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Sunday, March 31, 2002
"Anything other than free enterprise always means a society of compulsion and lower living standards, and any form of socialism strictly enforced means dictatorship and the total state. That this statement is still widely disputed only illustrates the degree to which malignant fantasy can capture the imagination of intellectuals." -- Lew Rockwell "The Constitution does NOT stipulate any "separation of church and state." What it DOES prohibit is any law effecting 'an establishment of religion.' This should include the churchless new religions of dogmatic earth-worship, government-worship and elitism. " -- Bert Rand "Liberals seem to assume that, if you don't believe in their particular political solutions, then you don't really care about the people that they claim to want to help." -- Dr. Thomas Sowell "Asking liberals where wages and prices come from is like asking six-year-olds where babies come from." -- Dr. Thomas Sowell Keep and Bear Arms - 'Boston Mayor was right to drop gun case' Submitted by: Newslinks Director "This case was frankly a publicity stunt - an expensive publicity stunt supposedly in the cause of "public health." But the roughly $500,000 it cost so far was diverted from other goals. There is no telling how many more infants might have been recruited for immunization, how many more mothers might have received help toward avoiding a low birth weight baby, or dozens of other things that might have been done..." - Opinion of BostonHerald.com Don Perata: Ultimate Hypocrite In 1999, state senator Don Perata authored SB 23, a draconian gun ban. But when Don Perata himself felt the need for personal protection, what did he do? He obtained a permit to carry a concealed firearm! Mr. Perata enjoys the ability to defend his self and family using means he denies to all law-abiding Californians! Below you will find the actual 1999 "Good Cause" letter he used to justify his permit. (Ed. Note: NRAWinningTeam.com has been unable to locate any documentation substantiating his claim of "overt threats".) (Mr. Perata appears to be typical of many supporters of victim disarmament--guns for them, none for others.--TA) Keep and Bear Arms - Murder spree brings additional life terms (NC) OpSD -- The article doesn't tell the whole story: Roache was captured by an armed citizen who then called the police--that's how the murder spree ended. (How the media protects us from the truth about armed self defense.--TA) Townhall.com: Measuring gender bias at M.I.T. not scientific by John Leo (3/31) The sad truth is that MIT, one of the world's great centers of scientific education, has now produced and accepted two astonishingly unscientific studies of its own administrative behavior. TownHall.com: Debra Saunders The taint is everywhere without a lawsuit, because slavery leaves its woeful mark on the American soul. With a lawsuit, the taint of slavery is everywhere, and it's followed by a new injustice -- a very small group of African Americans loudly proclaiming that they are victims of centuries-old sins and demanding money for damages they didn't suffer from people who had nothing to do with slavery. That's not justice. It's not even retribution. Townhall.com: Campaign Finance "Reform"? by George Will (3/31) Bush said reform should protect ``the rights of citizen groups to engage in issue advocacy.'' But reformers trumpet their desire to impede such advocacy. NewsMax.com: Commentmax Archives Under the guise of "fighting terrorism," the current administration and its party have advanced domestic socialism on every front, from the vast expansion of the federal role in education, to a 50 percent increase in the length of time for unemployment benefits, to the creation of a vast new national "service" program (one Republican bill mandates this "service" for all), to a refusal of the simple, pro-Second Amendment solution of permitting pilots to be armed to fight air terror, in favor of the complex, rights-eroding solutions that put military troops in every airport, federalized tens of thousands of airport employees, and created legions of burdensome regulations. NewsMax.com: Commentmax Archives During her race-baiting Senate campaign (see "Hillary's Race War," Click here for article) Hillary cozied up to Al Sharpton, bashed Giuliani, vilified the NYPD and declared the accidental shooting of Amadou Diallou a "murder." She inflamed racial tensions to a fever pitch. Saturday, March 30, 2002
A Bill of Rights that means what the majority wants it to mean is worthless. ~~ Justice Antonin Scalia "Lenin said give me a child for the first five years of his life and he'll be mine thereafter. The NEA has your child for 12 years. Vouchers are looking better and better all the time." --Unk. "Warning to the Democrats and the Greens: Gun the regulation engine on motor vehicles and you'll dig yourself into a deeper hole than you did with firearms. There are vastly more truck and SUV owners than there are members of the NRA."~~Brock Yates--Tech Central Station Once lead this people into war and they will forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance. PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON the victim disarmament crowd – the folks that would rather see a young lady strangled with her own pantyhose rather than use a gun to defend herself, to quote L. Neil Smith. Never before in our nation's history have Americans been so unwilling to actually pay attention to important matters. According to newspaper-circulation statistics and television-news ratings, only about 20 percent of us actually take the time to be informed. (Bill O'Reilly) In UN and media parlance, CO2 has gone from essential trace gas (which is what it really is) to "pollutant" and now, "toxic gas emission." A most impressive rebranding exercise considering this minute fraction of the atmosphere ultimately supports almost the entire biosphere. Our lives depend on its presence in the atmosphere and now it's spoken of as a "toxic gas emission." (http://www.junkscience.com/) Other than supporting The Bill of Rights, does anything constitute treason in this country any more? ~~ Minority Mike Since Columbine, though, many school administrators would rather create a totalitarian environment than take any risk. Back in 1969, the Supreme Court announced, "It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights ... at the schoolhouse gate." In fact, school administrators make that argument all the time. This time, they may be wrong. (Steve Chapman--The Danger When Schools Try To Stamp Out Risk--Townhall.com--06-03-01) If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual. ~~ Frank Herbert The gun-control movement is driven by raw emotion. Facts are irrelevant. Logic is spurned. Utter nonsense is solemnly intoned. It's little wonder that our most emotive president (Clinton) has made gun control his signature domestic issue. — Don Feder Op-Ed: Michael A. Bellesiles -- Anti-Gun Nut of the Century --Randolph Roth, a member of the History Department at Ohio State University and a member of the Editorial Board of Historical Methods says that Bellesiles' claim that homicide rates were low everywhere among European Americans before the 1850s is "false." This claim is important because it is vital to Bellesiles' thesis that low homicide rates and an absence of guns and gun violence went hand in hand. Roth says that "every tally of homicides Bellesiles reports is either misleading or wrong." Op-Ed: Michael A. Bellesiles -- Anti-Gun Nut of the Century --Randolph Roth (a member of the History Department at Ohio State University and a member of the Editorial Board of Historical Methods), noting that the thesis of Arming America is "wrong," says the claim that gun ownership was not widespread in early America "is not supported by the sources Bellesiles cites, by others he does not cite, or the data he presents.... Bellesiles is the only researcher who has produced such low estimates of gun ownership.... Op-Ed: Michael A. Bellesiles -- Anti-Gun Nut of the Century ---"Bellesiles' scholarship does not do justice to his subject -- at least, not from a military perspective. His efforts to minimize the importance of guns, militia, and war in early America and to portray the Civil War as the catalyst for a national gun culture founder on a consistently biased reading of sources and on careless uses of evidence and context."~~Ira Gruber, Harris Masterson, Jr., Professor of History at Rice University It is difficult to maintain the illusion that we are interpreting a Constitution, rather than inventing one. — U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scalia, in his minority dissenting opinion in Nebraska vs. Carhart Keep and Bear Arms - Freedom Fest: The Time Has Come -Submitted by: T.E.Slusser "A few weeks ago, I wrote an article called “The Danger of Factionism”, in which I suggested that it was time for a meeting of Real Americans who are concerned about the way our rights are fading into the sunset. I mentioned that I might know of a place to hold such a meeting, and I finished the article with: “So, what would ye, Americans?” "The response has been tremendous. I received email after email from people who agreed that it was time to hold such a meeting." Keep and Bear Arms - Mere threat of gun sends robbers running OpSD -- "Police recommended that she should have given the money to the robbers." Criminals everywhere appreciate such helplessness training of their victims. Bestselling author Michael Fumento reports: "Rather Suffers From Truth Deficit Disorder." "Wrong diagnoses are always a problem in medicine," Washington, D.C. psychiatrist Alen Salerian told me. "There's a danger of an incorrect ADHD diagnosis even with the best of intentions." But neither he nor the NIMH blames the drugs nor their makers. "Family practitioners are more likely than either pediatricians or psychiatrists to prescribe stimulants and less likely to use diagnostic services, provide mental health counseling, or provide followup care," says the Institute. The IQ Exemption - Capitalism Magazine-- By Walter Williams (March 24, 2002) -The never-ending battle of the left to keep people from being held responsible for the consequences of their own actions is now in the Supreme Court of the United States, where the justices are being urged to exempt murderers from the death penalty if they score below some number on the IQ scale.--- Capitalism Magazine: Free Markets, Individual Rights, Egoism, and Reason "West Wing" vs. Reality: Bush Dumb, Gore Bright? by Larry Elder (March 25, 2002) President George W. Bush -- despite his post-Sept. 11 performance -- remains dumb, says "West Wing" producer Aaron Sorkin. (West Wing=Liberal/leftist propaganda disguised as entertainment.--TA) Accuracy In Media--Melting The Global Warming Myth -- While the media did state that there has been a cooling trend in the central Antarctic landmass, their massive reporting of the recent disintegration of a major ice shelf clearly implied their concern with global warming. But atmospheric temperature measurements show no such trend and many scientists doubt that man's activities have a major effect on climate.-March 27, 2002 www.knoxstudio.com Vonnie Crumpton, of the Big Country Home Educators of Abilene, Texas, said the schedule flexibility is one reason home-schooled kids succeed academically. Her son was interested in classical music, and his home-school education allotted him plenty of time to practice. "Yes, we get math and English and grammar and everything, every day," she said, "but we had more time to dedicate to the talents that God has given him...that's the beauty of home-schooling. You can spend more time where they have interests." NewsMax.com: America's News Page --Maryland Senate: Let Felons Vote Good news for Democrats: The legislation would give repeat offenders the right to vote. NewsMax.com: America's News Page--From Republic to 'Mobocracy' How Polls Threaten the Nation --The media’s obsession with polling has torpedoed a cornerstone of a free, well-informed public. Reasoned debate in the U.S. has vanished, thanks in large part to the proliferation of superficial polls, the book "Mobocracy" reveals. (Excellent book!--TA) www.recordnet.com--letters--03/31/02 ---Liberals like Leahy regularly insult the intelligence of half the public in order to win the votes of the terminally stupid. Leahy, Daschle and Byrd will say absolutely anything. The easily demagogued are a key Democratic constituency.---Bob Wilder --Stockton Friday, March 29, 2002
Arms are the only true badges of liberty. The possession of arms is the distinction of a free man from a slave. — Andrew Fletcher 1698 Keep and Bear Arms - 'Flunking gun safety' -Submitted by: Newslinks Director "THE NEWLY PASSED Missouri House bill that allows people over 21 to carry firearms in their vehicles contains no safeguards to protect people from gun owners who are felons or mentally deranged. ... The lawmakers deserve an ... F for foolish." - Opinion of STLtoday.com How dumb can you get? Of course there's a law - it's called assault, murder and rape. That's why people have the right to be armed. Keep and Bear Arms All agree current rules don't keep guns from troubled people- -Submitted by: Newslinks Director "gun control laws do little to prevent seriously mentally ill people from buying guns. But it's not just gun rights advocates, such as the National Rifle Association, who oppose substantial new restrictions. Mental health specialists worry about unfairly painting the mentally ill as violent, and even some gun control advocates fear that tighter rules would compromise privacy rights and doctor-patient confidentiality." Keep and Bear Arms - Study: Gun Licensing Reforms Had Little Effect on Crime Rates -Submitted by: Newslinks Director "Christopher Koper, from the university's Jerry Lee Center of Criminology, examined the federal government's attempt to reduce crime through changes in firearms licensing requirements. He found that while the reforms pushed 70% of gun dealers out of the gun-selling arena, the changes did not oust the dealers who supply most guns to criminals." If you think it's wrong to kill someone who is about to kill you, you are too stupid to be allowed to vote. — Michael James Keep and Bear Arms - Gun Owners Home Page - 2nd Amendment Supporters Aboriginal police in Australia are NOT allowed to carry guns and STILL are required to intervene in violent crimes. -- This is what the left wing and media elite in this country are desperate to achieve! > The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods. — H. L. Mencken Keep and Bear Arms - Gun Owners Home Page - 2nd Amendment Supporters NRA Supported the National Firearms Act of 1934 In fact, they've supported gun rights infringements "since...1871." by Angel Shamaya "To deflect Senator Kennedy's assertion, NRA published an article by their magazine's Associate Editor entitled 'WHERE THE NRA STANDS ON GUN LEGISLATION' — elaborating at length about NRA's longstanding support for a wide variety of gun controls that included gun and gunowner registration, waiting periods, age restrictions, licenses for carrying a firearm or having a firearm in your vehicle, increased penalties for violating gun laws, regulating ammunition and more." The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt. — John Philpot Curran, 1790 Media Research Center CyberAlert - 03/29/2002 - Medicare and Social Security spending keep spiraling ever upward, but instead of seeing the current programs as unsustainable for the increasing burden they are placing on ever fewer workers, U.S. News & World Report Editor-at-Large David Gergen blamed problems with Medicare on greed: "How can we look at ourselves in the mirror if we keep shoving tax cuts into our pockets while letting poor, elderly people go without doctors and medicine?"---Instead of considering the possibility that a government-run program is more of the problem than the solution, Gergen scolded the public’s stinginess.--- Media Research Center CyberAlert - 03/29/2002 - And no one in the media has yet to explain why who the Bush administration consulted on energy policy is such a controversy when journalists were never outraged by how the Clinton administration did not consult conservative groups when formulating its policies. Media Research Center CyberAlert - 03/29/2002 - The Natural Resources Defense Council, the lead environmental group suing the administration for disclosure of its energy task-force contacts, abandoned its year-long complaint against the administration amid evidence released this week that the Energy Department reached out for advice from environmentalist groups -- and in some cases got snubbed. Bestselling author Michael Fumento reports: "Stem-Cell Political Science: Nature's Agenda." In short, non-embryonic stem cells have may have quickly jumped from having almost every advantage over embryonic ones to having every advantage. If you were a scientist dependent on the government nipple to keep your embryonic-stem-cell research going, you'd be choking now, too – and hoping that somebody like Nature would be delivering your salvation. Read Michael Fumento's additional work on biotechnology. Michael Fumento is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. He’s completing a book tentatively titled “BioEvolution: How Biotechnology Is Changing Our World.” He is the author of the numerous books, including Science Under Siege. Junkscience.com -- Main Page "Stem-Cell Political Science: Nature's Agenda" - "Such a coincidence! With the U.S. Senate debating so-called "therapeutic cloning" to produce embryonic stem (ES) cells and other countries, such as Canada, suffering similar political agony, Nature magazine releases letters from two research teams saying that the alternative – so-called adult stem cells – may be worthless. Nature was so eager to get the news out that it even published the letters online, before the print edition. Both letters attack the "supposed flexibility" of NES cells, as one reporter put it. And the world media swallowed it like a starving mouse downing a chunk of cheddar." (Michael Fumento, National Review Online) Bestselling author Michael Fumento reports: "Stem-Cell Political Science: Nature's Agenda." I found out about Nature's "political science" years earlier, when the journal assigned a prominent AIDS activist to review my book The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS. When I protested in a letter that he quoted lines from the book that never appeared in it, the editor wrote back that he was entitled to his opinion. TCS: Enviro-Sci - Common Sense and Sensibility It's true that economists have trouble with the views of many environmentalists. But this just reflects our frustration with the ecologists' use of the most naive and inappropriate economic models and assumptions in their forecasts and policy prescriptions. That's why Bjorn Lomborg's new book The Skeptical Environmentalist is such a distinctive, rare, and important work. In addition to sharing the ecologist's concerns about aquifers, sustainability, and global warming, Lomborg accepts the economist's paradigm. By combining economics with ecology, he comes up with a rational, balanced analysis. ABC Sci-Tech - 29/03/02 : Study reveals repetitious work not the cause of nerve condition Workers compensation cases accept repetition trauma as a cause of the nerve compression known as carpal tunnel syndrome. But a review in the ANZ Journal of Surgery says risk factors are obesity or lack of fitness, diabetes, reaching menopausal age, smoking and a lifetime alcohol intake. "One wonders as a population whether money spent in making people fit for work, losing weight, stopping smoking, may be far more relevant than changing people's work," he said. Only in cold temperature work, often with load and repetition, such as butchery, has a true connection with carpal tunnel syndrome been established. FOXNews.com Science's editors should be ashamed for once again allowing the prestigious journal to be the mouthpiece for junk science-fueled political correctness. The researchers acknowledged their study was the first to investigate the potential for TV viewing to have long-term effects on aggressive behavior. One study, though, is not science. At best, it's a data point — and it's not clear this study even measures up to that standard. The reported statistical associations are pretty weak.---Inexplicable inconsistencies among the results reinforce the notion that they are statistical nonsense.---the researchers didn’t collect data on whether the violent acts committed by the study subjects were motivated, inspired or otherwise linked directly or indirectly to television viewing. They hoped to accomplish this feat with statistical correlations alone.---The researchers further seem to believe they can simply wave a statistical wand over their data to make alternative explanations for violent behavior — such as history of aggressive behavior, childhood neglect, family income, neighborhood violence, parental education, psychiatric disorders, and others — disappear.---The junk science-taint of the study is sealed by the overzealous and even somewhat paranoid comments in the editorial.---The researchers buried a disclaimer at the end of their study, "It should be noted that a strong inference of causality cannot be made without conducting a controlled experiment, and we cannot rule out the possibility [of other explanations] for these associations."--- TownHall.com: Conservative Columnists: Brent Bozell Take it from Washington Post automotive reporter Warren Brown, as he wrote in a recent Internet chat: "We tend to believe that any nonprofit group is telling the truth because the group is, well, nonprofit. We overlook the fact that nonprofit groups hustle for money just like any other organization." Brown suggested, "It's time that we in the media take away that carte blanche believability from nonprofit organizations and start treating them the way we treat everybody else." It's also time we take away that carte blanche believability from many in the "news" media, too. TownHall.com: Conservative Columnists: David Limbaugh The most remarkable thing about all of the reform mania is that it is all based on the flawed assumption that political contributions (and expenditures) inevitably corrupt the political process. How? Through so called quid pro quo arrangements, where politicians receiving large contributions reward those making the contributions and expenditures rather than acting primarily in the public interest. But the reformers never produce any specific evidence of such corruption; they just say it exists because money is necessarily corrupting. “It is because it is and we are all corrupted by it,” they intone gleefully. But this conveniently ignores the fact that most people and interests contribute and expend on behalf of candidates who share their ideological viewpoint, without expecting anything in return. TownHall.com: Bruce Bartlett Many of those supporting President Bush's decision to impose tariffs on steel imports do so not so much because they care particularly about the steel industry. Rather, they are concerned that too much of the U.S. economy appears to be devoted to producing services, like banking, and not enough to producing goods, like autos.---There are many problems with this theory. The biggest is simply that there is not the slightest bit of evidence supporting it. The truth of the matter is that the U.S. economy produces a higher percentage of goods as a share of total output today than at any time in its history. Production of goods -- "things" -- is not falling, as implied by the industrial policy advocates, but in fact has been rising steadily for the last 30 years. TownHall.com: Charles Krauthammer Sept. 11 awakened Americans to the anti-American vitriol in the state-controlled media of such apparently friendly states as Egypt and Saudi Arabia. We are just beginning to understand how a daily diet of hatred fed through schools and the media--a hatred quietly incubating for years--found its most perfect expression in the slaughter of Sept. 11. We have failed, however, to see how a similar campaign of hate has laid the groundwork for the orgy of murder-suicide the Palestinians are now engaged in. TownHall.com: Jacob Sullum A quarter of a century ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that restrictions on campaign spending were unconstitutional because they amounted to restrictions on speech. By now it is abundantly clear that the same is true of restrictions on campaign contributions. These limits cannot be enforced without trampling on the rights of the citizen who cares so passionately about an issue that he is willing to put his money where his mouth is. TownHall.com: Jacob Sullum Bush said he had "reservations about the constitutionality of the broad ban on issue advertising, which restrains the speech of a wide variety of groups on issues of public import in the months closest to an election." Apparently forgetting the oath he took last year, he decided it wasn't his job to worry about the Constitution. "I expect the courts will resolve these legitimate legal questions," he said. NEALZ NUZE AN ECONOMICS TEXTBOOK THAT TELLS IS LIKE IT IS! ---In an economics textbook written by N. Gregory Mankiw: “Consider, for instance, policies aimed at achieving a more equal distribution of economic well-being. Some of these policies, such as the welfare system or unemployment insurance, try to help those members in society who are most in need. Others such as the individual income tax, ask the financially successful to contribute more than others to support the government. Although these policies have the benefit of achieving greater equity, they have a cost in terms of reduced efficiency. When the government redistributes from the rich to the poor, people work less and produce fewer goods and services. In other words when the government tries to cut the economic pie into more equal slices, the pie gets smaller.” Comforting, isn’t it? Some college students are actually being introduced to reality. Bill Would Require Public-Sector Unions to Di... [The Mackinac Center for Public Policy] Many Americans are wondering how a corporation like Enron could legally conceal so much about its shady financial dealings. These same Americans would be astonished to learn that labor unions disclose far less about how they spend their money—even though their funding is legally mandatory, paid to them in the form of union dues amounting to an estimated $13 billion per year nationwide. Free-Market.Net Freedom News---School choice meets constitutional standards Source: Cascade Policy Institute--Author: Robert Freedman, J.D. Because our current system of forcing lower income families to stay in poor performing schools is unconscionable, Freedman contends that it's time that we give parents and children the power to get an education of their choice. (3/25/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Property and the moral life Source: Foundation for Economic Education--Author: Jason Baldwin "Hayek's bold statement that 'Private property is the most important guaranty of freedom' holds true at many levels. Certainly it is private property that allows the individual to be independent from the whims of his government and his fellows." (02/02) Daily Journal | John Hood President George W. Bush is proposing a budget for FY 2003 that would devote a shocking 18 percent to defense – feel free to blame that pesky military-industrial complex. Medicare and Medicaid have now drawn even with Social Security at 22 percent of the budget, making total entitlements (including other welfare programs) almost 60 percent of the total. As these numbers show, without entitlement reform, there is no way to achieve significant federal tax reduction and to return our government to its proper, constitutional size. www.fff.org--The Solution to Poverty To rid the world of poverty, then, would entail at a minimum the following steps: the repeal of income taxation (including here in the United States), minimum-wage laws, restrictions of business enterprise (that’s why it’s called “free” enterprise), restrictions that prevent people from entering into mutually beneficial trades with one another, and all government welfare, including for the rich and middle class. In other words, to solve the problem of poverty, leave people free to accumulate unlimited amounts of wealth, freely engage in any business enterprise, and enter into any peaceful exchange with anyone in the world. The solution to poverty lies not in the failed welfare-state policies of the past but rather in the unhampered market economy. Mounting evidence links TV viewing to violence | csmonitor.com ---What it did not do, say critics, is prove that the television viewing necessarily caused the violence. The comment goes to the heart of the debate over the issue: Does TV play a part in making violent people, or are violent people naturally inclined to watch violence on TV? Thursday, March 28, 2002
Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Going global Source: Citizens for a Sound Economy--Author: Wayne T. Brough "In recent years 'globalization' has become a battle cry for the forces of big government. ... While it is difficult to discern a coherent vision among the polyglot of voices, one thing is clear: whatever the issue, the solution is more government and less free trade. This hostility towards increased exchange among nations ignores benefits that free trade bestows upon all nations." /26/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--A governent cop in every media device Source: News Forge--Author: Jack Byar "U.S. Senator Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina) is once again trying to shut down independent electronic communications in the United States in order to curry favor with large media conglomerates." (03/27/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Suburbs show benefits of 'decentralization' Source: Atlanta Constitution--Author: Stuart Galishoff "Shakespeare wrote that a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet. But what you call something does affect how it is perceived. Use the term urban sprawl and you evoke a negative response, but call it urban decentralization and most Americans respond approvingly, as well they should." (03/28/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Health insurance: it’s a policy, not a choice Source: Reason.com--Author: Mike Lynch "You need health insurance -- whether you want it or not," says the subheading, but Lynch questions the current media blitz to get every American under that umbrella, noting that "The uninsured population is not uniformly poor or clamoring for health care. Nearly one in three lives in a household earning more than $50,000 a year." (03/28/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--The 'red and the blue' of housing Source: New York Times--Author: Virginia Postrel Postrel analyzes a study which finds affordable housing less available in coastal California and along the Northeast corridor, than it is in almost all other parts of the nation, largely because land-use laws and regulations, which abound on the two coasts, are far less intrusive inland. She relates "red and blue" voting patterns to this phenomenon. (requires NYT registration) (03/28/02) The Providence Phoenix This Just In In 1998, Congress passed legislation barring students from receiving federally guaranteed student loans for one year after a drug possession conviction and two years after a drug dealing conviction. Students must declare drug convictions on their Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). FAFSA contains no questions, though, about rape or other crimes. Free-Market.Net Freedom News--The continuing vision of welfare reform Source: Acton Institute--Author: Phillip W. DeVous "Even with the sound successes of the 1996 welfare reform legislation, it is somewhat discouraging that American policy makers continue to dwell on how to increase the scope and reach of the government —- along with its cost. The latest expansion of the welfare state's size and scope comes in the form of Bush Administration proposals to involve government in the issue of marriage." (03/27/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Israel's government pamphlet describes terrorism before 'occupation' --Source: The Jerusalem Post Israel's government is issuing a pamphlet to Israelis traveling abroad. Title "Which Came First -- Terrorism or 'Occupation,'" it describes Arab terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians before the start of the 'occupation' of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967. "[T]he basic premise of the Palestinian claim -- that the 'occupation' causes terrorism -- is historically flawed." (03/27/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--VA=Vermin Abode --Source: Star Tribune Horror story about what its like in a Veterans Administration hospital (Government health care.--TA) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Taxpayers strike out--Source: New York Post "Former Met pitcher Kevin Appier, in the middle of a $42 million, four-year contract, is collecting farm subsidies for a 270-acre spread he owns in Kansas." (03/27/02) ---the liar always attacks the opposing person and the truth teller always attacks the opposing premise! What great person or debater has ever proven their point by ridiculing people? ---Who has ever used ridicule other than those who can't refute the truth,--- Truth is never defended with ridicule. Facts speak for themselves. — "Doc" Tavish Keep and Bear Arms - "Despite heavy U.S. opposition, the first permanent global criminal court to try individuals for the world's most heinous crimes is only four nations shy of becoming a reality." The Bush administration has asked the UN if it could rescind Washington's signature from the treaty (signed by Clinton at the end of his term). Opposition to the International Criminal Court is led chiefly by Republicans, who have sponsored amendments to cut funding for U.S. involvement. Keep and Bear Arms - "University of New Mexico women made the Women's Studies department madder than a wet hen by suggesting that self-defense is a good way to prevent rape." DUHHHH! Why is it that campus leftists have such trouble with the obvious? Why doesn't the desire of "feminists" to prevent rape extend to allowing women to, well, prevent rape? Three cheers to these brave women for promoting the truth on campus! Keep and Bear Arms - Gun Owners of America today awarded Sarah Brady's son, Scott, an honorary one-year GOA membership. "Now that Scott Brady is the proud owner of a high-powered 'sniper' rifle, he will most certainly need a fuller understanding of the Second Amendment than he ever received at home," said Erich Pratt, Director of Communications for Gun Owners of America. Keep and Bear Arms - BATF Victim Gets Hundreds of His Guns Back And Now for the Civil Lawsuit... --by Angel Shamaya "At least two pieces of information surfaced that show BATF's overly ambitious 'Special' agents to not only be liars, but complete bumbling idiots." Junkscience.com --"Far Eastern Economic Review | The Promise of Food Security" - "Genetically modified food has got a bad rap for endangering the environment and human health, but without so much as a shred of scientific evidence as proof. In fact, for much of Asia, transgenics hold the key to increasing productivity and fighting hunger." Junkscience.com -- "Washington Times | Energy pile-on ignores the facts" - "Recent news coverage of President Bush's energy task force offered the conclusion that the White House left environmentalists and consumers out of its national energy policy equation. Yet most print and broadcast accounts ignored or buried the fact that administration officials actually contacted environmental groups for input — but were rebuffed — detailed in both an Energy Department letter and an e-mail included among documents released by the agency Monday." Junkscience.com -- "Just a one degree rise in temperature could spell the end for a living fossil, New Zealand's tuatara, according to a university researcher. "One degree makes a difference between all female-producing and all male-producing temperatures," says researcher Nicky Nelson, who completed her doctoral study at Victoria University in December 2001. "The pivotal temperature is between 21 and 22 degrees Celsius," she told BBC News Online. The tuatara is the last representative of a reptile species that appeared at the same time as the dinosaurs." So, if they can't handle one degree temperature change, how did they survive ice ages and intermittent warm periods?(JunkScience.com comment.) opinion.telegraph.co.uk - Organic food is no safer than the ordinary cheaper kind Meanwhile, the zealots' crusade against conventional food continues with increasing fervour. No wonder the consuming public is confused and worried. Yet they shouldn't be. In spite of the ayatollahs' pronouncements, the food that conventional farmers grow is clean, nutritious, tasty, cheap and safe. Repeat safe. But if you still insist on paying a 40 per cent premium to buy organic produce, make sure you wash it first. Unless, of course, you like the taste of potassium salts of fatty acids. The Case against the Proposed International Criminal Court Specifically, the court threatens to diminish America's sovereignty, produce arbitrary and highly politicized "justice," and grow into a jurisdictional leviathan. Already some supporters of the proposed court want to give it the authority to prosecute drug trafficking as well as such vague offenses as "serious threats to the environment" and "committing outrages on personal dignity." Even if such expansive authority is not given to the ICC initially, the potential for jurisdictional creep is considerable and worrisome. Moreover, it appears that many of the legal safeguards American citizens enjoy under the U.S. Constitution would be suspended if they were brought before the court. Endangered constitutional protections include the prohibition against double jeopardy, the right to trial by an impartial jury, and the right of the accused to confront the witnesses against him. This Is Reform? Understanding the New Campaign Reality By adding President Bush's signature to the legislation passed by Congress, campaign finance reform advocates will hit an anti-democratic triple. They will make future elections less competitive, strengthen the mainstream media's grip on political discourse, and run roughshod over the First Amendment's protection of freedom of speech. Thomas Sowell Considering what detailed statistics are kept in sports - you can find out how many times Ty Cobb hit into double plays 80 years ago -- it is truly ironic how few records are kept on those who make decisions that can cost other people their lives. Perhaps that is because the payoff matters in sports, while in much social policy what matters is that people with power keep it -- and conceal any information that would threaten their theories. NYPOST.COM Post Opinion: Oped Columnists: WHERE W'S DRAWN A LINE IN THE SAND By DICK MORRIS The international community (i.e, the appeasement-oriented Europeans) won't back an invasion of Iraq. But they can't oppose arms inspection. Once Saddam makes clear that he won't really allow inspection, they'll have no choice but to at least keep silent as Bush hangs Saddam by his heels in Baghdad. FrontPage Magazine | Ann Coulter -- I Like Black People Too, Julia! It's interesting that Berry makes such a big deal about being black. She was raised by her white mother who was beaten and abandoned by her black father. Clearly, Berry has calculated that it is more advantageous for her acting career to identify with the man who abandoned her rather than the woman who raised her. OpinionJournal - SCENE & HEARD The sad truth is that school administrations themselves are too often staffed with the subpar products of education schools. Couple this with a labor-union mentality among the rank and file, and you have a teaching profession that has become less and less "professional" (devoted to the welfare of its students) and increasingly obsessed with connecting its own sense of grievance to a larger political agenda. What are parents supposed to do but do whatever they can to take back their schools? The reason citizens in a democratic society decide to undelegate powers to their elected and appointed officials is because they've lost trust in those officials. OpinionJournal - SCENE & HEARD But nothing about public involvement is reasonable as far as the Texas school board's Democratic members are concerned. "Groups of extremists are organized in an attempt to censor our textbooks by removing material that is unacceptable to them," Mary Helen Berlanga, a voice of the liberal faction, bawled recently. Having gotten used to exercising power over what is fed to impressionable minds, Ms. Berenga and allies are loath to give it up. OpinionJournal - SCENE & HEARD For many in the public school system, the primary goal of education has been to drive a new level of political awareness in the next generation. The outrages of big business, the fragile environment and the oppression of native cultures have become a sort of holy trinity within the curriculum. (Witness passages about clear-cutting trees as part of a reprehensible "frontier" mentality.) And, of course, these things are also much more fun to teach than, say, monatomic ions. OpinionJournal - Cartoon Network, owned by AOL Time Warner, has banned the cartoon character Speedy Gonzales from its airwaves: CN officials say the network was instructed by its owner, Ted Turner, to stop showing the Speedy cartoons because of racial stereotyping.--- Fox News, however, reports that "there is a place where Speedy can still be found zipping across TV screens--and, presumably, where the crude stereotypes he embodies don't touch a cultural nerve." That place is the Cartoon Network Latin America, where Speedy is "hugely popular." OpinionJournal --Tenured Peasants- One G. Ross Stephens writes an angry letter to the Kansas City Star, responding to a pro-tax cut column by Jerry Heaster: Heaster and his colleagues, the libertarians and supply-siders, want to give all of the tax breaks to the wealthy so the crumbs from their activity will trickle down to us peasants at the bottom of the heap. This "peasant" signs his letter with his title: "Professor Emeritus, Political Science and Public Administration, University of Missouri-Kansas City." (Another Marxist academic.--TA) OpinionJournal - A Gratuitous Smear- A Las Vegas Sun article on a Supreme Court ruling on drugs in public housing includes this red herring: "The issue of substance abuse has touched the White House. President Bush's underage daughters were caught drinking in a Texas restaurant last year and his niece, the daughter of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, was admitted to a drug treatment center in February after being arrested on a prescription drug charge." This is completely unrelated to the subject of the article, which deals with illegal drugs. The only possible purpose of this aside was to smear the Bushes. It would be the equivalent of our including a reference to Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky in the preceding item about pedophilia. NEALZ NUZE Now … about the crime rates. Across the country you will see uniformity in these numbers. Looking at violent crimes, the rate of violent crime is the greatest in no issue states and the lowest in shall issue states. What’s more, when a state liberalizes its laws and moves from no issue to may issue, or from may issue to shall issue, the crime rates go down. Criminals don’t want their victims to be armed. Oddly enough, neither do many governments. NEALZ NUZE The progressive income tax was one of the original principals of communism. Progressive taxation – a system whereby you institutionalize the concept of taking from people in accordance with their ability to pay and giving to people in accordance with their needs. Wednesday, March 27, 2002
