Author Archives: Stephen Gordon

According the the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON – The U.S. is at great risk for more terrorist attacks because Congress and the White House have failed to enact several strong security measures, members of the former Sept. 11 commission said Sunday.

Considering that both major political parties predict an immediate terrorist attack, it must be so:

“More than four years after 9/11 … people are not paying attention,” the former Republican governor of New Jersey said. “God help us if we have another attack.”

Added Lee Hamilton, the former Democratic vice chairman of the commission: “We believe that another attack will occur. It’s not a question of if. We are not as well-prepared as we should be.”

It seems about time for another rush on plastic sheets and duct tape as we prepare to elevate our official Terror Alert Level from Bert to Ernie.

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Dood Abides just flattered us — and we like his sense of satire:

Washington, DC (APE) – President Bush, notably absent from Washington, DC this weekend resurfaced today after a secret trip from Paris France, where he apparently underwent a partial face transplant at the hands of Dr. Jean-Michael Dubernard. Bush becomes the second person in history in rapid succession to undergo the groundbreaking procedure, and both patients appear to be doing well. The first patient who as yet remains anonymous had her face severely mauled by a pet Labrador earlier this year. Bush apparently suffered from long-term damage as a result of chronic substance abuse as a younger man.

The operation was to provide the president with a stiff upper lip, required for national security purposes because Bush “has been suffering for some time in regards to staying the course in Iraq and sticking with some difficult choices in regards to interrogation techniques.”

The Washington Post has some additional insight into the wrongful imprisonment of German citizen Khaled Masri. They provide detail which makes one of the government agencies we entrust with the ever-so-important responsibilities of kidnapping, starvation and torture look like a bunch of bumbling fools.

The article confuses me at one point, though. After the CIA learned that they had kidnapped, starved and beaten the wrong guy, there was debate over issuing an apology:

“You couldn’t have the president lying to the German chancellor” should the issue come up, a government official involved in the matter said.

Senior State Department officials decided to approach Interior Minister Schily, who had been a steadfast Bush supporter even when differences over the Iraq war strained ties between the two countries. Ambassador Coats had excellent rapport with Schily.

The CIA argued for minimal disclosure of information. The State Department insisted on a truthful, complete statement. The two agencies quibbled over whether it should include an apology, according to officials.

From the context, it seems the debate was over an apology to the German government, but it could have suggested an apology to Masri. They kidnapped a guy, ripped his clothing off, drugged him, held him without bail and denied him due process. That they wonder if they should apologize indicates the mindsets of those who supposedly protect our freedoms.

I’ve been very critical about the teaching of Intelligent Design in public high school science classes recently. While many people are adamantly opposed to the use of the Bible in any form or context in public education, I strongly disagree with them. In order to properly understand western history, religion, literature, art, society, culture and philosophy, I find the Bible totally indispensable. For me, where the line is to be drawn is about the context in which the material is be studied.

You won’t find me agreeing with Democrats very often, but I’ll give a couple of them some credit on this issue from WorldNetDaily:

Two Democratic leaders of Alabama’s House of Representatives introduced legislation that would authorize local boards of education to offer a course in Bible literacy as an elective in grades 10-12.

The bill, expected to pass both legislative chambers without opposition, would make Alabama the first state to offer a Bible curriculum in a public education setting.

The legislation, introduced by Speaker Seth Hammett and Majority Leader Ken Guin, refers to use of a course called “The Bible and Its Influence,” with an accompanying textbook authored by Cullen Schippe and Chuck Stetson and published by the Bible Literacy Project.

As I’ve not read the textbook, there may be grounds to oppose the bill based on its content — time will tell on this issue. Also, for the sake of disclosure I should add that I’ve placed bills in front of both of these sponsors before, and will likely be doing so again when the state legislature reconvenes.

This said, these Democrats seem to have a more rational and libertarian grasp on the issue than their Republican counterparts, one of whom wishes to ban books that refer to homosexuality in a positive or even neutral light. Mel Seesholtz provides his take on the topic:

Gay novelist Michael Holloway Perronne sent a copy of his novel A Time Before Me, along with a miniature shovel, to Alabama lawmaker Rep. Gerald Allen. The Alabama legislator had proposed legislation to remove from school and public libraries books with any gay content, no matter how small. When asked what he’d do with all the works by gay and lesbian artists, and all the other works that refer to homosexuals and homosexuality, Rep. Allen said, “I guess we dig a big hole and dump them in and bury them.”

