|
“Hundreds of Tibetans are being rounded up and detained in Lhasa and armed paramilitary groups are patrolling the streets in advance of the anniversary of fatal riots in 2008, The Times has learnt. Authorities are anxious to avoid a repeat of the anti-Chinese attacks, in which about 20 people were killed when Tibetans rampaged through the city, setting fire to shops and offices. This month marks a particularly sensitive period in the region as March 10 is also regarded by Tibetans as the anniversary of the start of an abortive uprising against Chinese rule in 1959 that resulted in the Dalai Lama’s flight into exile in India. Lhasa residents told The Times that as many as 400 to 500 people had been detained in the latest crackdown.” (03/11/10) http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article7056345.ece | | Report Bad Link |
|
“A Mississippi school board has canceled a high school prom after a lesbian student challenged its policy banning same-sex dates. The school board in Itawamba County in northeast Mississippi announced the decision Wednesday. Itawamba County Agricultural High School officials had told 18-year-old senior Constance McMillen last month she could not attend the prom with her girlfriend, a fellow student, and could not wear a tuxedo …. She took her case to the American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi, which called on school officials on March 2 to reverse their decision and asked for a response by Wednesday …” (03/10/10) http://tinyurl.com/ygshhwk | | Report Bad Link |
|
“Score one more for Einstein. A new study has confirmed his theory of general relativity works on extremely large scales. The study was one of the first rigorous tests of this theory of gravity beyond our solar system. The research found that even over vast scales of galaxies and clusters of galaxies, the equations of general relativity predict the way that mass pulls on other mass in the universe. The new work also helps rule out a competing theory of gravity that seeks to do away with the need for bizarre concepts like dark matter and dark energy that have irked some scientists. This research indicates those pesky ideas may be here to stay.” (03/10/10) http://tinyurl.com/ykjfy83 | | Report Bad Link |
|
“Suspected militants armed with assault rifles and a homemade bomb attacked the offices of a U.S.-based Christian aid group helping earthquake survivors in northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing six Pakistani employees, police and the organization said. The attack prompted World Vision, a major international humanitarian group, to suspend its operations in Pakistan.” (03/10/10) http://tinyurl.com/yhftqay | | Report Bad Link |
|
“Three policemen were wounded during a blast on a highway near Saidiya. Two people were arrested at the scene. A bomb blast in Garma wounded two policemen. In Mosul, a soldier and a civilian were wounded in a blast. A blast at a checkpoint wounded a policeman.” (03/10/10) http://tinyurl.com/ycfp2ft | | Report Bad Link |
|
“Kerrville police said a home’s motion detection lights had gone off in the 1200 block of Jefferson Street, illuminating a strange man in the front yard. The first time happened in January: the lights exposed a masked man peeping through windows. This week, though, it was a strange man exposing himself. So, officers say, the homeowner went to her bedroom, got a pistol, and met him at the door.” (03/10/10) http://tinyurl.com/yc8h5tr | | Report Bad Link |
|
“U.S. mortgage foreclosure filings dropped for a second straight month in February, and notched the smallest annual increase in four years as housing-rescue efforts contained activity, a report released on Thursday showed. … Foreclosure filings — including mortgage default notices, house auctions and home repossessions by banks — were reported on 308,524 properties in February, down 2 percent from January, but still up 6 percent from the year-ago month, real estate data firm RealtyTrac said.” (03/11/10) http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1014858620100311 | | Report Bad Link |
|
“The top United Nations envoy in Iraq urged election officials Wednesday to release the results of this week’s historic vote as quickly as possible, saying Iraqis “have the right to know” the results as soon as possible. The call by U.N. diplomat Ad Melkert came as Iraqi election officials furiously counted ballot tallies in Sunday’s election that appeared to be coming down to a contest between Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, former premier Ayad Allawi and a coalition of conservative Shiites.” (03/10/10) http://tinyurl.com/yh3tk6n | | Report Bad Link |
|
“An open diplomatic row during the visit of Vice President Joe Biden has shined a spotlight on the U.S. failure to rein in Israeli settlement ambitions and deepened Palestinian suspicions that the United States is too weak to broker a deal. Biden’s handshakes and embraces gave way to one of the strongest rebukes of Israel by a senior U.S. official in years after Israel’s announcement during his visit that it plans to build 1,600 homes in disputed east Jerusalem.” (03/10/10) http://tinyurl.com/y8896kf | | Report Bad Link |