Keep and Bear Arms - Gun Bigots Strike Again by Robert Lyman Read Mr. Lyman's latest Gun Bigot Report to find out that sports shooters are "sick" -- among other things. Keep and Bear Arms -Gun Bigots Strike Again I believe much of this bias has its roots in bigotry. Gun owners are routinely portrayed as violent, uneducated, racist, uncivilized, criminal, mentally unstable, sexually frustrated, etc. etc. Fictional works as well as "news" reporting serve to reinforce these stereotypes, as do "studies" provided by the VPC. As many people before me have observed, insert the work "black" or "Jew" in to many articles about gun owners and you instantly have a page directly from one of Goebbels' finest propaganda pieces. Keep and Bear Arms - Because you have declared airports and aircraft "Second Amendment-free/Terrorist Empowerment Zones," will you now accept responsibility for crew and passenger safety? By responsibility, I mean fiscal liability for failure to perform a duty — will you issue a legally enforceable guarantee acknowledging that, by denying individuals the means of defense and assuming all authority for providing security, a legally recognized "special relationship" (**) will exist between the federal government, the carriers and the flying public? (David Codrea) Media Research Center CyberAlert - 03/27/2002 - Bush "Influence Peddling?" The faulty premise behind all of this kind of reporting: That the Bush administration, like any administration, did not already have a policy formulated upon assuming office and was not simply going through the motions of allowing its supporters to feel like they had influence. It’s congressional committees that are best at adding little tax break favors for an industry, not the executive branch. As for not consulting enough with left-wing groups, "consumer groups" to Gumbel and the Washington Post, President Bush ran and won on a platform which rejected most of their policy ideas and so why should they have deserved meetings? Were reporters upset when the Clinton administration failed to bring in conservative groups to get their policy advice? Junkscience.com -- "New York Times | Documents Show Energy Official Met Only With Industry Leaders" - "The energy secretary did not meet with environmental organizations or consumer groups as he helped the Bush administration write its national energy report last year." You want advice on manure, see organic gardeners. You want advice on energy... (Junkscience.com.) Junkscience.com -- Main Page The environmental movement's campaign to force industry into accepting it as the only judge of sustainable forestry is pushing consumers away from renewable forest products and toward nonrenewable, energy-intensive materials such as steel, concrete and plastic." Junkscience.com -- Newkirk---claimed, "everything we do is based at adults". Really? Last fall, PETA went to schools in Canada and distributed cards showing sickly children suffering ailments PETA claims are brought on by milk. Now the group is running an ad in a Wisconsin high school paper that alleges that dairy products cause acne. Far worse, earlier this month PETA was denied permission to send an activist dressed as a corncob into a Houston elementary school to preach a medically dubious "vegan" diet to growing children. But PETA did not surrender. The group, which has given money to the FBI-certified terrorist group Earth Liberation Front, sent the school principal's name to its supporters, and organized a rally "just off campus after school" -- to shout propaganda at students as they leave school." (Center For Consumer Freedom) Junkscience.com -- When co-host Tucker Carlson asked why PETA's once-planned billboard mocking a 10-year-old boy's loss of an arm in a shark attack as "revenge" should not be considered "hate speech," Newkirk replied: "You have to get a sense of humor." (Carlson later told Newkirk, "You say you're pro-animal. It strikes me that you are anti-human.") Junkscience.com -- Main Page The subliminal indoctrination continues: "Indianapolis Star - Pair of falcons perched Downtown once again" - "... But their population plummeted several decades ago due to the use of the pesticide DDT, and the falcons were placed on the endangered species list. The banning of DDT and reintroduction programs have led the population to rebound, and they are no longer listed by federal authorities as endangered." (The DDT myth was debunked years ago.--Details Here) Junkscience.com -- Putting sensationalism before science, Time even cites last month's thoroughly debunked youth-alcohol study by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (CASA) -- a study so flawed that college alcohol researcher Professor David Hanson said of it: "If I were teaching a research class, I would use this CASA report as an example of what not to do." (Center For Consumer Freedom) Junkscience.com -- "Organics form high percentage of CFIA recalls" - "Since October last year, organic or all-natural foods have accounted for about 14% of the total food safety recall actions initiated by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA). So far this month, ten out of the 21 Class 1 (serious) food recalls initiated by the CFIA have been for self-described organic or natural products." (just-food.com) TCS: Enviro-Sci - How Swede It Is ---"chemophobia," which is now bolstered by the precautionary principle. At first glance this 'principle' seems appealing, since it argues for caution and safety. But it is the antithesis of science, playing into the hands of scaremongers who can claim that the possibility of harm from a substance should be enough to banish it. The principle demands that the developers of technologies show they are safe - a scientific impossibility; one can only show something is harmful, or that it isn't harmful so far, not that it never will be. National Center for Policy Analysis Out-of-wedlock births are widely accepted in Europe, say observers, as the welfare state makes marriage optional.... NCPA - Daily Policy Digest - Big Business Benefits From Regulation ---when Republicans resisted imposition of price controls on energy last summer, the media implied this was only because Enron gave them campaign funds. Most reporters never seriously considered the idea that Republicans might oppose price controls because of their unbroken record of failure. NCPA - Daily Policy Digest - Big Business Benefits From Regulation --The media think big businesses like free markets, when historically, it has been Big Business, not consumers or progressives, who have been primarily responsible for creating most government regulatory agencies. Townhall.com: The campaign advertising that wasn't reformed --by Brent Bozell (3/27) Campaign finance reform focuses on paid 30- or 60-second ads, but does nothing about 30- and 60-minute entertainment television programs that are just as passionately, just as deliberately pushing liberal candidates and causes. TownHall.com: Debbie Schlussel --"We need to raise our sons more like our daughters, with empathy, flexibility, patience and compassion," the Ms. Magazine founder told the Palm Beach County YWCA, urging the promotion of "[T]hese so-called feminine qualities . . . present in men. . . ." Yup, that's the solution to terrorism against Americans-let's give our boys Barbies, pearls, and china patterns. Everyone knows that would have prevented attacks on the WTC. And created some real macho firemen and policemen to rescue the victims. Townhall.com: Foreign Aid and Republican Abdication by Pat Buchanan (3/27) With President Bush's pledge to ratchet up U.S. foreign aid by 50 percent over three years, can someone explain to me again the difference between a compassionate conservative and a Clintonian liberal? TownHall.com: Walter Williams ---The Framers had a deathly fear of federal government abuse. They saw state sovereignty as a protection. That's why they gave us the Ninth and 10th Amendments. They saw secession as the ultimate protection against Washington tyranny. TownHall.com: Walter Williams Americans celebrate Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, but H.L. Mencken correctly evaluated the speech, "It is poetry not logic; beauty, not sense." Lincoln said that the soldiers sacrificed their lives "to the cause of self-determination -- government of the people, by the people, for the people should not perish from the earth." Mencken says: "It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of people to govern themselves." "Bad Medicine" or Bad Economics? In reality, because government actions have been a major factor in forcing up the price of health care in America, we now have the perverse situation in which someone who either does not have access to private insurance or qualifies for government payments must face the system out of pocket. While politicians and their allies are fond of decrying the fact that at any given time, millions of Americans lack health insurance, they forget that they themselves have played a major role in creating the conditions that have made going without health insurance a recipe for individual financial calamity. "Bad Medicine" or Bad Economics? People of all classes and incomes have long had access to the medical facilities of this nation, and to declare otherwise is to rewrite history. In fact, basic health insurance did not arise because Americans were lacking care, but rather it came about as a way for employers to offer nontaxable perks to employees during World War II. "Bad Medicine" or Bad Economics? There is also a supply-side component to high health care costs. Governments at all levels have restricted entry into this field, ostensibly in the name of consumer protection, but actually to keep down competition, which would ultimately lower the incomes of many people in the medical fields. Furthermore, many governmental "cost containment" measures like Certificates of Need actually drive up costs, since they restrict the number of allowable medical facilities, along with some medical equipment. "Bad Medicine" or Bad Economics? While Krugman’s explanation of why health care costs are rising is horribly flawed, at least he asks the question. The answer is not difficult. On the demand side, for the last five decades, Americans have depended mostly upon private health insurance, as well as payments from state and federal agencies (read that, taxpayers) to make payments that once would have been handled by individuals. These third-party payments, and especially Medicare, have driven up demand for medical care, which has also forced up prices. We should also keep in mind, however, that the development of medical technology and improved information has kept health care costs lower than what they would have been otherwise. "Bad Medicine" or Bad Economics? ---the semi-primitive health care that is performed in Canada and elsewhere where socialist medicine reigns (this is because many modern, labor-saving devices like MRIs and Cat Scan machines are not made available in those places) imposes huge costs on patients, who must wait in line for numerous medical procedures. "Bad Medicine" or Bad Economics? ---it should give all of us pause to think that many in the political classes, as well as some of the medical "elites" like the editors of the New England Journal of Medicine, along with many so-called economists, have been urging that the United States adopt a health care system akin to what exists in Canada. They forget that we have such an arrangement already in place; it is called Medicare. If Krugman, a supporter of government medicine, does not like Medicare, I cannot see how he would like to live under such an arrangement himself. CEI.ORG: Competitive Enterprise Institute: Energy Bills Leave The Fat Cats Flush--Ben Lieberman The bill also contains energy conservation provisions affecting several other products, including ceiling fans and battery chargers. As with low-flush toilets, each of these measures carries the risk of unanticipated problems for consumers. And, if past is prologue, this bill will probably get larded up even further in the weeks ahead. By the time it reaches its final form, the energy package will likely contain many little-noticed but potentially anti-consumer provisions that deserve to be flushed. If you can only find a toilet capable of doing the job. CEI.ORG: Competitive Enterprise Institute: Energy Bills Leave The Fat Cats Flush Anger over the low-flush toilets has coalesced into perhaps the largest consumer backlash ever against a federal product mandate. In response to constituent complaints, Rep. Joe Knollenberg (R-Mich.) introduced a bill in the House to repeal the measure. Though it has enjoyed considerable support, it has thus far stalled in committee, due in large part to lobbying by toilet manufacturers who prefer the guaranteed market for these pricey, low-flush models. Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Are we prepared to break up the education monopoly? --Source: Citizens for a Sound Economy--Author: Paul Beckner "[W]hat is the condition of public education today? In a word: poor. Taxpayers aren’t receiving value for their dollars; children are being robbed of a quality education; and the nation is settling for a less educated workforce than the one it needs and paid for." (03/26/02) Politicizing the Housewife Choice is the key to individualist feminism and to whether or not housework is damaging to women. To those women who choose to stay home and raise a family, it can be not only the most fulfilling use of their time, but it can also teach management skills that translate well into the workplace afterwards. In approaching marriage and the family, the feminist slogan should be: “the personal is personal.” Individuals should choose, and the state should have no role. Politicizing the Housewife---when politically correct gender feminism built on Friedan’s work to argue for the abolition of marriage, she objected. In her book The Second Stage (1981) she explained that gender feminists were misinterpreting her meaning. She pleaded with them to move away from antifamily rhetoric and back to a dialogue with men about how to improve the institution of marriage. Politicizing the Housewife To preserve the image of women as victims of oppressive male society, however, PC feminists find it necessary to explain how the murder of a child by his or her mother is still the fault of men. The first step is to remove responsibility from the mother by blaming her acts on postpartum depression or some other “insanity” with which most women can identify. The second step is to castigate the traditional family with its stay-at-home mom as a breeding ground of pathology for women. Since PC feminists already decry the traditional family as a bastion of white male culture and a barrier to women’s actualizing their potential, the next leap of logic is easy. Murdering moms are driven to violence by the men who impregnate them and trap them in the psychologically devastating role of housewife. Thus many voices in the media blame Andrea Yates’s husband—a man whom no one has suggested was ever violent—even while they express sympathy for Andrea herself. They blame society for not recognizing Andrea’s plight. Politicizing the Housewife It has been well documented that wives assault husbands at approximately the same rate as husbands assault wives. The statistics regarding fatal child abuse are even more alarming. A Bureau of Justice report titled “Murder in Families” (NCJ 143498) surveyed murder cases tried in 1988 and discovered that 55 percent of defendants charged with killing their own children were women. “The Third National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect” (NIS-3, 1996) from the Department of Health and Human Services reported that mothers perpetrate 78 percent of fatal child abuse. Even granting that women are usually the primary caregivers and thus have much more opportunity and motive to snap, these figures are alarmingly high. They are so high and the subject of so much attention that it is no longer credible to claim that women are nonviolent in the home. Free-Market.Net Freedom News Productivity in Public Education Source: School Reform News--Author: George A. Clowes The U.S. Department of Education reports the pupil/teacher ratio in public schools fell from 22.3 in 1970 to 14.1 in 1999. Yet achievement levels remained static meaning K-12 public education has become significantly less productive than it was three decades ago. (03/02) FOXNews.com One publisher said these extreme books are so popular because the public has nowhere else to go to find out what's going on. "The spectrum of information that people are exposed to is so narrow that they're turning to books," said Dan Simon, publisher of Seven Stories Press, which released the Chomsky book. "There's a different readership than you would have had a few years ago. You have conservatives reading Chomsky, and liberals reading Bernard Goldberg. People don't want polemics, but they have no place else to turn for basic information." PAINFUL PROBING / IRS brings back the dreaded random audit under the guise of conducting research DAVID LAZARUS Wednesday, March 27, 2002--©2002 San Francisco Chronicle Remember all that talk about the Internal Revenue Service feeling taxpayers' pain and adopting a kinder and gentler approach to how it reaches into our pockets? Forget it. "The IRS never said it would be kinder and gentler," said Jesse Weller, a spokesman at the agency's Bay Area headquarters in Oakland. "That was just a catchword invented by the media. We never said that." Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Congressional anti-terror chief opposes ID cards Source: Fox News Calling proposals for national ID cards "too creepy for me," James Gilmore, the head of a congressionally appointed anti-terror commission, came out firmly against the idea. "I don't think we should teach Americans that they should get used to being watched," he said. (03/27/02) OpinionJournal - OUTSIDE THE BOX The world is a different place than the environmentalists would have us believe. Prosperity is increasing and so pollution is decreasing, because it is prosperity, not increased regulation, that enables a society to support sound environmental policies. Poverty has been reduced more in the last 50 years than in the previous 500, according to the U.N. Yet with all the industrialization, energy generation, economic expansion and uncontrolled growth that made poverty reduction possible, the environment is still improving. Fewer cries of environmental catastrophe and more advocacy of growth and prosperity would encourage a cleaner world. Meanwhile over at the Fish and Wildlife offices, it's ethics that's facing extinction. OpinionJournal - OUTSIDE THE BOX So why the lying? It seems deceit is the only way the greens can advance their Luddite agenda. They are ideologically inspired to try to limit, slow and if possible stop economic growth, for they believe that prosperity is harmful to the environment. But our nation's and the world's environments are getting better all the time, in fact so much better so much faster that it is hard to wave the green shirt based on honest data. Subterfuge and misrepresentation are thus left to energize the greens' antiprosperity cause. Victor Davis Hanson on NRO The problem is them and their unelected and unfree regimes, not us — just as it was Hitler, not us; Tojo, not us; Mussolini, not us; and Stalin, not us — just as it always is when unelected maniacs take control and hijack an entire country and culture. We can either step up and stop Islamic fundamentalism, Arab terrorists, and Middle Eastern dictators or we can step back and watch it all continue to grow. If 9/11 was the beginning of a war, then we should remember that wars usually end when one, not both sides, win. Victor Davis Hanson on NRO . I don't know about the rest of America, but I am proud that thugs like Khaddafi, murderers like Saddam Hussein, inquisitionists like the mullahs in Iran, criminals in Syria, medieval sheiks in the Gulf, and millions of others who do not vote, do not speak freely, oppress women, and are not tolerant of religious, gender, or ethnic diversity don't like me for being an American. I would find it repugnant if they did. Victor Davis Hanson on NRO All the while, no American statesman has the guts to tell the Arab leadership that statism, tribalism, fundamentalism, gender apartheid, and autocracy — not America, not Israel — make their people poor, angry, and dangerous. NEALZ NUZE The Supreme Court has ruled that the EPA doesn’t have to give any consideration to the costs of its clean air mandates. The EPA can just issue it’s standards, whether based on good science or not, and American taxpayers and consumers will just have to shoulder the costs – whatever they are. It really makes you want to have some clear heads in charge at EPA, doesn’t it? Remember --- the anti-capitalist movement has found refuge in the environmentalist movement. What better way to destroy capitalism than to burden industry and business with huge costs for absurdly excessive environmental standards? NEALZ NUZE I’ll tell you what. Maybe I can just make this easier for you. If I’m saying things that make you uncomfortable --- and you just can’t stand it any more --- just cut the following paragraph and past it into your e-mail message to me. Dear Neal. I am writing to tell you that I am never going to listen to your show again. You believe some things that I do not believe, and you do not believe some things that I believe. You say things that I don’t agree with. You express opinions that I don’t share. I do not wish to listen to people that I don’t agree with. I do not wish to hear opinions that I do not share. I don’t want to hear anything from anybody who is in any way different from me. All my neighbors, co-workers and friends agree with me and they’re never going to listen to you again either. Good bye. NEALZ NUZE I am truly shocked at the intense, burning degree of hate that so many people out there have for homosexuals. It all seems to me to be very un-Christian, yet I am told that I cannot possibly be a Christian if I don’t condemn homosexuality Tuesday, March 26, 2002
Reason --No cause in the history of mankind has produced more cold-blooded tyrants, more slaughtered innocents, and more orphans than communism. It surpassed, exponentially, all other systems of production in turning out the dead. No one honors those dead. No one does penance for them. No one pays for them. No one is hunted down to account for them. It is exactly what Solzhenitsyn foresaw in The Gulag: "No, no one would have to answer." Communism was not a "god that failed." Rather, it was an intellectually organized slaughter and slavery that succeeded, but that could not sustain itself against the productivity and resistance of free men and women. UN Planting the Seeds for a Coming Global Tax April 15th is coming, and you’re getting ready to file your tax return. Throughout the year you paid federal taxes through withholding, including Social Security payroll taxes. You also paid state income taxes, unless you’re fortunate enough to live in Texas or another state without an income tax. You paid local property taxes. You paid local sales taxes every time you bought something, and you paid numerous miscellaneous taxes such as vehicle license fees and federal gas taxes. Like most people, you probably feel taxed to death by all these city, county, state, and federal taxes. Well, hold on to your wallets, because the United Nations now wants to impose a whole new level of global taxes on us. (Congressman Ron Paul--R-TX) NewsMax.com: Commentmax Archives--And what about the police who allegedly came to the rescue? The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz explains that a young plainclothes cop named Salim Barakat was parked outside when the attack began. Officer Barakat shot and wounded the terrorist. But the gunman fought back, stabbing the policeman in the chest and killing him on the spot. Only then, reports Ha'aretz, did a "civilian on the scene shoot the gunman in the head, killing him." NewsMax.com: Commentmax Archives --"There's no question that weapons in the hands of the public have prevented acts of terror or stopped them while they were in progress," stated Police Inspector-General Shlomo Aharonisky. Former Police Inspector-General Assaf Hefetz seconds the motion. "A gun owner who can get within effective range of the terrorist while keeping under cover can prevent many casualties," he wrote in the Israeli paper Yediot Aharonot. Commentary - SierraTimes.com --What was the last part of the fight to recover our lost freedoms and preserve the few we have left that you personally supported, either with money, or time, or just spreading the word to people who might not know what the dangers are? If you have an answer, great… I’m proud of you! But if you’re like the vast majority of Americans who read publications like this one and watch carefully for the next incursion of tyrannical power into a realm they don’t belong in, then you probably stammered a bit: “Um… well… Y’see…” Keep and Bear Arms --Gun control laws have failed once more- --Submitted by: Darren VanDerwilt "If gun control laws work, by the way, what is it you're complaining about? Surely you don't mean there's now been another wrongful or accidental gun death in spite of all these 20,000 overlapping state and federal laws which you gun-grabbers (since 1934, and especially since 1968) have been assuring us would guarantee "the safety of the children"? If so, will you now join me in declaring they've all failed, and calling for their repeal?..." Pacificus at Liberty For All - Online Magazine I prefer to live by the double negative Golden Rule first introduced to me by Andrew J. Galambos in his book, " SIC ITUR AD ASTRA": " Do not do unto others as you would not have them do unto you…" Keep and Bear Arms - Patriots: Finance measure foe introduces opposing team --Submitted by: Newslinks Director "Less than 24 hours after Congress approved the broadest overhaul of campaign-finance law in a generation, its leading opponent, Sen. Mitch McConnell, unveiled the glittering legal team he has assembled to undo it." 'This is a mission to preserve the fundamental constitutional freedom of all Americans to fully participate in our democracy,' McConnell (R,KY) said." -- Here is a man who understands integrity and freedom! (Unlike Bush.) Keep and Bear Arms - Airport Insecurity: Weapons Still Getting Past Checkpoints--Submitted by: Newslinks Director "The Transportation Department inspector general found airport security screeners on several dozen occasions failed to catch guns and simulated explosives, even after the September terrorist attacks." "Inspector General Kenneth Mead's report found that screeners missed knives 70% of the time and guns 30% of the time and also concluded that the screeners failed to detect simulated explosives 60% of the time." WorldNetDaily: State surveillance: Abolishing freedoms In October, Congress voted 98 to 1 for the Patriot Act, which gives the government broader power to monitor e-mail, detain immigrants, listen to phone calls, monitor financial transactions, and secretly gather other data on suspects, who can be defined at whim. National ID cards had been unthinkable for the U.S. before 9-11. NewsMax.com: Statistical Malpractice – Part II -- by Miguel A. Faria Jr., M.D. This published gun (control) study (Harvard School of Public Health study published in the February 2002 issue of the Journal of Trauma.) is an example of politically driven propaganda, result-oriented research with preordained, biased conclusions, which can only be characterized as junk science. Keep and Bear Arms -We are NOT a Nation of Laws- Submitted by: Michael C. Nedrow This article from a supporter of Armed Females has the picture of our laws and our Constitution in perfect perspective. The United States is a Constitutional Republic, not a democracy. Our ‘nation of laws’ concept has perverted our Constitution to the point that the Constitution is not even considered in the passage of new laws. Media Research Center CyberAlert - 03/26/2002 - --We tend to believe that any nonprofit group is telling the truth because the group is, well, nonprofit. We overlook the fact that nonprofit groups hustle for money just like any other organization. The difference is that they don't report a net gain from income. They have not dirtied themselves with profit. They supposedly have nothing to gain by saying what they say, or doing what they do. "It's time that we in the media take away that carte blanche believability from nonprofit organizations and start treating them the way we treat everybody else." Media Research Center CyberAlert - 03/26/2002 - ---But I do think that there is a liberal bias, and that it works this way: We are taught in journalism school that our mission as journalists is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. But no one ever explained what gives us the right to do that. No one ever suggested that the comfortable are not inherently evil because they are comfortable, or that the afflicted are not inherently virtuous because they are afflicted. So, the tendency in the general media is to view anyone who makes a profit as comfortable. That tendency is coupled with the erroneous notion that profit and truth are mutually exclusive commodities.---- Media Research Center CyberAlert - 03/26/2002 - If liberal Hollywood is so filled with racists who are denying opportunities and recognition to blacks, how about a little coverage of that from a media which so often sees racial motives behind policies and campaign tactics employed by conservatives? Junkscience.com -- Main Page --But there is a reason that renewables, despite a history of generous government subsidies stretching back to 1982, haven't made a dent in the dominance of oil, gas and coal - which together account for 85 percent of the energy used in this country. The reason is cost. As energy sources, wind, sun and hydrogen are hugely expensive and inefficient. Fossil fuels aren't." (James K. Glassman, TCS) Junkscience.com -- "'Doing A World of Good': Pesticide/Crop Tech Industry Refocuses on Benefits" --- When it comes to pests, Americans are spoiled. That's good news and bad news. The good news is we expect - and have been rewarded with - an abundant supply of nutritious, affordable food to eat in our insect-free backyards while we walk barefoot through the healthy green grass. The bad news is Americans don't realize that it's the judicious use of pesticides and crop biotechnology that brings the bounty of America's heartland to supermarket shelves and ultimately our dinner tables, while protecting and enhancing our health, homes, schools, rights of way and businesses." (U.S. Newswire) Junkscience.com -- "Incendiary ecoterror" - "America has a burning problem with domestic terrorism. Just ask the residents of Vail, Colo., Medford, Ore. or Seattle. They have had property torched by members of the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF). Since 1996, ecoterrorists representing those organizations have committed more than 600 acts of arson and other mayhem and caused over $43 million worth of damage." (Washington Times editorial) Junkscience.com --"Hunter-gatherers ate lean cuts" - "Wild meats gnawed by ancient hunters contain healthier fats than modern farmed cattle. This finding backs the idea that a palaeolithic diet is the key to good health. Fifteen thousand years ago, cheeseburgers and chicken wings weren't on the menu. Before the advent of agriculture, humans ate whatever meat and fish they could catch, plus seeds and plants that they gathered. Humans were healthier for it, claims Lauren Cordain of Colorado State University in Fort Collins." (NSU) Um... people are sicker and lifespans are shorter now than 15,000 years ago? Junkscience.com -- "It is a mystery that frustrates research scientists like Tina Clarke of the Northern California Cancer Center. There is no logical reason Marin County -- where women hike pristine trails, eat organic and see their doctors regularly -- has more breast cancer than almost any place on Earth. There is no reason that the numbers continue to climb. The breast cancer rate in Marin has increased 60 percent between 1991 and 1999." Here's the clue: "Breast cancer disproportionately strikes white, affluent, college-educated women, and Marin County has a higher concentration of those than most places." Possibly because this demographic delays or completely avoids childbearing - a known risk enhancement for breast cancer. Marin County is being stalked by... affluence? Freedom of Education: A Civil Liberty ---Just as government is not to suppress the opinions of anyone, so it is not to promote the opinions of anyone. Jefferson’s “Bill” unequivocally declares “that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical.” If we grant that, then it should make no difference whether those same opinions are propagated by a tax-funded state church or a tax-funded state school. Reason Is No Guarantee: The Case of Campaign Finance Reform --So we will have this law. It will make billions of dollars for clever legal minds and policy wonks who will quickly learn how to circumvent any new obstacles to buying politicians, and proceed with the old game: Send money to the centers of power in the hope that you'll be first in line when a bit of it is returned. It is the iron law of the politics of a welfare state. Reason Is No Guarantee: The Case of Campaign Finance Reform --Reason, wisdom, insight, prudence, and common sense counsels that campaign finance reform is a ruse. Yet millions of people put their faith in various measures to produce such reform. It's not unlike tax reform. It starts off with the dream of fairness and efficiency, but quickly becomes no more than the production of loopholes and special privileges. The bottom line? There is no way to make a corrupt system good. NEALZ NUZE The media tried hard to tie Enron to the Republican party. The truth is that Enron’s collapse can be more properly blamed on Clinton rather than Bush regulatory policies. More TownHall.com: Cal Thomas --Increasingly, thanks to our public schools, children of illegal immigrants do not become Americanized by learning and embracing the history, language and ways of this country. Instead, too many are taught that America is a bad place and that capitalism is a bad system, though their parents came here presumably because our system is far better than the one they left. NEALZ NUZE --Is this the way it’s supposed to work? You borrow money from American taxpayers. Then you demand that your loan be forgiven. Then you borrow more money. Then you demand that your new loan be forgiven. Then you borrow more money …… More Here TownHall.com: Cal Thomas Even the liberal Brookings Institution now concedes that foreign aid does not work. Brookings scholars Michael O'Hanlon and Carol Graham studied the effectiveness of U.S. foreign aid and concluded in 1997 that, “countries getting more aid do worse macroeconomically, on average, than those getting less.” The reason, according to a study of 96 countries by Peter Boone of the London School of Economics, is because virtually none of the money is invested. All such aid does, says Boone, is increase consumption and expand the size of government without any benefits to the poor. NEALZ NUZE --Is the Supreme Court ready to rule that some speech really isn’t speech? That’s the only way the hideous campaign finance reform bill that Bush is preparing to sign can make it through the legal challenges. It’s a shame, isn’t it, that our president doesn’t care to live up to his oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution. More Here Nurturing terrorists at home -- The Washington Times Khalid Duran, a prominent Muslim academic who says " . . . the fundamentalism of the last half-century is a stranger to traditional Islam. Basically, it's a revolt against the modern world. People in modern societies are very cosmopolitan and tolerant of ethnic and cultural differences. They thrive on them. But fundamentalism tries to establish an ethnic purity and withdraw from cosmopolitan society." OpinionJournal -Stupidity Watch Speaking in Palm Beach County, Fla., feminist Gloria Steinem offers this pearl of wisdom: "The cult of masculinity is the basis of every violent, fascist regime. We need to raise our sons more like our daughters, with empathy, flexibility, patience and compassion. These so-called feminine qualities are present in men as much as women, and it's a libel on men to say they're not." What do you mean, "we," Gloria? Our enemies are the misogynistic ones, and we won't defeat them by raising a generation of effeminate young men. NEALZ NUZE--WOULD YOU LIKE TO FRIGHTEN THE HELL OUR OF YOUR POLITICIAN? Then tell them that you believe in freedom. Tell them that you believe that you, as a free American, ought to be free to do anything to or with yourself that you please, so long as you aren’t interfering with the rights of other people. Tell him that you believe in freedom – and that you are perfectly capable of making the decisions that affect your life and your future without the help or interference of government. In other words; tell him to butt out. Politicians are frightened to death of people who actually believe in liberty. NEALZ NUZE --Well .. here we go. Lawsuits being filed today against several large corporations seeking damages for slavery. The lawsuits are being filed against Aetna Insurance, CSX Railroad and Fleet Bank. This is just another illustration of just why we need a “loser pays” legal system. You want to file a lawsuit? Fine! File away! But … if you lose. If the judge or the jury doesn’t think you had a case … you get to pay all of the legal fees and expenses of the party you drug into court. If this gaggle of lawyers faced the possibility of paying the legal fees for the defendants in this slavery lawsuit it never would have been filed. Most people can't think, most of the remainder won't think, the small fraction who do think mostly can't do it very well. The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively, and without self-delusion- in the long run, these are the only people who count. -- Robert Heinlein LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL: OPINION: COLUMN: Vin Suprynowicz ---A traitor and a coward, sir, a whimpering sycophant to tyrants, it was to your kind I believe Samuel Adams rightly referred when he famously advised: "If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom ... go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels nor arms. May your chains set lightly upon you and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." CEI.ORG: Competitive Enterprise Institute: An Energy-Efficient Tax Code ---Indeed, the history of energy-related tax breaks yields a rule with very few exceptions - if the government has to induce taxpayers into buying something, then it probably wasn't such a hot idea in the first place. Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Reason is no guarantee --Source: Cato Institute--Author: Tibor R. Machan "Reason, wisdom, insight, prudence, and common sense counsels that campaign finance reform is a ruse. Yet millions of people put their faith in various measures .... It starts off with the dream of fairness and efficiency, but quickly becomes no more than the production of loopholes and special privileges. The bottom line? There is no way to make a corrupt system good." (03/26/02) Monday, March 25, 2002
