Archive for the ‘Constitutionality’ Category
Quote of the day
Saturday, February 4th, 2012The very same faction that pretended for years to be so distraught by Bush’s mere eavesdropping on and detention of accused Terrorists without due process is now perfectly content to have their own President kill accused Terrorists without due process, even when those targeted are their fellow citizens. —Glenn Greenwald, on ...
Maybe free speech is less popular than I thought
Friday, February 3rd, 2012I had a bizarre experience yesterday: I encountered two people who were wrong on the internet who asserted that words can harm people and so their (mis)use should be punishable by law. I don't mean using libel or slander to harm someone's reputation, which should not be considered crimes anyway. ...
PCIPA: another internet-censoring, privacy-violating bill that goes overboard
Wednesday, February 1st, 2012I was impressed by this article in The Atlantic by Conor Friedersdorf about the Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011 (PCIPA), The Legislation That Could Kill Internet Privacy for Good. This article was written on August 1, 2011, and apparently the bill, H.R. 1981, is almost a year ...
How long will the SOPA protests be successful?
Sunday, January 29th, 2012In my more cynical moods, I think that Westerners' complacency in political and economic matters and their comfort levels with life in general will make their recent victories against internet censorship mere footnotes to the history of State encroachment into our online lives. In other words, lawmakers, lobbyists, and other ...
Links for an ending week
Friday, January 20th, 2012President Obama deserves praise for opposing the SOPA/PIPA bills in the House and Senate, respectively, but, of course, in true Republocrat fashion, deserves further criticism for qualifying that with, "That is why the Administration calls on all sides to work together to pass sound legislation this year that provides prosecutors ...
Hypocrites silent as Obama authorizes military detention of American citizens
Monday, January 2nd, 2012One of the most unfortunate aspects of America's democratic process and its current state here at the beginning of 2012 is the nearly compete absence of discussion of some central issues by most people, along with their failure to acknowledge that those issues even exist and their complete hypocrisy regarding ...
Stop the Stop Online Piracy Act!
Saturday, November 12th, 2011The latest attempt from the parasites in Washington to limit the freedom of the internet and all of the benefits that stem from it is called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Its more official, full name is Enforcing and Protecting American Rights Against Sites Intent on Theft and Exploitation ...
The existence of the TSA is the point
Monday, July 4th, 2011You might have read or heard about this story from Florida in which a 95-year-old wheelchair-bound woman was required to remove her adult diaper to be inspected by the Transportation Security Administration last month. You might not have heard that the 95-year-old woman was actually calm and acquiescent during the ...
Bin Laden reaction roundup
Sunday, May 8th, 2011I have been much more interested in the various and sundry reactions, mainly from Americans, to Osama bin Laden's killing than to the news itself. The whole situation ought to inspire quite a bit of mixed feelings from any libertarian, and even from any sensible, sympathetic human being. Notwithstanding the ...
End-of-the-month links
Saturday, April 30th, 2011Amazon.com's cancellation of its plans to open a South Carolina distribution center and high-tailing it out of town because the state legislature voted against giving the company a tax exemption are interesting from a libertarian perspective for a couple reasons. First, from a principled anti-tax standpoint, this is one of ...
Government-enforced net neutrality
Tuesday, February 1st, 2011The only part of the phrase "government-enforced net neutrality" that is relevant is the "government-enforced" part. There are so many arguments against the position that the Imperial Federal Government should enforce net neutrality that I had a hard time knowing where to begin. They include: Most problems with cable companies ...
Julian Sanchez on politically motivated suppression of WikiLeaks
Saturday, December 11th, 2010I really enjoyed Julian Sanchez's entire post Wikileaks and "Economies of Repression", but the conclusion was the best: In the heady days of the 1990s, it was widely assumed that the global Internet was, by its nature, an anarchic zone of untrammeled speech inherently immune from the control of governments quite ...
Two totalitarian laws closer to being enacted
Friday, November 19th, 2010You might have heard about two awful, totalitarian, Orwellian laws that the Senate is close to passing, which would unquestionably make our lives worse and cement this Democratic Congress as one of the worst in our history. The Senate Judiciary Committee recently approved the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act ...