Seesholtz provides a rather pertinent point:

That would have to be a pretty big hole to contain everything by gay and lesbian writers and other works that had “any gay content.” A partial list of artists, authors and thinkers to be buried would include Sappho, Socrates, Plato, Alexander the Great, Michelangelo, Emperor Hadrian, Richard the Lion Heart, Peter the Great, Francis Bacon, Montezuma II, Virginia Woolf, George Frideric Handel, T. E. Lawrence, Tchaikovsky, Lord Byron, Florence Nightingale, Tennessee Williams, Andre Gide, George Cukor, Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, Leonardo Da Vinci, Christopher Marlowe, Herman Melville, Horatio Alger, Jr., E.M. Forster, John M. Keynes, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Noel Coward, King James I, Queen Anne, Langston Hughes, Hans Christian Andersen, Tom Dooley, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Dag Hammerskjold, Rainer Maria Rilke, Edward II, Gore Vidal, James Baldwin, W. H. Auden, Susan B. Anthony, Leonard Berstein, Malcolm Forbes, Henry James, James Joyce, Georgia O’Keeffe, Marcel Proust, Jean Cocteau, Cole Porter, Alan Turing, Rudolph Nureyev, Christopher Isherwood, and Aristotle.

This Republican censorship goal is indeed scary, as it would deprive our youth of vast bodies of important knowledge. However, Democrats often take these things too far, especially when the try to ban all references to God and Christianity. Homosexuals and the Bible have both had a strong influence on western society, and to deny either is simply burying our heads in the sand.

It has long been my opinion that separation of church and state issues have been politicized by both the right and the left for purposes of self-aggrandizement — generally to the detriment of our students. Finally, someone has proposed what appears to be some common sense legislation which will allow youth to actually learn the about biblical history, literature and philosophy in a proper context.

If we truly wish for our children to make the world a better place, it is important for us to provide them every possible tool at our disposal. Censorship from the right or the left deprives them of these critical resources.

UPDATE: Debate has already started on the issue:

But Larry Darby, former head of the Alabama chapter of American Atheists, said the bill would lead to the Bible being taught as faith in Alabama public schools.

“This is just an instrument to open the door for preachers to proselytize,” Darby said.

Barry Lynn, head of Americans United for Separation of Church and State in Washington, said the course could turn into a faith-based class, depending on who taught it.

Over at Hit and Run, Tim Cavanaugh notes that Newsweek columnist George Will recently put in a good word for libertarians with:

So Rep. Jeb Hensarling, a 48-year-old Texan, tried riding to the rescue. Hensarling is a Republican, which means next to nothing nowadays, but also a libertarian, which means he believes, as Republicans once did, in limited government.

which prompted this commentary from Cavanaugh:

I gag at putting in a good word for any baseball elegist or bowtie-wearer, but Will consistently provides a strong critique of campaign finance reform in media that regular people actually pay attention to; he’s probably the most prominent figure making this argument in the mainstream media. So godspeed to him.

It wasn’t just Will’s latest column which used the “L” word in a positive light. On November 27, Will had the following to say about Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels:

In the division between social conservatives, who emphasize nurturing virtue, and libertarian conservatives, who emphasize expanding liberty by limiting government, Daniels is with the latter.

Whether Daniels is truly libertarian is a matter for debate, however. Indiana attorney and state Libertarian Party chairman Mark Rutherford sent the following message out on the LP State Chairs’ e-mail list:

No. Mitch is not now, nor has he ever been a Libertarian. And with such government-expanding actions as:

1. advocating taxpayer money to build a new stadium for the multi-million-dollar business, the Colts;
2. seeking to spend millions of dollars on an unnecessary Interstate-69 route when the state can’t afford to maintain and upgrade current roads;
3. dumping the state’s tax burden onto local entities to fulfill the whims of the governor and the legislature;

Mitch Daniels will never become a Libertarian.

While Will may not be libertarian either, he clearly seems to respect libertarian principles, and it is truly refreshing to see him using the increasingly popular “L” word.

Over here at HoT, we write quite a bit about the interface of blogging and politics.

Recent news provided that FEC upheld the journalistic rights of bloggers, but Adam B over at DailyKos reports this may not necessarily be the case:

In other words, these Commissioners have indicated that they believe a site that gets too partisan will have to file with the FEC. Fired Up isn’t there yet, they indicate, but it could be. As could others — like this one, clearly…

…People engaged in online politics should not have to worry about having to submit themselves to a fact-intensive “major purpose” test to determine if their website has to register and file as a political committee.

As I’ve stated before, I’ll continue to blog until they “pry the First Amendment from my cold, dead fingers” — and I am not going to fill out freakin’ FEC paperwork in order to do so.

Fortunately, an old ally is jumping to the rescue. Christopher over at Suicide Girls informs us:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, in addition to suing Sony regarding its famed digital rights management, has started a support network to protect blogger rights. Rights such as anonymous blogging, confidentiality between sources, fair use of IP, open discourse in comment threads, protection against unlawful server seizure, access to public information, and the freedom to blog about elections and employers have been explicitly cited by the EFF.