Media Research Center CyberAlert - 03/25/2002 - Global Warming Blamed How can global warming be responsible for something in 2002 when the same thing occurred 29 years ago? Don’t ask ABC’s Peter Jennings who expressed that convoluted logic in a short item he read Friday night. On the March 22 World News Tonight, Jennings announced: "In Japan today the cherry blossoms are blooming and they are two weeks ahead of schedule. The last time they flowered this early was in 1973 and scientists are suggesting global warming." I guess we had 29 years of less warming. Junkscience.com -- if an enterprise does everything according to the community's then current desire, in accord with then current standards and the community benefits from enterprise-generated employment, local taxes funding local development, schools, infrastructure, community maintenance etc., and the community subsequently changes their collective mind and standards, effectively moving the goalposts after the fact and redefining benefactor to "polluter," is the original enterprise now at fault? If society collectively changes the rules and object of the game, why shouldn't society collectively foot the bill for costs incurred? TownHall.com: Steve Chapman The claim that free trade will increase poverty and inequity also appears to be built on sand. It discounts the most important economic experiment of our time -- China's decision in 1978 to open up an economy that was among the most tightly closed on earth. Since then, World Bank economists David Dollar and Aart Kraay point out in a recent issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, "China has seen the most spectacular reduction of poverty in world history." TownHall.com: Steve Chapman Environmentalists will be reassured to learn that countries which opened up to trade generated faster economic growth -- which, these scholars say, produced more pollution. But that was not the only effect. It turns out that as nations grow richer, they and their people demand a cleaner environment. The first result comes sooner, but for the vast majority of countries, the second one has been much more important. TownHall.com: Debra Saunders "Too many citizens answer the question (of) where are we going to get the money to pay for a prescription benefit with: 'The government will pay for it.' Current beneficiaries need to understand that most of the money for this benefit will not come from them. Most of the money will come from a tax on the wages and salaries of Americans who are in the workforce," Kerrey warned. General revenue is expected to subsidize Medicare Part B to the tune of $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years. Kerrey added, "And a growing number of these workers, who are seeing an increasing share of their income going to insure someone else, do not have health insurance themselves." And people who have health insurance get doubly dinged, as hospitals and doctors shift costs from the skinflint Medicare system to private insurers. Second, alert your representatives and senators in Congress that you don't want the federal government to cut doctor fees so drastically that you'll be lucky to get a doctor who can prescribe drugs for you when you're on Medicare. TownHall.com: Debra Saunders Last Sunday, The New York Times reported a story that should send a chill down the spine of every American who plans to grow old. Reduction in Medicare payments to doctors -- 5.4 percent this year, with a total decrease of 17 percent by 2005 -- apparently has prompted some doctors to refuse to take on new Medicare patients. One doctor was quoted as saying that he refuses to take new patients who are age 60 or older because they'll be on Medicare within five years. It had to happen sooner or later to the Great American Quest to Get Other People to Pay One's Medical Bills -- even when people can afford to pay them. "The funniest thing that people will say is, "I don't want to pay for it," said Harry Zeeve of the bipartisan fiscal watchdog group, the Concord Coalition. "I shouldn't have to pay for it. So let's let the government pay for it.' "Ultimately who's the government?" OpinionJournal - Featured Article There are a few things we're fairly confident in predicting, however. One is that the media will grow in political clout, which is one reason the press corps has been reform's loudest cheerleader. Mr. McConnell quipped Wednesday that editorials over the years in the Washington Post and New York Times amounted to $8 million in unregulated soft money contributions for reformers. This is one form of political speech the bill will not restrict. A second group of winners will be incumbents, who have easier access to both hard money and the media than challengers do. Forsaken benchmarks of liberty -- The Washington Times At one time, Congress and the president routinely honored their respective duties to consider the constitutionality of legislation. There used to be lengthy congressional debates over the constitutionality of legislation, and presidents vetoed many more bills than were invalidated by the Supreme Court on the basis of their unconstitutionality. (Now they just honor the polls, the votes and the money.--TA) Forsaken benchmarks of liberty -- The Washington Times What right do the Congress and the president have to ignore their oaths to support and defend the Constitution? What right do they have to abdicate their responsibilities to ensure that unconstitutional legislation does not become law? What right do they have to shirk their duties and confer on the Supreme Court the sole duty to uphold the Constitution?---What if all citizens decided to ignore the laws on the theory that it was not their duty to obey the law, but law enforcement's duty to coerce them into obeying it?--- Free-Market.Net Freedom News NOW bribed by Clinton cash Source: NewsMax--Author: Carl Limbacher NOW received a series of unprecedented federal grants from the Clinton administration totaling over $700,000 before the women's group fell silent on charges of sexual harassment, sexual assault and even rape in the Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky cases four years ago. (03/19/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Drug testing for everybody! Source: Reason--Author: Jacob Sullum "[M]ost teenagers who smoke pot (by far the most popular illegal drug) do so experimentally or occasionally. The unremarkable consequences of such limited use are apparent from the fact that schools generally cannot identify drug users without looking at their urine." (03/22/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--NOW continues to defend Yates Source: Equity Feminism--Author: Brian Carnell In the wake of Andrea Yates's conviction, NOW is claiming that she is being persecuted. Carnell writes, "Leave it to NOW to want a reeducation campaign to make Americans better understand a woman who murdered her children and repeatedly said she knew what she was doing was wrong." (03/22/02) Liberty For All - Online Magazine We are busy people. We don't have time to research every policy, every law, every mistake that destroys good people. We are good people, but sometimes we support policies because we've been fooled by the 'Smoke and Mirrors'... the propaganda, the manipulation of faulty numbers and bogus research. Sometimes we make mistakes. Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Tall grass, parked cars, and other so-called offenses--Source: Foundation for Economic Education--Author: Scott McPherson "Whoever said local government is best because it is 'closest to the people,' ... must have invented the concept of city codes; because nothing better represents the capricious, arbitrary, and dominating nature of majority power than local ordinances passed to give one group of people the ability to harass their neighbors into conforming to a specific esthetic standard." (02/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Women's studies depts slant toward PC feminism -- surprise? --Source: FOX News--Author: Kelley Beaucar Vlahos "The modern woman is plagued by stereotypes imposed by a male-dominated society, which keeps her relegated to rearing children, keeping home and working in low-paying, menial jobs." Or so Women's Studies Departments would have you believe. But is it true? (03/25/02) FOXNews.com ---"It is a truth universally acknowledged in women's studies textbooks that women have been and continue to be the victims of oppression," wrote Stolba. "Women's studies textbooks support a large number of factual inaccuracies. Many of these are deliberately misleading sisterly sophistries." Stolba quoted numerous cases of "mythmaking" found in the textbooks--- Free-Market.Net Freedom News--The ABC's of Jihad ... from the U.S. Source: Washington Post "In the twilight of the Cold War, the United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, part of covert attempts to spur resistance to the Soviet occupation." (03/23/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Cannabis given clean bill of health Source: This is London "[T]he drug is not as addictive as tobacco or alcohol .... In healthy young people, cannabis is even said to have a similar effect on the heart as exercise." (03/14/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--States revive death tax Source: Washington Post In a scramble to extract as much money from Americans as possible, state governments across the country are boosting estate tax rates even as the much-reviled levy is dropped at the federal level. (03/25/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--GOP mocked for attacks on liberty Source: Washington Post The conservative Club for Growth has bestowed its first-ever Republican in Name Only (RINO) awards, mocking "Republican office holders around the nation who have advanced egregious anti-growth, anti-freedom or anti-free-market policies." (03/25/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Campaign finance reform favors incumbents, experts say --Source: Nando Times Experts agree that the campaign finance "reform" bill passe by Congress preserves big advantages for incumbents. "They passed a bill that doesn't just preserve incumbent advantages," said political scientist Larry Sabato. "It extends them dramatically." (03/25/02) Keep and Bear Arms-- The United States is not a "Free" country, nor is it governed by "The People." Only when a country founded on laws, follows those laws is it legitimate. All governments will cross the line from time to time and the people and/or laws will reign it back in. The US Government has entirely destroyed the line and the law is not enforced against it. This is defined as a "Police State" anywhere else in the world it occurs. We even send our troops to free people living in such conditions while pretending it's not happening here. Gun control organizations are to gun owners like the Ku Klux Klan is to black people. There's really only one difference: Where the KKK has generally been known to exert its own violence against its victims, anti-gunners get the police to do their dirty work. --Angel Shamaya, KeepAndBearArms.com Keep and Bear Arms --Book Review: The State vs. The People --Submitted by: Newslinks Director "Don’t bother with this review - go read this book! Yes, that gives away my feelings on The State Vs. the People, but it isn't often that I think as highly of a book as I do this one. Written by Claire Wolfe and Aaron Zelman, TSVTP documents the rise of the American police state in very clear, detailed fashion, moving swiftly through eleven chapters (and six appendices)." Keep and Bear Arms --Educational Terrorism- --Submitted by: Newslinks Director "From the time a child is born until he makes it through to the age of eighteen, he is a potential kidnap victim. Parents pay ransoms every year their children are in school, and the kidnappers still hold the children. They live with the constant knowledge that one little slip could cost them the loss of their children and possibly even the loss of their freedom and/or everything they own. If that is not terrorism, then I do not know what is!" Keep and Bear Arms - --How Communist is Public Education? --Submitted by: Newslinks Director "Dewey believed that the best way to implement communism in America over the long term was to infiltrate all major areas of American life. Education would, he believed; provide the foundation since pupils could be indoctrinated into this peculiar way of thinking at a young age." How Communist is Public Education? by Chuck Morse - Sierra Times.com By Chuck Morse --published 03. 22. 2002 at 22:43 PST That the prevailing philosophies and methodologies of American public education are leftist is not up for debate. Leftists have dominated the federal Department of Education, most State Departments of Education, the teachers unions, most teachers Colleges, and education foundations for several decades. Many rank and file teachers know this, and have observed the catastrophic results, yet the situation is so rotten that they dare not speak out. Sunday, March 24, 2002
Ninety-eight percent of the people in this country are decent, hardworking, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them. -- LILY TOMLIN The history of liberty is the history of the limitations placed on the government. -- WOODROW WILSON "Government sponsors untold waste, criminality and inequality in every sphere of life it touches, giving little or nothing in return. Its contributions to the commonweal are wars, pogroms, confiscations, persecutions, taxation, regulation and inflation. ... It’s an inherent characteristic of all government."--Doug Casey--LewRockwell.com-- (10/26/01) "That all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and free money when unemployed, and free medical care, and a free house with a yard for the kids, and free public transportation, and free education, and a guaranteed well-paying job, and cheap cable TV, and a pension that keeps abreast of inflation, and a steak every Friday, and free basketball hoops, and a new car." — The Declaration of Independence, Liberal Edition. Keep in mind that the Boston Tea Party was sparked by a one half of one percent increase in the tea tax. Couple that with the fact that most American citizens pay over 50% of their earnings in one form of tax or another, and you'll understand why the camel's back is expected to break at any time. ~~Angel Shamaya The [Elian] raid... was almost worth it, if only to watch Jesse Jackson... defending an armed pre-dawn raid by the US government on a minority household. --RICH GALEN “The U.S. Code, which contains all federal statutes, occupies 56,009 single-spaced pages. Its 47 volumes take up nine feet of shelf space. An annotated version, which attempts to bring order out of chaos, is three feet long and has 230 hardcover volumes and 36 paperback supplements. Administrative lawmaking under statutes fill up the 207-volume Code of Federal Regulations, which spans 21 feet of shelf space and contains more than 134,488 pages of regulatory law. … Federal law is further augmented by more than 2,756 volumes of judicial precedent, taking up 160 yards of law library shelving.” And you’re certain you’re not breaking one of those laws? --(From:http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/wolfe70.html) We know that the Democrats (and some Republicans like Georgia’s Charlie Norwood) think that it’s a great idea for you to be able to sue your employer over a health care problem. Well --- if that’s such a good idea, why not extend it to government? Government makes decisions regarding the health care of Americans every single day. What is and is not covered by Medicare. Who gets what treatment at VA hospitals. Well, if employers should be liable for those decisions, why not government? (Neal Boortz) People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy— and I keep it in a jar on my desk. STEPHEN KING Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it. ~~ Thomas Sowell I'm getting a little tired of politicians trying to prove how "moderate" and "centrist" they are by taking more of my money and freedom. Where's this center -- somewhere between Lenin and Stalin? --ANN COULTER "The world is aghast at the admission of Treasury chief O'Neill that there are no assets in the Social Security Fund!," writes Richard Daughty. "Well, duh! Congress has been taking the money and putting in IOU's for decades, and suddenly this is news!" --(Bill Bonner--The Daily Reckoning) In response to Democratic critics who claim that Treasury bonds provide a foundation for Social Security, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said the retirement program has no real assets. He described the system as beholden to future government fiscal policy. (07/11/01) ~~Source: Fox News. In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all -- security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again. -- EDWARD GIBBON [On ancient Athens] Rights don't defend themselves. People have only those rights they are willing and able to unite to defend, with armed force if necessary. If you don't defend others when their rights are violated, don't expect anyone to defend yours , and those rights will be violated if they are not defended. — Jon Roland, 1994 Rightful 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 rights of the individual. ~~Thomas Jefferson Reporters today are far removed from America's founding values and are alarmed and contemptuous of gun owners as dangerous lower classes. -- HENRY ALLEN, WASHINGTON POST The tendency to claim God as an ally for our partisan values and ends is the source of all religious fanaticism. REINHOLD NIEBUHR Religion may in most of its forms be defined as the belief that the gods are on the side of the Government. BERTRAND RUSSELL Junkscience.com -- "GES - VIRTUAL CLIMATE ALERT , March 21, 2002 Vol. 3, No. 10" - "The ice shelf is melting! The ice shelf is melting!" was the late-breaking news as summer comes to an end in Antarctica. While many of the press reports link the disintegration of an enormous chunk of the Larson-B ice shelf with human-induced global warming, others resist the urge and try to report just the facts. To those few, all honor and glory." "A lie gets halfway round the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."~~Sir Winston Churchill Saturday, March 23, 2002
Keep and Bear Arms - Amplifying fears is our job and our pleasure. The one bias I'll concede all of us in this business fall prey to: we want there to be a story, and "no problems" is not much of a story. — RICK HOLMES, METROWEST NEWS Keep and Bear Arms - --'Why you can't trust Government' --Submitted by: Newslinks Director "I'll never understand people – especially Americans – who think that government somehow has a monopoly on truth and justice. In fact, the more we rely on government to find truth and secure justice, the more we see how corrupt, how hopeless it is in doing either." WorldNetDaily: Why you can't trust government Read Joseph Farah's explosive 1996 primer on property rights and the Endangered Species Act, "This Land Is Our Land," written with Rep. Richard Pombo. You can get a first-edition autographed at the WorldNetDaily online store at a bargain price. WorldNetDaily: Why you can't trust government While the lynx scam got more of the headlines, the Forest Service was forced to admit that it has lied to Congress and the public about the number of visitors to national forests. The agency claimed 920 million visitors in 2000, while the real number was 209 million. Keep and Bear Arms - --Personal Security and the Second Amendment --Submitted by: Newslinks Director "Congressman Schaffer and his colleagues took an oath before God and the people of the United States to uphold, defend and protect the United States Constitution." "The Second Amendment is not about sports and recreation. The fundamental force behind the Second Amendment is to empower the people and give them the greatest measure of authority over the tyranny of runaway government." WorldNetDaily: Defining 'social democracy' In fact, the very people who would violently oppose changing our form of government to a social democracy often support socialist initiatives because they are carefully labeled "smart growth," "sustainable development," "comprehensive land-use planning," "School to Work," "campaign reform," and on and on and on. WorldNetDaily: Defining 'social democracy' Social Democrats in both political parties are transforming America from a system of limited government, empowered by the consent of the people, to a social democracy in which the government is the supreme arbiter and enforcer of the redistribution of wealth, and the dictator of socially acceptable behavior. WorldNetDaily: Defining 'social democracy' Americans tend to react emotionally to words such as Nazi, communist and socialist, with very little understanding of what distinguishes one from the other. The term "social democracy," stirs little emotion, because it too, is not well understood. Democratic socialism is a kinder, gentler form of Marxism, which arose throughout Europe after World War II. The Scandinavian countries – Britain, France, The Netherlands – all proudly wear the "Democratic Socialist" label. The United States wears no such label but, increasingly, it should. Keep and Bear Arms - --The Collateral Benefits of Guns --Submitted by: Robert Waters--Website: http://KeepAndBearArms.com/Waters "Gun rights advocates believe that defensive uses of firearms save thousands of Americans from becoming crime victims each year. Here is a case where a serial rapist was captured by armed citizens. Unfortunately, he was turned loose by the criminal justice system and we can count the number of preteen victims he later assaulted..." - Robert A. Waters Keep and Bear Arms - --Liberty Belles Trounce "Million Moms" --Submitted by: Russell Fennick Summary of debate at L.A. Harbor College. Keep and Bear Arms The mobster Sammy (The Bull) Gravano once called gun-control activists "the best friends a crook ever had. 'Cause guys like me will always get a gun." Keep and Bear Arms ---people who support the Republican Party call themselves and the party – conservative. Once upon a time conservative meant to uphold the Constitution exactly as it is stated. Now, it seems to mean to uphold the profits of big business and to remove as many rights as possible from the American people by expanding the powers of the corrupt central government. Once upon a time, the Democratic Party supported other than big business. It was started by and for farmers, small businesses, and the like. It is now called “liberal” but any person would be hard pressed to prove that the Republican Party doesn’t behave exactly as the Democrats behave. Keep and Bear Arms--Forfeiture Extortion Stories Wanted --Leon Felkins, FEAR.org I am looking for cases of extortion by the government using forfeiture. Of course, in most cases, there will be nothing documented. The victims are somehow convinced that they could suffer major consequences if they talk. So they don't. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. — JOHN ADAMS (1814) spiked-health | Article | Medicine v magic: the homeopathy scam Like most proponents of alternative medicine, homeopaths vaguely cite an ever-growing mound of evidence that homeopathy works. True, there have been numerous studies of homeopathy, but most of them are unpublished and unsubstantiated. Homeopaths can (and do) point to John Buenaviste's 1988 scientific article in the prestigious journal Nature, but they tend not to mention that it was roundly criticised in subsequent issues because the results could not be replicated. STATS at Work: Columbus Dispatch: E-mail full of post-Sept. 11 inanities On the Internet, the freshest piece of misleading information rapidly disseminates to thousands upon thousands, creating a flood of misplaced concern. STATS at Work: The Los Angeles Times, In Which Truth Can You Trust? To paraphrase H.L. Mencken, no pundit ever went wrong underestimating the intelligence of the American people. STATS at Work: The Los Angeles Times, In Which Truth Can You Trust? In 1996, astronomer Carl Sagan wrote "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark," in which he lamented that "a kind of Gresham's Law prevails in popular culture by which bad science drives out good." ("Gresham's Law": In economics: bad money drives out good.--TA) STATS at Work: The Los Angeles Times, In Which Truth Can You Trust? At least three books with "dumbing"--the dumbing down of our kids, of our curriculum, of America itself--are in print. STATS at Work: The Los Angeles Times, In Which Truth Can You Trust? Just last week, columnist Michael Kinsley denounced Americans for their "social hypochondria," mocking our imaginary fears that this or that social ill will "destroy the country or the world unless it is eliminated." (But Americans are way behind Europeans in "social hypochondria."--TA) STATS at Work: The Los Angeles Times, In Which Truth Can You Trust? ---the American people are gullible, if not out-and-out dumb. In 1988, math professor John Allen Paulos wrote "Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences," in which he criticized "a lack of numerical perspective, an exaggerated appreciation for meaningless coincidence, a credulous acceptance of pseudosciences, an inability to recognize social trade-offs."--- TCS: Enviro-Sci - Polluting the Debate ---the LA Times strangely claimed, that it (particulate air pollution) "greatly increases the rate of dying." Most epidemiologists would agree that this study's findings are too small to be meaningful yet. The question therefore must be asked, why did JAMA publish this at all? By doing so, it may have polluted the public health debate with a contaminant. TCS: Defense - Vetting Agent Orange Although only a few reporters caught on, the IOM report actually said that "the increased risk [of diabetes], if any... appears to be small. The known predictors for diabetes risk - family history, physical activity, and obesity - continue to greatly outweigh any suggested increased risk from wartime exposure to herbicides." Bestselling author Michael Fumento reports: "Exploiting Child Exploitation." A former salesman from Florida, John Walsh, remains among America's most wanted television celebrities two decades after he riveted Congress and the nation with the astonishing claim that "Fifty thousand [American] children disappear annually and are abducted by strangers for reasons of foul play" and the horrifying statement that "this country is littered with mutilated, decapitated, raped, and strangled children." (The actual number of such crimes investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1981 was thirty-five.) Bestselling author Michael Fumento reports: "Exploiting Child Exploitation." By Michael Fumento--American Outlook, Spring 2002--Copyright 2002 Hudson Institute A new study that grossly exaggerates the extent of child sexual abuse in the United States is just old-fashioned America-bashing in disguise.---a study released on September 10 by the National Association of Social Workers and the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work. The study asserts that one out of every one hundred American children – or approximately 244,000 to 325,000 kids-each year are victims of sexual exploitation. Richard J. Estes, the study's lead author, calls this alleged explosion of evil "the nation's least recognized epidemic."---For all of the report's imposing five hundred pages (including appendices), only about thirty pages of it actually discuss the data-and much of that space is used to argue against accepting official figures! STATS at Work: Seattle Times, Oh, what a tangled Web Fienberg, whose research organization is known as STATS, makes his living checking the media's facts. In particular, he checks statistics that mainstream and online outlets publish. He says to be a good consumer of online information, "you do basically have to fall back and check things against what you consider to be authoritative sources: Major news media, government Web sites, names that are known and trusted." One advantage of being on the Internet, he added, is that "your capacity to check what you're reading is much better." STATS at Work: Seattle Times, Oh, what a tangled Web Internet manipulators rely on the naive trust many people place in the information they receive online or through e-mail, and the quickness with which the Internet can replicate a dubious "fact" so many times it seems to become axiomatic. "Sixty-two thousand four hundred repetitions make one truth," says a character in Aldous Huxley's famous 1932 novel, "Brave New World," which depicts a technologically advanced dystopia. Cato Daily Dispatch for March 22, 2002 In "Postal Ploy: 'Give Us Your Money or Don't Get Your Mail!'" former director of regulatory studies Edward Hudgins writes that, "A private Postal Service, without special privileges, would have an incentive to operate efficiently and to offer innovative services that profit its stockholders, provide opportunities for its workers, and give customers the best service for the best prices." Hudgins is also the editor of the Cato book Mail @ the Millennium: Will the Postal Service Go Private? projo.com/opinion We should worry that free speech is under threat in academia. However, the most serious threat is not external, from flag-waving Washington think tanks, but internal, from professors and administrators, who believe---that "the only question is the political one of which speech is going to be chilled." projo.com/opinion Academics have supplied the theoretic underpinning for the suppression of free expression. For example, the Marxist Herbert Marcuse asserted in Repressive Tolerance that no "oppressor" deserved free speech, and reserved the right to determine who the oppressors were. Modbee.com | Local Interior Secretary Gale Norton advised employees in a memo, Bush administration officials hope to identify 3,500 Interior Department jobs nationwide in the next two years that might be subject to competition. (Letting private business bid for what in essence has been a government monopoly.)--(Hooray!--TA) Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.... We've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of government himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price. — Ronald Reagan Keep and Bear Arms --Gun Owners - Learn This Lesson!- --Submitted by: Brian Puckett -- THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT GUN OWNERS NEED TO DO! If you get on a jury and there's a non-violent gun law violation, REFUSE TO CONVICT! No need to say WHY you're not convicting (2nd Amdt) which might cause a mistrial or disqualify you. Simply say NOT GUILTY, clam up, and sit there until the defendant is acquitted. NewsMax.com: Inside Cover Story Sarah Brady is typical of the anti-civil rights radicals," noted John Bender, executive director of SUSSA. "She wants to ban private transfers of guns for everyone but her and her elitist friends. If a black mother in a Delaware public housing apartment did this she would already be charged with a crime. I’m wondering if Delaware has different enforcement standards for rich white women.” The right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against tyranny, which though now appears remote in America, history has proven to be always possible. — Senator Hubert H. Humphrey That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of The United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms... — Samuel Adams, Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, at 86-87 (Pierce & Hale, eds., Boston, 1850). Friday, March 22, 2002
