…the Noam Chomskys and Michael Moores and Robert Fisks of the world (and their thousands of lesser imitators in faculty lounges everywhere) are not brave transgressive forward-thinkers but pathetic memebots running the program of a dead tyrant.
Eric Steven Raymond (ESR)
Gramscian damage
[ESR doesn’t just claim this. He proves it. Great blog posting.–Joe]
So congress says the Clean Water Act applies to all U.S. navigable water. Okay, I can see them getting authority from the interstate commerce clause. But then the Corp of Engineers and the EPA have their way with things:
The dispute is one of two cases consolidated for oral argument Tuesday examining just how far upstream the Clean Water Act (CWA) extends federal jurisdiction. Is it limited to lakes and rivers? Or does it include remote wetlands with no link to them? At stake: how broadly the clean water law will be applied nationwide and, potentially, whether a broad application of the law is consistent with the proper constitutional balance of power between the federal government and the states.
At the center of the dispute is a discrepancy between the words Congress used when it wrote the CWA and the regulations the US Army Corps of Engineers and Environmental Protection Agency wrote later to enforce the clean water law.
Congress said US jurisdiction would extend over all “navigable waters.” EPA and Corps of Engineers regulations interpret the law as extending far upstream, even to waters with no hydrologic connection to a tributary of navigable waters.
“Through this authority, the Corps will effectively exercise a wide-ranging federal police power over all kinds of land use,” writes Carabell’s lawyer, Timothy Stoepker, in his brief to the court. “A saturated portion of a residential lawn, which is near a storm drain … will come within the scope of the act, and the owners of such land will have to obtain permits from the Corps before making a variety of ordinary land-use decisions.”
So what definition of navigable water can you come up with that includes a saturated portion of a residential lawn? This is government WAY out of control.
I think this is a train wreck waiting to happen.
Mike Machado
California State Senator
Talking about “Real ID” which is expected by most to be a real mess.
[For expense think about the Canadian gun registry on steroids. Plus it can’t possibly achieve it’s intended goals.–Joe]
The mere absence of war is not peace.
John F. Kennedy
Washington D.C. elected a convicted felon as Mayor but at least they waited until he was out of jail. Not so on the West Bank. And these aren’t just minor crimes:
RAMALLAH, West Bank — Imagine 54 U.S. congressmen holding office from behind bars, and you get an idea of the problem facing the Palestinian parliament when it meets today for its first session since the January landslide victory of the radical, anti-Israel group Hamas.
About 10 percent of the 132 newly elected Palestinian legislators are inmates of Israel’s civilian and military jails. Some of the legislators are being held in administrative detention without charges; others are serving time after conviction in Israeli courts.
How, if at all, these prisoner-politicians can participate in government and join debates on proposed legislation is a serious question.
“They won’t get any special privileges just because they were elected,” said Israeli Prison Service spokesman Ofer Lefler. At best, he said, they might be able to pass information to the outside world through monthly family visits or visits with lawyers, which can occur more frequently.
“In our jails they haven’t got cellphones — I hope. And they haven’t got permission to call,” Lefler said. “They are prisoners. That’s the whole story.”
While Palestinian legislators confined to the Gaza Strip under Israeli travel restrictions are expected to participate via closed-circuit video link with their colleagues meeting in Ramallah, no such provision exists for the 13 legislators in Israeli custody. (One legislator is in a Palestinian jail as well as under international supervision.)
Ten of the 14 are members of Hamas, whose effective majority drops from 74 to 64 seats while they are incarcerated. Three are members of Fatah, including the head of the party’s electoral list, Marwan Barghouti. Barghouti is serving five consecutive life sentences for his role in five attacks that killed civilians. Still, he is often mentioned by Palestinian and Israeli analysts — a la Nelson Mandela — as a possible future Palestinian leader.
One inmate, Ahmed Sadaat, of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, is in a Palestinian jail in Jericho for his role in the 2002 assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi.
This should speak volumes about their agenda, their political mandate, for their terms in office.
About 10 days ago I was telling someone about the extremist Muslim response to the cartoons of Muhammad. They weren’t particularly familiar with what was happening but said, “It will go away soon.” I agreed, but my point was it showed the tremendous gulf between the west and radical Islam. Later, at lunch with a friend, I repeated, “It will go away soon.” He disagreed, “The only way I see to get to the other side of this is over a pile of bodies–either theirs or ours.” I realized he could be right but wasn’t convinced. A week or so, I thought, that’s about the typical attention spam for this sort of thing. I had forgotten the length of the French riots (and here, here, here, and here) last fall. That was more like three weeks or a month. This is a bigger and more widespread event. Perhaps this will be the flame that will burn until all the fuel is exhausted. It was over lunch yesterday this same friend told me about the $1 million reward for killing the cartoonist and ended the conversation with, “I feel like I’m living on another planet, these people are a bunch of savages.” I couldn’t disagree.
