IT IS NONE OF YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS WHAT ROGER CLEMENS INGESTED OR WHETHER HE LIED TO YOU ABOUT IT. YOU HAVE NO MORAL AUTHORITY TO DEMAND ANYTHING FROM HIM, INCLUDING THAT HE TELL YOU THE TRUTH ABOUT ANYTHING.

Any person who thinks any member of any government is in any way remotely justified in demanding the first thing from Roger Clemens or any other athlete regarding performance-enhancing drugs is an enemy of freedom who should be called out as such.

Speaking of insatiable parasites, the government of Hawaii will now tax its residents on gross gambling income rather than net gambling income.

A Hawai’i resident who wins $10,000 in a year, for example, and loses $9,000 in the same year used to be taxed only on the $1,000 in net winnings. Under the new law, that resident would be taxed on the full $10,000 in winnings.

I imagine several other states already have similar laws, but it’s no coincidence that at least one state is enacting such a tax during the Second Great Depression. Many companies offer better deals to customers in an attempt to maintain revenues (…and, unfortunately, they also fire a lot of people to cut costs) to stay afloat. The first resort of governments is to take whatever they can from their captives. It is sad to read comments about this and other stories from people who probably claim to love freedom and justice and all those other things that, they’d say, made America great, but then when it gets down to specifics they bend over backwards to support anything and everything that helps the State at the obvious expense of its subjects.

It doesn’t matter that this is unenforceable. The intent and the attitude of these parasites in government is what should really boil your blood.

Y’see, gals, if you follow sports and know a little bit about them, then you can sail right through the interrogation about your cocaine-filled golf clubs without arousing any suspicion. Such efforts to traffic drugs would obviously be unnecessary if the drugs were legal, which would be better for everyone in society because their sale, distribution, and use would be safer and our civil liberties wouldn’t be the collateral damage of the War on Drugs.

A Maryland high-school softball coach was fired after parents drank beers that they brought to an end-of-the-year team party. Because underage high-schoolers were present, observing their parents imbibing alcohol. At the coach’s private residence. A firing over this probably wouldn’t happen in a free society. Hysterical teetotaling anti-alcohol crusaders are about as wretched as they come. Without a doubt, they are more to blame for society’s alcohol-related problems, such as underage binge-drinking and drunken driving, than any other factor. There is no way they could exert as much influence without the State enforcing their delusions upon society. All of this influence is harmful. A dead giveaway of a brain-dead Statolatrist zombie is that they suggest government school board members could rise to any position of importance in an educational system in a free society (or probably any other organization or business).

In a free society, family and community would be intimately involved in the education of children because it would be necessary and because there would be neither the inclination nor the opportunity to relinquish such responsibilities to State bureaucrats. Conversely, bureaucrats and other strangers would have no opportunity to claim authority over parents or their children. Idiotic teetotalers and other brands of moral busybodies would never be in a position to make decisions about other people’s children or, in this case, a coach who supposedly…let parents do something that was in some way bad to their own children.

Frank Hatley of Cook County, Georgia, was imprisoned for one year for failing to make child support payments for a child who, as the court was aware, was not his.

In June of last year, a judge ordered Hatley to jail for failing to reimburse the state for public assistance that was paid to support his “son,” who, as the court was aware, is not actually his son.
[...]
For 13 years, Hatley made payments to the state until learning, in 2000, that the boy might not be his biological son. A DNA test that year confirmed that there was no chance he was the father, according to court documents.

Hatley…was relieved of any future child support reimbursement but was ordered to pay more than $16,000 that he had owed the state before the ruling.

Anyone who wants to claim such absurdities as this could happen and carry on for a full year in a non-monopolistic, non-coercive legal system, and that the agency responsible could continue operating as usual after this came to light, simply doesn’t have a leg to stand on. Only coercive monopolies can get away with things like this; private, peaceful bodies cannot and would not.

The British socialized medicine system will ban private organ donations from dead donors. Basically the problem is that foreigners were paying top dollar (pound, euro, whatever) for the organs of dead Britons, and it horrified the busybodies in the UK government that scarce resources were being voluntarily allocated via the price system, and that such exchanges were taking place outside of the gentle governance of the NHS.

An independent report said the public needed to be confident that scarce donor organs were allocated fairly within the NHS.