The EFF Bloggers’ Rights page is here, and it hosts a lot of good reference material on the legal rights of those of us who blog. I’ll likely begin with the Bloggers’ FAQ on Election Law.

Washington keeps trying to stick its meddling fingers into the inner workings of the blogosphere, proving that they just don’t get this freedom thing we keep talking about. If they keep it up, I’ll predict an alliance between libertarians, the left, and the right which will topple their little authoritarian bureaurocratic world.

_{Graphic credit: EFF (and we’re pretty darned sure they won’t mind)}

According to PajamasMedia, doctors have completed the first partial face transplant in France:

Doctors in France said they had performed the world’s first partial face transplant, forging into a risky medical frontier with their operation on a woman disfigured by a dog bite.

The 38-year-old woman, who wants to remain anonymous, had a nose, lips and chin grafted onto her face from a brain-dead donor whose family gave consent. The operation, performed Sunday, included a surgeon already famous for transplant breakthroughs, Dr. Jean-Michel Dubernard.

America is in dire need of a full facial transplant in the Oval Office. With (today’s count) 2,110 Faces of Death, finding a donor for the brain-dead commander-in-chief should be at the top of our priorities.

UPDATE: Speaking of faces, be sure to check out this online video.

When people are down in the dumps about something or another, it sometimes helps to take a look at someone wallowing in deeper doo doo. As deplorable as the failed war on drugs in the United States is, it could still be worse. At least we’re not executing people for smuggling drugs across the border — yet.

Thinks might be lightening up a bit in the UK, however. According to this article, “DRUGGIES caught with enough cannabis to make 500 joints could escape being charged as dealers” under recently proposed guidelines.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse may not be executing people, but they certainly aren’t concerned about intellectual integrity. Their new claim is that weed causes AIDS. They launched a new commercial (view it here) with the following verbal lines:

Female Number One: What about Kim?

Female Number Two: She has HIV. She got high, got stupid, and now she has HIV.

As funny as the taxpayer supported advertisement is, Owen Emberley gives us a humorous and almost accurate view of the differences between marijuana and alcohol intoxication. Here is a sample:

Read his whole article here.

In what can only be described as a defining Bob Woodward moment, a Homeland Security Department official leaked news that could only be presented Deep Throat style:

Transportation Security Administration chief Kip Hawley on Friday will announce changes to the list of items prohibited in carry-on luggage and to the airport screening process, according to the official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity (emphasis emphatically added) because the plan has yet to be announced.

The government may actually allow us to travel with cigar clippers, nail clippers, and the tiny pot metal scissors some hotels provide in their sewing kits. I know, I know –the TSA has a list which says some of these items are already allowed. Tell this to government security goons who took my cigar clipper at Phoenix Sky Harbor, my nail clippers at Reagan National, or my hotel sewing kit at La Guardia. Tell it to the little old lady in front of me in the security line at LAX who had her crochet needles seized. I’m sure the little booties she was making were going to be shipped to bin Laden as soon as she landed. (mental note: Call my parents before they fly back from California and let them know they might be able to get a corkscrew on the plane.)

As frequent flier smokers will attest, they may well take your Bic lighter. This is to stop those terrorists with a sudden urge for an inflight cigarette dead in their tracks, apparently. Fortunately, the TSA spends billions to protect us from second-hand terrorist smoke. Travelers should also avoid checking or carrying sex toys when flying in and out of Alabama, as they are illegal there.

A BBC report makes me wonder if banning crochet needles is taking security far enough. After all, our country is still at risk from nail clipper wielding maniacs.

But many flight attendants believe that while such objects could not be used to carry out a 9/11 style hijacking, the items could still be used as weapons to injure other passengers or crew members.

“When weapons are allowed back on board an aircraft, the pilots will be able to land the plane safely, but the aisles will be running with blood (emphasis emphatically added again),” said Corey Caldwell, a spokeswoman for the Association of Flight Attendants.

That’s right, folks – the aisles will be filled with blood because of crazies wielding disposable razors.

While things might be lightening up at the TSA a bit, don’t forget about U.S. Customs. Declan McCullagh informs us that customs officials now read blogs. (mental note: I need to contact co-blogger Michelle, as she is on her way back from Thailand at this moment and probably took a laptop with her.) He must have met some brighter customs officials than I have:

Customs official: I see you have a bunch of cigars which have no bands on them. Are they from Cuba?

Moi: Of course not, officer. As I don’t have much money, I took this trip all the way to Cancun to buy a bunch of local factory rejects.