|
“Journalists have become a prime target in an Iranian government crackdown on the opposition following last June’s disputed presidential election, with 52 of them currently held — making Iran the top jailer of journalists in the world, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. The wave of arrests, which has only accelerated recently, has sent a chill through journalists in Iran at a time when the opposition is struggling to maintain its challenge against the government in the face of a heavy crackdown on pro-reform figures.” (03/10/10) http://tinyurl.com/yzy7avv | | Report Bad Link |
|
“Virginia’s General Assembly became the first in the nation Wednesday to approve legislation that bucks any attempt by President Barack Obama and Congress to implement a national health care overhaul in individual states. The Republican-ruled House of Delegates, with wide Democratic support, voted 80-17 without debate for the largely symbolic step aimed at the Democratic-backed reforms pushed by Obama and stalled in Congress.” (03/10/10) http://tinyurl.com/ylx98j9 | | Report Bad Link |
|
“Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad used a brief visit to Afghanistan on Wednesday to lob insults at the United States and argue that international forces won’t stop terrorism and will only lead to more civilian deaths. Ahmadinejad said the United States was playing a ‘double game’ in Afghanistan, fighting militants it once supported.” (03/10/10) http://tinyurl.com/yj76q62 | | Report Bad Link |
|
“The Pentagon is training people to hack into its own computer networks. ‘To beat a hacker, you need to think like one,’ said Jay Bavisi, co-founder and president of the International Council of Electronic Commerce Consultants, or EC-Council. His company was chosen by the Pentagon to oversee training of Department of Defense employees who work in computer security-related jobs and certify them when the training is complete.” (03/10/10) http://tinyurl.com/yh8k6a5 | | Report Bad Link |
|
“A federal judge who found it unconstitutional that Congress tried to cut funding to the activist group ACORN has rejected a government request to change her mind and has ordered government agencies to make it clear the funding isn’t blocked. In a written ruling Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Nina Gershon made permanent her conclusion last year that the cutoff of funding was unconstitutional.” (03/10/10) http://tinyurl.com/yheltxh | | Report Bad Link |
|
“House Democratic leaders announced Wednesday that they will ban the much-criticized practice of using annual spending bills to direct pet projects to companies that often return the favor with campaign contributions. Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., chairman of the Appropriations panel, told reporters that he hopes the step will mean 1,000 fewer earmarks and break the linkage between campaign contributions and earmarks that has sparked intense criticism and resulted in ethics probes of several lawmakers.” [editor’s note: Given that more than a few of the worst offenders in this practice are among their own ranks, this should be mighty interesting - SAT] (03/10/10) http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100310/ap_on_bi_ge/us_congress_earmarks | | Report Bad Link |
|
“U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates raised the possibility Wednesday that some of the U.S. forces involved in the Afghanistan surge could leave the country before President Barack Obama’s announced July 2011 date to begin withdrawal. Without giving specifics, Gates said, ‘It would have to be conditions-based.’” (03/10/10) http://tinyurl.com/ygpxl8s | | Report Bad Link |
|
“A California lawmaker has stepped into a growing gun rights debate by introducing legislation that would essentially outlaw what’s called the ‘open carry’ of unloaded weapons on public property. The measure, which was first introduced last month but is not expected to have its first hearing until April, is meant to address the growing ‘open carry’ movement, in which some gun owners have taken to meeting in coffee shops, parks and restaurants while wearing holstered weapons to raise awareness about gun rights. ‘People should be free from the fear and the potential for violence firearms represent,’ said Democratic Assembly Member Lori Saldana of San Diego, in a statement. ‘These displays of firearms can create potentially dangerous situations.’” (03/10/10) http://tinyurl.com/ydzsqsh | | Report Bad Link |
|
“Senator Scott Brown railed yesterday against President Obama and congressional Democrats for continuing their quest to pass a comprehensive healthcare bill, saying the majority party in Washington has failed to heed the lessons of his own surprise victory in January. ‘I was sent here in a message almost, to the administration and people up on Capitol Hill, that the American people expect us to do better,’ the Massachusetts Republican told a conference of the National Association of Health Underwriters in his most extensive remarks on healthcare since arriving in the capital. ‘Right now the healthcare plan they’re pushing, in particular, and the way they’re trying to do it, is wrong.’” (03/10/10) http://tinyurl.com/ylf6efr | | Report Bad Link |
