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Category: Government

Government evils — but I repeat myself

Weekend links

Published October 1, 2016 1:21 am by Claire
  • University of Michigan offers students the opportunity to designate their “personal pronoun” of choice to avoid giving offense to the whatever-gendered. One student selects “Your Majesty.”
  • Not only does another major newspaper endorse Gary Johnson, but the editorial is pretty awesome.
  • OTOH, A.B. Stoddard thinks Johnson is such a stumblebum — and yet such a threat in a four-way race — that Hillary should offer William Weld a cabinet position in hopes of luring would-be LP voters to her campaign. (Yup, this whole election cycle is even sicker than we thought.)
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    • Monday links

    Published September 26, 2016 1:38 am by Claire

    The economy slides closer to that black hole. Confirmation of that unlikely truth: pot users are thinner than contemporaries with similar lifestyles. And confirmation of an unsurprising truth: pot prohibitionists have as much respect for the law and for truth as anti-gunners. Second Amendment sanctuary cities. Imagine it; government actually serving the people and our rights for a change. “For the first time in a generation, Democrats are betting they’re on the winning side of the gun issue.” And they’re sending out Giffords and Kelly as their “majority” representatives to the swing states. There’s not a reason in the world…

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    Weekend links

    Published September 18, 2016 7:20 am by Claire
  • Local-government control: a campaign issue ignored while the federal government grows and grows and grows. (And yes, you could take this to a local level beyond all government.) (H/T PT)
  • Reminds me of flap over the word “niggardly” a few years back. Ignorami can’t even use a dictionary before embarrassing themselves.
  • A tiny pension plan hints at bigger problems in California’s government pension systems.
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    • Friday links

    Published September 9, 2016 9:56 am by Claire
  • Now this is something. Cracked, which is normally entertaining as all get out but relentlessly anti-gun, points out the five biggest reasons “gun control” in the U.S. is a lost cause. Decent points they make, too.
  • Looks as if last Friday’s attempt to dump those FBI/Hillary documents invisibly before a holiday weekend is backfiring, reflecting even more on the fibbies than on Hillary. It’s clear that FBI agents were ordered to go incredibly easy on the crook. And Comey’s once sterling (though never deserved) reputation for being an honorable man has gone off the cliff it edged toward when he first announced (I paraphrase), “She’s guilty as sin but she’s a Clinton so she gets a pass.”
  • Is it a sign of progress that the media now reports on an LP candidate’s gaffe with speculation about whether it will sink his obscure candidacy? It has certainly led to some great laughs in major media Gaffeland
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    • Shoving us at gunpoint toward the cashless society

    Published September 8, 2016 5:24 am by Claire

    Talk of forcing us into a cashless society has been around for decades. It’s very easy to tune it out as old news, something that’s going to remain a statist pipe dream forever. But it’s time to take this very, very seriously. The stage has been set. We’ve got central-bank desperation. Negative interest-rate policies. A police/surveillance state in which cash is more important to the authorities than any actual crimes committed. And the increasing ruthlessness of first-world states everywhere. We’ve got an atmosphere in which the desire for privacy is itself considered a sign of criminal intent. Now the faux-intellectual…

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    Monday-that-falls-on-a-Tuesday links

    Published September 6, 2016 6:03 am by Claire
  • Per Adam in comments: “Inside the Federal Bureau of Way Too Many Guns.” How the ATF traces guns used in crimes since the mean old NRA has denied it a full computerized record. (Actually an interesting article, though it would have been better with some recognition of why that computerized database is verboten.)
  • Ah, but The Atlantic has something much easier to track, even though it could fill just as many large cardboard boxes: the scandals of Hillary from Whitewater to Bengazi.
  • With science fiction’s Hugo awards having become so politicized that a coterie of social justice pecksniffs will deny v*tes to great writers, artists, and editors merely because they’re supported by a rival (and more freedomista) coterie, The Dragon Awards arise. No cliques. Just fan voting. And of course that makes it “sexist,” “racist,” and … well, you know the drill.
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    • Weekend links

    Published September 3, 2016 7:34 am by Claire
  • “Anti-think” abounds among social justice pecksniffs. Particularly on the question of arms and the safety of politically correct minorities.
  • One of my personal heroes, Giordano Bruno, was the very model of a Freedom Outlaw Agitator. Not the most prudent guy ever born. Bit of a suckup to powerful patrons; but that’s the way it was back then.
  • Wow. We’re fast approaching a milestone (not) to celebrate. Government employees in the U.S. now outnumber manufacturing employees by a figure that’s pushing 10 million. (The article calls them workers (sic).)
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    • The usual cheery links for beginning your week

    Published August 21, 2016 5:03 pm by Claire
  • Just in case anybody imagined problems in the housing market got solved after 2008.
  • And in the Department of Uncommon Common Sense Department, Jim Bovard says, farmers ought to farm (but of course politicians have a lot to say about that).
  • In Chicago, a tool cops said was supposed to help people is just ending up hassling the hapless. (H/T LA)
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    • What the Second Amendment actually protects

    Published August 20, 2016 5:32 am by Claire

    At first this may seem like a standard (though well-done) lib-conserv historical analysis of the 2A. But the conclusion about what the Second actually protects? Now that’s a bit more intriguing. (Via Jerry the Geek) The Adaptive Curmudgeon has some related thoughts. Not directly about the 2A. But about the state of mind of a seemingly complacent populace.

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