Transplant surgeons said the ban would reassure the public that organs will go to those in greatest need.

Everything is scarce and the only sensible, practical, or remotely principled way to allocate those scarce things—yes, including body parts that their owners want to donate—is by the price system of the free market that matches supply to demand. No governing body or other self-anointed group of experts could ever allocate resources or direct people more efficiently or “fairly” than the free market’s price system does. It is simply not possible in the real world, even if the governing body had the best of intentions, and especially not when decisions will inevitably be made for political rather than economic reasons. Here is a much more logical and refreshing take on the U.S.’s screwed-up, government-run organ donor system.

Those Philadelphia cops who pulled three shooting suspects out of a car and beat them back in May 2008 have been cleared of any crimes by a grand jury. (Wow, that was almost a year and a half ago?!) The most surprising part of this case is that their chief, Charles Ramsey, fired four of the officers and suspended or demoted another four, and he’s not backing down from that decision. “I have 40 years of law enforcement experience. I kinda know what I’m looking at. In my opinion, all the actions were not justified.” Good for him.

A program that allows citizens to file anonymous complaints on the Illinois secretary of state’s website about people misusing handicapped parking spots received 114 tips in its first month and a half. People snitching on each other to punish them for disobeying laws that have no basis in natural law, no relation to right vs. wrong, and that attempt to force common courtesy on everyone? Sounds par for the course for governments. Wake me when you hear of an example of government promoting a sense of respect, community, and courtesy among its captives.

A Fort Myers Beach councilman was fired after other council members learned he was married to a former porn star. Terrible and unjust. They fire him in July 2009 “without cause” after he had been married since October 2008. The dolt who led the vilification said, “It’s a matter of how effective he becomes after this situation. How much disruption there is.” You stupid moron, there was no decrease in his effectiveness and there was no disruption until you got it into YOUR pathetic little brain to make an issue out of it. You can’t work with him and approve of his effectiveness for nine months and then decide his marriage might be disruptive to his job only after you learn of it! And soon, after his wrongful termination suit against the city, the idiots on the town council won’t have to pay for his settlement out of their pockets, oh, no; it will come from the town’s treasury, in other words, other people will pay for their stupidity directly or indirectly. Prudes are bad enough, but idiotic prudes are just depressing.

An Illinois millionaire didn’t like the $80,000 property tax bill on his mansion, so he had himself ordained by some online “church,” put a wooden cross on his house, and called it a church to get a property tax exemption. Good for him, I say! Not good for him or the rest of the taxpaying suckers, say idiotic Statolatrists everywhere. A man defends himself from a crime in a nonviolent and somewhat clever way, and the sanctimonious public responds with violence and derision. Everyone is pleased that this sham was found out and the guy will now have to pay back taxes, because nonviolent nonparticipation is a violation of their moral code. (I’ll conveniently gloss over the fact that this millionaire banker made his fortune off of the ultimate State racket, the monopoly on currency, because the principle of nonviolent nonparticipation remains the same.)

How the “buy American” attitude backfires: it spurs resentment and nationalism, whereas free, borderless trade engenders the respect, goodwill, mutual prosperity, and reciprocal interdependence that characterize true civilization. Libertarians at least as early as Frederic Bastiat have known this as a truism. Welcome to the 19th century.

Philip Morris supports new FDA regulations on cigarettes. Why, when they’ve opposed previous interventions in their industry?

The bill, already passed by the House of Representatives, will change the face of the tobacco industry by giving the FDA the authority to restrict tobacco product ingredients, impose nicotine caps and limit advertising campaigns. It solidifies the position of the producer with the greatest market share—Altria—which makes 50% of all cigarettes in the U.S. [and which owns Philip Morris].
[...]
“Bringing new products to market will be extremely difficult,” says Maura Payne, a spokeswoman for Reynolds America….

Obama’s drug czar claims the DEA will be scaling back the war on marijuana users and focusing more on treatment. While that article points out some good changes the Obama regime has already made and should be congratulated for, I am skeptical that we’ll see any substantive change in drug policy in the next eight years. Call me out and remind me to issue a retraction of this prediction if it’s wrong, but our freedom over our bodies will not increase under Obama’s rule and nonviolent drug users will still spend absurd amounts of time in federal prisons. No one with any power will allow that to change any time soon because the drug war gives them too much power over their subjects.