|
“A bailout watchdog warned Thursday that the three infusions of federal for troubled lender GMAC could end up costing taxpayers billions of dollars. In a new report, the Congressional Oversight Panel said it is ‘deeply concerned’ that the Treasury Department has not insisted that GMAC ‘lay out a clear path to viability or a strategy for fully repaying taxpayers.’” (03/10/10) http://tinyurl.com/ykdtrw9 | | Report Bad Link |
|
“A tax squabble is forcing voters to decide next week whether to dissolve the boundaries of a central New York village known as the birthplace of women’s rights and the inspiration for a classic Christmas movie. The March 16 ballot question in Seneca Falls asks whether the 179-year-old village of 6,600 should be absorbed into the surrounding town of the same name. Even though the name won’t change, some residents expressed concern that a ‘yes’ vote could erode the village’s storied identity. Supporters say the ballot proposal would do away with a costly duplication of governmental services. The village was the site of the first known women’s rights convention, in 1848, and claims to be the model for Bedford Falls, the mythical community depicted in the 1946 movie It’s a Wonderful Life.” (03/10/10) http://tinyurl.com/yj6otd7 | | Report Bad Link |
Commentary
News | Audio and Video | Events and Movement News
|
“Madison writing in the Federalist Papers knew that no matter how many weapons systems are in service to protecting the establishment powers, nothing can prevent the people from eventually reaching a point where merely by refusing to cooperate the system collapses in on itself. It’s not just guns that would come out in the streets when that happens. It would be SUV’s, iPhones, IEDs, and — in general — the indignation and ingenuity of millions of people who have their garages, attics, and basements filled with so much lethal junk that even I — a science-fiction writer — can’t imagine the havoc they could create if the Middle Class American ever really got pissed off. The Supreme Court of the United States is the mediator between a nation of potential revolutionary maniacs and an establishment that exists — no shit, really — only by their sufferance.” (03/10/10) http://jneilschulman.rationalreview.com/2010/03/a-bad-case-of-liberty/ | | Report Bad Link |
|
“America has become a society of elites. Specifically, those in the political class who enjoy an endless economic bounty that comes from the sweat and blood of taxpayers. At the pinnacle are politicians with rich salaries, plush expense accounts (not counting bribes), platinum pensions and health insurance, etc. Then there are the millions of civil servants who are paid considerably more than their private-sector counterparts, who have greater job security due to unions, and who enjoy a pension plan that others can only dream about. The devouring appetite of these elites is fed by the ever-increasing taxes, fees and other money-grabs from the private, productive sector of society. As the level of theft increases, more productive people are being driven in poverty, homelessness and a despair that could easily turn into rage. Last night I was reading about the conditions in 18th century, pre-Revolutionary France. (Specifically, I was reading about the Physiocrats who were precursors to libertarianism.) The parallels to the U.S. did not escape my notice.” (03/10/10) http://www.wendymcelroy.com/news.php?extend.3131 | | Report Bad Link |
|
Twenty-one reasons why statism is a radical and radically incoherent theory
Strike the Root by Jakub Bozydar Wisniewski “Upon encountering the claim that some non-statist doctrine (e.g., anarcho-capitalism) is practically unsafe due to its radical character, it is worthwhile to point to the glaring radicalism of every form of statism. Having thus suggested, however, that it is not radicalism per se that is a problem with any given socio-economic doctrine, it is even more worthwhile to underscore that statism is not simply radical, but radical in its incoherence. It seems a very fitting description for the theory that claims, among others: 1. That the only sure way of protecting oneself against violence, aggression and coercion is to help institute and continually support a vast, monopolistic apparatus of institutionalized violence, aggression and coercion.” (03/10/10) http://tinyurl.com/yc8r964 | | Report Bad Link |
|
“The idea that invoking ‘the rules’ against a government will force it to lie down obediently at one’s feet and accept a leash around its neck is beyond superstitious — it’s foolhardy. There are no magic words. There is no secret formula. The relationship between government and governed is inherently adversarial.” (03/10/10) http://c4ss.org/content/2016 | | Report Bad Link |
|