Because in an anarchic society, gangs of thugs would kidnap newborn babies because of the beliefs or affiliations of the parents
Saturday, November 13th, 2010I postponed writing about this travesty because the only page I could find about it was at infowars.com, but the affidavit seems legit and there some videos about the story online, such as this Fox News clip. Basically, New Hampshire state thugs kidnapped Johnathon Irish's and Stephanie Taylor's newborn baby ...
Fish in a barrel 7
Monday, May 24th, 2010I've been a little depressed about how little time I have/make for blagging and reading about politics and economics this year, but it's because I'm working a lot, exercising five or six times a week, and watching things obsessively on DVD, like Star Trek and Futurama and True Blood. I ...
Misguided Tea Partiers, misguided Tea Party haters
Monday, April 26th, 2010You know, I actually think it's a shame the Tea Party gatherings receive nothing but ridicule and not discussion or engagement from the liberal Democrats. Really, what's more of a shame is that they deserve a lot of the ridicule, from libertarians and libertarian-ish people, because the movement has become ...
My jury duty experience
Sunday, March 21st, 2010I'd like to relate my limited experience as a potential juror and use this as a starting point for some thoughts about our criminal justice system. It might be a little anti-climactic, but it might also be worth the read. I'll leave out a lot of specifics because it is ...
Internet uprising overturns Australian censorship law
Friday, February 5th, 2010I don't think this news story got enough attention: from Ars Technica I read that an internet uprising led to the overturning of a very Orwellian censorship law in Australia. The law, which had taken effect just weeks prior, banned anonymous political commenting online. Can you imagine the twisted set ...
Campaign finance reform is pretty simple
Monday, January 25th, 2010Many of my friends and millions of people in the blogosphere/social-mediasphere have expressed their outrage and indignation at the Supreme Court's ruling that corporations can spend as much as they want to promote or oppose whatever political candidates or causes that they want. One of my friends said she was ...
Monopolistic law-enforcement systems are a racket
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009My friend got a new car, a white Subaru Legacy, to replace his old white Subaru Legacy. Apparently, Michigan law lets you transfer your old license plates to your new car in some (all?) situations, so he just took his license plate off of his old Legacy and put it ...
Anarchist Elliot Madison wrongfully arrested, robbed
Tuesday, October 6th, 2009In a continuation of law-enforcement agencies' general disdain for and dismissal of our civil liberties, Elliot Madison, a self-described anarchist, was arrested for using Twitter and a police scanner to help G20 protesters coordinate their efforts and avoid police officers. The charges on which he was held don't indicate any ...
Obama Defense Dept. advocates post-acquittal detentions
Tuesday, July 7th, 2009We'll see if this actually happens: Defense Department General Counsel Jeh Johnson moved the Obama administration into new territory from a civil liberties perspective. Asked by Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) the politically difficult but entirely fair question about whether terrorism detainees acquitted in courts could be released in the United States, ...
Obama’s next terrible idea: Cyber Czar
Sunday, May 31st, 2009There is no possible way this can end well. Obama continues to reveal his true authoritarian colors for all to see with his announcement of a new cyber security office to be headed by a "Cyber Czar". Like everything else the government touches, this will be bad for everyone involved ...
The Chrysler takeover and the rule of law
Monday, May 25th, 2009Joshua Claybourn summarizes why the Obama regime's management of the Chrysler bankruptcy is worse than just more government intervention. It violates the most important aspects of a sound legal system: the sanctity of contracts and the rule of law. Under these long standing bankruptcy laws—enacted and enforced by the federal government ...
Obama DOJ: Government officials are above the law
Friday, April 10th, 2009Literally. This is the legal doctrine the Obama regime's Department of Justice [sic] is invoking in its recommendation that Jewell v. National Security Agency be dismissed. Kevin Carson, in his column National Security: The Last Refuge of Scoundrels is incisive: If the Obama Justice Department’s legal doctrine is allowed to stand, ...
