Via Jacob Sullum, we learn that Lori Drew is not a nice woman, but also that prosecutors can be out-of-control dangers to us all. On MySpace Drew picked on an estranged friend (Megan) of her 13-year-old daughter, Sarah, in violation of the site’s TOS: “unauthorized access to a computer” — a prohibition meant to rein in hackers — providing false information, and harassing another member. Ms. Drew employed a pseudonym to obtain information about her daughter’s nemesis to gain information about the latter and to pretend to be a boy who was interested in the lass. Then the fake boy cyber-dumped Megan, whereupon she killed herself.

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Now, I’m not reflexively anti-Wal-Mart; I shop there. However, that that chain has had past warnings that people are injuriously trampled upon when doors open on Black Friday — such as to purchase $29.95 VCRs, which must be a fine product indeed. This morning, a 34-year-old stock clerk is dead, and a woman has miscarried her baby at a Long Island Wal-Mart. The stampeding throng took the doors off the hinges and simply stomped the clerk to death as a co-worker looked on helplessly. (The clerk’s family should have — in addition to an oh-so-Merry Christmas — a superb wrongful death suit, given that this is hardly the first such event and there was clearly warning that a fatality could occur.)

Must be part of the War on Christmas. /sarcasm.
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I’m grateful that McCain-Palin lost. But concerned that Obama is pretty Establishment himself; not sure about all this change rhetoric translating into much of anything. Post-election, I have posting constipation. Any thoughts as to what could be meaningfully addressed (bearing in mind that economics is not my strong suit?)

And if you draft an especially incisive comment, I’m going to lift it/them up into this this post as updates.
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Well, I guess it’s true. Less government really is good for free enterprise. You really have to give it to the Somali pirates. First an Ukrainian munition transport ship carrying tanks, now a giant oil tanker. With lots of smaller-scale takes in between.

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A financial consultant friend of mine just IMed me in a giddy mood. He’s been buying Citi since the stock started seriously going south and just doubled down on Friday. I told him then I wouldn’t touch the over-leveraged swamp of bad assets with a ten-foot pole.

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A federal district court judge — appointed by Bush 43 — has ruled that “five Algerian men were held unlawfully for nearly seven years and ordered their release” from Gitmo. This ruling was somewhat unexpected, given that Judge Richard J. Leon, of Federal District Court in Washington, has previously been sympathetic to Bush Administration positions vis-a-vis Guantanamo Bay detainees. Nevertheless:

Judge Leon, in a ruling from the bench, said that the information gathered on the men had been sufficient to hold them for intelligence purposes, but was not strong enough in court.

“To rest on so thin a reed would be inconsistent with this court’s obligation,” he said. He directed that the five men be released “forthwith” and urged the government not to appeal.”

Ahem, I assure you, the Bush Admin will appeal. And as for those seven years of their lives these guys lost? Well, I guess just “oops, sorry about that.”
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Update: Greenwald has as in-depth an analysis of this ruling as is currently possible. (Brief ad click-through.) Among other things, he describes the vicious torments to which these five men have been subjected for nearly seven years.

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Behold a classic tale of government in action: a woman in Massachusetts owes a penny on her water-and-sewer tax bill, and the local government spends 42 cents on postage to tell her they’ll put a lien on her house if she doesn’t pay said penny. With luck, everybody in that town will underpay their tax bills by exactly one cent next year.  Check out the government’s explanation for why spending 42 cents in order to get one makes perfect economic sense: Read the rest of this entry »

…I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.
–Matthew 25:35, quoting Jesus–

Savaged by dogs, Electrocuted With Cattle Prods, Burned By Toxic Chemicals, Does such barbaric abuse inside U.S. jails explain the horrors that were committed in Iraq?

–Information Clearing House–

(Inmate beaten to death in U.S. prison.)

