Rational Review

Myanmar: UN agency suspends aid flights

2008-05-09T15:29:29Z

“The UN food agency on Friday suspended all aid flights into Myanmar over ‘unacceptable’ restrictions by the junta, which has refused to allow foreign relief workers to help desperate cyclone survivors. The World Food Programme’s decision cast new doubt on the regime’s claim to be doing all it can to save the 1.5 million people at risk of starvation and disease after last week’s devastating storm. The situation on the ground is one of horror almost beyond imagining — with starving survivors picking for food in waterways littered with the bodies of the dead — and aid groups agree time is running out. But the military, deeply suspicious of any outside influence that could dilute the tight control it has kept on the nation for 46 years, insists that it will welcome supplies from abroad, but must distribute them itself.” (05/08/08)

Bush set to veto $300 million ag welfare bill

2008-05-09T15:29:24Z

“Administration officials have dashed hopes among farm-state lawmakers from both parties that President Bush will sign a nearly $300 billion farm bill that they finished Thursday. The veto warning sets up an effort by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, joined by many farm-state Republicans, to override a veto and defend government payments to farmers earning record incomes even as food prices soar. Administration officials said the bill, which would set U.S. food policy for the next five years, is loaded with budget gimmicks that disguise a $20 billion increase in spending. ‘At a time of record farm income, Congress decided to further increase farm subsidy rates, qualify more people for taxpayer support, and move programs toward more government control,’ Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer said.” (05/09/08)

Iraq: 14 killed in Sadr City, Green Zone attacked

2008-05-09T15:29:21Z

“A day after a top al-Sadr politician indicated about a military onslaught on the Shiite strongholds in Baghdad’s Sadr City, U.S. forces have killed 14 militants in the slum area of Sadr City …. U.S. military pounded heavily with air strikes and tanks …. militants attacked the heavily fortified Green Zone in downtown Baghdad with rockets and missiles.” (05/09/08)

GA: Ex-cop testifies that officers routinely lied for warrants

2008-05-09T15:29:15Z

“A former Atlanta police officer testified Thursday that narcotics officers routinely lied under oath when seeking search warrants — a practice that led to police killing a 92-year-old woman. Former Detective Gregg Junnier told a Fulton County jury that detectives would tell judges that they had verified their informants had bought cocaine from dealers by searching them for drugs before the buy took place. … Junnier testified at the Superior Court trial of one of his former partners, Arthur Tesler, who was guarding the back of [Kathryn] Johnston’s Neal Street home on that day, Nov. 21, 2006. Junnier and Smith pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and face up to 10 and 12 years in prison, respectively, depending on their cooperation. Tesler faces 15 years on charges of lying in an official investigation, violating his oath as an officer and false imprisonment, a charge stemming from illegally surrounding Johnston’s house.” (05/09/08)

House passes mortgage bailout bill despite veto threat

2008-05-09T15:29:08Z

“A bill that would allow the government to guarantee new mortgages for homeowners facing foreclosure passed the House on Thursday, but it faces a veto threat from the White House and an uncertain fate in the Senate. The bill was approved by a vote of 266-154. A companion bill that would send $15 billion to states to buy and fix up foreclosed properties also passed the House by a vote of 239-188.” (05/08/08)

A wall between environment and state

2008-05-09T15:25:23Z

“Many people can only believe in humanity as Robert Heinlein did for so long, and eventually must either cling with Joe Klein to ‘the perfectibility of human nature,’ or give up altogether. (The same process can be seen among progressives when it comes to patriotism. Faced with an unlovable country, they either turn to loving it for its potential/perfectibility, or they give up trying.) Those who give up on humanism are finding something more transcendent waiting to take over the role of prime valuer: the environment. And with the advent of the Carbon Footprint, environmentalism stands ready to not only structure every aspect of your life (as religion is said to do), but to give meaning and importance to things that never mattered before (like what you eat for breakfast). Every decision takes on a life-or-death importance. Even your choice of windows or lightbulbs becomes a way for you to ’save the environment.’” (05/08/08)

Don’t blame Britney and Miley

2008-05-09T15:25:17Z

“By 1997, some Christians decided to boycott Disney because Disney — which was never anything remotely like a Christian company — started to give out same-sex partner benefits to their gay employees. If your business employs large numbers of animators, make-up artists, costume designers, and dancers, this sounds like a sensible business decision. The new generation of Christians, however, demanded ‘wholesome’ entertainment from a ‘wholesome’ company, when their grandparents would have warned that seeking ‘entertainment’ was itself the problem. The very fact that a Christian boycott of Disney was called for was proof-positive that the Old Time Religion had died and the boycott could never work. The real problem was not Disney, but the fact that conservative Christians watched Disney videos and vacationed at DisneyWorld. … Had the old-time Christians been as vehemently against radio, records, and television as they were against cards, alcohol, and shows, conservative Christianity may actually have become a counter-cultural movement today, rather than a whiny, paranoid subculture within the mainstream culture that it has become.” (05/08/08)

Root 2008: Anarchism, age of consent laws and the Dallas Accord

2008-05-09T15:25:08Z

“People form governments to protect the majority against a small criminal minority. In a ‘perfect world’ loving, caring parents would always be the perfect guardians. But we do not live in a utopia. Unfortunately, many criminals also have children of their own. And these innocent children are often abused by criminal parents. In the real world that we live in, some parents either fail to protect their children, or are the predators and child abusers themselves. Anarchists may be fellow travelers with us libertarians in the sense that they want to cooperate with our efforts to dramatically reduce the size of government, but where we part company is in their desire to eliminate the state altogether.” (05/07/08)

Ruwart 2008: Do you believe in liberty?