Joseph Carnevale, the NC State student who created the famous orange barrel monster, has been arrested for larceny for pilfering the barrels from a construction site and tearing them up to build the statue. His arrest is completely illegitimate because he has as much right to those barrels as any other taxpayer. (Well, you could argue not as much as someone who pays much more in taxes, but you get the point.) The hardcore Statist might say his “theft” and “vandalism” are harmful to taxpayers because now the state of North Carolina will just have to buy more barrels with more taxpayer money, but that is obviously the fault of the thieves in government, not the non-thief Carnevale. (It should be noted that no pun was intended with the use of the word “barrel” in this paragraph and the post’s title, as the post was titled before I ever heard of the orange barrel monster.)

The Las Vegas branch of the U.S. Attorney’s Office requested personal information about two people who left “threatening” comments on a story on the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s website, and the Review-Journal is complying. The comments in question happen to be completely innocuous:

One called jury members “12 dummies” and said they “should be hung” if they convict Las Vegas business owner Robert Kahre on charges of defrauding the Internal Revenue Service with a scheme involving gold and silver U.S. coins.

The other, since deleted from the newspaper Web site, offered a bet that one of the federal prosecutors in the case wouldn’t reach his next birthday.

Wow, really scary. Funny, I don’t notice the U.S. Attorney’s Office investigating the feds who ACTUALLY AND CREDIBLY THREATENED MURDER against Kahre for not paying proper penance to the Imperial Federal Government, to the commenters and the rest of the American citizens for the same, and to those same jurors lest they decide to stay home or go to work and live their lives as they please instead of acquiescing to jury conscription.

A good way to spot pathetic pro-State trolls: they mention Bernie Madoff or Sir Allen Stanford without bringing up the professional criminals in Congress or their largest Ponzi scheme in the history of the world, Social Security.

You know, instead of proposing to legalize, regulate, and tax marijuana to mitigate budget shortfalls, why doesn’t anyone propose to ABOLISH THE DEA? Is that so hard to understand? Do they not realize how many billions upon billions of dollars that would save the federal government every year? And similar drug-fighting tax drains in state budgets? Is it because they are pathetic leeches who have no conception of individual rights and just support the predatory State whatever it does?

The ballot proposal I voted Yes on was to legalize medical marijuana in Michigan. It is sad how many caveats and regulations would/will be attached to this legalization, but I have a feeling it will pass and it’s one small step for bodily freedom in this state.

There were two tax increases and a proposal related to park land that I voted against.

The controversial “no” vote that I cast was against public funding of human embryonic stem cell research. That position isn’t controversial as libertarianism goes, because regardless of how much tax money it might have cost (some advocates said zero, which I found unlikely), and regardless of who it might benefit or harm, I oppose the expansion of any and all government activity. My vote would be controversial amongst my friends and colleagues, who are scientific researchers like myself. I think human embryonic stem cell research holds quite a bit of promise for curing degenerative and developmental diseases, and possibly for understanding some biological processes better than we currently do. (I wish I could be more specific, but I don’t study stem cells and I really don’t know how much promise they really hold. I tend to be skeptical.) I also hope research on stem cells proceeds well-funded and can be applied to many degenerative and incurable diseases in the near future.

However, some people don’t want their tax money to fund it. I heartily agree with Thomas Jefferson’s statement, “To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.” My “no” vote was sticking up for the people who, for whatever enlightened or unenlightened reasons, don’t support research on human embryonic stem cells and don’t want to contribute to it. They clearly should not be forced to contribute to it. Another quotation comes to mind, from Heinlein: “There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.”

My Obama-worshiping friends might find that position stubborn or unenlightened. But I would ask them whether they’d want their tax money to fund the Iraq invasion, torture of Guantanamo Bay detainees, or CIA wiretaps, if they had the option. They would surely say no, if they were being honest. Similarly, people who don’t want their money to fund failed artists, public park land that they don’t use, abortion clinics, or human embryonic stem cell research shouldn’t be forced to pay for them.

The logical extension of that position is anarchism.