“When the City of Chicago banned all handguns recently, countless Americans rightly cried foul. When it looked like the Supreme Court might overturn the ban, gun-rights advocates cheered the decision. But while their heart is in the right place, their enthusiasm is not, as what gun-rights advocates are really cheering is the federal government assuming even more power.” (03/10/10) http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=678 | | Report Bad Link |
|
“Stack’s worldview, like Bedell’s, was a personalized hodge-podge. These men represent not the far left, not the far right, but the very far end of the political long tail. If they belong to a tradition, you won’t find it by tracing the intellectual evolution of any organized movement. You’ll find it in the lives of people like George Metesky, Samuel Byck, and Ted Kaczynski.” (03/10/10) http://reason.com/archives/2010/03/10/the-children-of-george-metesky | | Report Bad Link |
|
“In spite of the fact that the United States faces no enemy anywhere in the world capable of opposing it on a battlefield, the Defense budget for 2011 will go up 7.1 percent from current levels. A lot of the new spending will be on drones, America’s latest contribution to western civilization, capable of surveilling large areas on the ground and delivering death from the skies. It is a peculiarly American vision of warfare, with a ‘pilot’ sitting at a desk half a world away and pressing a button that can kill a target far below. … Washington’s embrace of drones as the weapon of choice for international assassination is one major reason why the United States has become the evil empire.” (03/11/10) http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2010/03/10/the-rogue-nation/ | | Report Bad Link |
|
“The ‘I have nothing to hide’ response is used time and again by folks who I now see as exhibitionists — exhibitionists for the state. These folks see nothing wrong with opening their private lives to the state — they have nothing to hide. So the very same folks who pull their blinds to keep the leering eyes of their neighbors out of their bedrooms open those very same blinds to those very same neighbors when they (their neighbors) act as agents of the state. And those folks do so as if a state badge transforms their neighbors into something other than voyeurs — as if the badge makes it all OK.” (03/11/10) http://www.lewrockwell.com/fedako/fedako18.1.html | | Report Bad Link |
|
“[T]his week I look at out of control state licensing requirements. The state of Louisiana now licenses 87 professions, including acupuncturist’s assistants, manicurists and even florists. You want to earn a living engaging in consensual trade with other adults? You must kiss the bureaucrats’ rings first. Fortunately, someone’s fighting back. My syndicated column this week features the efforts of the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public-interest law firm that specializes in challenging such intrusions on freedom. (Who knew there were lawyers who weren’t evil?)” (03/10/10) http://tinyurl.com/y9yewbv | | Report Bad Link |
|
“Financial reform, as it is called, shouldn’t be all that complicated. Break up the banks deemed ‘too big to fail,’ since that offends any possibility of market discipline and puts taxpayers on the hook for future bailouts. Crack down on gambling with other peoples’ money in the financial casino. Give consumers a cop on the beat to protect them from the cons and frauds. Tax the big guys to get our money back. Outlaw compensation schemes that give million dollar incentives to make risky bets. But, of course, finance is its own world, with its own patois, ethos and interests. And banks and regulators have a strong interest in making this stuff complicated.” (03/10/10) http://tinyurl.com/yzhzn4z | | Report Bad Link |
|
“About three years ago, it looked like the United States might be emerging from its long neoconservative night to play a constructive role in ending the Israeli-Palestinian and broader Israeli-Arab conflicts. … The Bush administration had long resisted that equation, influenced as it was by the neoconservatives and their often Likudist-inspired Middle East worldview. The conflict and the accumulating grievances that it has generated have a deeply corrosive effect on both America’s standing and ability to get anything done in the region and beyond. At about the same time, Barack Obama, then a young senator who was just launching his presidential campaign, seemed to get it.” (03/09/10) http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=a_path_to_peace | | Report Bad Link |
|
“I’m not sure yet what to make of the arrest of an owner-operator of a medical marijuana facility called 215 Agenda in Lake Forest, and two others. There certainly are operators of such facilities who operate outside the law, and the state law and guidelines issued by Attorney Gen. Jerry Brown, though they were developed in cooperation with patient advocates, have some ambiguities and shortcomings, IMO. On the other hand, given that it issued complaints against 35 facilities last year and has made it clear it wants to shut down all such operations in the city, it appears that Lake Forest is not all that interested in a good-faith effort to allow California’s medical marijuana law to operate without unnecessary hindrance. A particular example of bad faith is the city attorney’s invocation of federal law. The city is a subdivision of the state and its officials’ job is to uphold state law, not federal law.” (03/10/10) http://tinyurl.com/yldrle2 | | Report Bad Link |