McCullagh writes:

Hossein Derakhshan, who writes a blog on Hoder.com, said in a post last week that he’s “homeless” because he was prevented from re-entering the country. Derakhshan says he was born in Tehran and then moved to Toronto, Canada in December 2000.

The United States, of course, requires a visa for foreign citizens who want to live here permanently.

So when the border guards found a Newsweek magazine labeled with his name and a New York City address, coupled with the I-live-in-the-Big-Apple contents of his blog, they were suspicious and denied him entry for six months, Derakhshan says.

McCullagh then goes on to tell the tale of my personal friend (and Libertarian Party goober-natorial candidate) Loretta Nall’s border harassment on a return trip from Canada. Like many of her stories, this one fits into the “must read” category. While you are at it, be sure to catch The Great Prison Panty Rebellion of Alabama article, too. Nall is a good writer, and she provides us with yet another in a long list of reasons not to visit Alabama. Here is another. To bring us back on topic, they searched the contents of Nall’s laptop which forced her to miss her flight.

Reminds me, I better clean all those porn anti-Patriot Act links off my laptop before my next flight.

The Humorous Title of the Day Award goes to Voice of America for this entry: New Debate Underway on Ethics in US Congress. How can there possibly be a debate about something absent in the aforementioned body? The article begins this way:

The resignation of a Republican lawmaker who admitted to charges of bribery, tax evasion and other charges has again focused attention on the subject of ethics in U.S. Congress. Over the years, scandals have been a problem for both major political parties in the United States. However, recent developments are prompting new calls for an ethics house-cleaning in Congress

If there is to be a true house cleaning, I’d only expect to see one man standing at the end of the day: Congressman Ron Paul of Texas.

DownSizeDC is promoting a pretty good idea. The following arrived in my e-mail today:

D o w n s i z e r – D i s p a t c h
——————————————————————————–

Action Item: Send a message to Congress encouraging them to continue doing NOTHING to extend the Patriot Act. If Congress does NOTHING then some of the worst aspects of the Patriot Act will sunset, and be no more. We have a chance to win this one. Encourage Congress to do the right thing, which is NOTHING. Click here to send your message to Congress.

Congress already ripped up the Constitution with Patriot Act I, and now they wish to burn the shredded remains with Patriot Act II. It is imperative that we continue to voice our displeasure with the tyrants in Washington, and DownSizeDC provides a great medium for us to do just that.

In a press release issued earlier today, Independent presidential candidate Webster Brooks has provided a summary of his 11 Point Iraq Peace Plan. Brooks has also called for a total withdrawal from Iraq no later than December 2008. His plan may be viewed on his campaign website.

The 11 key points of the exit strategy are:

1. The New Iraq: A Functional Confederation of Three Autonomous Regions
2. Accepting Iraq as a “Theo-democratic” Islamic Republic
3. The Iran Factor – A Marriage of Convenience and Necessity
4. Preserving the Militias Will Enhance Iraq’s Security
5. Securing Kurdistan’s Autonomy by Taking a Hard Line With Turkey
6. Bring the Arab League Into Iraq to Facilitate Sunni Reconciliation Talks
7. Diminishing the Insurgency by Sealing the Syrian Border
8. Closing the Back Door To al Queda; Securing the Saudi and Jordanian Borders
9. Influencing an Equitable Oil Revenue Sharing Formula
10. Establishing a Timetable to Train 300,000 Iraqi Troops
11. Shift the Focus of the U.S. Military to Establishing “Green Zones”

Webster Brooks is an former DC mayoral candidate currently residing in Hartford, CT. He has managed both Republican and Democratic campaigns and is the founder of New England Republicans of Color and the Low Country and Chesapeake Society (an independent black think tank). Brooks left the GOP in 2003, and has been studying independent movements and third parties since then. He is currently running for president as an independent on a platform he describes as centrist, and his campaign is employing a unique electoral vote strategy.

I wrote about the ACLU appearing to accept new 4th Amendment violations the other day. The key issue was over this statement, which originated from an AP article:

Howard Simon, executive director of ACLU of Florida, said the Miami initiative appears aimed at ensuring that people’s rights are not violated.

“What we’re dealing with is officers on street patrol, which is more effective and more consistent with the Constitution,” Simon said. “We’ll have to see how it is implemented.”

The point I was making is that it appears Mr. Simon is excusing the plans of the Miami cops because they are doing better at complying with the Constitution. As this is typically not the position of the ACLU, I also provided for the potential of a misquote with this line:

While I’m not at all surprised by another usurpation of our rights as American citizens, I am deeply upset (assuming the quotation above is correct) that an ACLU spokesperson has become an apologist for the police state.

It seems the official ACLU line is that Simon was misquoted by the AP. Below is the message we received from them this morning:

AP misquoted our Executive Director, Howard Simon, and ran a correction on the wire. Can you please clarify this for your readers? Thanks.