The PBS documentary, Torturing Democracy — chronicling in sickening detail the torture we Americans have committed on foreigners in the name of the war on terror — is long, but well worth watching (click each of the three episodes on the upper-left of the site page.) Yet, a more neglected regimen of inhumane atrocity occurs continually — torture even unto homicide — right at home in the U.S.; it is rampant among the correctional officers occurs in America’s $40 billion a year prison-industrial complex.

I strongly recommend this BBC documentary (and how sad it had to be the BBC to take on such a subject), Torture Inc. America’s Brutal Prisons.

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Otherwise, they’d overwhelmingly vote Republican. But with much rending of teh garments, wailing and gnashing of teeth, Don Feder laments the intractable insanity of his fellow Jews, who voted for “Barrack Hussein Obama” by a margin of 77%. It’s incomprehinsible to Don, that:

In the American Jewish Committee’s 2008 survey of Jewish Opinion (conducted September 8-21), by 53% to 36%, Jews said the Democratic Party is more likely to make the right decisions in dealing with terrorism than the GOP - doubtless on the principle that appeasement works.

By the same lopsided margin (52% to 32%), those surveyed said Democrats also were more likely to do the right thing when it comes to Israel. They probably reached that conclusion when Jimmy Carter pronounced Israel an apartheid state, and Nancy Pelosi crawled to Syria, wearing a headscarf.

That McCain had an unblemished, 20-year record of support for Israel, Obama is surrounded by advisors who are hostile to Israel, and Iranian Television described the latter as “highly educated” and “eloquent,” mattered not in the least.

Oh the humanity!
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Celebrated yet controversial left-libertarian author becomes first C4SS paid staff member.

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(Thanks to freefoto.com for image, and BigHugeLabs for lolcat tool)

I was for bailing out the banks, and despite the fact that there are many aspects about the administration of the TARP that left much to be desired, I stand by my support for it.

But I am totally against the rescue package for the automakers.

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UPDATED: Unfortunately I jumped the gun when I assumed Maine was free of bigotry towards our new President. (Although Obama had a 17% lead here, Maine did have the most active KKK chapter outside of the South)

“And in a Maine convenience store, an Associated Press reporter saw a sign inviting customers to join a betting pool on when Obama might fall victim to an assassin. The sign solicited $1 entries into “The Osama Obama Shotgun Pool,” saying the money would go to the person picking the date closest to when Obama was attacked. “Let’s hope we have a winner,” said the sign, since taken down.”

Hobbes was wrong. Even with the establishment of a political community and a society, we still have Bellum omnium contra omnes (an endless “war of all against all”).

Human beings still constantly seek to destroy each other in an incessant pursuit for power. Life in our current state of the Nation is “nasty, brutish and short.”

Or to put it simply, the stupidity and hostility that runs amuck in our country is disappointing.

I’m glad I live up here in Maine, nestled close to Canada. I can watch the news from a distance and pretend it is all one long final act in a Tony Kushner play. So far, we have no bus drivers kicking our wee children off the bus for congratulating Obama on his historic victory.  No Congressman comparing Obama to Hitler.
No landowners advertising a FREE PUBLIC HANGING, written in as large script as the OBAMA underneath it.

And so far, only one person in my town is a part of the 1 Million for the Impeachment of Obama group on Facebook–which already has 516 members. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m inclined to agree with Walter Block when it comes to theology and economic science: they don’t mix. UK Professor of Theology Adrian Pabst, writing in the Guardian, states that, Read the rest of this entry »

A blogger at this site (and I think the site is of the anarcho-capitalist flavor of libertarianism) argues that it should not be:

A person owns his mind and his body. He thereby owns what is there in his brain, that is, information. You cannot claim on something which is there in his mind, that is information, because that would be owning someone’s body like a slave.

Then, the person who is blackmailing another person, is merely asking for a voluntary trade for keeping silence for not publishing the information he possess, (which could also be in the form of an objectionable picture), in exchange for money.