Noted linguist Noam Chomsky has observed many times that the national media is not the information-disbursing entity created by our love for the First Amendment of the Constitution. Rather, the national media is the propaganda wing of the status quo. The national media tells us things in a certain way to keep our eyes on the ground, and to keep us from questioning power too closely. When no other avenue is available to control the masses, the national media simply refuses to inform us at all. (http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/Pitt062501/pitt062501.html) "Everybody must admit that the Post Office, as a branch of Government, is an institution obviously and inevitably liable to the most prodigious abuses," wrote New York Plaindealer columnist William Leggett in 1837. Most of us probably also carry the genes for Political Affective Disorder (PAD), a sort of Stockholm Syndrome that leads us to acquiesce when government rulers lie to us, raise our taxes, or violate our rights. We are descended from those who knew how to zip their lips and lower their heads when rulers were killing those who spoke out or fought back. (excerpt) http://www.frontpagemag.com/columnists/ponte/2001/ponte09-05-01.htm A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." --John Stuart Mill Murder: a new feminist view of motherhood--Source: Fox News/ifeminists.com--Author: Wendy McElroy The shocking crime of Andrea Pia Yates, the Houston woman who drowned her five children, has galvanized many mainstream feminists to make apologies for women who slaughter their own offspring, painting the criminals as victims. (07/03/01) TCS: Tech - Globo-Flop , the world is said to have become increasingly unfair. The chorus of the debate on the market economy runs: "The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer." If anything, this is regarded as a dictate of natural law, not a thesis to be argued. Yes, the first half is true: the rich have indeed got richer. Not all of them everywhere, but generally speaking. But the second half is, quite simply, wrong. The poor have not, generally speaking, come to be worse off in recent decades. On the contrary, extreme poverty has diminished, and where it was quantitatively greatest - in Asia - many hundreds of millions of people have begun to achieve a secure existence and even a modest degree of affluence. TCS: Tech - Globo-Flop The most depressing aspect of the current debate about globalisation -- and its manifestation via anti-globalisation protests such as those at the Barcelona summit -- is the assumption that the world is rapidly going to the dogs. This is not a new phenomenon. In 1014 Archbishop Wulfstan of Sweden put it this way: "the world is in a rush and is getting close to its end." Junkscience.com -- Main Page Gasp! "Tree rings may point to earlier global warming" - "A TREE ring study has revealed that 1,000 years ago the Northern Hemisphere may have been as warm as today, suggesting that global warming can happen naturally. The study shows that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has been focusing on the effects of burning fossil fuels, has probably underestimated the extent of global warming free of human influence." (Telegraph, UK) Junkscience.com -- "Law Revises Standards for Scientific Study" - "It does not even take effect until next Oct. 1. But a little-noticed law called the Data Quality Act, signed in the waning days of the Clinton administration, has set off a fierce debate over how best to weigh health and environmental risks. The law — supported, and largely written, by industry-backed groups — requires the government for the first time to set standards for the quality of scientific information and statistics used and disseminated by federal agencies. It would create a system in every government agency under which anyone could point out errors in documents and regulations." (New York Times) FOXNews.com By Steven Milloy The White House's Office of Management and Budget issued this week a draft report on the costs and benefits of the federal regulatory behemoth. The report's estimate of "social regulations" producing up to $2 trillion in benefits annually is "fuzzy math" run amok.---The EPA's valuation process is overly generous for good reason. If the EPA didn't exaggerate the benefits of its rules, the agency and its friends in Congress would have a difficult time justifying the high costs imposed on the public, such as the estimated $100 billion per year from the last round of air pollution standards in 1997. Junk Science Judo-- Freedom Book of the Month from Free-Market.Net: The Freedom Network Someone -- it may have been Mark Twain -- once referred to three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics. Most of us can identify with that sentiment, but it's still easy to be blind-sided by what purport to be "scientific" evaluations of facts or events and to make erroneous judgments based on those evaluations. Junk Science Judo: Self-Defense Against Health Scares and Scams is the kind of book that should be kept within arms' reach. It's a literary vaccination against the temptation to let others do one's thinking. Book explodes myths of 'scientific research' BY TOM RANDALL If you plan on ever reading another newspaper or watching the nightly news, you need to read Steven J. Milloy's Junk Science Judo--Self Defense Against Health Scares and Scams. Milloy's new book is written to enable the reader, without benefit of extensive scientific training, to ferret out, understand and debunk the blizzard of phony health scares that fill today's media. This is a quick, easy read in spite of dealing with scientific issues. It won't make you an expert, but it will equip you to tell who is and who isn't. TownHall.com: Debra Saunders I've received letters from readers who support 20-year sentences for low-level, first-time nonviolent drug offenders because they think those sentences will protect their kids. It doesn't occur to these folks that their kids could be drug offenders. According to the Bush administration's own brief, 54 percent of high-school seniors have used illegal drugs. TownHall.com: Bruce Bartlett Economists estimate that consumers now save tens of billions of dollars each year in lower airline fares, telephone bills and other costs because of deregulation. It would be foolish to throw the baby out with the bathwater because of one corporate screw-up. The answer to Enron is not re-regulation, but greater transparency and scrutiny of management by those with the ability and responsibility to do so: institutional investors and financial analysts. In short, more market discipline, not re-regulation, is the way to prevent future Enrons. TownHall.com: Mark Tapscott the James Madison Center for Free Speech recently noted in a devastating critique of the Senate-passed bill that "average citizens must pool their resources to have an effect in the political sphere of issue advocacy, lobbying and electoral activity. The wealthy and powerful have no such need. So ordinary people band together in ideological corporations, labor unions and political parties to amplify their voices." The campaign finance reform act unconstitutionally "suppresses" those "foundational" rights, according to the Madison Center; so much so that the measure "is destined for a court-ordered funeral." Townhall.com: Nuclear waste repository is radioactive issue by Jonah Goldberg (3/22) It's an old joke, but it's still true: More Americans were killed by Ted Kennedy's car than by nuclear power. Washington's about to have another big debate about nuclear power, and amid all of the inevitable fearmongering and hysteria, you should keep that joke in mind. Social Security fight needed -- The Washington Times James L. Martin Let's make sure I understand this: Republicans in Washington are proposing legislation that would require the government to guarantee — in writing — that retirees will receive all of their promised Social Security benefits. And Democrats are attacking the proposal as a threat to Social Security's future. OpinionJournal - A Reuters dispatch on "global warming" claims: The Antarctic Peninsular [sic] has warmed by 36 degrees Fahrenheit over the past half century, far faster than elsewhere on the ice-bound continent or the rest of the world.--- Reuters made an utterly boneheaded mistake. As this BBC dispatch notes, the actual recorded change in temperature on the peninsula is 2.5 degrees Celsius. The freezing point of water is zero degrees Celsius and 32 degrees Fahrenheit. That means a temperature of 2.5 degrees Celsius is about 36 degrees Fahrenheit, but a change of 2.5 degrees Celsius is the equivalent of a change from 32 to 36 degrees Fahrenheit--or about four degrees. NEALZ NUZE We are all grateful for the National Guardsmen who have had to leave their families in order to help make airports safer. My hat is off to them. I saw one of them in New Orleans today who walked right through a security point with his M-16 on his back. He did not get a second glance from any of the security people. I asked the screener if she knew him. She said, “No, he’s one of the army guys.” It’s comforting to know that it is difficult to get through airport security – unless - you are dressed in fatigues and carrying an M-16. NEALZ NUZE--IS CASTRO LISTENING TO GEPHARDT, OR THE OTHER WAY AROUND? The UN conferees in Monterrey, Mexico are having themselves one grand time. The central theme of this conference has been how to get the more-advanced nations of the world, especially the United States, to seize more money from their citizens to spread among the pitiful poor nations. These third-world apologists are particularly fond of slamming capitalism. Isn’t that amazing? They criticize the very economic system that is responsible for creating the wealth that they seek to redistribute!!!! Now … here’s something interesting. Fidel Castro was speaking to this Gimme Gimme conference. He called capitalism a “casino.” Does that sound familiar? Wasn’t it Democrat Class Warlord Richard Gephardt who referred to those who are successful in a capitalist system as “those who won life’s lottery?” So, to Castro, capitalism is a “casino.” To Gephardt, capitalism is a “lottery.” Are you hearing warning buzzers yet? TCS: Enviro-Sci - Deregulator in Chief A new report from the Office of Management and Budget indicates President Bush is ready to apply some brakes to the regulatory state. Bush is calling for better scientific analysis, more public involvement in rulemaking, better attention to small business concerns, as well as more aggressive central review -- and rejection if need be -- of agency rules by OMB. Bush is not the first observer to note that regulations often are not well targeted, cost more than they should, and may have costs that outweigh benefits Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Farm credit fraud Source: Foundation for Economic Education--Author: James Bovard "The federal government has been busy foisting new billions in loans onto uncreditworthy farmers. The lending binge is accelerating and paving the way for another massive loan collapse and another taxpayer bailout. The circumstances leading to the current binge are worth examining in order to understand why politicians are completely unfit to allocate credit." (02/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Bush to loosen medical privacy standards Source: Washington Post The Bush administration proposes changing some federal rules regarding the confidentiality of Americans' medical records. The changes would restrict the ability of patients to decide in advance who should be able to use their personal health information. (03/22/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Small government fans fear intrusive Bush administration --Source: Washington Post Many people who supported George W. Bush in 2000 hoped to see a smaller, less intrusive government. In the wake of the terrorist attacks, they increasingly worry as the administration advocates more government regulation and less privacy. (03/22/02) WorldNetDaily: District 'harasses' home educators By Diana Lynne--© 2002 WorldNetDaily.com Facing a possible jail sentence for "contributing to the delinquency of a minor," California home-schooling mom Sandra Sorensen claims the San Juan Unified School District and Carmichael Elementary School have been harassing her and her family since they withdrew their son from the "unhealthy environment" of the public school. NewsMax.com: Inside Cover Story Move over, Rosie O'Donnell: The newest "celebrity" anti-gun hypocrite is Sarah Brady. Mrs. Brady "bought her son a powerful rifle for Christmas in 2000 - and may have skirted Delaware state background-check requirements," the New York Daily News reported Thursday. Thursday, March 21, 2002
NCPA - Daily Policy Digest - Is Asthma Linked To Air Pollution? It's hard to see how decreasing pollution could cause increasing asthma. Yet in media reports, regulators and public health advocates insisted the study proves the need for stricter ozone regulations. (It's not about asthma, it's about power and control.~~TA) NCPA - Daily Policy Digest - Less to "Digital Divide" Arguments Than Meets the Eye In recent years, it has become fashionable to decry the so-called "digital divide" -- the notion that poor American were destined to fall behind wealthier ones in computer skills, because they couldn't afford computers and proper training. But experts say evidence to support this theory is lacking. Data from the Census Bureau finds that any such gap is rapidly closing. And experts point out that many computer skills aren't especially high-tech or demanding -- meaning that point-and-click technology is easy for many a novice. Hawaii Reporter: Hawaii Reporter Gun control advocates are much like the prohibitionists of the early 20th century. By making liquor illegal, they spawned organized crime, caused bloody, violent turf wars and corrupted the criminal justice system. Today's war on drugs has exactly the same results. Prohibition didn't stop liquor use; the drug laws can't stop drug use. Making gun ownership illegal will not stop gun ownership. (Especially not for criminals.~~TA) A De-Evolution of Leadership -- The Takeover of America Take back your country by getting involved. Run for office, help someone you support get elected, vote, drive people to the polls, join a grassroots movement, volunteer, write a post-card a week, send an e-mail a day. Do whatever it takes to be heard over the din of political spin and media misinformation. Let's put some common sense back into government, put the servants back into office and expose the tyrants for the impotent cowards they are. www.the-eggman.com--A De-Evolution of Leadership -- The Takeover of America We have never committed a crime, lied to them or given them any reason to mistrust us, yet they question our every action. We are searched when we travel, they read our e-mails, tap our phones, confiscate our nail clippers invade our private lives from bedroom to nursery, and generally treat us like the criminals they swore to protect us from. Once great masters of our own domain, we have become mere pawns on someone else's political chessboard. And they are doing it all for our own good. (It's not about our own good, it's about power and control. ~~TA) News - SierraTimes.com--Review of The State Vs. the People By Sunni Maravillosa--Published 03. 19. 2002 at 22:23 PST Don't bother with this review--go read this book! Yes, that gives away my feelings on The State Vs. the People, but it isn't often that I think as highly of a book as I do this one. Written by Claire Wolfe and Aaron Zelman, TSVTP documents the rise of the American police state in very clear, detailed fashion, moving swiftly through eleven chapters (and six appendices). Keep and Bear Arms - Two armed robbers find out the hard way that those who have the tools to defend themselves, WILL. An important lesson for those crime-ridden states that allow only criminals to carry weapons. Charley Reese The whole business of gun control is based on the fear of the common people by the elite. Maybe the elite have a guilty conscience and want to keep the common folks unarmed in case the folks figure out how they've been taken advantage of. Charley Reese Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see that a pilot shooting a terrorist in a cockpit is any more dangerous than air marshals having a gunfight out amongst the passengers. And certainly a gun in the cockpit is less dangerous than being blown out of the sky by an F-16. FrontPage Magazine | Tanya Metaksa -- When Guns Are Banned The politicians and the gun banners won’t acknowledge that banning guns doesn’t stop criminals from misusing guns. So when their ban doesn’t work, they lobby for more of the same impotent solution. Tony Blair’s government is now calling for a ban on replica firearms, gun shaped cigarette lighters, and air pistols. When will they learn that the only people who will obey are law-abiding citizens, who don’t misuse real firearms, let alone replicas, air pistols, or cigarette lighters? (It's not about criminals, it's about power and control.~~TA) Firearms Refresher Course by Sheriff Mike - Sierra Times.com An armed man is a citizen. An unarmed man is a subject. www.nationalreview.com--Dave Kopel Finally, the Chinese human rights report omits any mention the most important human rights effect of widespread firearms ownership: deterring genocide. Every government which perpetrated genocide in the 20th century made sure that its victims were disarmed first www.nationalreview.com--Dave Kopel The Chinese government frets that "The United States is the country with the biggest number of private guns." We are also, of course, the country with the biggest number of private books, private churches, private newspapers, private computers, private single-family homes, and other tools and incidents of freedom. It is no coincidence that America is a simultaneously a well-armed and a prosperous nation, for both traits stem from America's culture of freedom and individualism. Still Waiting For Greenhouse ---perhaps the greenhouse industry has forgotten about evolution, not just of living things, but of the whole earth. Where did they get this idea that natural evolution events must now stop and all new events be blamed on mankind's activities? healthfactsandfears.com--high priorities: phantom health menaces ---Whitman's underlying assumption, which hit "close to home," is the belief that Republicans are reluctant to regulate alleged environmental hazards — "poisons" — because doing so would require punitive action against corporations which, in turn, make donations to Republicans. This simplistic, unscientific "reasoning" is disturbing and leaves one with the impression that Mrs. Whitman and her EPA staff would prefer knee-jerk reactions with no time to "think about it" if an environmental advocate shouts "poison" or "toxin" or "carcinogen." Don't think, don't ask questions about dose, don't ask for evidence that a threat to health exists — just regulate. Junkscience.com --James K Glassman reviews Junk Science Judo "Disturbing Statistics" - "Junk Science Judo is not your typical self-help snorer. Unlike Chicken Soup for the Soul, or Who Moved My Cheese?, Steven Milloy's new book provides something all of us can actually use. And it's entertaining to boot. A Fox News contributor and the publisher of the popular JunkScience.com web site, Milloy aims to help you protect your family and your business from junk science, the latest weapon wielded by interest groups to advance their agendas. It is the perfect tool in a world where ends justify means, and is wielded with equal expertise in courtrooms, political campaigns, the marketplace, and the media." (James K. Glassman, Tech Central Station) www.cato.org--Law vs. Morality ---A society where laws have become the answer to all human problems, laws get completely confusing and many people begin to be concerned with nothing other than avoiding violating the law. Such a society is very likely to see ethics and morality slowly but surely recede from its midst.~~by Tibor R. Machan TownHall.com: Suzanne Fields Movies based on history or prominent lives often reflect a biased point of view and a lot of poetic license. In an educated and free society, the truth usually emerges in other places, albeit slowly. But when so many young people who can't or don't read very much get so much "information" from movies and videos, it's likely to take an extremely long time for them to question the accuracy of what they see on a screen. www.nationalreview.com--Guest Comment on NRO This brazen attempt to hand our nation's police and firefighters over to Big Labor's monopoly control must be stopped in its tracks. S. 952/H.R. 1475 is being aggressively promoted by Senators Ted Kennedy and Tom Daschle. In fact, Daschle publicly promised a group of union bosses that he would see to this bill's passage by the end of the 107th Congress. Now is not the time for Congress to capitulate to Big Labor bosses' demands. The GSU Signal - Right to bear arms should be defended ---Criminals prefer unarmed victims. Ted Kennedy’s car has killed more people than my gun. Race, gender, and gun control are the tools of the liberal to divide us. The freedoms embedded within the Bill of Rights gives inalienable rights to each individual American and should be defended at all costs.~~by Sabrina Kahn TownHall.com: Thomas Sowell From time to time someone tells me that I would not have been able to do this or that without affirmative action. But everything that I have done was done by other blacks before me -- and therefore long before the civil rights revolution of the 1960s or affirmative action. TownHall.com: Thomas Sowell It is not just a handful of individuals who advanced without the supposedly indispensable black "leaders." Most of the reduction in the number of black families in poverty occurred in the 1940s and 1950s -- before any major civil rights legislation. Black males doubled their years of schooling during that time. When you double your education, your income tends to go up -- with or without Jesse Jackson or other black "leaders." www.boortz.com/nealznuz--“I’M NOT REALLY INTERESTED IN POLITICS” OK, fine. So you’re not interested in politics.--- How would you feel if you got an income tax form in your mailbox. An income tax form from the United Nations? Would your attention be diverted from tonight’s Wrestlemania if your employer told you that it had just written a check to the federal government for 15% of your 401K plan? You go to your H&R Block to get your income tax done. The Block guy tells you that you owe another $1000. You wonder why. You’re told that the Democrats, who now control the congress, have passed a bill eliminating the mortgage interest deduction has been eliminated. You’re family doesn’t have health insurance. You try to buy a policy from a private health insurance company. It’s too expensive. You tell the agent that you don’t need coverage for pregnancy, drug abuse or alcoholism. The agent tells you that if he could drop that coverage from the policy you would be able to afford it .. but the state law prohibits it. Does this bother you? I could go on with this list for page after page …be sure you continue to be bored by politics. NEALZ NUZE Robert Jackson had this question. If the Supreme Court says it is OK to require a drug test before government school students can participate in extracurricular activities … why not require a drug test of welfare recipients? Wouldn’t you just love to hear the leftists screaming about that one? NEALZ NUZE The Senate, with no small amount of help from Republicans, has passed this absurd campaign finance reform law. It reforms nothing, my friends. It was simply designed to make it harder for an outsider to challenge an incumbent in a federal election. NEALZ NUZE Click here for the Social Democratic Party's SECRET PLAN for America after the elections! www.boortz.com--secretplans Haven't you ever thought it a bit odd that leftists and Democrats are generally opposed to the concept of the private ownership of firearms, while conservatives and libertarians favor the idea? Well, there's a reason. Those who value and celebrate the worth of the individual and of individual freedom generally believe that the individual should be permitted to own and bear arms. Those who put the power of government over and above the power of the individual would just as soon see the individual unarmed. Armed individuals are, of course, a threat to tyranny. (It's about power and control.~~TA) Wednesday, March 20, 2002
The evils...of welfarism are veiled and tend to be postponed.... The effect of welfarism on freedom will be felt later on — after its beneficiaries have become its victims, after dependence on government has turned into bondage and it is too late to unlock the jail. — Barry Goldwater Keep and Bear Arms - Death of Literacy --Submitted by: doug thompson People make decisions on EMOTIONS not on reason. "Today, political correctness has become judge and jury of our thoughts. It condemns free thought and along with it, deductive reasoning. It has become the modern version of the inquisition. Its consequence has been the death of literacy." "It is a culture that is dominated by hype and emotion and ruled by the crowd. It is devoid of any intellect and reason." I have yet to hear anyone afflicted with the "gun control" disability dial 9-1-1 and specify, "Now please be sure to send the kind of cops who are disarmed. If you can't do that, we'd rather you not send anyone at all to stop the men who are holding my daughter at knifepoint, because in this household we don't believe that guns ever solve anything." —VIN SUPRYNOWICZ Junkscience.com -- "The Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age in the Eastern Mediterranean" - "Summary: The evidence continues to accumulate. The Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age were real, climatically-significant, several-hundred-year, global events that were correctly reported in earlier publications of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but which have been "homogenized," i.e., made to disappear, in the most recent of the IPCC's reports, due to the unremitting embarrassment they provide for proponents of CO2-induced global warming. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 176: 157-176." (co2science.org) Junkscience.com -- "CO2 and Coral Calcification: Is the Tide of Pessimism About to Turn?" - "Summary: Sometimes we wonder why we even bother to ask such questions; for reality seems to be of so little concern to the political forces arrayed against the burning of fossil fuels. CO2 is the devil incarnate to them and can do only bad for the biosphere. Fortunately, earth's many lifeforms - including its incredible coral reefs - continue to defy nearly all of their dismal predictions." (co2science.org) Junkscience.com --Antarctic Ice Shelf Collapses (NSIDC) Actually, the event is rightly portrayed in this piece as 'interesting' but not much else, although there's plenty of fraudulent 'global warming' assertions being tossed about in some circles. Junkscience.com -- "Millions falsely believe they have food allergies" - "Britain's status as a nation of hypochondriacs was confirmed yesterday by a survey showing that while more than 30 per cent of people believe they have a food allergy, fewer than 2 per cent genuinely do." (Independent) (The British aren't alone. TA) www.law.com--Mercury's Legal Morass In Britain, she says, following a recent controversy over the measles vaccine, fewer children had the vaccinations and "there was a measles outbreak in the U.K. Whenever people become afraid of vaccines, the incidence of disease rises." NCPA - Daily Policy Digest - Alternatives to Employer-Based Health Care The Democrats don't like the idea of people being "thrown out there to fend for themselves with a tax credit," as an aide to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle puts it. But to Republicans, this "empowers" the individual, and having consumers exercise responsibility for their own health care could go a long way toward controlling rampant health-care inflation. Opponents fret that a wide array of choices would only confuse people. But Americans faced a similar wealth of choices after 401(k) pension plans were introduced. And, with few exceptions, say observers, they soon learned to make responsible choices and wise decisions. --Source: Tom Gray, "Health Care Reform Debate: Again, It's Government Vs. Market," Investor's Business Daily, March 19, 2002. NCPA - Daily Policy Digest - Opportunity to Reform Philadelphia Schools Fades Last year, Pennsylvania lawmakers acknowledged Philadelphia's schools were among the worst performing in the country, a system where only 13 percent of 11th graders could read a newspaper with any comprehension. The schools, critics said, were merely a vast jobs program for special interests -- from administrators to custodians. National Center for Policy Analysis Living wage laws raise unemployment by 7 percent among low-income workers, according to economist David Neumark.... NCPA TownHall.com: Paul Craig Roberts We are in far more danger from the belief that the ends justify the means than we are from terrorists. Fortunately, in our time of need Loyola College Professor Thomas J. DiLorenzo has stepped forward with a blockbuster of a book, "The Real Lincoln," just released by Prima Publishing. Read it and regain perspective. Lincoln believed that his ends justified his means. He used war to destroy the U.S. Constitution in order to establish a powerful central government. TownHall.com: Walter Williams Proponents of "campaign finance reform" make the flimflam argument that money has corrupted politics. If campaign finance reform becomes law, money will still go to politicians -- albeit by a different mechanism. The reason is simple: Congressmen are in the business of granting favors and exacting tribute. If various interest groups want favors, they will find a way to get money to congressmen. If CEOs want to pay tribute to protect their companies from harmful federal laws and regulations, they will find a way to get that tribute into the political coffers of a congressman. The bottom line is that if politicians weren't in the business of granting favors and exacting tribute, every single issue surrounding campaign finance reform would be irrelevant. After all, why would anyone spend money for influence, access, favors and tribute if the only thing that politicians do is to live up to their oaths to uphold and defend the Constitution? But, I'm afraid, most Americans want congressmen to do something else -- to violate the Constitution in order to make it possible for them to live at the expense of others. TownHall.com: Jonah Goldberg In the Soviet Union, the vast majority of Russians loved their children, but the official ideology, enforced by a self-serving elite, held that the state took precedence. In Saudi Arabia, another official ideology, enforced by a self-serving elite, holds that the state, or more accurately, the state's religion comes first. Regardless, of their biology, this is their ideology and believe me when I say to you, it doesn't matter if the Saudis love their children too. TownHall.com: Phyllis Schlafly This CDC-funded study follows a pattern of politically biased junk science published in medical journals on the subject of guns. Publications that support gun control then run headlines about the claims without checking the details. TownHall.com: Phyllis Schlafly Now that we have a new president, he should tell the CDC to do some sensible studies about the real health problems children face, such as potential harm from Ritalin and the many vaccines now mandated. Congress should also look into whether the CDC has violated the Dickey Amendment, which prohibits the CDC from spending funds to promote gun control. TownHall.com: Phyllis Schlafly An accompanying editorial in the Journal of Trauma, far from the headlines, concedes that states with the highest rates of firearm deaths by children do not have particularly high rates of gun ownership after all. Its response to this is to demand "future studies" to try to fit the data to the thesis. TownHall.com: Phyllis Schlafly The federal government says it lacks funding for much-needed research about the alarming increase in autism, asthma, diabetes and other serious childhood conditions. Now we know where scarce research money goes: to fund gun-control propaganda. www.newsmax.com--Education – Trojan Horse of Liberals At the University of South Florida, Prof. Sami AI-Arian tells students, "Allah curses Christians and Jews," adding, "Let us damn America." He raises money for terrorist groups. American taxpayers pay his salary. He, in turn, teaches their children. www.newsmax.com--Education – Trojan Horse of Liberals More and more, our progressive educational system has become a sort of Trojan horse, used to open the gates to the army of internationalists and other zealots so they can spread their gospel of the "new age of collectivism," to quote the 1934 National Education Association (NEA) Report of the Commission on Social Studies www.newsmax.com--America, Israel and Europe America, not Europe, made the world safe from Nazism and Communism. It is now obliged to make the world safe from Islam. www.newsmax.com--America, Israel and Europe When European countries needed assistance from afar, the United States sent its army across the ocean in 1917. Again, in the Second World War, America stood by the allied forces of Britain and France against Nazism and fascism. Gen. Eisenhower made possible De Gaulle's triumphant entry into Paris in 1944. The United States demonstrated its active solidarity in the name of freedom for a Europe threatened and victimized by aggression and enslavement. America has displayed gallantry and principle in standing up for friends in a way that by comparison exposes Europe's shameful behavior since Sept. 11. NEALZ NUZE The United Nations is still out there pushing for the idea of a world tax. Bush says no to the idea. That’s for now. What happens when we have Democrats in office? Will they say no as well?http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020320-167972.htm NEALZ NUZE Did Clinton buy NOW’s silence during his various sex scandals? http://www.newsmax.com/showinsidecover.shtml?a=2002/3/19/220751 OpinionJournal - ---the American economic model has substantially outperformed the European socialist model. Since 1959 the number of jobs in the United States has more than doubled, increasing by 107%, while the big four nations in Europe (Britain, France, Germany and Italy) have experienced only 23% growth. The U.S. unemployment rate is about what it was in 1959; France's is six times as high, Germany's four times. U.S. economic growth has exceeded that of the EU every year for a decade. Last year U.S. productivity grew 2%, the EU's just 0.6%. Like it or not, socialism is going to have to give way to market economics on the Continent. OpinionJournal - ---there is a fundamental divide wider than the Atlantic between how Europeans and Americans view governance and society. The divide is easily identified: Who would you rather have run your nation, white-collar elites or blue-collar voters? The faculty of Yale or the firemen you saw on CBS's "9/11" special last week? Most European societies would pick the Yale faculty, for they believe in the wisdom and judgment of white-collar intellectuals, and for more than a century they have built their governments around the elitist, socialist model Germany introduced in the 1890s. Most Americans would pick the firemen, for we are wary of the Ph.D./good-government elites, and since 1776 we have placed our faith in the judgment of voters. NEALZ NUZE--A THREE STRIKES LAW FOR CONGRESSMEN A listener, Mark Wilson, sent me this gem. What a tremendous idea! Here, I’ll just let you read his e-mail to me. “Whenever a bill is found to be unconstitutional, every senator or representative who voted for the bill gets a strike against them. When a total of three strikes is accumulated, that senator or representative is kicked out of office, immediately, no appeal. The strike count is cumulative over a career. This means that strikes accumulated while a representative, still count even if the person moves up to the senate, ... or even to the presidency.” What a tremendous idea! Wouldn’t you like to hear some elected official trying to explain to us just why he couldn’t support this bill? Please, Senator, explain to us just why you should be allowed to continue ignoring our Constitution and remain in office! NEALZ NUZE To a Democrat a family earning more than, say, $85,000 a year isn’t a “working family” any more. This is just a way to convey that high-income earners as not don’t actually work for their wealth. They just mysteriously come by it somehow. As Gephardt would say they just “won life’s lottery.” No work involved. NEALZ NUZE Democrats are the party of big government. Democrats are more than thrilled with the increased propensity of many Americans to look to government for the solution to virtually all problems they face in their daily lives. Democrats know that to teach people that they can expect the government to be there to solve all of their problems you have to start with the children. NEALZ NUZE As Democrats work diligently for more control over our economy and increase levels of income redistribution many high-achieving Americans are making plans to run. The greater the confiscation of wealth becomes the more people start looking for other countries in which to base their businesses. Democrats have a “secret plan” to impose confiscatory taxes on any Americans who try to move their wealth or their business interests out of this country. NEALZ NUZE As we’ve said, Social Security is a mainstay when it comes to Democrat vote-buying. Social Security was, is and always will be nothing more than a giant income redistribution scheme designed to create dependency on government and loyalty to the program’s protectors in congress. www.lewrockwell.com--AVOT? Make no mistake: William J. Bennett is a blubbery bully-boy who delights in the suppression of dissenting views on the left, but most especially in crushing dissent from the right. Bennett and others of his ilk have specialized in the destruction of the Bill of Rights via their evil war on drugs and and they most especially hate and fear the 1st and 2nd Amendments of the Bill of Rights. The horrific events of September 11th were a godsend for these enemies of freedom. In a mere six months they have managed to advance their timetable of slavery by decades. Free-Market.Net Freedom News--The bias against handguns Source: Reason--Author: Cathy Young "While exaggerated claims about the evil of guns generally get respectful treatment in the media, no such attention is accorded to facts which suggest that the case for guns as a means of crime prevention may be more than a National Rifle Association myth." (03/19/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--An armed citizenry is the best deterrent toward property crime --Source: Hawaii Reporter--Author: John Orendt "Libertarians want to see all people treated equally under the law, as our constitution requires. America's millions of gun owners are people too. Law-abiding, responsible citizens do not and should not need to ask anyone's permission or approval to engage in a peaceful activity. Gun ownership, by itself, harms no other person and cannot morally justify criminal penalties." (03/19/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Pundit, unbundle thyself Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute--Author: Ted Roberts "Why is there so much religious passion in the tone of the Microsoft critics? Why is it so difficult to understand that the marketplace is a far better evaluator of Microsoft's product than a federal judge who tries to synthesize, express, and enforce the whims of 20 million consumers whom he's never talked to?" (03/19/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--God tells teachers' group to ban books Source: Lexington Herald-Leader "A teachers' prayer group is involved in an effort to get dozens of books dealing with ghosts, cults and witchcraft reviewed for possible removal from the library. God revealed to the group that the presence of the books was one reason his 'manifested presence' hadn't yet come to the school to change the hearts and minds of students." (03/13/02) www.smh.com.au--Lying to the public is all right, says Washington's chief lawyer --By Mark Helm, in Washington The United States Government's top lawyer has said that officials have the right to lie to American citizens, telling the US Supreme Court that misleading statements are sometimes needed to protect foreign policy interests. Free-Market.Net Freedom News--States consider draconian medical emergency powers --Source: WorldNetDaily The majority of U.S. states currently are considering the "Model State Emergency Health Powers Act," which lets governors order the collection of all data and records on citizens, ban firearms, take control of private property and quarantine entire cities. (03/20/02) Tuesday, March 19, 2002
Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened. — Billy Graham An Armed Society Is ..., by Joel Simon Afterward I walked downtown for a while and thought about Heinlein's Dictum, that an armed society is a polite society. He was right as far as he went, but he didn't go far enough. The statement implies that armed people are polite because they are afraid of each other, and that's wrong. An armed society is a friendly society. The people there can afford to be friendly, because they have nothing to fear from each other. Commentary - SierraTimes.com Every day, in every classroom throughout our public school system, children sit with the mental faculties capable of absorbing far more than the teacher can convey, only because the teacher must hold the level and subject matter down to the lowest common denominator of the class to protect some sort of mythical esteem. www.sierratimes.com--The lowest common denominator By: Chuck Heron, Cuisinero --Published 03. 16. 2002 at 22:14 PST Whoa! Hold on there a minute! Why are you treating me as if I were a criminal? I have done nothing to deserve this hostility and treatment. Seems like these are common words, or at least thoughts in the minds of citizens across this Nation since September 11, 2001. We, you and I, law-abiding citizens, have found ourselves reduced to the lowest common denominator. We are all dumped into that litter box once reserved for criminals and terrorists. Keep and Bear Arms - Gun --UK: Blunkett: 'Muggers rule our streets' --Submitted by: John Fansler "HOME Secretary David Blunkett sensationally admitted yesterday that our streets are ruled by muggers and yobs."-- Are you not glad our forefathers rebelled against the English and founded a republic. Welcome to your firearms-free socialist paradise, British subjects!-- Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Nine states ignoring consumer interests in Microsoft suit --Source: Citizens for a Sound Economy--Author: Martin Reiser "These 9 state attorneys general seek to impose a far more punitive remedy and are quite prepared to hold the economy hostage until their demands are met. But these demands are not only far beyond the scope of the appeals court’s decision; they are fundamentally at odds with the interests of consumers." (03/18/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--When a loaded gun enters the equation Source: North Jersey Media--Author: Rod Allee "Should the young woman have access to a handgun? If the young woman were your daughter or your sister, would you want her to have access to a handgun -- not locked up in a vault, but ready to go -- as her enraged, abusive, threatening, drunk, and wasted boyfriend came through that apartment door? Even if that handgun were 'illegal'?" (03/17/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--School choice -- then and now Source: The Cato Institute--Author: Casey J. Lartigue Jr. School choice opponents are playing the race card by hearkening back to days when racists used school vouchers to evade the 1954 landmark Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka decision. That was then. Today, 60 percent of blacks support school choice. (03/18/02) www.freecannon.com Where do terrorists get their money to buy weapons to kill Americans? If you’re an American taxpayer they definitely get it from you. www.freecannon.com “Where do terrorists get their money? If you buy drugs some of it might come from you.” (Where do car thieves get their cars? If you buy vehicles, it’s your fault. Where do burglars get their money? If you buy DVD players, it’s your fault. Where do muggers get their money? If you receive a paycheck, it’s your fault.) seattlepi.nwsource.com--Readers Soapbox: Mind-altering drugs both banned and pushed "A Beautiful Mind" depicts Dr. Nash as a diagnosed schizophrenic who recovers with the help of the newer anti-psychotic medications heralded by the pharmaceutical industry and lay groups such as the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, which, according to Mother Jones magazine, has taken at least $11 million from the drug companies. They say that in war the first casualty is truth and it has certainly been killed here. For in fact the movie is based upon the biography of Nash by Columbia journalism professor Sylvia Nasar, who says in this week's Newsweek (March 11) that "moviegoers will be surprised to learn that powerful new drugs like Clozapine played no role in Nash's recovery." Indeed, Nash stopped taking psychiatric drugs in 1970, prior to the invention of the so-called atypical anti-psychotic medications. Nash himself told Nasar that he "emerged from irrational thinking ultimately without medicine." seattlepi.nwsource.com--Readers Soapbox: Mind-altering drugs both banned and pushed Americans use more illegal and legal mind-altering drugs than any other country in the world. And yet we continue with a national drug policy which sends the public two contradictory messages on psychoactive drugs. While one arm of the government is trying to stop people from voluntarily taking illegal mind-altering drugs, another arm is trying to get people to start taking legal mind-altering drugs. seattlepi.nwsource.com--Readers Soapbox: Mind-altering drugs both banned and pushed In his new book, "Madness in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill," journalist Robert Whitaker documents the heavy damage of the older anti-psychotics, whose use may have caused more than a million cases of the nerve-damaging illness called tardive dyskinesia, which Nasar says Nash avoided by quitting the drugs. And Whitaker underscores the unjustified and hyperinflated claims made by the drug companies (and the lay groups) for their newer, so-called atypical anti-psychotics. ifeminists.com > editorial > 21st-Century Feminism The liberated woman of the 21st century does not resemble the ghosts haunting '80s feminism. Who is she? She is the estimated 17 million women who control their own self-defense by owning guns; the mothers of children who are schooled at home; the stay-at-home moms who sacrifice careers to pursue more personal values; the entrepreneurs and career women who rise through merit and reject the concept of "victim." The 21st-century feminist is anyone — female or male — who rejects gender privilege and demands real equality for men and women under the law. She makes her own choices and takes personal responsibility for them, without asking government for protection or tax dollars. Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Man can keep atheist car tag --Source: St Petersburg (FL) Times "The state[FL]said Thursday that a Gainesville man can keep his personalized license plate that says 'ATHEIST.' Prompted by complaints, the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles declared last month that the tag was 'obscene or objectionable,' and ordered Steven Miles to ship it back. Miles called the American Civil Liberties Union instead." (03/15/02) 'Good Neighbor Act' Seeks to End 'Land Grabs' -- 03/18/2002 Rep. John Peterson (R-Pa.) is the bill's sponsor. "With Washington already owning one-third of America, we cannot afford to wait any longer to reform the federal government's runaway land acquisition process," Peterson said. "A good neighbor doesn't move into your house and take over, especially when they're not invited. Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Alarm over 'strip-search' scanners Source: CNN Airport security devices that reveal people's bodies through their clothing are under fire as "virtual strip search" machines. While their use is currently voluntary, an ACLU representative warns that, "Those of us who fly a lot know this won't remain voluntary for very long." (03/19/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Massachusetts bill mired in civil liberties concerns Source: Boston Globe A Massachusetts "antiterrorism" package has been mired in the House since October, much to the chagrin of prosecutors. One measure would allow prosecutors to subpoena e-mail and Internet records, raising red flags for civil liberties advocates. (03/19/02) Junkscience.com--"asahi.com : Gas guidelines: Bathe less, huddle" - "The government wades into the homes and offices of the public to cut greenhouse gases. Families should huddle together in one room, eat cold rice, bathe less and stare at blank TV screens, according to government guidelines to help Japan reach compliance with the Kyoto global warming accord. The recommended conservation measures are part of the Guideline of Measures to Prevent Global Warming, which is expected to win Cabinet approval next Tuesday." Junkscience.com -- "Portugal swings to the Right" -- "ONE country after another, Europe is turning its back on benevolent socialism and voting instead for free-market reform and tough curbs on immigration." (Telegraph, UK) (Having learned something from bad economic experiece.--TA) Junkscience.com -- "Odours found to trigger symptoms in Gulf War vets" - - Mar 18 - Everyday smells such as diesel or tar can trigger the symptoms of so-called Gulf War syndrome in soldiers who fought in the conflict, according to new research released Saturday. Common odours that remind Gulf War veterans of the battlefield can bring on memory loss, poor concentration, migraine-type headaches and muscle fatigue, a study by researchers at the University of Nottingham, UK, revealed. The results, presented at the British Psychological Society's annual conference in Blackpool, suggest a link between exposure to everyday smells and the severity of symptoms in veterans." (Reuters Health) (See 'psychosomatic'--Junkscience.com) Yahoo! News - Why are media exempt? --Were the media's own loophole ever repealed, or their outlet purchased by a non-favored entity, campaign ''reforms'' such as banning ''coordination'' (a legal term for Conspiracy to Commit Speech) would haunt Katie Couric's and Tom Brokaw's every utterance on the air and in print. Journalists and entertainers would then be screaming all the way to the Supreme Court about how the McCain-Feingold and Shays-Meehan bills trash their First Amendment freedom. I would side with the media in such a challenge because they are as entitled to freedom of political speech as every other American. No less, no more. (Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is ranking minority member of the Senate Rules Committee, which handles election-law legislation.) Yahoo! News - Why are media exempt? The news and entertainment media's political proselytizing is exempt from government restriction courtesy of Section 431(9)B(i) of the current law. This provision excludes from federal regulation ''any news story, commentary or editorial distributed through the facilities of any broadcasting station, newspaper, magazine or other periodical publication, unless such facilities are owned or controlled by any political party, political committee or candidate.'' Yahoo! News - Why are media exempt? --Journalists, and their corporate bosses, are America's privileged class in exercising freedom of speech. Through articles and editorializing, they wield tremendous political influence. They do not report their political activities (i.e. editorials, articles) to the Federal Election Commission (news - web sites). America's media companies are special interests. Yet, like defense contractor General Electric, which owns NBC, they all benefit from a special loophole written into the campaign-finance law a quarter-century ago.--- Doctors Shunning Patients With Medicare-- For the first time, significant numbers of doctors are refusing to take new Medicare patients, saying the government now pays them too little to cover the costs of caring for the elderly. Medicare cut payments to doctors by 5.4 percent this year. The government estimates that under current law, the fees paid for each medical service will be reduced in each of the next three years, for a total decrease of 17 percent from 2002 to 2005. NCPA - Daily Policy Digest - Some States Are Removing Insurance Coverage Mandates Year after year, in all 50 states, legislators have added new insurance requirements covering everything from acupuncture to well-child care. The proliferation of these mandated items of health coverage has driven up premium costs to the point where they have forced many Americans to forgo coverage. Medical interest groups -- from chiropractors to optometrists -- have often led the push to pile on these extra items.---Medical-policy experts point out that insurance was originally designed to cover the huge, unexpected costs of serious diseases and accidents. But mandates have changed insurance from risk protection to prepaid health care. --(And driven cost through the roof.--TA) TownHall.com: Husband abuse--Armstrong Williams--March 19, 2002 Last week, I began my column by observing that "one woman is battered every 15 seconds." What I neglected to mention was that the same study found that "one man is battered every 14 seconds." In fact, most studies reveal that men are attacked, clawed, beaten, shot and generally abused at equal - if not slightly greater - rates than women.---When Dr. Suzanne Steinmetz had the audacity to publish "The Battered Husband Syndrome" in 1978, a study that found that more women then men initiated domestic violence, feminist groups were on her like an animal. Steinmetz recalls receiving anonymous phone calls from feminist groups threatening to harm her family. At least one implication is that political groups that have resolved to empower battered women have hijacked our understanding of domestic abuse by any means possible - even if that means nourishing those cultural myths that portray women as forever victims. TownHall.com: Bruce Bartlett --The truth is that living wage campaigns are mainly fronts for municipal employee unions. Their goal is to raise labor costs for potential competitors. If government contractors have to pay their workers more because of living wage laws, then they are less likely to replace traditional government workers. This makes it easier for government employee unions to demand higher wages for their members, because the option of saving money by contracting out has been undercut. TownHall.com: Bruce Bartlett --Economists have an expression, "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch." Government can't give anyone anything it hasn't first taken from someone else. Understanding this simple point is all that is necessary to see the basic lunacy of living wage laws. OpinionJournal - Dorothy Rabinowitz's Media Log --Andrea Yates's family could offer, by contrast, her murder of five children as a testament to her victim status. They were appalled, they declared, that the jury had come in with a verdict of guilt for a woman so disturbed that she drowned her five children. Apparently, the more horrific the crime, the greater the proof that the perpetrators should be found not guilty by reason of insanity. By this reasoning, Mohamed Atta and his colleagues would certainly have escaped prosecution had they lived.--- NEALZ NUZE --It doesn’t seem to do any good to talk about this bill (So-called "Campaign Finance Reform"). It is clearly a violation of your right to political free speech. It makes it more difficult for an outsider to run against an incumbent. It takes power away from special interest groups – and these groups run from the leftist People For the American Way to the National Rifle Association – and gives that power to the editorial boards of the nation’s major leftist newspapers. It’s not about Enron, folks. It’s about protecting incumbents. Now it’s up to the Supreme Court to set things straight. Good luck. NEALZ NUZE --So --- here’s your situation. Father arrives at Blockbuster to pick up his son at when the store closes. Father sees predators with guns entering store. Father realizes his son is inside that store. Father has a gun. Father also has a concealed weapons permit. Father follows predators into the store. End result? One dead predator and another with a gaping, sucking chest wound. Father is safe, as is son.--- Monday, March 18, 2002
Cost of Government Day is July 6th--Source: ATR Americans for Tax Reform will hold a press conference on July 6th to mark Cost of Government Day, the calendar date when the average American worker has earned enough to pay off his/her share of the burdens of government. Americans currently work 187 days for this purpose: 87 days for their federal tax burden; 41 days for state and local taxes; and 58 days for the costs of regulations. (07/05/01) TODAY’S DEMOCRAT DEFINITIONS Responsible Tax Cut – Any tax cut which transfers tax revenue from the top one percent of income earners to those who do not, in fact, pay any income taxes at all. Irresponsible Tax Cut – Any tax cut which lets upper income wage earners keep any more of the money that they earn. (Neal Boortz) Congress works to make schools safe for roaches and rodents--Source: Fox News Even thought there's little scientific data that pesticides threaten health, and plenty that vermin do, the Senate approved a bill that would make it difficult for schools to clear rats and roaches from areas where children spend much of their lives. (06/22/01) Most Americans have no inkling of what rule of law means. We think it means obedience to whatever laws Congress enacts and the president signs. That's a tragedy. (Walter Williams) "--- whole organizations and movements are in the business of trying to alarm the public -- radical feminists, environmental extremists, race hustlers, consumer advocates and many more. Wild statistics help them get free publicity in the media and help stampede politicians to "do something," usually by spending the taxpayers' money to deal with a manufactured "crisis." (Thomas Sowell) There is too much power in the hands of the media, the career politicians and shallow entertainers. There is too little power in the hands of working people who fork over trillions of dollars in taxes to a government that wastes billions and insults them with foolish sound bites. PAY ATTENTION, PEOPLE! (Bill O'Reilly) All should remember, the Declaration of Independence was a declaration of war against tyranny and as such is the PARENT of the 2nd Amendment. (https://www.keepandbeararms.com/) Disarmament Through Obsolescence, by Patrick K Martin Throughout history, tyrannical governments have known that to wreak their will, they must first disarm the people. No armed population has ever been oppressed without first being disarmed. In the case of America, our long history of weapons ownership, and our jealous regard for our rights, makes the removal of our firearms more difficult than most. Keep and Bear Arms --U.N. seizure of U.S. land: Toward a wilderness utopia- -Submitted by: Newslinks Director Few people know – including most congressmen – that the management of 73,270,583 acres of the United States is determined by 34 non-Americans, who are elected by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. This land is distributed in 47 U.N. Biosphere Reserves, managed according to principles and guidelines established by the Man and the Biosphere International Coordinating Council, and set forth in the "Seville Strategy" and the "Statutory Framework." WorldNetDaily: Toward a wilderness utopia The ultimate objective is to convert as much as half of the land area of the United States to "core wilderness areas," which are off-limits to humans, with government management of most of the remaining land "for conservation objectives." This leaves only "sustainable communities" for people, which are described by Science magazine as "islands of human habitat surrounded by wilderness." Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you. — PERICLES (430 BC) Keep and Bear Arms --When the drug war ends- --Submitted by: Newslinks Director Some day soon, Americans are going to recognize the U.S. government's war on drugs has been a total, unequivocal disaster. Like most government initiatives, the war on drugs has only exacerbated our problems – increasing crime, infringing civil rights, soaking taxpayers and just generally making a bigger mess of things. Let's hope it's sooner rather than later. Keep and Bear Arms - Teen kills self playing with gun --Submitted by: Anonymous "A 16-year-old boy fatally shot himself while playing with a semi-automatic gun ... 'It just looks like he was messing around with the gun and it went off' ... A single bullet fired from the weapon..." KABA Note: The "gun went off". Riiiight. There was a time was when most 16-year-old boys knew better -- back in the days when they were encouraged to make firearms a routine part of their lives. This is what happens when society encourages ignorance instead. “The right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.”~~Hubert H. Humphrey Armed Females of America - Article Archive “When you’ve been on the edge,” stated Rosie, “you can understand what it’s like to go over.” Perhaps she is grounded in her belief that she should not own a gun. I certainly believe she shouldn’t. But with reasoning like that, shouldn’t the rest of us be able to carry a gun to protect us from people like her, who see nothing wrong with killing children? If Rosie can understand what it’s like to “go over” the edge, perhaps she needs more psychiatric help than she is already getting. Armed Females of America - Article Archive Ms. O’Donnell thinks that only certain types of violence are bad, particularly those involving a gun. In fact, the loud scary bang itself is what is frightening and bad. Even guns used in self defense – statistically the overwhelming majority – are not okay, according to Rosie. She so vehemently believes this that she has asked for everyone in the country to turn in his or her guns. Everyone but her bodyguard of course. The Queen of Whine will only truly feel safe when she is the sole person in the world able to defend herself. Keep and Bear Arms -Israel: More Guns In School --Submitted by: Newslinks Director "Israel's government officials have once again demonstrated a better grip on reality than have those in the United States when it comes to self-defense... the government is giving away guns to teachers. When will it occur to American officials and teachers that declaring schools to be Gun Free Zones is the same as sending an engraved invitation to an Al Qaeda terrorist(s) to come on over and shoot up some schools?" - Larry Pratt, GOA The US Police State As the excellent Paul Craig Roberts keeps pointing out in his column, government police and prosecutors are only emboldened by the weakness inherent in guilty pleas, and unless a strong and assertive defense bar fights back, in trial after trial, the government's pursuit of false convictions at any cost, and money, and power, all coming at the expense of private citizens, will only grow worse. Avoid the legal nets / That entangled Bernie Goetz — Just shout "Help! Help! Police!" / Like Kitty Genovese. —MARK GIBSON Junkscience.com -- Main Page Until the 1980s, no one thought mad cow disease could strike people either." (AP) (Junk Science Note: And we still don't know if it does - that remains strictly hypothetical.) NEALZ NUZE according to Donald Lambro of The Washington Times, Democrat insiders say it is the Democrats, not the Republicans, who are laying plans for quick votes after the election. The Democrats will vote to raise Social Security taxes by expanding the payroll threshold. They’ll also vote to repeal all of Bush’s income tax cuts. The truth is that every plan for Social Security reform put forth by Republicans absolutely locks-in … guarantees … all Social Security benefits for those already retired or nearing retirement. That information isn’t of any value to Republicans, though, unless the information is delivered to voters. The leftist media will be all to happy to report the frightening predictions of Gephardt and McAuliffe. That information helps to elect Democrats --- and about 97% of the media crowd will be voting for Democrats. With help like that, how can the Democrats lose? Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Web critics take aim at old-style publishers Source: Fox News A host of small online operations across the country are dissecting the work of traditional newspapers and magazines. Following the lead of SmarterTimes.com, which monitors the New York Times, they expose mistakes and bias in the print media. /18/02) School Reform News: "Research" Support for Teacher Certification Crumbles (February 2002) Despite the assertion by teacher certification advocates that scores of research studies exist to prove certified teachers produce higher student achievement gains, a meticulously researched study from The Abell Foundation concludes that, in fact, there is no persuasive evidence for such an assertion. Moreover, according to the Foundation's work, current teacher licensing requirements are neither an efficient nor an effective means of ensuring a competent teaching force. Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Critics charge abuse of eminent domain Source: Fox News According to the Institute for Justice, governments are increasingly using eminent domain laws that let them confiscate private property to grab land to make way for favored private developments and the fat tax revenues they bring. (03/18/02) Friday, March 15, 2002
Point-Counterpoint. VitalSTATS February 2002 “Prematurity's Effects Linger in Adults; Babies Born Early May Confront Lifelong Problems, Researchers Say” – Washington Post, Jan. 17 “Tiniest Babies Show Success As Youths in Spite of Hurdles” – The New York Times, same day (TA NOTE: So, which is it?) No, Pat, No.-- VitalSTATS February 2002 Buchanan actually claimed that “Just as the correlation between heavy smoking and early death from emphysema, lung cancer and heart disease has been established beyond refutation, so too, has the link between male sodomy and a short life.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Elevating prejudice to the status of data is no way to carry on a debate. Junkscience.com -- Main Page--"Public have more to fear from mistruths than GM" - "In recent weeks much media coverage in Australia has been directed at debate about the safety and labelling of genetically modified food. The one thing that has become apparent during this recent GM food debate, is that mistruths and misinformation about genetic modification are rife. It is also clear the Australian public should be more fearful about the mistruths and distortions from the anti-GM lobby than the safety or labelling of GM food." (Life Sciences Network) (TA NOTE: Same thing in the U.S.) Junkscience.com -- Main Page One of the ringleaders behind the anti-biotech vandalism is Greenpeace, which has campaigned against genetically improved foods. What should you eat instead? "Buy organic (if you can afford it)," Greenpeace advises -- inadvertently conceding that organic foods cost more. The question, then: If activists eliminate genetic improvement, and all that's left is organic… what do you eat if you can't afford it?" (Center For Consumer Freedom) (TA NOTE: And what happens when "organic only" farming reduces the available food supply by reducing crop yields?) Junkscience.com -- Main Page--"Does a vegan diet have a moral basis?" - "Some vegetarians and animal rights proponents suggest that the least harm would be done to animals if humans consumed a vegan diet, but a scientist at Oregon State University questions those assumptions - he has found that hundreds of millions more animals would die by this approach than if humans consumed a diet that included meat from grazing animals." (Oregon State University) Junkscience.com -- Main Page-- Let's see, 'organic' milk production doesn't allow use of bovine somatotropin (BST) does it? So, 'organic' herds need something like 20% more stock, requiring that much more feed, space (that could otherwise be devoted to wildlife), etc. and producing that much more waterways/environment damaging waste (and don't even think about climate-cooking methane!) than 'conventional' modern dairy herds. And organic milk is somehow to be viewed as environmentally friendly 'premium' product? Junkscience.com -- Main Page ---measured by the magnitude of change, the positive trends in both crime and welfare are dwarfed by the improvement in America's environmental trends. This surprises most people, because they are used to a drumbeat of apocalyptic news that the environment is getting progressively worse." (Steven Hayward, The World & I) Junkscience.com -- Main Page --Critics argue the biologists were falsifying data to restrict land use under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The GAO report lends itself to the latter interpretation and with federal scientists joining environmental activists there shouldn't be a spot of property, public or private, that the ESA cannot shut down. Too bad this action doesn't help species: endangered, human, or otherwise." (J. Bishop Grewell, NRO) Junkscience.com -- Main Page ---members of a National Academy of Sciences committee that reported on the dangers of mercury contamination insisted that women who don't limit their consumption of tuna and other big fish might be putting their children at risk of subtle brain damage, particularly learning disabilities. Revealing a broad schism in scientific and medical opinion on the dangers of low-level mercury exposure to the developing fetus, Dr. Charles Lockwood, chairman of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists' panel on obstetric practice, dismissed the academy's conclusions as unproven." (Scripps Howard News Service) The final word? Not likely! The anti-chemical hysterics will play the For The Children® card at every opportunity, despite the fact that 'subtle' effects generally equate to 'imaginary' ones. Junkscience.com -- Main Page 'Common drugs cloud rivers'? 'The nation's rivers and streams are awash in trace amounts'? We're actually talking parts per billion in sites selected specifically for likelihood of presence of the compounds found, in the words of the USGA: "... the study targeted streams most likely to be impacted by wastewater through direct discharge of effluent..." and "The results should be viewed as a measure of the occurrence of these compounds in streams affected by similar wastewater sources..." (TSHPfaq) Here's some sad news for the media, finding these compounds downstream from effluent discharges, in concentrations generally less than 1:1,000,000,000, does not a story make. Soda Slam In Sacramento We've told you before how soda bans are the "wedge" issue in the War on Fat, and Ortiz cites "a growing epidemic with childhood obesity" as the reason for the legislation. Her bill follows State Sen. Martha Escutia's effort to "remove junk foods from schools in the next four years" and Oakland's recent school soda ban. Writes the Register: "These matters are the responsibility of parents… Sodas and fast food are becoming the new tobacco, something busybodies want to harp about, ban and impose 'sin' taxes on. The Center for Science in the Public Interest wants even higher, neo-Prohibitionist taxes on alcohol and has attacked Chinese, Italian and Mexican cuisines for being unhealthy… What next, a Big Mac tax? And what happened to free choice and personal responsibility for dietary habits?" Junkscience.com -- Main Page "Libertarians Accuse Justice Department Of 'Health Fascism'" - "The Justice Department's plan to restrict cigarette advertising, criminalize all cigarette vending machines and slap new health warnings on cigarette labels has prompted the Libertarian Party to come up with its own label -- "Nanny State health fascism." "This plan treats adults like children, and violates the First Amendment," said Steve Dasbach, Libertarian Party executive director." (CNSNews.com) Let the Accounting Industry Impose its Own Stricter Standards The public should be wary of regulations enacted to prevent future Enrons. If history is any lesson, the new policies are likely to hurt rather than enhance fraud detection. New regulations will reduce the incentives for companies to develop private plans to certify the integrity of their financial information, and lower the incentives for investors to monitor their behavior. TownHall.com: Conservative Columnists: Mona Charen ---when DACOWITS's charter expired, the Bush Pentagon couldn't quite bring itself to let the beast die. It has elected instead to alter its responsibilities and change its focus. That's fine if the officials really mean it. But the history of the past couple of decades suggests that the military is more frightened of being called "anti-woman" than it is of losing its fighting edge. Now that there's a real war on, isn't it time to tell the truth? The United States exists to win our wars, not to serve as the tool of a bunch of noisy feminists. TownHall.com: Conservative Columnists: Mona Charen Despite the best will in the world, and constant cheerleading from DACOWITS, the military services have not been able to alter the fact that women are still only half as strong as men and have 30 percent less aerobic capacity. And when placed among all those young soldiers and sailors, they have an alarming tendency to become pregnant. TownHall.com: Conservative Columnists: Mona Charen "During a recent deployment of the carrier Theodore Roosevelt, 45 of 300 women did not deploy or complete the cruise due to impending childbirth." Eleven had to be flown off the carrier after it was underway. Aside from adding costs, this erodes readiness. During the deployment in Bosnia, the Army experienced one pregnancy every three days. Women service members also have twice as many sick calls as men. TownHall.com: Conservative Columnists: Mona Charen For though she is a tigress, Elaine Donnelly is under no illusions about her sex. She recognizes that, while women have many gifts, superior physical prowess is rarely among them. And while she values the role that women play in the armed services, she -- along with reasonable people everywhere (including most of the women in the U.S. military) -- opposes women in combat. (A 1997 study found that 79 percent of enlisted women and 71 percent of female noncommissioned officers would not volunteer for combat.) That's why she was keen to see the DACOWITS (Defense Advisory Commission on Women in the Services) sent packing. TownHall.com: Conservative Columnists: Steve Chapman It should come as no surprise that when the government shields American producers from foreign competition, they don't necessarily learn to compete. Sugar producers and peanut farmers have enjoyed a protected market for decades and still show no interest in giving it up.---why should anyone expect coddled industries (e.g. steel) to outgrow the need for special help?--- TownHall.com: Conservative Columnists: Jacob Sullum ---The picture made me think of a New York Times article I saw last month. The headline read "Palestinian Gunmen Kill 2 Israeli Soldiers," suggesting that the deaths had occurred in battle. But it turned out the attackers had opened fire on four women sitting at the outdoor tables of a pastry shop in Beersheba. Three of them happened to be soldiers.--- TownHall.com: Conservative Columnists: Thomas Sowell The only good thing about the Andrea Yates case is that the jury was obviously not influenced by the months of propaganda for her by radical feminists, while the judge's gag order kept the prosecution from telling the public the other side of the story. This is a case that should have been settled in court, not on talk shows. We can only hope that the strident propaganda by feminist zealots, for whom apparently all women are innocent of all things, did not cause a jury backlash. This woman and her children both deserved the best judgment that human beings are capable of. This was a tough case, made no easier by shrinks who claim to know what she was thinking at a time when they were nowhere near her.--- Philadelphia Daily News | 03/14/2002 | A NEW GENERATION OF AMERICAN HERO In enduring the brutality of this combat in a far-away and hostile environment, these Americans are telling the terrorists in the only language they understand that America is not a nation that fights only by long distance and remote control. The message here is that America, the most civilized and advanced nation in the world's history, has the eye of the tiger to bring the terrorists to their knees - by hand-to- hand combat if necessary. NewsMax.com: Commentmax Archives Won't looser licensing restrictions make it easier for criminals to get weapons? "Every criminal who wants a weapon already has one," said another retired Israeli police officer in a radio interview. End of argument. In two sentences, the most cherished dogmas of anti-gun groups such as the Brady Campaign and Gun Industry Watch have been dismissed. NewsMax.com: Commentmax Archives Israel is Arming its Civilians – Why Aren't We? -Richard Poe--March 15, 2002 Inundated as we are with anti-gun propaganda, many well-meaning Americans cannot imagine how guns in private hands might be useful in fighting terror. The Israelis do not suffer from such confusion. Living with terrorism every day, they know exactly what purpose guns serve. And they are not afraid to use them. We could learn a lot from the Israeli example. 'Truth Squad' Battles Dem Attack Plan on Social Security "This is going to be the bitter lesson of this campaign season for the Democrats," said Armey, who is retiring this year. "There has been nothing so shameful in American politics in my adult lifetime than the way Democrats have used Social Security to terrorize American seniors," Armey told news sources. 