The poor WaPost is worried about the “growing insurrection.” So very, very much the poor WaPost fails to understand. Just how bad is the growing growing student loan mess? More info on why the DoJ is so desperate to conceal info about its stingray searches and interceptions. Oh, there’s so much to hide! What? You didn’t already know this? And this, too: “When everything is a crime.” UPDATE on Joel’s siding bleg. He’s getting there, but could really, really use another $400. Just that much more. Yeah, I know it’s tax time and the fedgov thinks you should give your…
Category: Miscellaneous
Seems cops and the U.S. Justice (sic) Department will go to amazing lengths to hide their newest tracking methods from us. A must-read for philosophical Libertopians: “Welcome to the Arena in the Clouds” by Max Borders. Guerrilla civic improvement. (H/T AG) It takes 13,000 words for the Columbia Journalism Review to say it and those words are thoughtful and worth reading. But bottom line: in their zeal to confirm an agenda, Rolling Stone’s staffers chose to mistake the behavior of a manipulative liar for the behavior of a poor, traumatized victim. (To their credit, RS and writer Sabrina Erdely cooperated…
MamaLiberty reviews Jackie Clay’s Summer of the Eagles. Somebody in the mainstream media finally questions whether it’s right to destroy mom & pop businesses that aren’t sufficiently politically correct. Glad ordinary folk don’t even need to ask questions like that. Back when the RICO statutes were first passed, libertarian alarmists predicted that they’d be so misused that the feds would soon be busting penny-ante poker games. Well, it seems they’ve been misused for just about everything except that. But here’s one of the most creative turns of the RICO story. David Boaz notes that the final stage of socialism is…
The other day I posted at TZP about the dangers of mainstreaming bigotry and the folly of modern leftists thinking that their bigotry is somehow superior to the bigotry of others. I was stunned when about half the reader response implied that I was opposing freedom of association. Thanks to a comment by PB, I went back and realized I’d written this phrase in the final paragraph of the article: “discrimination is wrong.” That’s simply a dumb statement. Discrimination is not wrong, certainly not categorically wrong. It’s obviously something people do every day and something a free society would just…
Ilana Mercer on freedom of association. And dialoging with a Neo-Nazi. Related: Kevin D. Williamson on the war on the private mind. Back in the day, science fiction was a realm where freedom of ideas prevailed. Prevailed by definition, I assumed, because how can you speculate about alternate futures and realities without the freedom to think unbound thoughts? I’m still having trouble understanding how political correctness has consumed SF. Self control in a world that promotes self indulgence. This is about primal eating, but has implications way beyond that. (H/T PT) Chris Christie has pardoned Shaneen Allen. (Updated to direct…
Once in a while, buddy Jim Bovard will include “Claire Wolfe” in a group of searches. This apparently gets interesting. Images like this come up (embiggenate for proper appreciation): I have no idea who the cute-in-an-officey-sort-of-way “me” is, but she’ll do.* And while I truly, truly, truly don’t get why Sonia Sotomayor keeps coming up in searches on my name, it’s a fact. And it’s far from the first time. Poor Sonia and I appear to be linked by karma. Bad karma, no doubt. But her karma or mine, who knows? (I’ve probably deepened the karmic connection by writing her…
When you’re a bazillionaire, your April Fools jokes may be lame, but they can be pretty elaborate. (H/T MJR) Let me see if I understand this. It’s okay for the government to blackmail, extort, threaten violence, and steal all the assets from Silk Road. But it’s wrong if individual government agents do it. No, no matter how I try, I can’t wrap my head around whatever principle they’re going by. Showering with the fedgov. I always love these articles on how being a grumpy curmudgeonly doom-bearing sky-is-falling worrywort can actually be good for your work. While I disagree with some…
Five simple ‘Net security tricks from a Google engineer. I’m already doing four and a half of them. How about you? Don’t it just figure? Willie Nelson now has his own cannabis variety and hopes to open a chain of stores described as “the Whole Foods of marijuana.” Fascinating. Twenty-five percent of people have an extra color receptor in their eyes. Hm. Wonder how many of those are artists or go into fields requiring good color perception? So what do you think? Should this guy have been kicked off that plane or not? On hiding cops’ identities, a governor does…
Mechanic came out to my house today, poked around under the hood of the Xterra, and kept repeating, “Interesting. Hm. Interesting situation …” Trust me, “interesting” is not a word you want spoken by someone examining your vehicle’s engine. Seriously, though, things aren’t too bad. I noticed a grinding noise in the front brakes a couple of weeks ago and figured I needed new brake pads. No surprise. I’ve been driving only “litely” since then and had already made an appointment with the mechanic for next week. Then yesterday, the grinding in the front end took on a whole new…
Deadlining this week as well as doing my small bit to get The Zelman Partisans ready for its next big step (look for it mid-April, Lord willing and the crick don’t rise). So blogging is a bit slow. But got some links for ya … Missed an important anniversary in the history of government on Monday: passage of the Enabling Act. March 23, 1933. Personally, I think if they can’t afford to pay for their own first-class travel, the whole scurvy bunch of ’em ought to just hitchhike and stay in hostels. And what the heck is a “first lady,”…