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I respectfully request that those AoTP readers who have a grasp of economics — which I barely do — posit their theories as to why gas is now $1.84 a gallon where I live, whereas some 4-6 mos ago it was around $4.30. As I google around, I ran into many addressing the question — some quite in the John Birch-ish tradition; but I’d prefer an intelligent explanation(s) for this phenomenon of sky-high gasoline prices suddenly heading back to somewhere in the neighborhood of reasonable.

Consider that you are addressing an intelligent person (me — really!) who is, nevertheless, just not terribly knowledgeable about the oil market.
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School employees in Pearl, Mississippi, have been attempting to teach students that reality can be changed if you forbid people from talking about it, according to this story claiming that students were forbidden to mention Barack Obama’s name after he won the election: Read the rest of this entry »

So, does this mean there is work to be done with African-American and Latino voters? I continue to have a hard time accepting that marginalized communities vote to discriminate against others (my emphasis):

There are still some late absentee and provisional ballots to be counted, but as of Monday, 10.96 million votes had been tallied in the presidential race and 10.85 million for and against Proposition 8.

The only conclusion, therefore, is that as Obama was running up a 2.6 million-vote victory over Republican John McCain in California – twice the margins by which Democrats won in 2000 and 2004 – a great many Obama voters were also voting for Proposition 8, sponsored by a very conservative religious coalition.

Proposition 8, in fact, garnered 1.6 million more votes than McCain received. And, it’s apparent, many of those votes – enough to make the difference – came from African American and Latino voters drawn to the polls by Obamamania.

An overwhelming, but not surprising, 94 percent of the former supported Obama, exit polling indicated, while 74 percent of Latinos voted for the winner. But 70 percent of African Americans also voted for Proposition 8, as did 53 percent of Latino voters.

Turnout made the difference. Historically, black Californians have voted in about the same proportion as their population, in the 6 percent to 7 percent range, while Latinos, although more than a third of the state’s population, have been about 13 percent of voters.

They have no excuse.
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In the run-up to the election, I started reading The Corner at NRO purely out of childish glee. But I’ve retained the habit because, as Drum puts  it, it’s a direct pipeline into the Conservative Id. But once in a while, I actually end up reading something useful. Katherine Lopez pulls up a quote from Rachel Maddow of all people, seeming to say that Larry Summers shouldn’t be Secretary of Treasury because of the flap at Harvard. Read the rest of this entry »

I have a piece on libertarian anticorporatism on the Cato site today:
http://www.cato-unbound.org/2008/11/10/roderick-long/corporations-versus-the-market-or-whip-conflation-now

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Remember when the TSA insisted that tweezers and nail clippers were dangerous weapons that couldn’t be brought onto an airplane? I was almost disappointed when they rescinded that rule, because I’d become an expert at hiding these metal items from the X-ray machines by surrounding them with quarters in my overstuffed change purse. I kinda miss the days when I could acquire badass counterculture street cred simply by trimming my hangnails in a hotel room far from home. But TSA has not allowed my innate smuggling talents to go to waste; over at the New Britain Herald I share my smuggling genius with the world by telling people how to smuggle six ounces onto an airplane.

This post of mine drew some criticism, and on reflection I retract this:

To the African-American community, my only recommendation is to remove the mote of bigotry in your own eye before you squawk too much about the oppression you experience by virtue of race.

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Paul Krugman posts a picture announcing that “The Civil War is over.” Well, yes, it is, but blatant racism still exists in our country, despite our new Presidential flavor.

Meanwhile, Makani Themba-Nixon offers a better illustration:

If anyone doubts that racism is alive and well in American politics, the fact that more than 55 million people voted for McCain in spite of his negative, racist and politically vacuous campaign; his lack of charisma and terrible media performance; his scary choice of running mate and inconsistent positions on virtually every issue of importance; and in spite of his obvious ineptitude for the bread and butter issues facing the majority of electorate should be proof enough. Being White and male gave him the handicap (in golf terms) that got him 50 million plus votes “just because.”