2008-05-09T15:25:03Z

“Mr. Root is new to the LP; he doesn’t understand how liberty works because he hasn’t done his homework. He doesn’t understand the hidden dangers in government’s monopoly on force; he scorns the notion that justice is best served when we have competition in everything, including courts, police, and national defense. He calls such competition ‘anarchy;’ I call it ‘freedom from government oppression.’ Had Mr. Root walked in Steve Kubby’s shoes and had his children ripped from his arms, he might consider more carefully the unintended consequences of bans and prohibitions. Instead, as Mr. Root freely admits, he reacts emotionally to the superstitious belief that passing a law ‘makes it so.’” (05/09/08)

Relight the flame of freedom in Denver

2008-05-09T15:24:53Z

“First, I want to say how it warmed my heart to read the postings that accumulated on the article by Wayne Allyn Root, or WAR, as I think of him, on Third Party Watch. It was heart warning to see comments from so many people who understand what the Libertarian Party was intended to accomplish. Even better, one of the links lead to LP Radicals, a site that actually uses the phrase, ‘Radical Abolitionism.’ That brought back a wave of nostalgia.” (05/08/08)

Ned Parker on Antiwar Radio, 05/09/08

2008-05-09T14:52:58Z

Ned Parker, Iraq correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, joins host Scott Horton. 12:15pm Eastern on KAOS 92.7 FM, Austin, TX or live on the web. [live radio or stream] (05/09/08)

Cato Daily Podcast, 05/09/08

2008-05-09T14:51:21Z

“Bush’s law since 9/11,” featuring Eric Lichtblau. [MP3] (05/09/08)

Free Talk Live, 05/08/08

2008-05-09T14:50:21Z

“Man Faces Prison Over Snack Cakes / The State Kidnaps Grandma / American Politics / Want to be controlled? / The Watered Down LP / Video Games, ACDC, Dungeons and Dragons / Wussification / Helmets / The Military and Video Games / Saving the Federal Govt? / Stores may be forced to ID for video games! / Decentralized Activism / Lawyers / IN Porn Law / Federal Taxes / Jack Thompson.” [MP3] (05/08/08)

THINKFuture #599

2008-05-09T14:49:34Z

“Giant Govt vs Big Govt / Total GOP Destruction / Al Gore Disgusts Me / Medical Device Regulation.” [MP3] (05/08/08)

Christine Smith on SPOX Talk

2008-05-09T14:48:02Z

Christine Smith, candidate for the Libertarian Party’s 2008 presidential nomination, joins host “Shabby” for an interview. [M4U audio] (05./06/08)

Was Hillary channeling George Wallace?

2008-05-09T13:43:21Z

“Citing an Associated Press analysis ‘that found how Senator Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me,’ she went on to say: ‘There’s a pattern emerging here.’ There is indeed a pattern emerging — and it is a pattern that must dismay everyone who admires the Clintons and has defended them against the charge that they are exploiting racial divisions.” (05/09/08)

For president: None of the above

2008-05-09T13:40:01Z

“It’s probably no secret to anyone who reads my column regularly that I will not be voting for either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton for president. But I also will not be voting for John McCain. I could tell you all the reasons and have expressed them already in a number of columns in recent months. But this time, I’ll let someone with whom I seldom agree express them for me.” (05/07/08)

More fleas in the Paul Revolution

2008-05-09T13:35:19Z

“Lie down with dogs and you wake up with fleas — so goes the old saying. And it is true. Ron Paul thought he had the racism issue behind him. … But [the] racist problem just won’t go away. And it won’t go away because Paul’s campaign or his campaign people won’t let it go away. … I still don’t think Paul is a racist himself. But I also believe he doesn’t mind hav[ing] the support of racists and that he is following the strategy that his good friend Lew Rockwell outlined some years ago.” (05/08/08)

Has Obama finally clinched it?

2008-05-09T13:09:33Z

“When Hillary Clinton questioned Gen. David Petraeus last September, she famously said that to believe his description of progress in Iraq required ‘a willing suspension of disbelief.’ After the Indiana and North Carolina primaries, the same may now be true about her case for winning the Democratic nomination. It’s not that she can’t win, but with only 217 delegates up for grabs in the six remaining contests, the scenario for victory has become more fantastical, narrow, and painful. Clinton won Indiana, but, as she pointed out repeatedly to Petraeus, individual victories — even a surge of them in Ohio, Texas, and Pennsylvania — don’t change the whole story. The larger reality still holds. Barack Obama has the lead in elected delegates and the popular vote. Those leads increased Tuesday as he widened his margin by 15 delegates and roughly 200,000 more votes. For Clinton to move ahead in those numbers now, she must bring more states into the union.” (05/07/08)

Take that, Big Oil!

2008-05-09T13:08:21Z

“Imagine this. You’ve built the better mousetrap. (Because lasers and pneumatic tubes are cool, let’s imagine it uses them.) You’ve persevered through years of trial and error in your garage, enduring sleepless nights, the mockery of friends, the eye-rolling of family, and the non-lethal laser wounds to the family cat. But it was all worth it. You take your invention and, with your last few pennies, manage to bring it to market. It’s a smash hit. It starts flying off shelves. You earn back the investment in raw materials and maybe something close to compensation for your time. Now you’re ready for the big payoff. There’s just one thing left to do: make an appointment with the regional Reasonable Profits Board to find out how much of your windfall is reasonable for you to keep. … Replace ‘Mousetrap’ with ‘oil,’ and you have a good idea of how some in Congress want to bring the oil industry to heel.” [editor’s note: Interesting analogy, but I’m not sure how demanding that the American taxpayer subsidize perpetual worldwide war to secure the oil for you so that you can sell it to them constitutes “building a better mousetrap” unless the “mousetrap” you’re trying to top is the Nigerian letter swindle - TLK] (05/09/08)