|
“It will take many weeks of coalition building after Sunday’s election before we know who rules Iraq, or whether the country will unite or splinter along sectarian fault lines, but for the United States it will mean success or failure. The outcome will shape Iraq’s post-America future. Robert Malley of the International Crisis Group posed the vital, worst-case scenario question. ‘If you got back to a situation of chaos and of uncontrolled violence in Iraq, would that lead the administration to say we’ve done our best, it’s now up to the Iraqis, we’re leaving? Or, on the contrary,’ Malley asked on National Public Radio, ‘would it persuade the administration that it needs to stay a little bit longer, act a little bit more forcefully?’” (03/09/10) http://tinyurl.com/yjepage | | Report Bad Link |
|
“Long before Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi began talking up health care reform as a top priority for the Democratic Party, Congress and America, Dennis Kucinich was doing so. Indeed, the former Cleveland mayor, Ohio legislator, two-time presidential candidate and now senior U.S. House members has across the past 35 years been one of the country’s steadiest proponents of real reform of our broken health-care system. So Kucinich’s questioning of the reform legislation being advanced by President Obama and House Speaker Pelosi is neither casual nor uninformed. The congressman from Ohio knows the intricacies of the healthcare debate as well as any key player in Washington. And he objects to the compromises contained in the measure the president and the speaker are whipping House Democrats to support.” (03/08/10) http://tinyurl.com/yjs89dl | | Report Bad Link |
|
“There are many organizations that have been, for the best part of this Republic’s history, tax exempt. These groups are formed under what some call religion. The places of these religions are called churches, synagogue, mosque, holy places, and places of worship. I will use the term ‘churches’ in referring to all religions. If I offend someone, get over it.” (03/10/10) http://www.libertyforall.net/?p=3933 | | Report Bad Link |
|
“Are you aware that a Federal Reserve dollar bill is not a constitutional dollar? Perhaps you are, but if so, do you know what a constitutional dollar literally is? Is it gold? Is it silver? Is it both? What is actually meant by a metal standard? Can the United States or any country be on two standards at the same time? Can two metals circulate as coin if there is but one standard?” (03/10/10) http://mises.org/daily/4149 | | Report Bad Link |
|
“Floridians have suffered through the coldest winter in almost 30 years. In some parts of South Florida, it’s been colder than anytime in the last 83 years. So many records were smashed that if they were stacked, they would rival the thickness of Al Gore’s investment portfolio. In fact, Gore’s claims that global warming will produce dramatic and cataclysmic warming appear to be melting faster than any glacier. Gore is hardly alone in his poor forecasting record.” (03/08/10) http://tinyurl.com/yk747l7 | | Report Bad Link |
|
“It may be possible to look into America’s future. How? Watch what’s going on in Greece. According to the Washington Post, ‘Greece needs to raise about €23 billion [more than $31 billion] in April and May to pay debts coming due. Greek officials say that either is impossible, or would require punitive interest rates — making it harder to bring the budget under control — unless Europe helps out.’ So the Greek government awaits a bailout from Germany and France, but first it has to impress them that it is serious about fiscal austerity.” (03/10/10) http://www.fff.org/comment/com1003d.asp | | Report Bad Link |
|
“Paul Krugman recently declared that our real economics problem is this: ‘What’s limiting employment now is lack of demand for the things workers produce.’ Not surprisingly, this issue has been thrown about in socialist literature for more than a century. The idea that an economy operates only if workers are paid ‘enough to buy back the product’ is an important assumption behind Marxism.” (03/10/10) http://tinyurl.com/yjzp4gg | | Report Bad Link |
|
Five reasons why America should steer clear of a national ID card
Competitive Enterprise Institute by Alex Nowrasteh “The Senate is working toward a ghastly compromise on immigration reform that includes a biometric national identification card for all Americans. The stated purpose of this national ID, which an employee must present before getting a job, is to prevent undocumented workers from being employed. Back in December I warned that a national ID is the inevitable conclusion of the anti-immigration movement. The failure of E-Verify to catch 54% of undocumented workers is only accelerating the call for a national ID.” (03/09/10) http://tinyurl.com/yfuw6uh | | Report Bad Link |
