The financial crisis that we're dealing with was caused by the government and their stooges.
This is why we are where we are today.


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* video embed updated 10/02/2008

*In no way, shape, or form does the Professor Politico Show endorse any of the presidential candidates (only because we haven't found one to endorse yet) or their views.

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.

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.

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.

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.

More here.

And From the Wall Street Journal:

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.

For those of you who don't know, Brooke Oberwetter, aka The Jefferson 1, was arrested for silently bopping her head in the Jefferson Memorial on April 13 as part of the Thomas Jefferson Dance Party, organized by our friends in Liberty over at Bureaucrash, to celebrate the occasion of Thomas Jefferson's 265th birthday, and as a way to revive the dancing-as-freedom meme.

Here are my thoughts on the matter:Really!? Standing around bopping your head on "public" property (an oxymoron if I ever heard one) is an arrestable offense?! Don't Park's Department personnel have more important things to do? Oh, right, they work for the Park's Department, of course they have nothing better to do. My bad.

Fore more info on the Jefferson 1 and to donate to her legal defense fund, visit the Free the Jefferson 1 weblog here.

Here's an interesting little piece about a handicapped man being tackled, arrested, and put on trial for recording a conversation with a police officer.

If the police insist on not being recorded, citizens will just get sneaky, and start recording them on the sly.

[R]ightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law,’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual

Thomas Jefferson.

Just had to throw that quote out there.

What does "Freedom of Speech" really entail? Our new best friends over @ Bureaucrash have some ideas.

From Janet @ Bureaucrash.com:

I've been thinking a lot lately about freedom of speech. It is something that everyone in Canada and America values, or at least claims to value.

Ask a Canadian if they'd be willing to give up their freedom of speech, and they will likely tell you that in Canada we believe in free speech. Ask an American to support a candidate for president who's running on a promise to repeal the first amendment and they'll likely laugh in your face.

We are two of the freest countries in the world, and for all of our flirtations with socialism, free speech is something that average Canadians and Americans continue to have at least a strong superficial belief in.

So why is it that so often we hear the words "I believe in free speech, but..."

But what?

Well the one I hear most often is, "We believe in free speech, but freedom of speech is not freedom from responsibility."

OK, so we need to make sure that people are responsible for their actions. Let's examine this argument against free speech. (And it is an argument against free speech - unless you have complete freedom of speech, you do not have free speech. Is it freedom of religion if you can be any religion but pagan/Catholic/Jewish? Same deal.)

More here.