'Truth Squad' Battles Dem Attack Plan on Social Security 'Truth Squad' Battles Dem Attack Plan on Social Security--Christine Hall, CNSNews.com--Friday, Mar. 15, 2002 A conservative seniors group Thursday launched a political pre-emptive attack against the Democratic Party and its strategists who are mapping out ways to damage Republicans on the issues of Social Security and Medicare. (TA NOTE: Not all of us seniors can be frightened by the Democrat demagoguery on Social Security.) www.recordnet.com---energy is our best friend Its abundance allows us to live longest, healthiest lives in history --By Tom Randall -- A young woman who didn't care for my opinion that energy should be cheap and plentiful confronted me one night, on a Chicago public-television talk show. Insisting that air pollution from burning fossil fuels was killing Americans and higher taxes should be placed on these forms of energy to restrict their use, she said, ''What does extra cost mean when lives are at stake?''---If the young woman whom I met on television lived in the limited-energy society of the past -- an energy-deprived society that would return should the policies she proposes be adopted -- she, too, might expect to live just a bit over 20 years more. The difference: I would die in my 80s; she die would in her 40s.--- news.telegraph.co.uk - 15 girls die as zealots 'drive them into blaze' (Filed: 15/03/2002) SAUDI Arabia's religious police are reported to have forced schoolgirls back into a blazing building because they were not wearing Islamic headscarves and black robes.---The much-feared mutaween roam the streets of the conservative kingdom wielding sticks to enforce dress codes and sex segregation and to ensure that Islamic prayers are performed on time. Those who refuse to obey the orders of the religious police are usually beaten and sometimes jailed. TownHall.com: Conservative Columnists: Debra Saunders A funny thing happened to Gov. Gray Davis' effort to paint GOP rival Bill Simon as an extremist nut bag. Davis opened his mouth. OpinionJournal -Unspotted Owls- An environmentalist fraud by the U.S. Forest Service is going to cost taxpayers $9.5 million. That's how much the government has agreed to pay the Westel-Oviatt Lumber Co., which was denied a logging contract because the Forest Service falsely claimed that the Forest Service land in question was a habitat for the spotted owl.--- NEALZ NUZE Here are some of the things that Democrats consider to be “out of the mainstream.” A belief in a strict interpretation of the terms of the United States Constitution. The belief in the sovereignty of the individual. The belief that the role of government, particularly the federal government, should be strictly limited. The concept that oral sex is, indeed, just what we all know that it is. Sex. The belief that government functions should be carried out by local governments, and that state or federal governments should play a role only when issues are broadened beyond the local leve. The belief that all Americans should be treated equally under the law, regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, etc. This includes the belief that the government and taxpayer-funded agencies should not discriminate for or against any individual on the basis of race or gender. The belief that individuals have a right to the fruits of their labor, and that government should only seize the property of individuals when such seizure is absolutely necessary to fund the proper and constitutionally appropriate functions of government. The idea that elected officials should not be allowed to lie under oath and remain in office. --- (Neal Boortz) NEALZ NUZE Liberals understand that most of their victories over the past 50 years have come from the courts, not through the legislative process. To continue with their efforts to make America the liberal, socialist utopia they envision they will have to continue with their efforts to pack the judiciary with fellow travelers. There will be no new justices friendly to the United States Constitution unless the Republicans manage to regain control of the U.S. Senate.(Neal Boortz) NEALZ NUZE The leftist Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday Borked Charles Pickering. Straight party-line vote. Straight partisan politics. It was, of course, nothing less than a warm-up for Senate Democrat efforts to block any Bush nominees to the Supreme Court. The excuse the Democrats use? They say that Bush’s nominees – and this includes Charles Pickering – are “out of the mainstream.” This “out of the mainstream” phrase is a favorite one for Democrats. The problem here is that few media outlets and fewer Americans ever ask the question “Just what is the “mainstream” to Democrats?” Simply put – in one sentence – the “mainstream,” to Democrats, is simply the Democratic Party social and economic agenda. It has nothing to do with the views and opinions of mainstream Americans --- just Democrat Party leadership. Anything at odds with the Democrat agenda is, by definition, “out of the mainstream.”--- (Neal Boortz) NEALZ NUZE They’re testing out some new screening machines here in Orlando. These machines can see right through your clothes for weapons. ALL of your weapons. In a demonstration yesterday reporters could clearly see that the machine, which uses low-level X-Rays, clearly showed the complete outline of a man’s body. The outline was so vivid that airport officials refused to demonstrate the machine by allowing a woman to go through.(Neal Boortz) NEALZ NUZE Yesterday a study, commissioned and paid for by the British government, was released on Marijuana (Cannabis, to the Brits.) Guess what? They found that while people can develop a dependency on marijuana .. that dependency would not be as bad as an addiction to either tobacco or alcohol. NEALZ NUZE--THE GEORGIA FISCAL NOTE ACT You’re going to love this one. Six Georgia legislators have introduced House Bill No. 1709. It’s called The Georgia Fiscal Note Act. Very simply, this legislation would require that a note be attached to any legislation which would require the expenditure of taxpayer funds. The note, to be signed by the sponsors and co-sponsors of the bill, would affirm the sponsor’s belief that the government’s need for the funds necessary for the implementation of the spending bill overrides any needs of the citizens who earned the funds --- needs such as spending for medical care, child care, housing, food and clothing. The Georgia Libertarian Party is solidly behind the bill. Time for the Republican and Democrat Parties to step up and tell us how they feel. Thursday, March 14, 2002
Keep and Bear Arms - Guns, Children, Scholarship, and “The Bikini Factor”--Submitted by: Doug Charette EVERY NEW STUDY ABOUT GUNS OR GUN OWNERS that is put forth by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) or various university schools of public health is destined to get positive media coverage. (TA NOTE: No matter how biased or outrightly wrong the study may be.) frontpagemag.com/columnists/metaksa ---Don Kates in his book Armed accuses health professionals of exhibiting “gun-aversion dyslexia.” He shows that in study after study concerning firearms, “ academic ‘sages’ prostitute scholarship, systematically inventing, misinterpreting, selecting, or otherwise manipulating data to validate pre-ordained conclusions.” In analyzing biased research studies one has to hunt for the hidden truth. I call it the bikini factor. Statistics are like bikinis; what they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital. (Tanya K. Metaksa) Media Research Center CyberAlert - 03/14/2002 - Today Showcases Brock’s Smears NBC’s Today invited David Brock to come aboard this morning to castigate conservatives and endorse Hillary Clinton’s insight into the "vast right-wing conspiracy," even though his book is far from a best-seller. But the show has so far refused to provide any air time for Bernard Goldberg, whose book, Bias, is now number one on the New York Times best-seller list. Junkscience.com--"Evidence behind claim of religion-health link is shaky, researchers say" - - "Popular claims that religious activity provides health benefits have virtually no grounding in the medical literature, according to an article in the March issue of the Annals of Behavioral Medicine." (Center for the Advancement of Health) Special Report: Drop The Antitrust Case Against Microsoft - Capitalism Magazine By Onkar Ghate (March 2002) Why should Microsoft's punishment be as lenient as possible (assuming the case cannot be thrown out at this stage in the proceedings)? First, antitrust laws are non-objective and unjust. Second, Microsoft is guilty of no actual crime. The Prophets of Defeatism [CAPITALISMMAGAZINE.COM] The American press seems to have contracted Black Hawk Down Syndrome, a malady in which reporters and editorialists, whose military experience consists largely of watching Hollywood war movies, project a hand-wringing fear of American military failure. These reactions may seem bizarre after a period of extraordinary military success, but they do make sense -- because the very same organizations promoting this defeatism also promote the policies that would actually lead to defeat.---Why does the press systematically ignore America's history of military success, obsessing instead over a few failures? Note that these failures all have the same cause: political restrictions that deprived our soldiers of the tools they needed to win.---(by Robert Tracinski) The Blame of Sept 11th: Al-Qaida or Capitalism. Let the lawyers decide? - Capitalism Magazine ---And so, buildings come crashing down and it's the taxpayers, and every nearby capitalist, who should dust themselves off and appear in court with their checkbooks. The headline in "The Militant," published by the Socialist Workers Party, spouted this anti-capitalist line in the first issue to hit the streets of New York after September 11: "World Trade Center builders' greed responsible for massive death toll." In the Blame-America-First paradigm, it's money-grubbing American builders rather than Bin Laden who forced people to jump from the top of burning skyscrapers.---(Ralph R. Reiland ) Townhall.com: Enron -- the movie by R. Emmett Tyrrell (3/14) What does it tell you about Hollywood that already before the courts have decided Enron's fate and before congressional inquiries have made any headway in identifying the culprits, Hollywood's resident producers and directors know the plot line? (TA NOTE: Conviction first--investigation and trial later.) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Government's help not needed Source: Anchorage Daily News--Author: Rep. Vic Kohring "A revolution is needed in Alaska. Not with guns but with resolve to slash government's colossal $7.3 billion budget. With an army of 22,000 government workers 'helping us,' they consume $1 billion a year in salaries and benefits. The degree to which they do this would make Josef Stalin proud." (03/13/02) (TA NOTE: This problem isn't confined just to Alaska.) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--You wouldn't want your child to go there Source: SchoolReformers.com--Author: David W. Kirkpatrick Compelling children to attend Cleveland's terrible schools should be a criminal act. Being willing to do so as long as one's own children are not involved is not just hypocritical but disgraceful and cruel. (03/13/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Kofi Annan: UN Tax Consultant Source: American Policy Center--Author: Tom DeWeese "In spite of the denials of his well-trained apologists, Secretary General Kofi Annan has personally outlined the UN's intention to tax. He's been caught on paper. There is no greater danger to freedom than for the UN to gain the power to tax." (03/13/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Global taxation moves closer Source: American Policy Center--Author: Henry Lamb "If the U.N. gets the independent financing it covets, and has designed in the report of the High Level Panel, the United States will cease to exist as a sovereign nation. It will become nothing more than just another state at the mercy of a world government." (03/13/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Anti-trade: A vortex of absurdity Source: Foundation for Economic Education--Author: Barry Loberfeld "Applied consistently, the policy of anti-trade would transform the entire world into a deserted island on which each of us is stranded all alone. State despotism or social disintegration, 1984 or Robinson Crusoe, this is the choice that the critics of capitalism offer as a more just alternative to the freedom and cooperation of the market." (02/16/02) Carolina Journal Online | Exclusive "If students gain admission to colleges and universities for reasons other than their academic preparation," the report states, "it is likely that they will face greater burdens in school than will their peers who have met a higher academic standard of admission. They may in fact not earn their degrees. It follows, therefore, that racial and ethnic preferences will have a negative effect on the graduation rates of students who supposedly benefit from them." Netscape Gets the Green “W” AOL Time Warner Netscape should be given the Green “W,” the award I just made up for the biggest corporate whiner in the country. (The competition for that distinction is fierce.) The American business ethic today is this: Those who can do; those who can’t, cry to government.---The marketplace exists for the benefit of consumers, not producers. This isn’t athletic competition, where the object is to see who is best on a level playing field. This is economic competition, where consumers want producers to exploit every advantage in order to better serve them. Any peaceful act to satisfy consumers is, ipso facto, fair. AOL Time Warner Netscape is thus revealed as an enemy of freedom and progress. --Sheldon Richman Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Washington wants your money Source: Citizens for a Sound Economy--Author: Wayne T. Brough "Despite the increased spending levels and the return to deficits, many in Congress are calling for even greater spending while criticizing President Bush’s tax cuts as being fiscally irresponsible. Yet recent history suggests that it is Congress’s profligate spending habits that need to be curbed." (03/12/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Air pollution and health: interpreting the newest study linking particulate air pollution and mortality --Source: Reason Public Policy Institute--Author: Kenneth Green and Joel Schwartz Green and Schwartz question the findings of a new report regarding particulate air pollution. "Exaggerating the public's risk from air pollution," say the authors, "is no better than ignoring real air quality problems." (03/12/02) Big brother and national nanny -- The Washington Times AmeriCorps continues the process of government supplanting individual responsibility for those in need. People have long organized themselves, chosen groups to support, and gotten personally involved, thereby strengthening the sinews of society. But Uncle Sam has spent nearly a century taking control of areas of life once left to a vibrant civil society. Big brother and national nanny -- The Washington Times The president is pushing increased voluntarism for the right reasons, but he has chosen the wrong means. Americans should give more. That does not mean Uncle Sam should spend more. Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Chicken out Source: Tech Central Station--Author: Radley Balko America's decision to impose protectionist restrictions on steel imports is sparking retaliation overseas -- and the U.S. poultry industry could suffer. (03/14/02) (TA NOTE: Tit for Tat--What goes around comes around.) Keep and Bear Arms - Gun Owners Home Page - 2nd Amendment Supporters If you have ever seen a four-year-old trying to lord it over a two-year-old, then you know what the basic problem of human nature is and why government keeps growing larger and ever more intrusive. — Thomas Sowell Free-Market.Net Freedom News--House pushes through class action reform Source: Fox News/AP House Republicans pushed through legislation intended to curb a proliferation of "frivolous" class action lawsuits. The bill gives federal courts jurisdiction in many cases in an effort to end "forum shopping" where lawyers file suits in "friendly" state courts. (03/14/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Senate drops controversial fuel efficiency measure Source: Fox News The Senate voted to strip language from an energy bill that would have required an increase in auto fuel efficiency standards. The language threatened to end the production of SUVs and to mandate the use of smaller, less safe, cars. (03/14/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--California cops deal in illegal guns Source: ABC News/AP (03/14/02) An investigation has revealed the reason why some police oppose the open sale of firearms to civilians -- they want the black market for themselves. Police officers in California, including the LAPD, have been caught selling illegal "assault" weapons. (TA NOTE: Prohibitions invariably lead to black markets, and worse. Look at our experience with booze prohibition, and now drugs. There are better ways.) www.recordnet.com What if we held an election and nobody came? We're dangerously close in California where less than one-third of the state's registered voters bothered last week to go to the polls. More alarming, that's less than one in five of all voting-age Californians. NEALZ NUZE Now here is something I would really like to get a conversation started on … the compensation, with taxpayer funds, of the families who lost fathers and mothers in the terrorist attacks. Just where in our Constitution does it say that the government can seize our money for this purpose? Click here for article TownHall.com: Suzanne Fields "The feel-good compensation by the government without regard to the precedent it is setting is something politicians love to do with other people's money," wrote one reader. "Who is more deserving of compensation for loss of a loved one, a stock broker/bond trader in the WTC, or a soldier/Marine who dies defending this country?" asked another. Owl data knowingly faulty -- The Washington Times--Owl data knowingly faulty --By Audrey Hudson Forest Service officials knowingly used faulty data of spotted owl habitat to block logging in a California forest, according to court documents obtained by The Washington Times.---The revelation of bad science comes on the heels of other questionable actions taken by federal officials in the name of protecting endangered species.--- TownHall.com: Conservative Columnists: Jonah Goldberg Yes, the steel industry is in real trouble in the United States, but mostly because it is bloated and inefficient and cannot compete with new "mini-mills" here in the United States. The big steel companies and their unions argue that an increase in tariffs on foreign steel will save it. Nobody else believes this. Rather, these "temporary" tariffs will simply make the process of pulling off the bandage take a lot longer. TownHall.com: Jonah Goldberg Enron became an "outrage" because Democrats cynically exploited the media's guilt over Bush's wartime transformation and its obsession with campaign finance "reform." But, when the president actually caves to the political pressures of special interests (i.e. the U.S. Steel Industry), to the detriment of millions of Americans, indeed a million times the total number of Enron employees, the media yawns, Democrats applaud and conservatives hold their noses. That's the real outrage. TownHall.com: Jonah Goldberg You would think that after shrieking and ululating like Arab women at a funeral over Enron, the press and the politicians would be a little more inclined to make a fuss over a real "systemic crisis of capitalism": President Bush's craven decision to raise tariffs on steel. TownHall.com: Conservative Columnists: Jonah Goldberg The Economist magazine, the intellectual conscience of English-speaking free traders everywhere, pronounced, "This steel-tariff plan, it is important to remember, lies well outside the ordinary run of bad economic policy: it is so wrong it makes other kinds of wealth-destroying intervention feel inadequate." TownHall.com: Thomas Sowell It is certainly understandable that activists, politicians and others who wish to divide Americans for their own purposes would push the notion of "African Americans." They also push such things as the "African" holiday Kwanzaa -- which originated in Los Angeles -- and "black English" or "ebonics," which originated centuries ago in particular localities in Britain, and is wholly unknown in Africa. TownHall.com: Thomas Sowell Of all the reactions against the supposed "slave names" among blacks, the most painfully ironic has been the taking of Arab names instead. The Arabs engaged in massive enslavement of Africans before the Europeans began to -- and continued long after the Europeans stopped. TownHall.com: Thomas Sowell The so-called "slave names" that so many blacks began repudiating in the 1960s, were neither given to them by slaveowners nor were they usually the slaveowners' family names. They were names chosen despite prohibitions, in order to symbolize family ties that were often stronger than those in today's ghettoes. OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today According to Yates lawyer George Parnham, though, his client is a victim not of ignorance but of logic. "We can't permit objective logic to be imposed on the actions of Andrea Yates," he told the jury in his closing statement, according to the Washington Times--and never mind that applying objective logic is precisely a juror's job. OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today Holidays in Hell A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll finds that 48% of Americans want to make Sept. 11 a national holiday; the same percentage oppose the idea. This has got to be one of the dumbest ideas we've heard in a long time. Why celebrate an attack on America? We didn't make a holiday out of Pearl Harbor Day, after all.--- The New, New Journalism And with this unprecedented level of autonomy, many bloggers have become effective gadflies. Reynolds once wrote, “What bloggers are more than anything, I think, is anti-idiot. That makes life tough for Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, and the Revs. Falwell, Robertson, Jackson, & Sharpton, for reasons that transcend traditional partisanship and ideology.” Edward B. Driscoll, Jr. on the profusion of 'blogs lgf: anti-idiotarian headquarters ---Personally, I have no doubt that if the Palestinians had Apache helicopters, F-16s, etc, they'd still be blowing up strollers and attacking school buses. Why? Because, even limited to snipers, rockets, and suicide bombers, they have a choice of targets. They could attack soldiers, tanks, and military bases, but instead target seniors, school buses, and night clubs. That decision -- to kill civilians -- is what makes them terrorists.--posted by Robert Crawford @ 3/10/2002 03:29PM PST OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today--USA Today goofs in its headline: "For the First Time, U.N. Resolution Backs Palestinian State." While this is the first Security Council resolution to back a Palestinian state, the General Assembly way back in 1947 endorsed a partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. The Arabs, of course, rejected the plan and launched a war against the incipient Jewish state. Some things never change. Post-Taliban mosques sit empty / Afghans rethink Islam after heavy-handed enforcement ends ---now that the hard-line movement's strong grip on Afghan society has been released -- even in the countryside, where support for it was strongest -- some people are not sure they want to be Muslim at all. Most Afghans say they consider themselves devout Muslims, but few pray five times a day, as the Koran instructs. In cities like Kabul and Mazar-e-Sharif, muezzins' calls for evening prayer now go virtually unnoticed as men gather in restaurants for dinner instead of going to the mosque.--- (Anna Badkhen, Chronicle Staff Writer) Wednesday, March 13, 2002
Putting consumers ahead of windfalls -- The Washington Times Because of the cost, distraction and potential embarrassment associated with litigation, many defendants are cornered into settling class-action lawsuits regardless of their merit. The cost of these settlements is passed on to the American consumer in the form of higher prices and to employees in the form of diminished returns on their retirement plans. Ultimately, it costs jobs, investment and innovation — with consumers getting the short end of the stick. It's time for Congress to put an end to these abuses and provide Americans with the fair and efficient civil justice system they deserve. James Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican, is chairman of the House Committee on the Judiciary. NewsMax.com: Inside Cover Story When "Shakedown" author Kenneth Timmerman appeared tonight on CNBC, a recurring theme became even clearer: Jesse Jackson's defenders don't even try to deny the book's facts, they just attack the messenger. Class-Action Suits Destructive, Report Notes Class-Action Suits Destructive, Report Notes--NewsMax.com Wires--Wednesday, March 13, 2002 WASHINGTON – Some legal policy analysts have long blamed abusive class-action lawsuits for endangering the economic health of America and for clogging the court system with bogus claims. But recently, some legal experts say even "legitimate" class-action suits subvert political policy-making by legislating new laws. When in Doubt, Panic Moreover, the only thing that has kept the Enron disaster from being turned on them (The Democrat party) has been the media's refusal to cover the story of the company's cozy – and profitable – relationship with the criminal conspiracy known as the Clinton administration. NewsMax.com: America's News Page When in Doubt, Panic--by Phil Brennan Having struck out with Enron, the Democratic Party's strategy of the moment is falling back on the old class warfare tactic.--- NewsMax.com: Commentmax Archives Free the Dems! --John L. Perry--March 12, 2002 The national Democratic Party is being held submissive hostage by left-wing radicals. Their ransom demand: nothing less than the soul of America. Free-Market.Net Freedom News France's work-week restrictions backfire Source: London Daily Telegraph-- France's socialist experiment with a mandatory 35-hour working week is backfiring on its architect, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. Doctors, truck drivers and tax collectors are complaining, and small businesses say the restrictions have hobbled entrepreneurship. (03/13/02) Profs Do Better on Shorter Leash, Study Concludes--NewsMax.com Wires--Tuesday, March 12, 2002 WASHINGTON – Tenured college professors might be bad teachers and even worse scholars, but their institutions and peers have little ability to influence their conduct, according to a recent study by the Fraser Institute, a libertarian think tank in Vancouver, British Columbia. Free-Market.Net Freedom News Does anti-male bias contribute to suicide? Source: Men's Daily News Is the alarming rise of suicide in men partly in response to the anti-male bias in family law that strips them of dignity, child-visitation, and the ability to make a living? (03/07/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News The steel ripoff Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute--Author: Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. "The idea of the steel tariff is to help one inefficient, bloated, and pampered industry at the expense of all U.S. consumers of steel, including U.S. businesses, and all producers in Europe, Asia, Brazil, and Australia." (03/12/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News U.S. HMO beats Britain's NHS Source: Health Care News--Author: Conrad F. Meier "According to a detailed study of the costs and performance of the two systems, the U.S. HMO has costs similar to those of the entire NHS system ... but the HMO performs considerably better." (03/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News Food industry to blame for fat? Source: HealthFactsAndFears.com--Author: Elizabeth M. Whelan "Our prospects for long life, good health, and the pursuit of happiness are far brighter in the hands of competitive, profit-driven food corporations than they are in those of national nutrition-nanny know-it-alls." (03/12/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News Cato expert calls for anti-reformers' plan to save Social Security--Source: The Cato Institute--Author: Michael Tanner "The real secret is what reform opponents would do to fix Social Security, since no prominent congressional critic of individual accounts has endorsed any proposal. While happy to criticize personal accounts, few are willing to say what they would do to save Social Security." (03/12/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News Barred from use Source: U.S. Term Limits--Author: Paul Jacob Rep. Bob Barr is supporting a DEA ban on all products based on hemp. Is Barr trying to protect cotton farmers in his district or is he smoking something, asks Jacob. (03/12/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News Real campaign finance reform Source: Future of Freedom Foundation--Author: Jacob G. Hornberger "Congress has recently engaged in another flurry of activity over campaign-finance reform. Yet, congressmen never ask a fundamental question: Why shouldn’t people be free to do whatever they want with their own money, including donating whatever amounts they want to political candidates?" (03/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News Taking a gamble Source: Hawaii Reporter--Author: Ken Schoolland "[T]axpayers clamor for politicians to prohibit all risk taking. It seems to me that risk takers should absorb the costs of their own risk. How else to become better judges of risk in the future? For risk takers who find this too risky, there is always insurance. What a great business that is. ... Unlike the tax system, it’s voluntary." (03/12/02) TownHall.com: Conservative Columnists: Doug Bandow March 13, 2002--Junk science, redux WASHINGTON -- Nothing spurs government to action more than a crisis, and nothing suggests a crisis more than a dose of junk science. So it is with "America's Underage Drinking Epidemic," as proclaimed by the National Center for Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia. TownHall.com: Conservative Columnists: Walter Williams In a free society, income is neither taken nor distributed, it is earned. Income is earned by pleasing one's fellow man. The greater one's ability to please his fellow man, the greater is his claim on what his fellow man produces. This claim is represented by the size of his income. TownHall.com: Conservative Columnists: Walter Williams Free markets -- along with peaceable, voluntary exchange -- are morally superior to other alternatives. In order to make a claim on what my fellow man produces, I must serve him. Contrast that principle to government handouts, where a person is told: "You don't have to serve your fellow man. We'll take what he produces and give it to you." TownHall.com: Conservative Columnists: Walter Williams Michael Jackson is rich. So is Steve Jobs and Michael Jordan. Henry Ford was rich, and so was Jonas Salk -- but not Williams. Why? I can sing. I can also play basketball. The problem is that my fellow man is not as pleased by my performance as he is with Michael Jackson and Michael Jordan. Henry Ford became rich by making it possible for the ordinary person to own a car, and Jonas Salk helped eliminate a dreaded disease. You tell me what else do they owe anyone? They've already given. TownHall.com: Conservative Columnists: Walter Williams In our society, there are people who should give back. These are the thieves and social parasites who live forcibly at the expense of others. They prey on their fellow man. Some do it privately through theft, fraud and robbery. Others use the political mechanism whereby Congress enriches them at the expense of others. If giving back means anything, it should apply to thieves and social parasites, not those who became wealthy by serving us. Junkscience.com -- Main Page I could point the novice to a valuable resource in the methodology of identifying junk science and protecting themselves there from, which is what I think I'll do: Click for more about Steve Milloy's book Junk Science Judo: Self-defense Against Health Scares and Scams BERETTA SI! MINETA NO! ... SO, DAMN THE BUREAUCRATS AND PASS THE AMMO! Why should the personal, unsubstantiated, unsupportable opinions of bureaucrats not appointed by, nor representing or directly responsible to the people, be placed in a position of authorizing or denying practices concerning our safety when such bias makes them incapable of doing what is in our best interests? If armed marshals are okay, why isn’t it okay for pilots and first officers to carry sidearms, which were required of them when they served as military pilots protecting our Nation? A bullet from a marshal’s firearm is of no concern in a pressurized cabin, but a pilot’s is? That’s nonsense! The Agenda of Gun Control by Ted Lang - SierraTimes.com Gun control is an outrageous convolution of totally unconstitutional and illegal "legislation." The purpose of the Second Amendment is to permit arms availability to the citizens of the United States should they desire to alter or abolish their existent government. The Agenda of Gun Control by Ted Lang - SierraTimes.com Societal entities within our Nation, namely the media, physical and emotionalized victims of gun violence and their support groups, socialists and the Democrat Party, have advocated the progressive, unlawful recision of the Second Amendment. It is a legitimate part of the United States Constitution and can only be revoked by action of all the states of the Union. Gun control is a collection of "infringements" specifically forbidden by the Second Amendment. The Agenda of Gun Control by Ted Lang - SierraTimes.com We are advancing to left-liberal progressive socialism and communism rather rapidly at this juncture of our Republic’s short and soon-to-be-ended life. The very term "liberal" is a lie! "Liberal" used to define the philosophy of individual liberty and freedom, but it now represents unlimited authority of the state for the "greater good." Keep and Bear Arms - Gun Owners Home Page - 2nd Amendment Supporters Priest, Worshipper Shot Dead in Long Island Church Submitted by: BobL The headline says it. Gosh, if only NY would just ban concealed carry, this would never happen...oh, wait... Once again, don't try this at MY church. Dave Kopel, Paul Gallant & Joanne Eisen on East Timor on National Review Online It is here that the hypocrisy and inconsistency of U.N. policy shines through. The U.N. equates "licit gun" with "government gun", and "illicit gun" with "anti-government gun". As Charles Scheiner, National Coordinator for the (ETAN), correctly pointed out, however: "The guns used by the Indonesian military to kill 200,000 East Timorese civilians were almost all 'legal' …[but] the line between legality and illegality is irrelevant to the victims…" Keep and Bear Arms - Gun Owners Home Page - 2nd Amendment Supporters Airline security or security blanket? Submitted by: Doug Charette From an American Airline Captain: "Each day, I go through security screening just as my passengers do. My bag is x-rayed to ensure that I left my tweezers and nail clippers at home; I pass through the magnetometer to be certain that I don't have a weapon. Meanwhile, the potential on-looking terrorist smiles to himself, having been reassured that when he breaks into my cockpit with murder on his mind, I will be defenseless." Keep and Bear Arms - Gun Owners Home Page - 2nd Amendment Supporters--Gun Deaths Declining Among U.S. Teens, Young Adults-- While the reasons behind the decline are unclear, the results contradict the "common perception that gun violence is going up," D'Angelo said. He added that while school-related firearm incidents such as Columbine have led to a heightened awareness about this issue, "it is improperly being reported. Adolescents are once again unfairly being stigmatized in terms of their behavior, while in reality they are making remarkable progress." He added, "Reporters don't want this information, because it doesn't sell newspapers, and it doesn't make it on to the TV stations." Keep and Bear Arms - Gun Owners Home Page - 2nd Amendment Supporters NY: The Defenseless in NY--Submitted by: Doug Charette "The woman, a foreign exchange student who does not speak much English, was accosted around 10 p.m. by a strapping predator who forced her into an alley between 135 and 137 Sullivan St. and took her to a bodega, sources said." "The gunman watched as the terrified woman withdrew cash from the ATM inside the store, then forced her back into the alley - where he raped her before fleeing, they said." KABA NOTE: New York cops who disarm women by enforcing uncontitutional laws that violate the right to keep and bear arms shoulder part of the responsibility for these types of assaults. Keep and Bear Arms - Gun Owners Home Page - 2nd Amendment Supporters Political Cartoonist Takes Aim at Anti-Gunners Submitted by: Anonymous Political cartoonist Wayne Stayskal takes on the liberal anti-gun cartoonist media in Slate Magazine's gallery today. Keep and Bear Arms - Gun Owners Home Page - 2nd Amendment Supporters UN Conference To Promote Global Taxes; Bush Will Attend Submitted by: Doug Charette "A United Nations conference this month will ask world leaders, including President Bush, to consider global taxes to finance increased foreign aid spending." (TA NOTE: Really, really bad idea!) U.N. Conference To Promote Global Taxes; Bush Will Attend Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil has said that, "Over the last 50 years the world has spent an awful large amount of money in the name of development without a great deal of success." A 1995 U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee report said the cost of foreign aid for the U.S. over this period has been $2 trillion. Keep and Bear Arms - Gun Owners Home Page - 2nd Amendment Supporters Comment by: mjward@gol.com (3/13/2002) Does this mean "Taxation without Representation".....AGAIN?! What If the US withdraws from the UN, because the Citizens refuse to pay this Global TAX (theft) WE (the US) do not have to pay any tax that we don"t vote for. (for all those who don't understand please read the constitution!) Must we fight a war again to prove our point of freedom?? God I hope not!! but if we must so, be it. where do we sign?? This is why our forefathers insisted on the 2nd! Keep and Bear Arms - Gun Owners Home Page - 2nd Amendment Supporters Comment by: rednekz2000@yahoo.com (3/13/2002) The incidents of fraud and mismanagement associated with groups like WTO, IMF, WB (and others) are a good indication of what would happen if the U.N. gets to tax us. Not long afterwards, they will have their own army, then eventually be able to enforce their will against any country not aligned with it (you can bet they'll push for downsizing the military in many countries ... using their own army as an excuse). I just wonder if enough Americans have the backbone to fight such an attempt ... like the people during the 1770's. FOXNews.com The 21st-century feminist is anyone — female or male — who rejects gender privilege and demands real equality for men and women under the law. She makes her own choices and takes personal responsibility for them, without asking government for protection or tax dollars. By Wendy McElroy WorldNetDaily: Defenseless pilots President Bush needs to tell Ridge he's wrong about this. He needs to call him in to the Oval Office and straighten him out. He needs to arm the airliner pilots as a first step to securing our skies again. This is more important than all the other half-baked security measures currently undertaken by the federal government. This is where airline security should start. If President Bush disagrees, let him set the example by getting rid of all the guns on Air Force One. Keep and Bear Arms - Gun Owners Home Page - 2nd Amendment Supporters Perhaps only those who have watched the gun debate for years can understand the major shift that is occurring. College campuses are still liberal places, but the issue of gun rights is being uncoupled from its inappropriate linkage with conservative politics. Junkscience.com -- Main Page "Little Evidence of Man-Made Global Warming: TechCentralStation's Sallie Baliunas Testifies Before Congress" - "WASHINGTON, March 12 -- Dr. Sallie Baliunas, co-host of TechCentralStation, will testify tomorrow, Wednesday, March 13, before the full Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. Dr. Baliunas' testimony, entitled "New Scientific Advances: The Human Impact on Global Climate Change," will challenge the Committee to focus on research to improve "observations and computer simulations" to determine accurately the human contribution to global warming. According to Baliunas, sound science illustrates that the human contribution to the warming trend has been insignificant." (U.S. Newswire) Tuesday, March 12, 2002