She also brings up a clear point of contention by asking; “I mean what kind of system won’t mandate time off to vote or allow Ted Stevens (R-AK) to run for Senate as a convicted felon but not allow our ex-offenders to vote who have done their time?”

Just because we had a liberal ticket that seemed to take on the culture war at the top chain of command, doesn’t mean the grassroots armies weren’t busy doing battle with Props that were anti-gay, anti-choice, racist and draconian.
Let’s take California for instance, heralded as a progressive state, yet many props on the California 08 ballot indicated the exact opposite.  Read the rest of this entry »

It would be interesting to see the phenomenon of conservatives and libertarians defending a black president from charges of political incorrectness. It may even reveal these critics as not being secretly racist all these years, but instead just consistent, and free-speech-defending in the tradition of Nat Hentoff. (But yes, one must distinguish between thick skinned indifference and government censorship - I tend toward affirming the former and pooh-poohing the latter.) In the spirit of this possibility, I’d like to be (perhaps only one of) the first to call out the “Conservative and Proud” blogger for being too sensitive: Read the rest of this entry »

In my view, Brad R. at Sadly, No is the most incisive blogger there. He has a post up discussing some right-wing analysis of what the GOP needs to do to regain any competitive advantage against the Democrats, and I tend to agree. Some of his friends joined the military after the hype about Iraq and WMDs. And Brad writes (with relevant and supporting links) that Republicans are essentially whistling past a literal graveyard on the war issue, and want to blame GOP losses on anything but, my emphasis: Read the rest of this entry »

Sad to say, but the reality is that African-Americans tend to be highly homophobic, more so than white voters. With blacks voting in huge numbers for Obama, that helped put him in the Oval Office (with a lot of white, Hispanic, Asian and other voters), but their turn-out in California may be why a referendum banning marriage equality for same-sex couples prevailed. Post-election, CNN tells us:

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And I have to say, the fact that this nation elected an African-American whose name is Barack Hussein Obama almost makes me believe we can redeem ourselves. Not that I’m likely to lack for plenty to rant about from the Obama Administration. But Even so.

I could’ve voted twice today if I wanted to, since my state’s well-oiled Republican machine ignored my demand that they remove me from their rolls after I voted for Ron Paul in the primary last February. They also spelled my name wrong. Thus, the voter list in my city includes Jennifer A-B-E-L the registered independent and Jennifer A-B-L-E the Republican. That probably explains the Republicans’ reluctance to let me go; this is the first time the word “Able” has been associated with the state GOP in 50 years.

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At least here in southwestern Michigan, and a friend of mine in Ohio reports the same thing. My son and daughter-in-law were in line at 6:30 a.m. — half an hour before the polls opened — and waited over an hour, and so were later for work. Plan accordingly. (High turn-put is good for Obama.)

When I was confirmed and became a Soldier of Christ in the Roman Catholic Church, the good sister made me a nervous wreck by assuring the girls that if there was even one strand of hair on our foreheads when the bishop applied the oil, he would not merely tap us on face (part of the ritual), but knock us a good one. I though about my many unhappy experiences in parochial school when I read this amusing bit about 83-year-old nuns on the rampage in Italy.

Anne Applebaum has long been beloved by the right, including for her superb Pulitzer-winning book Gulag, which documents the horrors of Stalin’s USSR. But now, she has committed the cardinal sin of refusing to vote for McCain, explaining why, and finding positives if Obama should win.

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I contribute to the raising of a nine year old child, whose family circle includes 14 people. She is one out of six children in the clan. They are all gifted kids, with keen wit and manipulative powers to accompany their intellect. In our house, we’re already preparing for the inevitable use of drug experimentation.

For the kid–it’s both a blessing and a curse to have me around. While she won’t be able to fool me in the slightest, she also has access to someone who really understands how drugs and the mind work.

We’ve decided to start saving now for a big trip to Europe in six years. Aside from our own interest in traveling, we hope travel will help to satiate the natural curiosity teenagers have. In addition to that, we are ready (and experienced) to treat our growing child, just like a growing child should be–with trust, respect, and firmness. We’re scheming up all kinds of scenarios and responses.