Facebook “thoughts” of the day
Saturday, April 4th, 2009A friend's Facebook status: "...says its about time the government passes some serious gun control laws. to hell with the right to bear arms." Her friends' responses: "hear hear!" "No guns and arms? That settles it, no more gym." (admittedly, kind of funny) "But then what the hell am I going ...
Early English law screwed the masses to benefit the aristocracy
Thursday, November 13th, 2008In my ongoing and very occasional progression through Bruce Benson's masterpiece The Enterprise of Law, I am learning more and more about the origins of authoritarian (State-originated and -enforced) law and its usurpation of customary (community-originated and reciprocal-incentive-enforced) law in Medieval England. The main thrust of chapter 3 is that ...
Educating for Anarchism, Blagnet.net edition
Friday, October 31st, 2008Mike over at nostate.com has an occasional post entitled Educating for Anarchism, in which he posts real life exchanges of his political beliefs with others. Below, you will find an exchange with my brother in a Facebook message thread (which sadly, is the best means he has of keeping in ...
Anti–universal health care proposal in Arizona
Sunday, October 26th, 2008I was intrigued by this George Will column in the Washington Post, which might mark the first time that has happened to me. He begins: On Election Day, Arizonans can give the nation the gift of a good example. They can enact a measure that could shape the health-care debate that ...
Vote with your feet, not your mind
Thursday, September 4th, 2008In an astonishing departure from the norm, James Ostrowski blagged about something unrelated to Buffalo, NY, his father's career in Buffalo, NY, or his own amazing prescience in making political predictions. He's frustrated that the Democrats look as though they're about to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory once ...
A glimpse of anarchic rights, laws, and socioeconomic organization in online communities
Sunday, August 24th, 2008This is one of the most interesting and thought-provoking news articles I've read in a while: Rights like free speech don't always extend online. It is about the different rules and restrictions established and enforced by online companies (Yahoo!, YouTube, MySpace, GoDaddy, etc.) and the consequences of their actions, their ...
Paul Craig Roberts on the “terrorist watch list”
Sunday, July 20th, 2008Paul Craig Roberts violates Godwin's Rule but still manages to make excellent points in a good column about the ludicrous terrorist watch list and no-fly list maintained by the Department of Homeland Security. That's real talent. Money quote: The ACLU says that "putting a million names on a watch list is ...
David Z. on District of Columbia vs. Heller, Second Amendment
Tuesday, July 1st, 2008David Z. at No Third Solution had some excellent commentary on the recent ruling by the Supreme Court that (as I understand) Washington, D.C.'s gun-control laws were unconstitutional. It is the type of in-depth and thoughtful commentary that has been missing from our web page for a few weeks, which ...
Federalism and gay marriage
Saturday, May 17th, 2008I came across a blag that supports the Libertarian Party in the name of gay, lesbian, and bixexual rights, Outright Libertarians, and its proprietor, Brian Miller, has been writing a lot about the ruling by the California Supreme Court that California's illegalization of gay marriages was unconstitutional. In an example ...
They graciously hand down our rights
Thursday, May 15th, 2008We should…be able to see that our interest would be best served not by asking the state to promulgate our values but by forbidding the state to promulgate any values at all. If the state can espouse some value that we love, it can, with equal justice, espouse others we ...
Statolatry on the radio
Monday, April 21st, 2008A quibble I have with women, by and large, as regards their moral-political thought processes is that they are too hesitant to take a definitive side, to make a polarizing statement, to pronounce a strong (negative) judgment of people, ideas, or institutions. I made sure to say "by and large" ...
More rational thoughts on FLDS kidnapping
Sunday, April 20th, 2008I have decided I am an inadequate blagger. This is because I don't have enough time for writing and can't focus and materialize my thoughts into excellent blag posts, unless I take a lot of time for it. So I just link to other, (semi)professional writers who do it much ...
Insightful thoughts on the Eldorado polygamy compound raid
Saturday, April 19th, 2008I felt the need to chime in about the potential rights and certain wrongs of the raid by Texas police of the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints polygamist ranch in Eldorado, but I think Wendy McElroy expressed thoughts very similar to my own much better than I could have. If I have ...