Here’s our response:

For Immediate Release:
Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Contact:
Alessandra Soler Meetze at 305-576-2337 ext. 16.

ACLU Statement on Miami Shield Program

There is some confusion over the specifics of the “Miami Shield” Program. Reports differ as to whether the plan involves large squads of officers stopping everyone at a locale and then demanding people to produce identification. Although the Miami Police Department has claimed that “Miami Shield” will respect people’s right, much of its constitutionality will depend on how the program is implemented.

If police officers plan on stopping people and demanding identification without any reason to believe that there is criminal activity, that is unconstitutional.

When law enforcement stops people based on individualized suspicion of wrongdoing, that is always both more effective and consistent with constitutional principles.

Other post 9-11 law enforcement tactics such as randomly searching subway users in New York City or conducting mass pat-down searches of everyone entering the Raymond James Football Stadium in Tampa violate constitutional principles and are a waste of law enforcement resources.

We’ve asked for a link to or the wording of the retraction, but have not received a response, yet. I’m curious as to whether a mistake was made and the ACLU is trying to cover for it after the fact, or if the AP reporter got the quote wrong in the first place.

In an effort to keep our reporting fair and balanced (Bill O’Reilly should take some notes on this), we’ll try to provide all sides of the story here at HoT.

UPDATE: Suzette M. Laboy, Broadcast Editor for the AP of Florida sent me the following retraction they issued:

MIAMI (AP) – In a Nov. 28 story about the Miami Police Department’s new counterterrorism initiative, a police official discussing a hypothetical exercise said that officers might surround a bank building and check the identities of people entering and leaving. The story should have made clear that police will not be checking identification without cause.

Unfortunately, this does not clarify much. If it is an exercise (as opposed to a real terrorist incident), then any identity checking still would be done without cause.

Update by Stephen VanDyke: Here’s a side-by-side comparison of the “hypothetical” that was presented by the AP as being told by the police. Oddly enough, Deputy Police Chief Frank Fernandez and police spokesman Angel Calzadilla are interchangeable:

Original version (Nov 28th): Deputy Police Chief Frank Fernandez said officers might, for example, surround a bank building, check the IDs of everyone going in and out and hand out leaflets about terror threats.

Updated version (Nov 30th): As an example, uniformed and plainclothes officers might surround a bank building unannounced, contact the manager about ways to be vigilant against terrorists, and hand out leaflets in three languages to customers and people passing by, police spokesman Angel Calzadilla said.

MORE UPDATES by Stephen Gordon: The ACLU statement is now posted on their website.

Alessandra Soler Meetze of the FL ACLU sent this to us by e-mail:

The revised AP story is [linked here]. As you can see the story states — “[Calzadilla] said there would be no random checks of identification.” And it includes the correct quote from Simon.

It is interesting to note the change from:

“What we’re dealing with is officers on street patrol, which is more effective and more consistent with the Constitution,” Simon said. “We’ll have to see how it is implemented.”

to

“What we’re dealing with is officers on street patrol (making informed decisions on which individuals to stop), which is more effective and more consistent with the Constitution,” Simon said. “We’ll have to see how it is implemented.”

With all of the oopsies (hopefully) out of the way, maybe we can get back to the real issue of combating the increasing usurpation of our civil liberties.

While most of us have been rightfully railing hard against the Ermächtigungsgesetz Patriot Act and Homeland Stupidity Security, we’ve not been paying as much attention to another civil liberty slowly eroding away. Fortunately for us, Russmo has been on the ball, and provides us with his latest in a long series of timely political cartoons. Asset forfeiture may apply to more than just drug dealers, too. Common household items may be enough to have your home and car seized, as Reason’s Jacob Sullum provides:

Hard as this collateral damage is to justify, it pales next to that suffered by other innocent victims of the government’s war on methamphetamine. Last summer, for instance, state and federal agents arrested 49 convenience store clerks and owners in Georgia on charges they sold pseudoephedrine and other supplies to informants posing as meth cooks.

The supplies, including matches, charcoal, antifreeze, coffee filters, aluminum foil, and cat litter, were all perfectly legal. The charges, carrying penalties of up to 25 years in prison as well as fines and asset forfeiture, are based on the doubtful premise the defendants knew or should have known what the fake customers pretended to be planning.

So where does all the seized money go? Sam Vaknin provides us with his view:

According to David McClintick (“Swordfish: A True Story of Ambition, Savagery, and Betrayal”), in the late 1980′s, the FBI and DEA set up dummy corporations to deal in drugs. They funneled into these corporate fronts money from drug-related asset seizures.

