You’ve been hearing about the seeming hordes of tourists and businessfolk who in recent weeks made the mistake of imagining that New York City has semi-sane gun laws. And you wonder, don’t you, how the heck any gun owner could be so oblivious? There’ve been so many newsbits since mid-December about naive out-of-staters deliberately exposing themselves to NYC anti-gun Authoritah that we could be forgiven for imagining that there’s some mysterious species of gun-owning lemming that heads eastward to its doom at this time of year. One well-known gun-rights writer and one semi-hemi-demi-pseudo-quasi famous one have taken that issue on…
Author: Claire
No, not happy news like about crippled orphans being rescued by blind puppies (though that’s good, too). Not glurge. But in the biblical flood of bad news, good news does occasionally bob to the surface and I’ve been saving up bits of it to brighten your day. So here goes: Rhode Island may defy the NDAA. (Tip o’ hat to JS.) The most important secret of a prosperous economy. Remember the homeless man with the golden voice? Well, so far, so good. (HT to SC) Obama (not intentionally, of course) might bring back the Constitution. Gaston Glock did an amazing…
What did you see — or not see — today? How was your Internet different today than all other days? I missed the heck out of coming to the blog to read comments. But I was delighted to see so many sites either blacked out or joining in spirit (as Google did with the black censorship bar over its famous logo). Wendy McElroy, The Agitator, BoingBoing, Reddit, Backwoods Home, Wired, The Electronic Frontier Foundation, Mozilla, Rational Review News — all were “dark with SOPA/PIPA protests when I visited them today. Oddly, Wikipedia, the most widely touted resister and a resistance…
I just heard from Dave Duffy, who posted this on his blog. Backwoods Home’s website will go dark for 12 hours tomorrow, Wednesday, January 18 — joining Wikipedia, Reddit, Mozilla, and other sites to demonstrate what the Internet would look like under the rule of SOPA, PIPA, and the evil cabal of government and its crony corporate owners. I wish we’d had more time to make the announcement, but my heart cheered when I got Dave’s email. See you after the blackout! Under the reign of crony censorship, that might not be the case. —– I’ll save Wednesday’s planned blog…
Bravo, El Neil, for such a simple, realistic vision of personal freedom. And thanks for the reminder. We do have a habit of getting so focused on what we fear, dread, and hate in this scary world that we tend to forget — or sometimes not even know — what we want — what we would do with our freedom if we had it. (I’m talking about our “political freedom,” of course; we’ve already got the other sort with us.) I know we’ve been here before, but it’s a place we need to revisit frequently if we’re working for something…
“Why can’t they just hire a lobbyist like everyone else?” That should go down in history along with “Let them eat cake.” Anybody familiar with this? Useful or not? Libertarianism and science fiction. Yeah. Just gets creepier. And creepier. And creepier. (But remember, not inevitable and potentially monkeywrenchable.) This looks interesting. (Tip o’ hat to C^2.) Bastards. But as always, always, always — ya gotta laugh at ’em. (Tip o’ hat to Kevin in comments.) (Kudos to The Usual Suspect.)
That may be the nicest thing anyone’s ever said about me. Thank you, Neil. 🙂 I may adopt that as a tagline — although I think Kent McManigal has first dibs on the “hooligan libertarian” phrase. Be that as it may, the actual topic at that first link is Sandy Sandfort’s effort to find team members to build a smartphone app for people who care about gun rights. And although commentors have made some good suggestions, nobody has stepped up yet to volunteer for the development team. C’mon, I know there’s plenty of techie talent out there in the pro-gun…
Not that I think jail is a sensible solution for anything here. But imagine if every government VIP whose projects went wrong were treated like this. “Does America Now Qualify as a Police State?” Well now, there’s a no-brainer … But inventiveness never ceases to amaze. Bush war crimes under investigation. Not in the U.S., of course. Even “Raging Grannies” are against SOPA now. Its House and Senate (PIPA) sponsors have blinked. Not good enough, still. But progress. Hey, what about the poor dog’s privacy? (Tip o’ hat to JB.) Ron Paul money bomb for South Carolina still going strong.…
…going on today. Just learned this via Dave Duffy’s blog. This money bomb is specifically to give Paul a boost in South Carolina, where he’s not likely to make New Hampshire-like or Iowa-like v*te totals.