal government, and an act of defiance that changes everything.

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.

• 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.
  

• 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

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.

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.

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.

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."

Angry Renter is a grass roots campaign created by Freedom Works to oppose the corporate welfare that's being handed out to bail out mortgage companies that made bad or stupid decisions.


From the Angry Renter website:

You know a web site is making a difference when the Wall Street Journal publishes a hit piece on the front page!

We don't find it particularly shocking that a grassroots group working for limited government would launch a grassroots petition opposing a government housing bailout...but hey, we're not in the newspaper business.

We're not sure how a reporter can call this effort "fake" or "astro-turf" when we've put our name on every page and when over 48,000 real people have voluntarily visited and signed the petition.

FreedomWorks was founded back in 1984 and we're headquartered in Washington, D.C. We're based in D.C. because we fight for taxpayers and Washington, D.C. is where they pass the laws and spend trillions of your tax dollars every year. We are a non-profit organization chaired by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey with over 20 staffers across the country. Like every non-profit organization, from Sierra Club to the AARP, we respect the privacy of our donors and do not disclose them.

AngryRenter.com looks a bit like a digital ransom note, with irregular fonts, exclamation points and big red arrows -- all emphasizing prudent renters' outrage over a proposed government bailout for irresponsible homeowners.

"It seems like America's renters may NEVER be able to afford a home," AngryRenter.com laments. The Web site urges like-minded tenants to let Congress feel their fury by signing an online petition. "We are millions of renters standing up for our rights!"

Angry they may be, but the people behind AngryRenter.com are certainly not renters. Though it purports to be a spontaneous uprising, AngryRenter.com is actually a product of an inside-the-Beltway conservative advocacy organization led by Dick Armey, the former House majority leader, and publishing magnate Steve Forbes, a fellow Republican. It's a fake grass-roots effort -- what politicos call an AstroTurf campaign -- that provides a window into the sleight-of-hand ways of Washington.

More here.

Here we go. Maybe the calendar should be set back to 1984.

From Global Research:

In the wake of Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and Susan Collins' (R-ME) alarmist report, "Violent Islamist Extremism, the Internet, and the Homegrown Terrorism Threat," the Senate may be moving towards passage of the Orwellian "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007" (S. 1959).

A companion piece of legislative flotsam to the House bill, "The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007" (H.R. 1955), the Democrat-controlled Congress seems ready to jettison Constitutional guarantees of free speech and assembly. The bill passed the House by a 404-6 vote in October. Twenty-three congress members abstained, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers.

More here.

When will politicians, and the people who vote for them, learn that the more you regulate something the harder you make it for honest, law abiding citizens to function as honest, law abiding citizens? Just look at gun control or the licensing requirements in some states for cosmetologists. I'm just saying.