One thing we won’t be doing is calling Sniff Dogs. In fact, as soon as I finish this post, I will be penning a letter off to the owners of the new company. Read the rest of this entry »

A recent state Supreme Court decision made Connecticut the third state in the country to recognize gay marriages, so of course various state-level groups with the word “Family” in their titles are trying to push for a constitutional convention in hopes of amending the constitution to outlaw these marriages again. Over at the Bristol Press, I wrote a column explaining why the state’s heterosexual relationships are in grave danger from this ruling.

Popular (perhaps even ‘Pop’?) psychologist Jonathan Haidt and pals have constructed a cool website wherein you can gauge your various moral senses as they relate to relationships, politics and more: Read the rest of this entry »

I am so fickle. Here we are with a momentous election in the United States just days away AND the world teetering on the edge of a disasterous financial downturn…but I want to blog about something completely different — Mutual Help Societies. Well, at least this subject matter should be more interesting to readers of this blog than it would be to 99.9 percent of other blogs. Read the rest of this entry »

The First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech applies to government, not private entities. But Palin thinks media criticism of her over-the-top accusations of Obama (and likely also her remarks about where the “real patriots” live in the U.S.), is a violation of her constitutional right to opine as she pleases. (Our own AoTP’s Alix is a culprit here as well, as she links to a hilarious ridicule of Palin that may cause the poor candidate to stifle herself.)

Greenwald has a great post regarding this latest Palin idiocy (brief ad click-through):
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More than a month ago I wrote that Palin is actually uniting more women than Clinton did–a majority stand unanimous against Palin.

Today, the very website that I mentioned, Women Against Sarah Palin, is hosting a live webathon, from 1-9pm, EST. Live performers are reading the letters–more than 200,000 collected so far.

Good Luck getting on though, the server is pretty bogged down. I was surprised at how many people are either home, or using work time to watch the roast. It’s a historic people’s movement against a VP nominee and I’ll admit, I have a soft spot for it. Watch HERE. Read the rest of this entry »

Margaret and Helen, both in their 80s (and best friends for 60 years) have a blog, and insist on calling Sarah Palin a “bitch” and George Bush a “jackass”; if their commenters don’t like it, they have some suggestions for how to change their rhetoric. (Hint: It has to do with voting out of office what they see as the modern, corrupt, religiously dominated members of the GOP.)

You go, girls!
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When asked by ABC News whether she had any thoughts of running for president in 2012, she essentially said “yes,” my emphasis:

“I think that, if I were to give up and wave a white flag of surrender against some of the political shots that we’ve taken, that would bring this whole … I’m not doing this for naught,” Palin said.

God save the Republic of the United States of America if she were ever to run and win. If Obama doesn’t take it next Tuesday, and do a creditable enough job to be reelected in 2012, we may be so fvcked.
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Embarrassing confession: earlier this year I spent a few miserable days as a registered Republican, solely so I could vote for Ron Paul in the Super Tuesday primary. That’s the only time I’ve ever voted for someone in my life; every other ballot I’ve cast wasn’t for one candidate but against the other. Next week’s election promises more of the same: what respect I had for Obama vanished when he voted in favor of granting immunity to domestic spies after promising he’d vote against it. Yet I still want him to win, because the only alternative is John McCain. (Note to any third-party adherents planning to leave comments indignantly disagreeing with that: it’s not gonna happen next week. Admit it.)

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My pal John Cole has a very decent and respectful post up about the tragic death of right-wing pundit Dean Barnett from Cystic Fibrosis — Barnett was only 41. John’s post has inspired some interesting discussion in the comments section, especially surrounding John’s statement:

What matters is that he is dead, and life is too short. Not a day passes when I do no ponder my own mortality, and not a day passes without me wondering how I will continue without my parents and the people who mean everything to me.

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