Keep and Bear Arms - The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth. -----H. L. Mencken A man's home ... The never-ending battle over property rights (what can you do with what you own, and who can take it away from you?) often gets short-shrift in mainstream conversations about civil liberties. That's a shame. After all, once you've run the gauntlet of abuses by petty officials, home is where you hope to find refuge. That means that you're thoroughly screwed if somebody's nailed a seizure notice to the front door and handed you a like-it-or-lump-it check for half of the old homestead's market value. Keep and Bear Arms - Vast majority of pilots would rather be armed--Submitted by: Doug Charette "Gun support: While the debate continues over whether guns should be allowed in airline cockpits, there doesn't appear to be much argument among pilots." "According to a poll commissioned by the Air Line Pilots Association, 73 percent of its 67,000 members favors firearms." "Of the 24 percent opposed, many are no longer active, the association says." Armed Females of America - Article Archive ---the Brady Campaign has gotten into the act of attacking airline pilots by commenting to the Department of Transportation, 'it is difficult to imagine that their competence could approach that of trained law enforcement personnel.' How arrogant is that? Armed Females of America - Article Archive It has been shown that airline pilots are well suited for the added responsibility of firearm use as a means of defending the flight deck, which is the target of choice for the new breed of terrorist. Dr. Ignatius Piazza of Front Sight Firearms Training Institute has said, 'airline pilots are above average students compared to other civilian and law enforcement students.' FT.com | News and Analysis | World Article Ronnie Cummins, director of the US Organic Consumers Association, is frank about why he directs protests against Starbucks, the coffee chain, rather than giant coffee buyers such as Nestle, Procter & Gamble and Kraft Foods. "We target them because they're the only big coffee company in the world that pretends to be socially responsible," Junkscience.com -- Main Page Bush's reversal prompted noises of outrage, shock, and regret around the globe. Europe was particularly aggrieved, declaring that Bush's decision laid bare his administration's unilateralist tendencies. But a year later, the complaints have been largely muted. For all the outrage of a year ago, Europe has offered little more than lip service on Kyoto since then, aimed mainly at mollifying Green and Socialist voters." (Michael Standaert, Reason) TCS: Tech Central Station - Where Free Markets Meet Technology A Disgrace to American Science--By Philip Stott 03/11/2002 The January 'issue' of the Scientific American was surely nothing less than a disgrace to American science. The now notorious attack on the young Danish statistician, Dr. Bjørn Lomborg, and his important book, The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World (Cambridge University Press), not only offended against the principle of open, vigorous debate in science but, more importantly, also flouted the normal rules of natural justice. I have very rarely been so angry over the blatant mistreatment of a colleague. Thank Goodness for the Bill of Rights! When we see how our federal police today operate when they are not constrained by the Constitution, we are able to more deeply appreciate the wisdom of our ancestors in insisting on the protections outlined in the Bill of Rights as a condition for permitting the federal government to come into existence. by Jacob G. Hornberger, March 2002 Free-Market.Net Freedom News Air quality improvements contradict call for new regs--Source: Competitive Enterprise Institute/Environment And Climate News "America's air quality continues to get better. ... This good news might come as a surprise to most people. While we're exposed to cleaner air, we're also exposed to the drumbeat of gloomy media accounts to the contrary. The reality that air pollution is declining needs to be taken into account in current debates over costly new air-quality measures." Author: Ben Lieberman (03/11/02) Trading Buttons and Balloons for Ideas Where we once had Libertarian party leaders at the forefront of libertarian thinking, we now have libertarian intellectual elites who command respect for their adherence to purist libertarian philosophy. Don’t get me wrong, for the LP leaders have a valuable role in the movement, however, it is the intellectuals, the writers, the thinkers, and the speakers that have most affected the changes in modern libertarian thought. by Karen De Coster Patrioticus ay Liberty For All - Online Magazine How can a "government" entity, the FAA, created by our federal Congress, a Congress subject to the limit powers enumerated to it within Article I, Section 8 and the Second Amendment, prohibit citizens from their "right to...bear arms," whether in an airport terminal or in aircraft, when this and previous Congress' were fully aware of these enumerated constitutional rights and limited powers to prevent this government entity from enacting such prohibitions? Why Women Should Ignore the United Nations The United Nations (U.N.) Commission on the Status of Women is meeting in New York City, but there is no reason that women should take interest in the event. The status of women, after all, is better than ever, without help from the United Nations. by Sally C. Pipes Free-Market.Net Freedom News The diversity machine sputters Source: American Civil Rights Institute For nearly two decades, hundreds of companies like Ford, Xerox, and Hewlett-Packard have subjected their employees to countless hours of “diversity” training. Now, corporations may be returning to the true source of diversity -- respect for individual merit. --Author: Ward Connerly- (01/07/03) Boston Globe Online / Editorials | Opinions / Excesses of the 'war on fat' Given our culture's propensity to take good ideas to absurd extremes, it may not take long before the excesses of the war on tobacco are replicated by the war on fat. It would be unfortunate if, instead of taking responsibility for their own lives, people started suing food companies for addicting them to junk food. Cathy Young, 3/11/2002 Free-Market.Net Freedom News Arizona revenuers violate right to self-defense Source: KeepAndBearArms.Com--Author: Arizona Activists The State of Arizona's current refusal to allow one of its employees (who was viciously raped and whose rapist is due for parole very soon) to protect herself has caused a major furor among Second Amendment and other civil liberties groups in the area. (03/10/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News America seethes as airport search turns into groping--Source: Indian Express Across the United States, incidents of abusive treatment at the hands of airport security guards are prompting travellers to wonder whether aviation security is in danger of running amok and turning on ordinary citizens. (03/12/02) washingtonpost.com: Vouchers: Was a Poll Question 'Cooked'? A Stanford professor has accused the influential Phi Delta Kappa education association of "cooking the questions" in its closely watched annual survey of attitudes toward school vouchers so it could produce an anti-voucher result.--- TownHall.com: Conservative Columnists: Bruce Bartlett ---the (tobacco industry) settlement was never really about reducing smoking. It was always about one thing: extorting money from the tobacco industry. Were it otherwise, the states would be jumping for joy at the great success of higher prices on reducing cigarette use. That is what they've always said was their goal. In theory, the principal purpose of the settlement money was to fund cigarette cessation and prevention programs. But a General Accounting Office report last year found that only 7 percent of settlement funds were in fact used for this purpose. The rest went for general government spending.--- Democratic strategy advisers warn 'clear direction' needed -- The Washington Times Without constructive solutions to help America solve its problems, Democrats are being urged to resort to the tired old tactics of scaring seniors," said spokesman Ron Bonjean. "In fact, we all know the Democrats' real strategy is to recklessly increase federal spending and raise taxes on hardworking Americans." The Democratic strategists urge their party leaders to blame the Bush administration and congressional Republicans for spending the Social Security surplus. OpinionJournal - The 49-page National Intelligence Estimate, entitled "International Terrorist Threats to the United States," says that other countries have shown evidence that they are scaling back terrorist activities, out of concern that the United States will take action against terrorist groups in their territory, as it has in Afghanistan. NEALZ NUZE One of the reasons that airline passengers are so ticked off about the screening process is the quality of the person doing the screening. Airline passengers are, by and large, accomplished people with actual educations and private-sector jobs. They know that, with some exceptions, these security screeners are McDonalds rejects who wouldn’t have a prayer of earning a good living in the private sector --- and now they’re becoming government employees with government taxpayer-funded pensions and benefits. In other words … they’re losers. Accomplished, educated, hard-working people don’t particularly like the idea of voluntarily placing themselves in a situation where, for a few minutes, they are subject to the authoritarian whims of people they know aren’t qualified to wax their cars. NEALZ NUZE . Last week Daschle tried to set Bush up as a failure. Daschle established the capture or death of Osama Bin Laden as the standard by which success in the war on terror would be measured. It didn’t work. The American people came back with stunning poll numbers showing their approval of Bush’s efforts. Uh oh. A slight Daschle miscalculation. So .. the Democrats are out wandering in the wilderness again. Enron – didn’t work. The 2000 election --- ditto. Bush is dumb --- didn’t stick. Bush’s war against terrorism is failing – public doesn’t buy it. Election failure looms for Democrats. Time for a desperate act. What will it be? voice031202 Today, however, our citizen-of-the-world types are doing all they can to keep foreigners foreign and domestic minorities riled up over grievances, past and present, real and imaginary. Above all, they want group identity and group preferences and quotas. In short, they want all the things that have brought on the kinds of disasters from which India and other such "diverse" countries have suffered so grievously. Thomas Sowell voice031202 When India gained its independence in 1947, the number of Hindus and Muslims who killed each other in one year exceeded the total number of people killed in race riots in the entire history of the United States. Yet we are told that we should be like those gentle people, as if India were a nation of Gandhis. In reality, Gandhi was assassinated for trying to stop internecine strife in India. Thomas Sowell Monday, March 11, 2002
Free-Market.Net Freedom News Slaughter in the name of God Source: Washington Post--Author: Salman Rushdie- "The murder of children is something of an Indian specialty. But there's something beneath it, something we don't want to look in the face: namely, that in India, as elsewhere in our darkening world, religion is the poison in the blood. What happened in India has happened in God's name. The problem's name is God." (03/08/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News Slave to the state Source: Christianity and Libertarianism--Author: Jay Carper- "The time to choose is now. If you have chosen the slavery of welfare and social security, then you have chosen money over God. You have sold your soul to the State. Is God your master? Or is the State? You cannot serve two masters." (03/07/02) Answers to Mrs. Betty Bowers' "Reich or Wrong?" Quiz We were convinced that the people need and require this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.-- Adolf Hitler, in a speech in Berlin on October 24, 1933 Keep and Bear Arms - Gun Owners Home Page - 2nd Amendment Supporters How to (and Not) Arm Airline Pilots--Submitted by: The Texas Mercury Website: www.thetexasmercury.com--"Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge has come out and stated that arming pilots with firearms: "doesn’t make a lot of sense to me." Considering the alternatives to arming pilots, leaving flight crews defenseless or giving them an ineffective non-lethal defensive tool. The only thing that doesn’t make sense is Tom Ridge’s position." Media Research Center CyberAlert - 03/11/2002 - Florida Vote More Damaging Than Terrorism (Alec) Baldwin’s said a lot of silly and/or liberal things over the years, but perhaps his most famous mean-spirited outburst occurred back in December of 1998, during the House impeachment proceedings, when he went on NBC’s Late Night with Conan O’Brien and let loose: "If we were in other countries, we would all right now, all of us together, [starts to shout] all of us together would go down to Washington and we would stone Henry Hyde to death!...We would stone Henry Hyde to death and we would go to their homes and we’d kill their wives and their children." The Columbus Dispatch The problem with teaching creationism in high school, Wolfe said, is that it gives beginning science students the impression that these are scientific ideas before they know much about biology, evolution or the scientific method. (TA NOTE: It's not just high school students that don't know much about biology, evolution or the scientific method.) The Columbus Dispatch A 1997 poll by the University of Georgia found that about 40 percent of working physicists and biologists hold strong religious beliefs. Conflict results when fundamentalists want religious viewpoints taught as science The Columbus Dispatch "Evolution has never been proven, but aspects of it have been observed," McKee said. "But the theory of gravity has never been proven, either." This point is often misunderstood because a "theory" in science is not a hunch but a well-developed set of ideas that survived challenges over time while continuing to explain what we see in the natural world. Junkscience.com -- Main Page A combination of international family-planning programs, growing prosperity, and better education of women is widely credited with reducing fertility rates worldwide." (The Christian Science Monitor) People finally waking up that neo-Malthusians are still wrong. Junkscience.com -- Main Page There is a scandal at EPA, all right, but it's of a different sort. If Mr. Lieberman really wants to know who calls the shots in the back rooms, he'd do better asking about the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars the EPA doles out each year to non-profit organizations. This is money that the Inspector General and General Accounting Office have both said is given out with no public notice, no competition and virtually no accountability. The last time someone asked about this influence, it provoked a furious destruction of evidence that may yet lead to a contempt trial for several of the EPA's highest ranking officers." (Wall Street Journal) Junkscience.com -- Main Page Intemperate: "Chicago Tribune - Soot in air increases risk of cancer in lungs, JAMA report finds"--- Just right:"Correlative studies (like this) can do nothing more than suggest areas worthy of further attention but they can't establish fact," said Dr. Alan Leff, a professor of medicine and a pulmonologist at the University of Chicago. "This isn't like giving a substance to someone, seeing whether they get sick and defining what is making them sick. These studies are all correlative and no matter how good the methods are, they don't identify causation. There are grave dangers in implying that when you have a correlation, you have a cause." Junkscience.com -- Main Page New web site: "SOUND SCIENCE IN THE COURT ROOM" - "This is a "working page". Constantly "under construction" and constantly also under destruction. It started on March 9th 2002. On this page we hope to have information about various issues where "junk science" has been used and must be replaced by sound science whenever possible." (SoundScience.net) TownHall.com: Conservative Columnists: Don Feder ---But it's a cold world out there, filled with wolves snapping at our heels. To thwart them, at times we have to ally ourselves with unsavory characters. (Think of Stalin in World War II or Central American juntas in the '80s.) The way they treat their people should be the concern of ministers and moralists, not diplomats.--- TownHall.com: Conservative Columnists: John Leo (Tammy Bruce of the L.A. Times) has a strong book out: "The New Thought Police: Inside the Left's Assault on Free Speech and Free Minds." A few conservative outlets plugged it, but in five months she has not received a single book review in any mainstream newspaper or magazine, which sort of proves the book's point about the power of the censoring left. If Norah Vincent, a brave L.A. Times columnist, had not written about this newsroom-unapproved book, few people in Bruce's hometown would even know she had written it. She is a non-person in the L.A. Times and her book apparently never happened. Now she knows: Bernie Goldberg is right. TownHall.com: Conservative Columnists: John Leo The reluctance of the news business to hold seminars and conduct investigations of news bias is almost legendary. In 1990, Los Angeles Times media critic David Shaw stunned everybody with a 12,000-word, four-part series on press coverage of the abortion issue. He essentially concluded that the American newsroom culture is so strongly pro-choice that it cannot bring itself to report the issue fairly. Free-Market.Net Freedom News Dictionary of political phrases Source: ProbePhage--Author: Phanix- "How to use this dictionary: Pay attention to what a politician is saying, whenever he or she uses one of the phrases listed below, promptly replace it with the related text. For example: 'Lets Disarm Criminals': We would like to disarm criminals, but we can't. So we are going to disarm you instead." Free-Market.Net Freedom News Once again, Sun Microsystems shows it prefers litigation over innovation--Source: Americans for Technology Leadership--Author: Jim Prendergast-"Rather than improving cash flow through innovation, Sun Microsystems has chosen the litigation route. All the lawsuits in the world will not produce the technology that consumers and businesses demand." (03/08/02) (TA NOTE: Sun Microsystems suing Microsoft to compensate for failure to compete effectively.) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Social Insecurity --Source: Reason Online Author: Brink Lindsey "Social insurance is not menaced by excessive reliance on markets. On the contrary, it is the systematic suppression of market principles that has put the retirement security of millions in jeopardy." (03/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Workers and unions, how about freedom of contract? Source: Foundation for Economic Education--Author: George C. Leef "In the United States, the law prevents the emergence of a market for representational services .... Either you represent yourself or you accept representation by a labor union which may or may not be to your liking. Workers cannot shop around .... It is my contention that this situation ill serves workers and is a principal explanation for the decline of labor unions in America." (02/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--No excuses for failure in America's schools Source: Hawaii Reporter--Author: John Von Kannon "Only one-third of America’s 4th graders can read with proficiency. For poor children, it’s even worse: Over half of low-income 4th graders cannot read with understanding. Almost two-thirds of low-income 8th graders cannot multiply or divide two-digit numbers. In a world where information is replacing sweat as the way to make our living, these numbers are deplorable." (03/08/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Taxing taxpayers on a train ride Source: Independent Institute--Author: Gabriel Roth and Carl Close Why should taxpayers who don't choose to travel by train be required fund the nation's ailing rail carrier? (3/08/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Taking our liberties Source: New York Times--Author: Anthony Lewis "War without end is likely to have -- indeed is already having -- profound consequences for the American constitutional system. It tends to produce the very thing that the framers of the Constitution most feared: concentrated, unaccountable political power." (03/09/02) Forfeiture Endangers American Rights - Sunni's Page ---Government has lost its ability to ever blindside me again. I no longer read the news and believe the written pages. I no longer assume the guilt of those I see arrested. I have learned to open my eyes and see a story other than the one that the government and the media want me to see.--- Free-Market.Net Freedom News--An important first step toward Social Security reform Source: Heritage Foundation--Author: David C John Although Social Security reform will not affect today's seasoned citizens already receiving benefits, one of the most troubling aspects of the debate over reform has been the successful attempt by opponents of reform to scare senior citizens into believing that their benefits will be cut. (03/08/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Selling out free speech Source: Nando Times--Author: Mark R. Levin "The campaign-finance bill is a clear attempt by Congress to regulate, among other things, your ability to criticize your member of Congress, or his opponent, within 30 days of a primary election and 60 days of a general election." (03/10/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Sex, lies and women's magazines Source: Alternet--Author: Liza Featherstone "How can women's magazines run scrupulously reported and fact-checked articles on such subjects as breast cancer and women in Afghanistan, but tell complete lies in articles about sex?" (03/04/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Peeping justice Source: James Hanback--Author: James R. Hanback, Jr. Hanback analyzes the recent case of a woman who drove into a homeless man and left him embedded in her car to bleed to death over the course of two days. If she had been male, would the defense attorneys be claiming emotional distress? (03/11/02) Peeping Justice In the eyes of the law, it seems, men and women still are not equals. An 8-year-old boy should be held responsible for his actions no matter the circumstances, they say. An adult woman who knows right from wrong? Well, she’s a victim of her heart and mind.-© 2002 by James R. Hanback, Jr.-www.jameshanbackjr.com Peeping Justice--By James R. Hanback Jr. If anything positive can come out of Yates’ case though, it is the spotlight shown on the hypocrisy of the U.S. judicial system when considering cases in which women are perpetrators versus when men go on trial for similar crimes. And it has made those who consider such hypocrisies all the more vigilant about exposing them for what they are. After all, the man who murdered serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer in prison was schizophrenic. It didn’t stop us from putting him in prison for his previous acts of inhumanity.--- FindLaw's Writ - MICHAEL C. DORF : Why Congressional Power To Declare War Does Not Provide An Effective Check On The President It has long been recognized that, even absent a formal declaration of war, the President may, on his own authority, use military force to carry out the Congressionally delegated power to "suppress insurrections and repel invasions." Thus, for example, in The Prize Cases the Supreme Court upheld President Lincoln's Civil War blockade of southern ports. And no one doubts that in the event of an actual attack on the United States, the President can and should use military force even if there is insufficient time to seek Congressional approval. TCS: Defense - Cars in Utopia-By Brock Yates 03/11/2002 When and if the internal combustion engine is supplanted -- which, in my opinion, will be no time soon -- it will come because its successor is economically, technically and practically better in all aspects. Until that day comes, all the blather from the pols, the lefties, the greens and the media ranges between the inane and the idiotic. FOXNews.com By William LaJeunesse— Several Clinton administration rules deemed favorable to environmentalists are being reconsidered under court orders that suggest Clinton's Interior Department went too far in passing regulations to protect endangered species. "I think the courts are rightly stepping in and moving the pendulum to where there is a reasoned, balanced approach," said Richard Jemison, a land developer and homebuilder. Ironic Times - March 11, 2002 Administration Promoting Marriage As Way Out of Poverty. (And into debt.) Sunday, March 10, 2002
"Do we really think that a government-dominated education is going to produce citizens capable of dominating their government, as the education of a truly vigilant self-governing people requires?" (ALAN KEYES) In almost every area of legislation today, we are treated to endless wrenching tales of woe as the proponents of some added insult to the Bill of Rights self-righteously, arrogantly, indignantly demand that another "sinful" product or behavior be made verboten. (www.zolatimes.com) (www.mediaresearch.org) An FNC graphic offered these more detailed numbers for Zogby’s poll on Bush’s job performance: Excellent: 17 percent Good: 30 percent [17 + 30 = 47 percent positive] Fair: 34 percent Poor: 17 percent [34 + 17 = 51 percent negative] (How about: Excellent--17% Good-------30% Fair---------34% Total-------81% Approval Rating) NewsMax.com: Columnists The Center for Defense Studies at King's College found that criminal use of handguns in Britain increased 40 percent in the two years following the handgun ban. (Paul Craig Roberts) NewsMax.com: Columnists I have always wondered what the real agenda of the gun-control lobby is. Now I know. Gun controllers represent the criminal lobby. The purpose of gun control is to make criminals safe when they rob, burgle, rape and murder.--Paul Craig Roberts NewsMax.com: Columnists Vietnam veteran and Maryland "Citizen of the Year" Donald Arnold recently lost his gun permit because it came to light that 33 years ago he got into a scuffle with a war protester. According to Maryland's ridiculous attorney general, Joseph Curran, the scuffle means Maryland's Citizen of the Year is too dangerous to have any gun rights.--Paul Craig Roberts NewsMax.com: Columnists Do you remember when England had very little crime and unarmed Bobbies (police)? Since those halcyon days, the British have had their guns confiscated and are now being shot, raped, burgled, robbed and assaulted at record rates. Violent crime rates in Britain far outstrip those in the United States.--Paul Craig Roberts NewsMax.com: Columnists Four men broke into Ronald Biggs' Goldsboro, N.C., residence and assaulted him with a baseball bat. He broke up the attack by shooting one of the assailants. His assailants were charged with misdemeanors and Biggs was charged with assault with a deadly weapon.--Paul Craig Roberts NewsMax.com: Columnists Don Campbell of Port Huron, Mich., shot the assailant who broke into his store and attacked him. The prosecutor plea-bargained with the assailant in exchange for the assailant's testimony against Campbell for felonious use of a firearm. Community pressure forced the prosecutor to drop the charges he was fabricating.--Paul Craig Roberts The Horrible Logic of (Youth) Victim Disarmament, by George Justin Mallone -- anti-state.com ---Surely, the readers of this site are well-informed and savvy enough to look up the facts: Handgun Control Inc. skews the statistics and includes the deaths of 19-year old "gangstas" among it's "itty-bitty wittle kids killed by guns" statistics; that the youth that "snap" and proceed to make swiss cheese of their friend's heads tend to be forcibly drugged up (legal kinds) and forced in statist indoctrination centers (which tend to be a favorite target for rampages, GO FIGURE); and that, as a general rule, anything that is used in the media for liberty-restricting purposes is complete and utter bullshit.--- TCS: Enviro-Sci - Don't Know Much About History-By Sallie Baliunas- 03/08/2002 Over two decades ago the "Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975" mandated Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) targets for cars and light trucks. The standard for fleet fuel economy for cars rose to 27.5 miles per gallon, where it has stayed since 1985.---But now the facts are in on the experiment with the fuel consumption mandate that started a quarter century ago - and its supporters have a lot of explaining to do. Simply put, higher fuel efficiency mandates for passenger cars and light trucks are no panacea. Worse, they have proved dangerous for drivers and the environment, and economically costly.--- Virtual Climate Alert #8 Vol#3 Have you heard the one about the melting glacier atop Mt. Kilimanjaro? Of course you have, thanks in part to the efforts of Greenpeace. Some of its members beamed a satellite transmission and manifesto "live" from the peak during the Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties meeting in Marrakech, Morocco, last year. If you believe the story, you’ve swallowed another urban legend. That goes double if you believe a similar story about the glacier atop Mt. Kenya. When we debunked our last urban legend about inundation of Tuvalu (see www.co2andclimate.org) we used as our format the definition of urban legend provided by www.urbanlegends.com. We’ll follow the same format as we sort through this one. Junkscience.com -- Main Page Furthering the DDT myth: "Los Angeles Times - Bald Eagles May Soon Return to Skies Over Channel Islands" - "National Park Service officials hope to repopulate the northern Channel Islands with bald eagles, 50 years after the majestic birds were killed off by widespread pesticide contamination." Junkscience.com -- Main Page "Cancer Clusters: Findings Vs. Feelings" - "The issue of cancer clusters, which has been in the spotlight recently, is plagued by a wide disparity between public perceptions and scientific findings. Movies like Erin Brockovich and A Civil Action have led the public to think that industrial pollution in the environment is causing local "cancer clusters" where cancer cases are more prevalent due to cancer-causing chemicals." (ACSH) Junkscience.com -- Main Page Figures... "Women sue army for their equal opportunity wounds" - "THE ARMY is facing a spate of legal actions from women recruits who claim they have been injured by its “non- sexist” training regime. Four years ago, after complaints from the equal opportunities lobby, army chiefs introduced “gender-free” training in which men and women had to pass the same physical tests. Previously, women had had to meet less demanding physical standards than their male counterparts — a policy known as “gender-fair testing”. The new “non-sexist” regime has, however, led to more than 20 claims by women who say they have suffered injuries trying to keep up with male hopefuls during training." (Times on Sunday) Junkscience.com -- Main Page To date, there is absolutely zero observable difference between similar populations who served in the Gulf and those who did not. With all due respect to those who serve and have served their country (and served it well from all accounts), Gulf vets must get used to the idea that they are human, with all the physical ailments that accompany that classification - Gulf service has not made them specially ill. You are special guys, you're Gulf vets - you're just not uniquely sick. De-mystifying Democracy by Carter Laren ---Democracy and dictatorship are just two flavors of the same poison. The proper solution to the problems of war-torn Afghanistan (and war-torn America) is not simply "democracy." Replacing one dictator with 1 million ultimately does nothing to help an enslaved population. What is needed is the recognition of individual rights.--- De-mystifying Democracy by Carter Laren---When most Americans advocate "democracy," they typically cite the United States as a prime example. What makes the United States different (and better) than a dictatorship, however, is not that it is a democracy (it is actually a representative, constitutional, republic).--- The Collectivist Notion of "Giving Back to Society"-by Ron Pisaturo (February 11, 2002) ---In justice, productive individuals have no obligation to give away one penny of what they have earned, just as a customer has no obligation to "give back" the automobile and computer he has bought. And all of us should be grateful to producers, not for their charity, but for their productiveness. The legacy of knowledge and wealth created by Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Ford is not their charitable foundations; it is the industries these men built. Capitalism Magazine: Free Markets, Individual Rights, Egoism, and Reason Ted Kennedy Wants Your Money--by Jeff Jacoby (February 15, 2002) Americans should have less money to spend and Ted Kennedy and his buddies should have more to spend on their friends. Looters In "Public Good" Suits-by Michael J. Hurd, Ph.D. (February 17, 2002) ---The man who has the power to rob others of their liberty and their property likewise has the power to rob you. In one case, he may be robbing Peter or Paul to pay you in the form of a government program you like. In the next case, you more than likely will be his next victim. As Ayn Rand pointed out in Atlas Shrugged and her other works, the welfare-regulatory state is nothing more than the sacrifice of all to all. If you benefit from today’s socialistic sacrifices, you will be the victim of tomorrow’s. A Sign of Things to Come? Expanding the Tobacco Industry Lawsuits Against All Industry-By Ralph R. Reiland (February 18, 2002) ---In his First Inaugural Address, Thomas Jefferson put forth a vision of a people "free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement." Translated, I'd say that means we needn't be shielded from half-naked Art Deco statues, market-driven vending machines, theme parks, "glamorous," "burly," or whopper-sized sticky buns. Who Pays The Tariffs?--By Paul C Nagy (February 24, 2002) ---Tariffs, bailouts, quotas and subsidies not only don't make economic sense, but are downright immoral. How would it be any different if we use tax dollars and imposed higher prices to salvage one segment of the economy or if we just went door to door with a gun and forced people to hand over some cash to benefit their neighbors who happen to be employed at one certain factory or another? Why are certain companies as well as certain unions/members entitled to their incomes regardless of whether their product is wanted or needed? How can the general public be punished by being denied a cheaper or better product in deference to those who refuse to be competitive?--- Birth of Big Brother: How the Court deep-sixed the Tenth-by George F. Smith (March 2, 2002) - Capitalism Magazine ---After the stock market crash in 1929, statists blamed unbridled capitalism for the economic misery government created through the Federal Reserve's manipulation of the money supply. Roosevelt offered the country a stronger dose of the same interventionist poison, but sold it to the public as medicine.--- Birth of Big Brother: How the Court deep-sixed the Tenth-by George F. Smith (March 2, 2002) - Capitalism Magazine---For all their brilliance, our founders never completely threw off the clutching cloak of altruism, the doctrine that man exists to serve others. This is grotesquely at odds with our founding philosophy of man's inalienable rights, that each man is an end in himself and not a sacrificial object of society. If we let self-sacrifice be our moral ideal, we've given government the means of enslaving us, and liberty, to the extent it exists, will be by permission, rather than right. Birth of Big Brother: How the Court deep-sixed the Tenth-by George F. Smith (March 2, 2002) - Capitalism Magazine ---If we open our history books, we'll find that Chief Justice John Marshall, in 1819, issued the first landmark ruling corrupting the philosophy of limited government. It "is the duty of the court to construe the constitutional powers of the national government liberally," Marshall wrote, in supporting the constitutionality of a national bank.--- Birth of Big Brother: How the Court deep-sixed the Tenth-by George F. Smith (March 2, 2002) - Capitalism Magazine ---So what is it Big Brother's doing right? "Educating" us. Compulsory, taxpayer-financed schooling carefully corrupts the foundations of a free society. Government schools invariably preach the primacy of the group over the individual, thus destroying the concept of individual rights.--- Should the Government Choose What Kind of Car You Should Drive?-By James K. Glassman (March 3, 2002) - Capitalism Magazine ---On safety, the record could not be clearer. Higher CAFE regulations mean lighter cars, and lighter cars are less safe. A study by USA Today found that, in the quarter-century since the laws were enacted, 46,000 people died on our highways who would otherwise be alive without CAFE. A study by John Graham of Harvard and Robert Crandall of the Brookings Institution estimated that deaths due to CAFE totaled 2,200 to 3,900 a year — a horrifying number.--- Should the Government Choose What Kind of Car You Should Drive?-By James K. Glassman (March 3, 2002) - Capitalism Magazine ---But if the objective of CAFE laws has been to reduce gasoline consumption, they have been a bust. Since 1975, when the rules were first imposed, crude oil imports have doubled. That's not hard to understand: When a car gets more miles to the gallon, a person tends to drive it more.--- Should the Government Choose What Kind of Car You Should Drive?-By James K. Glassman (March 3, 2002) - Capitalism Magazine ---CAFE also raises costs for consumers — by $500 to $2,500 per car, according to the National Academy of Sciences. Another study notes that CAFE has cost the U.S. some 200,000 jobs, shifted to manufacturers in other countries.--- Should the Government Choose What Kind of Car You Should Drive? By James K. Glassman (March 3, 2002)-- Capitalism Magazine ---Let's get this straight: As a simple matter of personal freedom and consumer choice, it should not be up to the government to determine how many miles my car can travel on a gallon of gasoline.--- Nobel Prize for Economics Rewards Voodoo and Not Science - By Richard Salsman (March 10, 2002) --Capitalism Magazine ---In the 1990s seven out of ten winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics hailed from the University of Chicago, which for decades had built a reputation for advocating free and efficient markets.7 It's no coincidence that this was also the decade that saw the institutionalization of more pro-market economic policies in Washington, a shift that began in the early 1980s with the supply-side revolution. And it's no accident that in the 1980s and 1990s, as a result of better policies, investors saw spectacular equity returns.--- Saturday, March 09, 2002