The idea was to infiltrate global crime networks but a lot of the money in “Operation Swordfish” may have ended up in the wrong pockets. Government agents and sheriffs got mysteriously and filthily rich and the whole sorry affair was wound down. The GAO reported more than $3.6 billion missing. This bit of history gave rise to at least one blockbuster with Oscar-winner Halle Berry.

Alas, slush funds are much less glamorous in reality. They usually involve grubby politicians, pawky bankers, and philistine businessmen – rather than glamorous hackers and James Bondean secret agents.

The asset forfeitures continue, as well as graft and corruption in high places. Thomas Jefferson defined tyranny as “that which is legal for the government but illegal for the citizenry.” If in doubt about whether we live under a tyranny today, I’d recommend that you go purchase a case of Sudafed, some coffee filters and a few gallons of antifreeze. Before you begin your shopping spree, I have one simple recommendation: Please consider donating your house and other assets to charity.

This one is pretty damned scary:

Miami police announced Monday they will stage random shows of force at hotels, banks and other public places to keep terrorists guessing and remind people to be vigilant.

Deputy Police Chief Frank Fernandez said officers might, for example, surround a bank building, check the IDs of everyone going in and out and hand out leaflets about terror threats.

There goes the Fourth Amendment and what particles remain of the Fifth.

“People are definitely going to notice it,” Fernandez said. “We want that shock. We want that awe. But at the same time, we don’t want people to feel their rights are being threatened. We need them to be our eyes and ears.”

Geez, like we need more shock and awe these days. What’s the plan, to intimidate honest citizens into being snitches for the jackbooted thugs. It is comforting to know that they “don’t want people to feel their rights are being threatened” — except for that quirky little 4th Amendment thing.

Howard Simon, executive director of ACLU of Florida, said the Miami initiative appears aimed at ensuring that people’s rights are not violated.

“What we’re dealing with is officers on street patrol, which is more effective and more consistent with the Constitution,” Simon said. “We’ll have to see how it is implemented.”

I’ve been actively supportive of the ACLU on this general issue, as they have been leading the way with respect to fighting the Patriot Act and related infringements of our civil rights. This time, I’ve got to hold their feet to the fire. The admission that the Miami Model is “more consistent with the Constitution” logically means that it is not consistent with the Constitution.

While I’m not at all surprised by another usurpation of our rights as American citizens, I am deeply upset (assuming the quotation above is correct) that an ACLU spokesperson has become an apologist for the police state.

Update by Stephen VanDyke: Radley Balko weighs in, saying “If the terrorists hate us for our freedom, then holy shit are we ever appeasing the terrorists.”

Another update by Stephen VanDyke: A modified version of the story in the Washington Post quotes police spokesman Angel Calzadilla as saying “there would be no random checks of identification.” Did the stink on the blogosphere drive them to drop the idea?

Yet another update by SV: Free Talk Live, home of the bestest libertarian talk radio, had a great hour of discussion on their show (MP3 link).

Update by Stephen Gordon: The ACLU is now claiming that Mr. Simon was misquoted. Details here.

In a move sure to make members of the Bush administration proud, an Oak Ridge Tennessee high school principle named Becky Ervin has shut down the school newspaper and seized copies which had already been distributed.

Tennessee Independent Media Center reports:

Administrators late Tuesday searched through teachers’ rooms and desks and seized copies, they said. The inter-school mail system delivering copies was halted, and the newspaper returned. Bundles of papers were removed from teachers’ mailboxes, Grooms [the newspaper advisor] said.

Grooms said she was told to retrieve “all copies that went home. I picked up one copy from one student.”

The students don’t seem to be standing down, though.

“The school administration should realize they don’t have the power to censor our paper,” [the paper's Editor-in-Chief Brittany] Thomas said, while fellow students gathered around her living room late Wednesday afternoon to hand-paint T-shirts they plan to wear to school on Monday in protest.

According to the Boston Globe, the issues at stake are tattoos and birth control:

The Oak Leaf’s birth control article listed success rates for different methods, and said contraceptives were available from doctors and the local health department. Superintendent Tom Bailey said the article needed to be edited so that it would be acceptable to all the school.

The edition also contained a photo of an unidentified student’s tattoo, which the student had not told her parents about, said Bailey.

”I have a problem with the idea of putting something in the paper that makes us a part of hiding something from the parents,” Bailey said.

And we can be sure this infuriated the control freaks even more:

However, this time a quote from a health department doctor explaining pregnant teens rights to privacy went too far.

“I don’t think we should be condoning anything that tries to suggest a school newspaper or a school’s mission is to keep things from parents,” Dr. Bailey said.