In our frame of reference this insult is so trivial and their response is so extreme there will be no compromise, no truce, and no ceasefire. As communication and travel have improved we can no longer be isolated from each other on this planet. The publication of a few cartoons in minor newspaper in a small country in Western Europe ignited a violent, worldwide, response. The fuel supply for this flame, this clash of civilizations, has been building for over a thousand years and the flame may not be extinguished until the fuel is exhausted. I see only uncomfortable options; we destroy their civilization, they destroy ours, or we participate, as either victims or perpetrators, in the greatest genocide this world has ever known.
This is a unanimous decision by all imams of Islam that whoever insults the prophet deserves to be killed and whoever will take this insulting man to his end, will get this prize.
Mohammed Yousaf Qureshi
Peshawar, Pakistan
February 17, 2006
Cleric announcing rewards of $1 million dollars, one million rupees, 500,000 rupees, and a car for the killing of the cartoonist who drew the prophet.
The police commit the ‘crime’ in order to get evidence:
According to court documents, Spotsylvania detectives paid three visits to the Moon Spa in January and received massages, baths and sex acts on four occasions. Smith previously told The Post it was not the first time his agency has employed the full-contact method, which he said is essential because many prostitutes avoid verbally incriminating themselves. Several legal and law enforcement experts said the practice is rarely used, if ever, and might amount to breaking the law.
In their news release, Smith and Neely said that undercover officers often purchase illegal drugs to build cases against dealers and that the “same lawful investigative technique” was used in the prostitution cases. A Virginia law banning drug possession exempts law-enforcement officers who possess narcotics as part of their job duties. The prostitution statute makes no such exception.
Another case of “The law doesn’t apply to us.” Jerks.
BRITAIN’s security forces are nowhere near getting to grips with al-Qaeda, the country’s top anti-terror police officer said yesterday, warning the struggle could take decades.
Peter Clarke, the head of the Metropolitan Police’s Anti-Terrorist Branch, said it was “hopelessly optimistic” to think that the threat from al-Qaeda could be contained within five or ten years.
One report even suggests that the current generation of al-Qaeda leaders have drawn up a “50-year plan”, he said.
Mr Clarke, speaking to a Whitehall gathering of security experts, gave a sobering assessment of the task facing police and intelligence officers trying to counter Islamic extremist groups.
As Ry and I concluded a year and a half ago–we must destroy their culture. The only alternative involves a nearly uncountable pile of bodies and may be unavoidable anyway. But we must try.
Patience and perserverence have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.
John Quincy Adams
[I just got all caught up on my paperwork dealing with the bigoted felons at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.–Joe]
I don’t go along with the idea of taxing income so “deductions” don’t really excite me all that much–they should make deductions not applicable to taxes. Deductions are just the government attempting to screw people a little bit less, but we are still screwed. Anyway, Australia is going to be doing less screwing of prostitutes:
STRIPPERS and prostitutes will be allowed to claim condoms, lingerie, oils and other “tools of the trade” as tax deductions under new rules issued by the Tax Office.
In a directive obtained by The Daily Telegraph, the Australian Taxation Office informs sex workers that they should also claim for their exotic dancing lessons.
Damaged bondage equipment and “adult novelties” are also listed as valid tax deductions.
Sex workers who keep a separate premises will also be able to claim a deduction on their accommodation costs – even if it is a room rented by the hour.
The UK is on it’s way just as F.A. Hayek warned. This is from an editoral, again warning the British people:
FEW industries could be more competitive than retailing. The drive to better their rivals is what pushes the major store groups to continuously improve what they offer to customers. So what does a gaggle of Members of Parliament suggest applying to this thriving industry? A regulator, of course.
Imagine how the staff of the Retail Regulator might delight in “protecting” consumers by dictating permissible prices, and suitable sales mixes. The customer would no longer be king, instead it would be the bureaucrats who held sway over what appeared in the stores.
The MPs would have their new creation charged with bringing forward “proposals for the maintenance of a vibrant, diverse and sustainable retail sector”. That is a tall order of a bureaucrat, as likely to result in a dictat that every high street should have the approved quota of coffee shops, chemists and clothes stores and end up looking remarkably similar.
The All-Party Parliamentary Small Shops Group has identified a problem but it is reaching for the wrong weapon to deal with it. In its own evidence it cites the heavy regulation that already governs retailers, with the burden being disproportionately heavy on smaller stores. There is a genuine concern about the speed at which smaller stores are vanishing: in the last decade the UK has lost nearly 30,000 independent food, beverage and tobacco retailers. Yet dubious regulation has hastened this trend.
The insistence of the competition authorities that there were two distinct types of grocery shop, the superstores and the convenience stores, and that the first could be allowed to gobble up the second, has dramatically changed the retail landscape in Britain. There now seems a willingness to rethink that view but it is too late to undo the damage. One lobby group, the new economics foundation, is calling for the major grocers to be forced to divest their stores to limit their market share to a maximum of 8 per cent. Even if that were possible, consumers would be incensed.
Competition authorities and Retail Regulators? Wow!
The serfs are loosing even more freedom in other areas:
SMOKING will be banned in all pubs, clubs and workplaces from next year after historic votes in the Commons last night.