|
“Back in 1996, the Catholic bishops of England and Wales issued a document, The Common Good and Catholic Social Teaching, to address political issues facing Britain at the time. Leaving aside the incoherence that characterized much of that text, a distinctly skeptical tone about market economies pervaded the document — almost to the point of being an anti-Thatcherite screed. … Fast-forward to 2010.” (03/09/10) http://tinyurl.com/ygljoyh | | Report Bad Link |
|
“If you grew up in America, you learned the Pledge of Allegiance pretty early in your life. And if you emigrated here, you learned it, either to fit in or before you tried to become an American citizen. But have you ever learned about the Pledge of Allegiance itself, and stopped repeating it by rote long enough to think about what you are pledging?” (03/07/10) http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2010/tle560-20100307-06.html | | Report Bad Link |
|
“Journalists are now in the same situation as steel workers in the1970s: they are destined to disappear, but they don’t know it. That was the assessment of a banker from BNP-Paribas at the French national press federation’s conference in Strasbourg in 2006. His words caused a sensation, but the statistics support him: having lost more than 2,300 jobs last year, the French press is going through a similar crisis to the United States, where more than 24,500 jobs were axed in 2009. Only 300,000 now work in newspapers in the US, compared to 415,000 a decade ago (according to Figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, quoted by Market Watch. The Washington Post has closed its regional bureaus, and the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune have filed for bankruptcy protection. Every national daily in France, apart from the sports daily, L’Equipe, has lost money. The decline is not surprising.” (03/10/10) http://counterpunch.org/benilde03102010.html | | Report Bad Link |
|
“Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) plans to use a parliamentary maneuver to force a Wednesday House vote on the removal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan. Kucinich’s resolution directs President Obama to remove troops 30 days from the day it is passed or, depending on whether troops can be removed safely in that time frame, no later than Dec. 31. The resolution’s substance and timing are revealing. For there are growing signs that some on the political right have new reservations about our continued military involvement in Afghanistan.” (03/10/10) http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11437 | | Report Bad Link |
|
“In an article published in the Wall Street Journal on March 8, 2010, Louise Radnofsky reports that the U.S. Conference of Mayors claims it ‘can put thousands to work on infrastructure projects, as was done in the 1930s.’ The mayors expressed a collective willingness to hire people on jobs that benefit their communities — provided, of course, that the costs of such projects are financed principally by taxpayers residing (and voting) in jurisdictions beyond city limits.” (03/09/10) http://www.independent.org/blog/?p=5266 | | Report Bad Link |
|
“‘We allow the insurance industry to run wild in this country,’ President Obama declared on Monday. ‘We can’t have a system that works better for the insurance companies than it does for the American people.’ Yet Obama’s plan to tame health insurers would boost their business, protect them from competition, and guarantee their profits, all at the expense of consumers and taxpayers. It is therefore not surprising that the insurance companies, while they object to the president’s rhetoric and quibble over some of the details, are happy to be domesticated.” (03/10/10) http://reason.com/archives/2010/03/10/insurers-gone-wild | | Report Bad Link |
|
“If you take into account prisoners, a large majority of African American men in some urban areas have been labeled felons for life. (In the Chicago area, the figure is nearly 80%.) These men are part of a growing undercaste — not class, caste — permanently relegated, by law, to a second-class status. They can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education, and public benefits, much as their grandparents and great-grandparents were during the Jim Crow era.” (03/08/10) http://tinyurl.com/yfhhwvz | | Report Bad Link |
|
“High-frequency finance can revolutionize economics and finance by turning accepted assumptions on their head and offering novel solutions to today’s issues. In high-frequency finance: The first step involves the collecting and scrubbing of data. The second step is to analyze the data and identify its statistical properties. Due to the masses of data points available for analysis (for many financial instruments one can collect more than 100,000 data points per day), identification of structures is straightforward — either there is a regularity or there is none. The third step is to formalise observations of specific patterns and seek tentative explanations/ theories to explain them. Fractal theory suggests that we can search for explanations of the big crisis by moving to another time scale — the short term.” (03/09/10) http://www.dailyspeculations.com/wordpress/?p=4503 | | Report Bad Link |