To the students at Oak Ridge High: We know what it is like to have to resort to samizdat news coverage. That’s why we run this website. Our presidential candidate was arrested last year, and I’ll bet most of you never even heard about it. Please bear in mind that many authorities at all levels will try to suppress journalistic expression. Journalism classes and school newspapers are supposed to teach students what it is like in the real world. The way things are going politically, this may soon be the case.

Contact: Principal Becky Ervin or Superintendent Thomas Bailey. Props.

Update by Stephen VanDyke: I know this is a bit late, but I wanted to note this comment from Fark:

Anecdotal data already indicate that Viagra use leads to pornography, polygamy, and even death. If this trend continues, older people may actually start engaging in sexual activites which don’t even include the missionary position. Considering the absurd position of the DEA on marijuana prohibition, these data should already be more than enough to forever prohibit this evil drug which actually can kill.

New evidence suggests that Viagra is the pill of choice for people using illicit recreational drugs. From the article:

“Viagra has been the number one party pill since it was released,” said Paul Quigley, emergency medicine specialist at Wellington Hospital.

Partygoers report many party pills and illicit drugs make them amorous but unable to perform. They see Viagra and other similar drugs as the perfect finale to their weekend cocktail.

“Most recreational drugs make you very randy but you can’t do much about it,” said Quigley, an expert in recreational drugs. “That’s the standard mix to go out in the evening – to make sure you take some Viagra with you.”

Viagra is a common addition to illegal party pill packs combined with “uppers” for Friday and Saturday night, as well as “downers” to help clubbers sleep on Sunday before work.

Not only might one argue that Viagra is frequently abused by people taking it for recreational use, but it also leads to more dangerous activities. The strength of the DEA argument against marijuana has always rested on the distortion fact that marijuana is a gateway drug. Viagra is much more of a gateway drug, as it is not only associated with the use of hard (no pun intended) drugs, but it also leads to such things as marital enhancement for those with erectile dysfunction and the restoration of healthy sex lives for our elderly. Like marijuana, it must be outlawed today before our society slips into further decay.

Update By Jake Porter: Let’s not forget the government funded Viagra.

Not wishing to be outdone by the US, Norway seems to be working on a plan specifically designed to leave all children behind. Aftenposten reports on a proposal to revise the way history is to be taught in the land which bore Thor Heyerdahl and Roald Amundsen:

The new program leaves out the world wars, the Russian Revolution, the Cold War, and does not mention the topics of Nazism or Communism.

The world wars are potentially included under a clause that would allow teachers and students “to choose and examine two or more recent international conflicts, and assess cause and effect”.

The reform would further complicate the teaching of general education by reducing the number of hours of history to two hours a week.

We already know the results of teaching revisionist history in the United States. Let’s just hope that Norway doesn’t forget its proud history of resisting the Nazi occupation, so this piece of soon to be verboten history doesn’t repeat itself.

Angel Raich, of Gonzales v. Raich fame, is taking her case back to court despite the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that growing weed in one’s backyard somehow involves interstate commerce.

This time, she is using a new constitutional angle of attack. From CBS 5:

Angel Raich contends in a brief filed with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that she has a fundamental liberty right to take “the only medication that enables her to avoid intolerable pain and death.”

The brief argues that barring her from using marijuana would violate her “fundamental right to life” under the Fifth Amendment due process guarantee of the Constitution.

Her hubby adds:

Robert Raich, who is Angel Raich’s husband and attorney, said, “This case implicates perhaps the most fundamental right of all, the right to preserve one’s life.”

As always, everyone at HoT admires Angel for her courage, wishes her success in her legal endeavors, and perhaps even more importantly, hopes that she survives the ordeal. Others haven’t always been so lucky.

This must take the cake as the world’s worst business plan:

Former FEMA Director Michael Brown, heavily criticized for his agency’s slow response to Hurricane Katrina, is starting a disaster preparedness consulting firm to help clients avoid the sort of errors that cost him his job.

Some thoughts on beer, evolution and Intelligent Design:

If you’re such as inclined to do something in close proximity to a whirring propeller, AND you’ve got a good belly full of beer, then congratulations!

…Most people would say, “Why would I somehow enter into a situation where my penis is coming close to a decidedly anti-penis contraption?” But for the boat accident victim, their brain works differently. Their question is, “How can I afford not to do this?” And that’s how the herd is thinned. Sunrise, sunset. Beautiful.

From the “Must Be a Typo Department”:

A recent survey has poured cold water on what everyone believed till now was every man’s dreams…
…if they were paid a 100,000 pounds for it, a whopping 83 percent of them would turn down an offer of sex with their wives and a sexy girl friend, even if the opportunity ever presented itself.