After last-minute appeals from health campaigners, MPs opted for a blanket prohibition which will start in summer 2007, ending months of argument over whether smoking should be barred in pubs and restaurants only. They voted to ban smoking in all pubs and clubs by 384 to 184, a surprisingly large majority of 200.
Smoking will still be allowed in the home and in places considered to be homes, such as prisons, care homes and hotels. But there are difficult decisions to be made on exemptions for places such as oil rigs, where smoking outside the workplace would be dangerous.
Smokers lighting up in banned areas will face a fixed penalty notice of £50 and spot fines of £200 will be introduced for failing to display no-smoking signs, with the possible penalty if the issue goes to court increasing to £1,000.
Caroline Flint, the Public Health Minister, also announced that the fine for failing to stop people smoking in banned areas would be increased to £2,500 — more than ten times the £200 originally proposed.
The Bill also allows the Government to increase the age for buying cigarettes. Ministers will consult on raising it from 16 to 18.
Smoking could still be banned at outdoor locations that are “substantially enclosed”, such as football grounds and railway platforms. The details will be contained in regulations after a three-month consultation.
No decision has yet been made on whether smoking will be banned in cars carrying passengers.
What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
Thomas Jefferson
Letter Nov. 13, 1787
referring to Shay’s rebellion
[Present day examples of tyrants and patriots abound and are a constant reminder we must not give up the fight to keep our right to keep and bear arms.–Joe]
Via Bruce Schneier comes this cartoon. Airplane security isn’t improved by removing tools (such as knives and firearms) from the passenger compartment. It’s improved by removing the people that are a threat and giving the innocent people onboard the tools and the will to help with their own security.
If it passes, as it almost for certain will, it will be with an English rather than a German accent this time when the police demand “papers”:
MOST Britons will be forced to have an identity card within five years after MPs defeated the Lords last night, despite a Labour backbench rebellion.
Moves to require people to buy ID cards when they request or renew a British passport were carried by 310 votes to 279, a majority of 31.
…
The Identity Cards Bill will now go back to the Lords, who had voted to decouple the issuing of ID cards from passports, blocking ministers’ plans to add millions of people to the identity register each year technically on a voluntary basis.
The Lords must decide whether to insist that passport applications stay separate from identity cards, amending the Bill again in a “ping-pong” with the Commons, or to give way, which is the more likely option.
Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, moved amendments overturning changes made to the Bill by peers, saying that the Government had made clear that it envisaged linking ID cards to passports as part of their phased introduction.
Applicants for residents’ permits and for visas from certain non-European Union countries and asylum-seekers would also be subject to compulsory registration of biometric data — fingerprints and iris scans — on the identity database.
See also my essay on the fatal flaws of universal ID cards and my Jews in the Attic Test.
If this had happened in the U.S. where police officers are armed things probably would have turned out different. But instead it was in the “gun free paradise” of London England:
LONDON (Reuters) – A female trainee police officer is seriously ill in hospital on Tuesday after being shot as she and a colleague tried to apprehend a suspected burglar.
Police said the incident occurred shortly before midnight when two officers, an experienced male officer and the 25-year-old female probation officer, were called to a burglary in the Lenton area of Nottingham and tried to stop a man nearby.
“The suspect produced a firearm and shot one of the officers,” a Nottinghamshire police spokeswoman said, adding the victim had not yet been named.
The wounded officer, who was wearing body armour, has undergone emergency surgery for a gunshot injury and is in intensive care in a serious condition.
No one has been arrested.
New Orleans was the first place in American history to disarm peaceable citizens, house-by-house, at gunpoint. And I promise you this standing here today: We at the NRA are going to make sure it’s the last place it ever happens.
Never again can Michael Bloomberg or Rebecca Peters or Mike Wallace, or the United Nations, or the Brady Center, or anywhere else say that honest citizens don’t need firearms because what happened in New Orleans proves beyond a shadow of a doubt what we’ve said all along.
The next time some arrogant politician looks at you and says, ‘Why does anyone need to own a gun?’ I want you to look them straight in the face and say this: ‘Remember New Orleans!'”
‘Why do you need to own a gun?’ Remember New Orleans!
‘Aren’t you just being kind of paranoid?’ Remember New Orleans!
‘Why does anyone need right to carry?’ Remember New Orleans!
‘What makes you think our government would ever try to confiscate your guns?’ Remember New Orleans!
‘Is the Second Amendment really relevant in the 21st Century?’ Remember New Orleans!
Wayne LaPierre
Executive Vice President
National Rifle Association
From speeches given:
Once Law was sitting on the bench
And Mercy knelt a-weeping.
“Clear out!” he cried, “disordered wench!
Nor come before me creeping.
Upon you knees if you appear,
‘Tis plain you have no standing here.”
Then Justice came. His Honor cried:
“YOUR states? — Devil seize you!”
“Amica curiae,” she replied —
“Friend of the court, so please you.”
“Begone!” he shouted — “There’s the door —
I never saw your face before!”
Ambrose Bierce
The Devil’s Dictionary
Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.
Frederic Bastiat
1801-1850
Taking a long view of history, we may say that anyone who lays down his arms deserves whatever he gets.
Col. Jeff Cooper