“When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.”
— P. J. O’Rourke
“The blame for [the national debt] lies with the Congress and the President, with Democrats and Republicans alike, most all of whom have been unwilling to make the hard choices or to explain to the American people that there is no such thing as a free lunch.”
— Warren Rudman
(1930- ) US Senator (R-NH)
Re-posting from The Liberty Belles, we have these two Google searches. The first is a US Google search for “Tiananmen” and the second is a PRC Google search for “Tiananmen”.
US Google search
People’s Republic of China Google search
In the long run this is not going to work for the PRC and it’s going to be negative for Google. I wonder how Patri feels about this?
Lindsay Beyerstein of Majikthise: Analytic philosophy and liberal politics suggests that the ”war on terror” isn’t even a war.
The fact is that we're not at war on terrorism, let alone against terror. Terrorism is a strategy. Actually, it's a normative assessment of a family of tactics. In the current climate “terrorism” refers to any political violence the speaker
doesn't like.
Fair enough, but are we not at war with terrorists? Bin Ladin et al certainly thinks so.
War is a metaphor for any all-out struggle against a serious problem: poverty, cancer, drugs, terrorism… Sometimes we use military hardware and tactics to further that struggle. Sometimes we Traffic survival school supply store is often used to prevent a driver’s license suspension. even fight real wars as part of our strategy.
While a criticism of declaring war on “everything but the kitchen sink” is justified, terrorists are not inanimate, as are poverty and drugs; they are severely deluded and violently doctrinaire thugs who see our death as their sacred responsibility. So no, we’re not dealing with a metaphorical threat.
The idea that the so-called war on terror justifies dramatic expansion of presidential power is extremely dangerous. Terrorism is never going to go away. If we accept that we are literally at war with terror, we are signing on to perpetual war for perpetual peace.
I too am apprehensive about expanded presidential power. This is mainly because I think the government already exercises more power than the constitution allows. Nevertheless, we can’t very well accept terrorism, by offering no defense at all. Just think of what could have transpired, had the cheap cialis no prescription US and its allies (and liberty-minded individuals) simply assumed—as some did— that communism was a permanent fixture on the world stage.
Brian Doss, at Catallarchy, has a great discussion on Treaties, Sovereignty and Binding Legal Authority. Apparently, there was an earlier discussion that brought up the idea that the US had ceded some of its sovereignty to the United Nations and could not declare war, in all cases, without UN authorization. Brian does an excellent job of explaining why this is not the case.
Brad Warbiany gives us his take on The Future of Liberty. He has an optimistic and upbeat view of the future, one that I personally share as well.
Perry Eidelbus takes a look at the birth rate and marriage rate in France and other Western countries and then discusses the problems that this brings to light for a social structure built on young workers paying for the retirement of the aged population in his article Hardly Something France Should be Proud of.
Resistance is Futile brings us Carnival of Cordite #45, which focuses on, appropriately enough, firearms involving the number 45.
An entry about the NSA and their wiretapping led to a discussion of the 4th Amendment at Hammer of Truth. Interesting discussion, and one that illustrates, to me, how important it is to determine the law through a textual reading, rather than an interpretive reading, of the law.
Okey dokey folks, I’m upgrading The Liberty Papers to WordPress 2.0 this morning. At some point the site is going to go down. Let’s all keep our fingers crossed that it comes back up. :-)
Update: All done. And amazingly easy. Here’s what I did:
That’s it, all done.