|
“Government investigators can’t find the Bush lawyer’s emails. His explanation makes about as much sense as his legal rationale for torture.” (03/10/10) http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/03/john-yoo-email-fail | | Report Bad Link |
|
“Just as the economy of Zimbabwe starts to recover after decades of economic mismanagement, Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s despotic president, is now intent on canceling any chance of Zimbabwe’s economy recovering. Mugabe is proposing a law that will require all foreign and white-owned businesses based in Zimbabwe to give up a controlling share to black Zimbabweans. Of course this is a populist move by Mugabe and he is spinning it as a policy that will empower blacks in Zimbabwe. Of course, the reality is that this is in fact a racist policy that will only benefit Mugabe and his cronies and if it becomes law it will be utterly disastrous for Zimbabwe.” (03/10/10) http://www.fr33agents.com/2494/more-mugabe-madness/ | | Report Bad Link |
|
“There’s no question that alternative and renewable fuels and energy sources are the way to go — if they’re feasible. Solar, wind, geo-thermal and others all promise clean and renewable energy for our future. But one of the more irritating things concerning some of those energy sources are the claims that they’re technologically ready for prime time. Geo-thermal being the exception (but a very minor source), wind and solar aren’t at all where they need to be to provide for the energy needs of the world. That doesn’t stop the usual suspects from implying they are.” (03/10/10) http://www.qando.net/?p=7414 | | Report Bad Link |
|
“Why aren’t Republicans livid about Obamacare’s proposed Medicare tax increase? As someone who believes in progressive taxation and would like to see Obamacare become law, I hesitate to bring this up. But I’m a long-standing observer of Homo Republicanus, and anthropological curiosity is getting the better of me. Obamacare would raise taxes on rich people. Why isn’t the GOP making a bigger stink?” (03/09/10) http://www.slate.com/id/2247374/ | | Report Bad Link |
|
“It seems that a group of US warming alarmists have been emailing one another discussing an offensive against those nasty people who question their theory. I was looking at those emails and one of them, apparently from David Schindler says: ‘I’d add that Edmonton is near snowless and has been shirtsleeve weather for most of 2010 instead of the usual -40C … but of course there are no major media here, so only the locals know!’ Unlike most global warming theory, which is based on models projecting into the future what the theorists think will happen, given the assumptions they make, this claim is easily verified in the here and now. So I did.” (03/10/10) http://tinyurl.com/ylpcdn4 | | Report Bad Link |
|
“The prospect of Nixon’s shadow falling across his administration must surely unsettle Barack Obama. The legacy of Richard Nixon has suffered for decades whenever an instance of political dishonor required historic quantification. Every time the ubiquitous suffix ‘gate’ is applied to political scandals both great and small — from Clinton-era Travelgate to today’s Climategate — we are forced to think in terms of Richard Nixon. In the minds of the American people, the Nixon years were fraught with criminal conspiracies, dirty tricks, and Machiavellian political machinations. Yet there are some lessons that President Obama would do well to learn from Nixon, particularly when it comes to our nation’s approach to the global terrorist threat.” (03/10/10) http://tinyurl.com/ykc3jxc | | Report Bad Link |
|
“It was only a matter of time before American elites abandoned their faux regret over Iraq. For tribalists and nationalists, America can err in its execution but never in its motives. There’s no question — as this glorifying, propagandistic Newsweek cover story reflects — that it’s now official dogma that this was the right thing to do, or at least that we produced something great and wonderful for that country, as was our intent all along (leaving aside the what is actually happening in Iraq). It’s nothing short of nauseating to watch those responsible glorify what they did without weighing — or, in Friedman’s case, affirmatively dismissing as irrelevant — the extreme amounts of death and suffering that they caused, all based on false pretenses. But this is why Tom Friedman is the favorite propagandist of ‘Washington insiders’ — because he feeds them the justifications they need to feel good about themselves.” (03/10/10) http://tinyurl.com/ykn8y95 | | Report Bad Link |
|