NewsMax.com: America's News Page warned us.--Clinton's Parting Insult World Criminal Court Looms This Year The world's first permanent international criminal tribunal will almost certainly be created by the end of 2002, campaigners say. Thank Bill Clinton for the prospect of foreigners putting U.S. troops on trial. (TA NOTE: Without benefit of U.S. Constitutional safegards.) The Green Matrix, Part 3: Weird Science – Think Globally Diane Alden-- In the late '60s, modern environmentalism became an ideology and a movement. One thing it lacked was "science" to give it credibility and validation. At that time almost every aspect of American society, from politics to culture, was radicalized and swung to the left. Environmentalism was no different. In fact, in the late '60s, the promising area of ecology was hijacked by radicals. Along with much else in that era, what evolved was more philosophical and political than a science using rigorous scientific inquiry. Environmentalism became a movement in search of a science. The ultimate agenda was international command and control, top down, and it covered everything from education to the environment. NewsMax.com: Commentmax Archives Diane Alden--The most important tool that came out of conservation biology was the notion of the "precautionary principle." Using that tool and the ecosystem approach to land management, the new scientists had entire areas and thousands of miles of land to "save" and "repair." What didn't seem important to them, however, were the costs to people and to animals, to private property, or to the Constitution of the United States. NewsMax.com: Commentmax Archives Diane Alden---These scientists use the "precautionary principle," says Fox. "As a theory, it is on shaky ground. In fact, it would be better geared [as a] tool in a witch hunt than by scientists grounded in unpoliticized science." Dr. Fox says the precautionary principle is "the antithesis of sound science." But in fact, it was the use of the precautionary principle that got the spotted owl listed, closed down the Klamath farmers for the sake of a trash fish, and is closing down other areas from Maine to Florida and from sea to shining sea.--- NewsMax.com: Commentmax Archives -Diane Alden---The upshot of the ecosystem approach to land management and species restoration is more than the fate of one species of fish or survival of old-growth trees. Rather, it is about hundreds of millions of acres placed off-limits to both human enjoyment and human use. Every species, salvageable or not, would be listed. Thus, land would end up restricted, allowing little to NO human use. There is absolutely NO balance in this approach. There is no balance, because humanity, in conservation biologist's Soule's words, is a "cancer on the land." It is implied that humanity counts for very little in the ecosystem scheme of things.--- NewsMax.com: Commentmax-Archives Diane Alden---To this day, no one can pinpoint or define when, where, how and WHAT an ecosystem is. It is, in fact, what Dr. Soule and federal and green organization conservation biologists say it is. This is science? Perhaps it comes from the same science that told Galileo he was nuts or that informed Columbus that the earth was flat.--- NewsMax.com: Commentmax Archives-Diane Alden---The eco-scientists in the Forest Service, BLM and FWS did not even leave the American Indian alone. The Timbasha tribe of Death Valley came back to their summer camping grounds a few years ago to find their dwellings bulldozed by the Forest Service and BLM. A tribe that had been in the area a thousand years was in the way of ecosystem management.--- NewsMax.com: Commentmax Archives-Diane Alden ---In one of Bill Clinton's last major executive orders, roads on millions of acres of federal lands were closed as green activists and federal green "biologists" lent support to an approach to land management that is neither scientific nor good for land nor animals and certainly not meant for people. Such policy is neither scientifically based nor ethical. And people are surprised when federal "scientists" fudge or manipulate data?--- NewsMax.com: Commentmax Archives-Richard Poe---Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge has thrown in his lot with the Rosie O’Donnells of this world – people who preach that Americans should go meekly to the slaughter, like spring lambs, rather than risk accidental death by fighting back. Our forefathers who built this country were made of sterner stuff. WorldNetDaily: Gun-shy government?Jon E. Dougherty---in the months following the hijackings, the mindset in Washington hasn't changed much. Arrogant career bureaucrats, despite the government's abysmal record, still insist they – and they alone – are the best protectors of an increasingly vulnerable population. Their high estimation of themselves defies logic, fact and popular opinion.--- newsandopinion.com/--Julia Gorin ---The very ownership of a gun for defense of home and family implies some assertiveness and a certain self-reliance. But if our man kept a gun in the house, and an intruder broke in and started attacking his wife in front of him, he wouldn't be able to later say, "He had a knife--there was nothing I could do!" Passively watching in horror while already trying to make peace with the violent act, scheduling a therapy session and forgiving the perpetrator before the attack is even finished wouldn't be the option it otherwise is.--- AAPS: Unlimited Forced Drugging OK'd By Court WASHINGTON, March 8 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Defendants can be forcibly drugged even though they haven't been convicted of any charges and pose no danger to themselves or others. That's the ruling issued yesterday by the Federal Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in the case of United States vs. Charles Thomas Sell. (see http://www.ca8.uscourts.gov/opndir/02/03/011862P.pdf) The 2-1 split decision establishes government power to forcibly medicate a person with mind-altering drugs even before trial. "It's a shocking, inhumane decision. Now, all the government needs are allegations and a cooperative psychiatrist to forcibly drug any citizen," said Andrew Schlafly, general counsel for the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS). NewsMaxStore.com: Browsing Power Grab: How the National Education Association Is Betraying Our Children --In Power Grab, Greg Moo - a former high school principal - presents convincing evidence that the National Education Association's (NEA) goals are: first, to create one national system of education and second, to control this national system for its own ends. Moo shows that the NEA's strategy is to corrupt and subvert local control of education in order to build its power and promote its ultraliberal social agenda - even to the detriment of students' mastery of academics. Power Grab provides a usable foundation for change and offers effective strategies for parents and taxpayers to unravel NEA's ill-gotten power and to regain control of their schools. Keep and Bear Arms - Gun Owners Home Page - 2nd Amendment Supporters ---"The 4.5 million honest, law-abiding concealed weapons permit holders, nationwide, must be ever vigilant of where the "rapist and terrorist protection zones" are, so we don't inadvertently violate some terrorist's rights and stop them from harming our loved ones."--- Hoover Institution Weekly Essay - What Part of 'No Law' Doesn't Congress Get? by David R. Henderson Suppose representatives of an industry pushed for a law giving them a monopoly on disseminating information about political campaigns and candidates. We would be outraged, right? Our outrage would be based on our belief in two important principles: first, that government should not grant monopolies, and second, that Congress should not violate freedom of speech and of the press. It's time for outrage. Because the industry representatives have been pushing for such a law for years. And Congress is about to pass such a law. The industry: newspapers and broadcasters. The law: federal campaign finance "reform." Keep and Bear Arms - Gun Owners Home Page - 2nd Amendment Supporters KABA NOTE: Project Exile involves federal prosecution of local gun laws and also involves enforcement of unconstitutional laws and even ex-post-facto laws which are strictly prohibited by the United States Constitution. If you are yet unaware of just how wrongheaded and dangerous NRA's Project Exile is, go here: Project Exile Is Not Smart At All Keep and Bear Arms - Gun Owners Home Page - 2nd Amendment Supporters South Africa: Shop owner fends off four would-be robbers, shoots one of them dead OpSD — The businessman was apparently a crack shot, too. He defended himself against four thugs and wasn't injured. First robber was hit with one shot to the head -- R.I.P. -- and when the next robber went for a gun, the store owner put one through his hand. Thanks to OPSD Co-founder and Net Detective Robert Waters for sending this one in. Keep and Bear Arms - Gun Owners Home Page - 2nd Amendment Supporters Israel Army Issuing 40,000 Handgun Permits--www.israelnationalnews.com The government is taking immediate steps to put more licensed handguns on the streets in the hope of citizens being in the “right place at the right time” to prevent terror attacks. Senior police officials have acknowledged that in several cases of late, citizens prevented continuing bloodshed by using their licensed weapons against terrorists. (Hey, Sarah Brady and VPC -- how are you going to spin this one?) Keep and Bear Arms - Gun Owners Home Page - 2nd Amendment Supporters If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin. — Samuel Adams (1780) Accuracy In Media - Guest Columns - Texas: Police State By William S. Lind most Americans seem to accept without question that the state can do anything to us it wants. Here too we have been conditioned, by one absurd law after another: by tax forms that are incomprehensible but must be filled out accurately, by "wetlands" legislation that keeps farmers from plowing and builders from building, by "asset forfeiture" laws that allow the state to seize your property without a conviction or even a trial. We have accepted so much that we cannot draw the line anywhere. Sometimes it's hard to remember that 50 years ago, America was still a free country.--- Armed Females of America - Pro-Gun Women on Full Auto ---There are, of course, individuals and families that have suffered from gun violence at either the hands of mental incompetents, criminals, or family members who used a firearm against other family members, or to commit suicide. In spite of the low number of instances of such occurrences, the media exploits these low numbers propagandizing them to falsely indicate that these incidents are rampant.--- Armed Females of America - Pro-Gun Women on Full Auto The pressure from the media empowers corrupt politicians, who are mostly identifiable as being such in that they violate their oaths to preserve and protect the Constitution by passing illegal, harmful, laws penalizing the American people. Keep and Bear Arms - Gun Owners Home Page - 2nd Amendment Supporters Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge said yesterday if pilots were permitted to be armed, the trend would likely spread to other sectors of the travel industry – something he didn't seem prepared to sanction. KABA NOTE: Tom Ridge is unfit to serve as Homeland Security Director and should step down for being too soft-spined to understand the harsh realities of facing criminal elements with only a pencil for self-defense. Ridge took an oath to uphold, protect and defend the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, but now we need somebody to defend the Constitution from HIM. TCS: Enviro-Sci - Free Speech Under Attack --By Glenn Harlan Reynolds03/06/2002 When Bjorn Lomborg wrote his book The Skeptical Environmentalist, I imagine that he expected to be criticized; one doesn't accuse an entrenched establishment of fraud without encountering some blowback. So when a critical issue of Scientific American came out, accusing Lomborg of not knowing what he was talking about, Lomborg didn't get mad: he simply posted the article, along with a detailed response, on his website. What happened next, however, may have come as a surprise: Scientific American sent him a letter threatening to sue him if he didn't remove the critical article that he was responding to. With the air of bemused politeness that has marked Lomborg's response to his often-overheated critics, Lomborg took the article down. Lomborg's situation, however, serves to underscore a new and unwholesome trend: the use of copyright law to silence critics. Reuters Health Information (2002-03-06): Food allergy info on Web often misleading: report By Keith Mulvihill NEW YORK, Mar 06 (Reuters Health) - Two Massachusetts doctors are warning the public that food allergy information on the Internet may be incomplete, misleading or downright wrong. featured articles DeGregori's Agriculture and Modern Technology March 6, 2002 Reviewed by Manfred Kroger, Ph.D. Agricultural literacy is at a low level in the land of plenty. There may be a law that dictates an inverse relationship between abundance and knowledge about the source of the abundance. We do not burden ourselves with factual information about that which we take for granted, namely, food, health, and a comfortable life in a non-threatening world. As long as the fridge is full, the car always starts, and the TV keeps entertaining, why bother to know what makes all that happen? Thomas DeGregori's new book combats this problem. It's Everyone's Air, Mr. Bush--EDITORIAL The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's conclusion, more than a decade ago, that breathing someone else's cigarette smoke can cause cancer galvanized support for passage of tough anti-smoking laws in California and nationwide. (Is that the same conclusion later determined to be fraudulent, having bent the 'facts' and cherry-picked the data to fit a predetermined conclusion?--www.junkscience.com) WorldNews: Flawed Lynx Study Leads to Reform The Associated Press, Wed 6 Mar 2002 WASHINGTON (AP) — The Forest Service and Interior Department have clarified ethical requirements for scientific studies after biologists falsified data in a study of the reclusive Canada lynx. The phony data has led some Western Republicans to question the validity of other scientific studies involving rare plants and animals. GAO: Lynx fur hoax was no secret -- The Washington Times By Audrey Hudson-- The General Accounting Office reported yesterday that government scientists knew they should not have submitted falsely labled samples into a national lynx survey and that some supervisors were aware but took no action. "They all admitted they knew it wasn't in the protocol, they weren't allowed to do this," said Ronald Malfi, acting managing director of the GAO office of special investigations. TCS: Tech Central Station - Where Free Markets Meet Technology Nothing New Under This Sun -By Herb Inhaber 03/07/2002 Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated, Mark Twain said in response to a premature obituary. About the same can be said about a recent report from Reuters titled "Nuke Test Fallout Caused 15,000 U.S. Deaths." FOXNews.com Published in the Journal of the American Medical Association March 6, the study reports fine particulate air pollution causes people living in the most heavily polluted cities to die at a 12 percent greater rate of lung cancer than people in the least polluted areas. What’s really gasping for breath, though, is the basic science and honesty that’s been steamrolled by the EPA and its researcher henchmen. It's Not Just About Terrorists In the name of catching terrorists, the federal government is rapidly establishing program after program to monitor law-abiding American citizens. Long-standing wish lists of government officials and special interests for expanded government surveillance of ordinary Americans are being trotted out daily, wrapped in fine-sounding phrases. Promoters hope that busy and frightened Americans will look no further than each measure's reassuring title.--- Friday, March 08, 2002
TownHall.com: Ann Coulter If you suspected that the Democrats and their legal and journalistic handmaidens were trying to steal an election in broad daylight, "Breaking the Deadlock" (By Richard Posner, a federal judge on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals) will not relieve your mind. There is no argument, no riposte, no silly liberal sentiment that Posner does not methodically deconstruct. TownHall.com: David Limbaugh most economists, liberal and conservative, agree that tariffs are bad economic policy. Protectionist arguments are largely political and emotional.--- Free-Market.Net Freedom News Lynx, water, cattle and the Fish and Wildlife Service--Source: Mountain States Legal Foundation--Author: William Perry Pendley- "In December 2001, The Washington Times reported that employees of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had planted lynx fur in two national forests in Washington State ... in order to compel closure of those forests. ... Months later the story is still making news, most recently when environmental groups defended the FWS employees and attacked the investigation as 'a witch hunt.'" (03/02) Washington Policy Center • Publications When Auto Safety is Against the Law--by Daniel Mead Smith March 6, 2002-- Two years ago, scores of Washington residents were killed by a defective product. The fatality figures for 2001 haven't been released yet, but they are likely to be similarly high. The dangers of this product have been documented for over a decade, and were confirmed by a panel of the National Academy of Sciences last summer. Yet not only is this product still around; it's actually a mandatory component of every new car sold in this country. Worse yet, there's a widespread push to make this product even deadlier. The product is the federal government's new car fuel economy standards, known as CAFE (for Corporate Average Fuel Economy). Hawaii Reporter: Hawaii Reporter democracy’s dirty little secret. It allows the majority to vote on whether it can harm a certain minority, even though this shouldn’t even be voted on in the first place. Then the voters can call this “the will of the people"--- The Freedom Beam at Liberty For All - Online Magazine by Roderick T. Beaman The poor performance of America's schools is front and center on just about every politician's agenda. And whenever there are politicians involved, there is always demagoguery. The solution for almost all of them is throwing more government money at it. Of course, all money comes with strings attached and with government, you can be sure that the strings will result in accomplishing precisely the opposite of what it's supposed to.--- Free-Market.Net Freedom News Demand is causing drug problems--Source: Enterprise Journal--Author: Charley Reese- "It is the fact that the government bans [drugs] that creates the crime. The exact same thing happened when the government banned alcohol." (03/07/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News Bush abandons his principles to keep a promise--Source: Reason.--Author: Jacob Sullum- Not long ago, Bush declared his commitment to free trade. So now he has to go through logical contortions to justify high tariffs on steel. (03/08/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News Still wrong after all these years--Source: Environment & Climate News--Author: Ronald Bailey- "The Washington, DC-based Worldwatch Institute has dedicated its annual compendium of environmentalist doom and gloom, the State of the World 2002 report, to pointing in the wrong direction." (03/08/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News Does improved student achievement require increased resources?-Source: School Reform News--School Reform News -Author: Hanna Skandera and Richard Sousa- Since previous increases in per-pupil expenditures have not been matched by increased student performance, a strategy of increasing resources may not, in fact produce the desired outcome. (02/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News Times columnist distorts gun rights issue Source: New York Times-Author: Nicholas D. Kristov-www.nytimes.com--(Requires registration) It's not "man bites dog," but this column in the "newspaper of record," purporting to discuss the Mount Holyoke chapter of Second Amendment Sisters, uses the space to distort and slander gun owners everywhere, with specious claims like "Already, since the beginning of September, more than four times as many Americans have fallen to guns as to terrorism ..." (03/08/02) Free Market Advocates Confront Eco-Terroris--Conference Profiles Enemies of Biotechnology, Research, and Development --by CEI Staff-- Washington, D.C., March 7, 2002 — In a Capitol Hill conference today, several experts in security, politics, and communications revealed the troubling rise in acts of violence and destruction being committed by environmental and animal rights activists.--- NYPOST.COM Post Opinion: Oped Columnists: THE PETA-ELF CONNECTION By STEFAN C. FRIEDMAN THE PETA-ELF CONNECTION --By STEFAN C. FRIEDMAN - March 7, 2002 -- NEARLY six years after the Earth Liberation Front set off its first firebomb in the United States, the feds may have gotten their first break in figuring out who runs this dangerous eco-terrorist group. In congressional testimony last month, Richard Berman, of the Center for Consumer Freedom, produced a tax return from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). It turns out PETA isn't just funding anti-milk and anti-fur organizations. It's funding arsonists.-- NORML News Bulletin - March 7, 2002 ---Numerous studies published between 1999 and 2001 challenge a report published today in JAMA (The Journal of the American Medical Association) that marijuana smoking negatively impacts cognitive function. "The only significant long-term impact marijuana has upon cognitive function is upon those who continue to irrationally demonize and criminalize this plant," said Allen St. Pierre, Executive Director of The NORML Foundation.--- 'Security' arrest invalidated The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prohibits warrantless searches. “The tragic and horrific events of Sept. 11 did not topple the prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures,” (District Court Judge David) Ross wrote. Wednesday, March 06, 2002
Protecting one's life is right, not privilege In your Feb. 22 editorial, you stated, in reference to the concealed carry laws of South Carolina, "It was to ensure that a trained, educated corps of concealed weapons carriers exercised that privilege in a responsible way." When did the ability of an individual to protect his or her own life or the life of their child, become a "privilege"? At what point in time did we, the people, surrender our lives to the government, either federal or state?---RICHARD JEFFERIES-Columbia The Disturbing Trend Toward Federal Police By Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX)-Federal Observer ---I believe there is a growing recognition that our founding fathers were correct when they prohibited federal government involvement in law enforcement. In Waco, Americans had a vivid example of the impact of the growing police state. With the veneer being stripped from the myth of federal law enforcement, our citizens are beginning to realize that it is both unconstitutional and untenable. Keep and Bear Arms - Ridge and Mineta Thumb Their Noses at Armed Pilots Law-Submitted by: Doug Charette "Ridge's and Mineta's opposition makes it unlikely that the Bush administration will permit guns in cockpits... White House officials say Ridge's view reflects the thinking of President Bush, who has not commented publicly on the issue." --- Make sure you read that quote above. It clearly looks like officials in the executive department are working to subvert the "armed pilots" language that was signed into law thanks to your hard work last year. Campaign finance reformers threaten free speech -- The Washington Times -Jonah Goldberg Somehow, in the last 40 years the entire concept of free speech has been completely inverted. The closer a person or group gets to doing precisely what the First Amendment was intended to protect, the more likely it is that the government will regulate or ban it. Conversely, the further out we get, the more likely it is that "Free Speech" will be an indispensable iron law of liberty, unbreakable without bringing the edifice of liberty down in rubble.--- PETA's charity status questioned Matthew Cella-THE WASHINGTON TIMES-Published 3/5/2002 An organization that tracks crimes against business interests filed a complaint yesterday asking the Internal Revenue Service to revoke the tax-exempt status of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. The 12-page complaint, filed by Ron Arnold, executive vice president of the nonprofit Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise (CDFE), argues that the Norfolk-based animal rights group should be stripped of its charitable status. The complaint says PETA supports domestic terrorist groups, steals trade secrets and assaults business executives. Keep and Bear Arms - Gun Control: The Second Amendment -Submitted by: LFA Editor-Website: http://www.libertyforall.net There are some facts that the liberal media doesn't like for ordinary citizens to know. For example, guns are used over 7,000 times every day to prevent crimes in this country. In 98% of these cases, the gun is never even discharged. Simply brandishing the weapon will cause most cowards to run like little rabbits. In the majority of the 2% of cases in which a gun is fired, there are only warning shots taken to either frighten the attacker away or convince him to wait for the police. The Spokesman-Review.com - 71-year-old kills intruder, sheriff says COLVILLE, Wash. -- A 71-year-old Stevens County woman shot a 32-year-old man to death Saturday when, she told authorities, he entered her home uninvited and assaulted her.--- Media Research Center CyberAlert - 03/06/2002 - NBC’s West Wing "Non-Political"? Hardly- West Wing writer Aaron Sorkin got a lot of publicity for complaining about how the media are too reverential to President Bush, but he also preposterously maintained: "We're a completely fictional, nonpolitical show." In fact, this season the fictional "President Bartlet" is facing a dumb Republican Governor with a lot of money. Past CyberAlerts have documented the liberal themes showcased on the NBC program.--- Junkscience.com -- "Hooray for Designer Babies!; Sliding gently down the slippery slope to prevent genetic diseases" - "A human being was spared the horror of losing her mind by age 40 by means of genetic testing, revealed the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) last week. Of course, this medical miracle was an immediate occasion for anxious hand wringing on the part of bioethical busybodies worried about "designer babies." (Ronald Bailey, Reason) Junkscience.com --CAFE's Lethal Effects ---complaints would be justified if CAFE's lethal effects were a poorly supported hypothesis. But the evidence on this issue comes from no less a body than the National Academy of Sciences, which issued a report last August finding that CAFE contributes to between 1,300 and 2,600 traffic deaths per year. Given that this program has been in effect for more than two decades, its cumulative toll is staggering." (Sam Kazman, Competitive Enterprise Institute) Junkscience.com -- "Energy Bill That's Not So Cool" - "With summer not too far away, we should all be thankful for affordable air conditioning, but a little-noticed provision in the Senate version of the energy bill could send the future price of central AC systems through the roof. If successful, Congress would force the federal Department of Energy (DOE) to enact a stringent new energy conservation standard for air conditioners, despite the agency's own determination that it's a bad deal for consumers." (Ben Lieberman, Competitive Enterprise Institute) Junkscience.com -- "Subject Index Summaries; Aerosols (Biological - Terrestrial)" - "Summary: Biological processes occurring in terrestrial ecosystems possess an array of abilities to alter the atmosphere's complement of aerosols in ways that prevent over-heating of the planet." (co2science.org) Junkscience.com --"Another Silver Lining in a Global Warming Storm Cloud" - "Summary: Are things really as bad as the climate alarmists make them out to be? Is earth's climate really as sensitive to CO2 as they want us to believe? Of course not, as real-world data clearly show. Really!" (co2science.org) Junkscience.com - Lawsuits may be next weapon in climate change fight" - Lawsuits may become the next weapon against climate change as impotent, tiny islands, sinking beneath the waves, seek revenge on the rich polluting nations and multinational concerns they accuse of wiping them out." (Reuters) (Actually, removal of coral and sand (for building materials), with associated beach erosion and over-extraction of groundwater supplies allowing compaction and subsidence are playing a much larger role in the cited cases while subduction is the major factor from say, the Solomons and regions north-west from there. Nonetheless, Watson is quite correct in that remote industrial countries have nothing to do with island subsidence.--Junkscience editorial comment.) OregonLive.com--Oregon's homegrown terrorists incite hate, violence-- ---The philosophy espoused by the ELF is to destroy the free-market principle of profit and those institutions that support it. ELF members, like those who blow up abortion clinics, believe that violence is an acceptable statement of political dissatisfaction. They use the protections of freedom of speech to publicly call for the destruction of our country. This should not be protected speech; it is incitement. It is a hate crime and it is despicable.--- Junkscience.com -- "Smog risk 'same as passive smoking'" - "Long-term exposure to air pollution in congested cities significantly increases the risk of dying from lung cancer and heart disease, a study released yesterday has concluded." (Independent) Yeah? Since passive smoking has virtually nil risk demonstrated, smog must also be something of a non-issue these days, is that what they claim?---(Junkscience editorial comment.) TownHall.com: Walter Williams--They're coming after you ---You might say, "What's the fuss, Williams? These people will never get away with controlling what we eat and drink!" Think again. In the '60s, when the anti-smoking zealots were simply asking for smoking and non-smoking sections on airplanes, no one would have ever anticipated today's tobacco taxes, laws and regulations.--- TownHall.com: Walter Williams--They're coming after you ---We reveled in the EPA's dishonest study concluding that second-hand smoke causes cancer. And, by the way, I'd like to hear whether the Food & Drug Administration would sanction pharmaceutical companies employing EPA's research methods to test drug safety -- and if not, why not?--- TownHall.com: David Limbaugh--Make them pay for 'Borking' ---The Democrats have never been held accountable for their usurpation of the president’s appointment power and the systematic character assassination "Borking" of politically unacceptable judicial nominees. If anything, they have been emboldened by the Republicans’ feckless response.--- www.newsmax.com--Hillary for President – And Away We Go! Books chronicle the Clintons in power, king and queen, partners who loved power and believed they were entitled to anything they wanted. Voters, however, saw sleaze, adultery, lies and more lies, cheating, stonewalling, obstruction of justice, greed and whatever would advance their profit and pleasure.--G. Russell Evans--Captain, U.S. Coast Guard (Ret.) Cleveland.com--Burned-out residents a threat to patients, two studies find Roger Mezger -Plain Dealer Reporter The nation's doctors-in-training, stressed out by long working hours, low wages and staggering education debt, are depressed and cynical and sometimes are giving patients bad care, according to two studies being published today. sunspot.net - nation/world--Air pollution raises risk of cancer death- Long-term exposure to the air pollution in some of America's biggest metropolitan areas significantly raises the risk of dying from lung cancer and is about as dangerous as living with a smoker, a study of a half-million people found. (TA NOTE: That would mean it isn't very dangerous, if you read the valid studies on second hand smoke. See post for 11:21:29, this date.) Shrinking AMA Calls the Shots on Anti-gun Policy---AMA, once the respected voice of the mainstream of the medical profession, has become just another left-wing interest group. Declining membership does not prevent AMA from presuming to speak for all doctors or from aggressively weaving its leftist dogma into the doctor-patient relationship.--- Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Public education versus liberty: the pedigree of an idea -Source: Acton Institute-Author: Michiel Visser- "Public education as we know it grew from a desire by 18th century monarchs to mold more malleable subjects. Pupils were not primarily supposed to learn reading, writing, arithmetic or anything else, but were meant to become obedient citizens. The history of modern education, then, is a history of social control." (2001 Acton Institute Essay Comptetition Winner) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Alliance of feds, activist groups threatens rural America -Source: Environment & Climate NewsAuthor: Bonner H. Cohen "The alliance between powerful federal regulatory agencies and wealthy environmental groups poses a serious threat to the livelihood of farmers, ranchers, loggers, and other property owners." (03/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Eminent domain abuses unchecked-Source: Washington Times-Author: Dana Berliner / Scott Bullock- "[I]n the last few years, governments across the country have taken private homes and businesses to replace them with other privately owned single businesses, malls, industrial developments and upscale housing." (03/04/02) Free-Market.Net Freedom News--Media misconceptions help lead to public fear of global warming --Source: The National Center for Public Policy Research--Author: Chris Burger- Burger criticizes media reports on global warming that ignore the actual scientific record. "NASA satellite data show temperatures in the lower atmosphere have not risen in over 20 years although numerous computer models by global warming theory advocates predicted that such increases should have occurred by now." (03/05/02) Guest Comment on NRO Financial--Another Bush Home Run: But the critics strike out on Social Security personal accounts. ---Gallup, CNN, and USA Today have asked the public five times since June 2000 about personal accounts, the last time in January, 2002. They found each time that over 60% of respondents favor a proposal "that would allow people to put a portion of their Social Security payroll taxes into personal accounts that would be invested in private stocks and bonds." The same results have been found over and over by other polls for years now.--- Guest Comment on NRO Financial--Another Bush Home Run: But the critics strike out on Social Security personal accounts. ---The personal-account option for Social Security has been designed precisely to avoid the problem experienced with Enron. The problem for Enron employees was that so many of them held such a huge proportion of their 401(k)s solely in Enron stock. Guest Comment on NRO Financial--Another Bush Home Run: But the critics strike out on Social Security personal accounts. One of the foremost critics is Sen. Edward Kennedy---He said, "Social Security must remain a guaranteed benefit. It would be an enormous mistake to substitute personal accounts for that guaranteed benefit." But where did Kennedy get the idea that Social Security is a guaranteed benefit? The Supreme Court said otherwise in the 1960 case of Flemming v. Nestor. The Court said that Social Security benefits are not government guaranteed like Federal debt, which must be repaid under the Constitution. Congress is free to reduce or cut off Social Security benefits any time it chooses.--- |