Here is an example of the Justice System (almost) actually working:

“Cold and snow forced an Ohio woman sentenced to spend a night in the woods for dumping 33 kittens back to jail. Michelle Murray, 25, a former animal rescuer, was convicted of animal cruelty last month. Judge Michael Cicconetti sentenced Murray to spend the night in the woods without food or light. He said he wanted her to feel the same pain as the kittens she neglected.”

Libertarians no longer the world’s worst dressed, according this article:

More than 150 tech professionals attended a corporate fashion show in Sydney as organisers officially dubbed the industry “the worst dressed” in Australia.

Short sleeved shirts, man-made fibres and the wrong coloured socks were some of the most common fashion faux-pas cited by corporate stylist, Melanie Moss, who hosted the event on Wednesday night.

Oops of the day! Seems the writer forgot about that pesky little Patriot Act thing.

Title: The FBI Is NOT Watching Your Email

Okay, everyone who has received one of those emails supposedly from the FBI or CIA telling you your IP address has been logged for potential illegal activity, RELAX. It’s just another stupid scam.

Coyote ugly (def.) no longer blamed on beer, and provides one argument to ban smoking:

“The beer goggles effect isn’t solely dependent on how much alcohol a person consumes, there are other influencing factors at play too,” said Professor Nathan Efron, Professor of Clinical Optometry at the University of Manchester. Amazingly, scientists now believe you don’t even need to have had an alcoholic drink to suffer from the beer goggles effect.”

In July, I posted a blog entry over at the Libertarian Party website entitled “Can Purism and Pragmatism Co-exist?” My key intent was to better define the role of the LP and figure out some mechanism for purists and pragmatists to ally against our common enemies. I closed my rant with with:

There is nothing wrong with being an ideologue – I consider myself one. However, in a conflict between ideology and politics – as a political party, the LP must act in a principled but political manner.

There is clearly room for both ideologues and political players within the libertarian movement. However, for movement to actually move, it is imperative that we work together instead of in opposition to one another.

The comments on that posting led to another blog entry, which I posted at LibertyForSale. There are many brands of libertarians, and I was trying to get beyond the traditional labels to better define the conflict many of us have with each other. In an e-mail, Tom Knapp summed the major conflict best by stating the real division is probably between the ideological wing and the political wing of the party. He even used this dividing point in an article a few days later.

I thought I had seen every possible legitimate definition and subset of libertarianism until I ran into this one today (which, in turn, led me to this website). The guy who wrote it is a local, so I intend to contact him personally and get more of his views on the topic.

Once a year, Americans take a day off work to reflect about things for which we should be thankful. I thought I’d come up with a short list of issues we could celebrate this year:

1. Unlike the Viet Nam era, our kids aren’t involved in an unpopular quagmire in a far away land.
2. America sets international standards for the ethical treatment prisoners, ensuring their civil rights, as well as protecting them from torture and abuse.
3. Our civil liberties are safe, secured by a government that won’t invade our privacy without cause and due process.
4. Our homes and land are secure from eminent domain seizure by corporate interests.
5. All levels of our government ensure that we have access to the medications which keep us alive.
6. Our politicians secure a future for our children by implementing responsible fiscal policy.

Actually, I am thankful about one thing. We still have the right to vote the bastards out!

Howard Nemerov may be on to something. In his article Gun Control: No Illusion Without Collusion, he outlines Brady Campaign activities intended to scare tourons (my neologism for intellectually under-developed tourists) in Florida:

Visitors were responding to the interviewer after being greeted by the Brady Campaign as they disembarked and given a leaflet advising them to avoid confrontational behavior with the locals, as they are allegedly armed and out of control.

“Do not argue unnecessarily with local people,” it says. “If someone appears to be angry with you, maintain to the best of your ability a positive attitude, and do not shout or make threatening gestures.” From flyer entitled “An Important Notice to Florida Visitors” from Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence

Far from being the end of life as we know it, Florida’s SB 436:

Creates “a presumption that a person acts with the intent to use force or violence under specified circumstances.”

States that “a person has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force if the person is in a place where he or she has a right to be and the force is necessary to prevent death, great bodily harm, or the commission of a forcible felony.”

Provides “immunity from criminal prosecution and civil action for using deadly force” if the above two conditions are met within the definition of the law.

This means that if you have the right to be where you are, and you are attacked, it is reasonable to believe that the person attacking you means you harm, and you have the right to protect yourself. If these two conditions are met, you can defend yourself with force, and if you kill the predator, his family cannot continue the assault by suing you for wrongful death. Florida law has become common sense: all resulting consequences reside with the attacker.

Seems pretty common sense, to me. Robert A. Heinlein once wrote, “An armed society is a polite society.” One is always free to choose between Heinlein’s reality or Brady’s illusion.

And speaking of illusions, don’t forget to check out this piece of editorial excrement.