“‘Is Justice Scalia abandoning originalism?’ Josh Blackman and Ilya Shapiro pose the question in the Washington Examiner in the context of the McDonald gun rights case now before the Supreme Court. A better question would be ‘how can one abandon that which one has never practiced?’” (03/10/10) http://knappster.blogspot.com/2010/03/original-spin.html | | Report Bad Link |
|
Thomas Sowell: Them pore ole bosses need all the help they can get
Center for a Stateless Society by Kevin Carson “In Sowell’s morality play, the struggle between big government and big business is a struggle between power and freedom. Sowell has it exactly backwards. The struggle between big government and big business is about as authentic as the struggle between a ‘good cop’ and ‘bad cop’ in a police interrogation room.” (03/10/10) http://c4ss.org/content/2011 | | Report Bad Link |
|
“As Stepek says, the Wilsons — and thousands of other buy-to-let speculators — took a big risk, did not correctly anticipate the crunch coming, and so should bear the consequences, like every other entrepreneur. Except that now, the Bank has cut interest rates to just 0.5% — cutting the Wilsons’ own mortgage costs. What should have happened is that they had a fire-sale of their over-ambitious, debt-driven property portfolio, and Kent first-time buyers would have been in the pink. Instead, the Bank of England is bailing them out — at taxpayers’ expense.” (03/10/10) http://tinyurl.com/y9hec86 | | Report Bad Link |
|
“… And that’s why I’m against ‘fiscal conservatism.’ Why the fuck would I think it’s a good thing for the U.S. government to get back $100,000 more to spend on bailing out failed bankers or on hurting and killing innocent people? What I’d like most is for that money to get back into the hands of innocent working people (whether under the cover of Congressional featherbedding, or by any other means). But failing that, we’d still all be better off if Ron Paul took the $100,000, piled it up on the National Mall, and set it all on fire, rather than giving it back to the United States Treasury.” (03/09/10) http://tinyurl.com/yz8vk3z | | Report Bad Link |
|
“On average, taxes ate up every cent we earned last year from January 1 through April 13, according to the Tax Foundation’s analysis: ‘Tax Freedom Day answers the basic question, ‘What price is the nation paying for government?’ An official government figure for total tax collections is divided by the nation’s total income. The answer last year is that taxes amounted to 28.2 percent of our income, and the stretch of 103 days from January 1 to April 13 is 28.2 percent of the year.’ Add last year’s unprecedented federal budget deficit to the total taxes collected and the cost of government moves to May 29. That’s 41 percent of our total income to pay the price of government. Thomas Jefferson thought it was time to grab the muskets off the wall at 1 percent.” (03/10/10) http://spectator.org/archives/2010/03/10/losing-faith-in-the-feds | | Report Bad Link |
Audio and Video
jump to News | jump to Commentary | jump to Events and Movement News
|
Julie Fox, Libertarian candidate for Illinois Comptroller, joins host Kenneth John. 9-10am Central on WRMN 1410 AM, Elgin, IL or live on the web. [live radio or stream] (03/15/10) http://freedomrings.net/ | | Report Bad Link |
|
“Reason.tv’s Ted Balaker sat down with Postrel to discuss organ markets, wonder drugs, and how to reform health care without squashing innovation.” [Flash video] (03/10/10) http://reason.com/blog/2010/03/10/reasontv-virginia-postrel-on-h | | Report Bad Link |
|
“Reconciling ObamaCare,” featuring Michael D. Tanner. [MP3] (03/10/10) http://tinyurl.com/cato031010 | | Report Bad Link |
|
“During a question and answer session at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, one man opined ‘One thing I’ve learned here at CPAC is that the ‘C’ actually doesn’t stand for ‘Libertarianism,’ it’s not ‘L’PAC.’ When Congressman Ron Paul won the annual straw poll at CPAC, talk host Rush Limbaugh made a point to tell his listeners that CPAC wasn’t conservative this year because a libertarian had won. Both men are worse than just wrong. They’re on crack.” [Flash video] (03/09/10) http://tinyurl.com/ybrvcnq | | Report Bad Link |
|
“Former CIA and DIA officer Philip Giraldi discusses the usual suspects who are calling for war with Iran, the practical limitations on the U.S. military’s ability to fight a third concurrent war, the ploy of letting Israel start a war with Iran so the U.S. will be obligated to finish it, likely U.S. sponsorship of the terrorist organization (and former al Qaeda satellite group) Jundallah, birth defects in Iraq linked to depleted uranium and the terrible U.S. network news shows exemplified by NBC’s Andrea Mitchell’s conflicted reporting.” [Flash audio or MP3] (03/06/10) http://antiwar.com/radio/2010/03/06/philip-giraldi-27/ | | Report Bad Link |
Movement News & Events
News | Commentary |Audio and Video
|
Check our sidebar calendar for this week’s freedom movement events. Don’t see your event? Drop us a line at info@rationalreview.com … or see: www.rationalreview.com/add-your-event-to-our-calendar … for instructions on adding your events directly! http://upcoming.yahoo.com/group/4042/ | | Report Bad Link |