I hope I helped defend some people against having their money taken from them to pay for things they don’t want merely because scientists, politicians, and others think it would be good for them. Unfortunately, a lot of people see mob-rule elections as a contest to out-vote their political rivals for control of the violent, deadly police power of the State, to see who gets the power to point the guns at whom and for what reasons. That is the very antithesis of civilization.

I feel like I wasted a lot of time waiting in line just to write in my protest vote of “NOBODY” for president, mayor, and other positions. I stopped filling in the “other” bubble and writing “NOBODY” on the line after a while. There were too many judges and attorneys that I didn’t feel like voting against because my vote is meaningless anyway. I don’t anticipate waiting nearly that long in line to write in “NOBODY” next time. Abstaining completely is probably a better protest-vote. I don’t have a problem with voting against government predations in ballot proposals, though. In contrast to, for instance, this presidential election, when all candidates were undeserving of my vote and would violate my moral code in many ways, there was a clear yes-or-no position for the ballot proposals, the way I saw it.

It was supposed to be just another federal drug prosecution. The federal prosecutors introduced evidence that the man on trial was involved in the black market drug trade. The defense attorney said the government agents entrapped his client. And then the twelve citizen-jurors retired to deliberate the outcome of the case.

But then something unusual happened. The jury sent a note to the trial judge with the following query: Since the Constitution needed to be amended in 1919 to authorize federal criminal prosecutions for manufacturing and smuggling alcohol, a juror wanted to know from the judge where “is the constitutional grant of authority to ban mere possession of cocaine today?”

That’s a fair question. It is a point that has been made in Cato’s publications…and a point that has been made by Justice Clarence Thomas, among many others. Federal District Court Judge William Young was startled. He says he has been on the bench for 30 years and has never faced a situation where a juror was challenging the legitimacy of a criminal law. Young tried to assure the jury that the federal drug laws are constitutional because the Supreme Court has interpreted the commerce clause quite expansively. When the jury sent out more notes about a juror that wasn’t going to sign off on an unconstitutional prosecution, Young halted the proceedings to identify the ”problem juror.” Once discovered, that juror was replaced with an alternate—over the objections of defense counsel. Shortly thereafter, the new jury returned with guilty verdicts on several cocaine-related charges.

I know several lawyers now. They are my friends from high school and college. I think and hope they wouldn’t become so dismissive of the right of jury nullification in the interest of promoting convictions and upholding State fiat regardless of the justice of the laws and the judgments of the jury.

Second, a man is dead and another is wounded because of an undercover drug sting that turned into a robbery in Detroit on Tuesday. The sting happened in the Westland Mall parking lot in the middle of the afternoon. The undercover cops arranged to meet with some drug dealers to sell them drugs and then arrest them for attempting to buy it. (That is how drug stings go, I’m told.) But, instead of buy the drugs, the buyers decided to rob the sellers, and that’s when the gunfire began. Over 100 shots were fired in all, with one of the police’s targets being killed and another wounded. The deal was going to be for $60,000 worth of cocaine, so it’s easy to see why the thugs who don’t work for the police were willing to take such a risk to obtain the drugs.

As someone who has the moral clarity to understand right and wrong (as contrasted with legal vs. illegal) and defend people’s rights even when their actions are repulsive to me, I am at a loss to understand why everyone in the world still fails to grasp this obvious and simple fact: MOST OF THE HARM THAT COMES FROM DRUGS IS DUE TO THE FACT THAT THEY ARE ILLEGAL. I know they can ruin lives, but the State and its armed thugs ruin many more directly, not to even mention the way they ruin lives indirectly by debasing neighborhoods, families, and economies.

This fatal drug bust never would have happened if cocaine were legalized! Most other drug-related violence wouldn’t happen if all the other drugs were perfectly legal! The fact that dealers and users have to get around the law and are faced with such high demand in relation to supply (i.e., super-high prices) makes them resort to such desperate, violent measures. None of this happens with alcohol or tobacco! I know people know this but they just can’t bring themselves to admit it. This is what pro-State programming by schools, media, and politicians does to weak people’s minds. It prevents them from admitting the obvious: NONE OF THIS WOULD HAPPEN IF DRUGS WERE LEGAL!!!

One more tidbit to think on: Why do the cops not go to prison for possessing and attempting to sell $60,000 worth of cocaine? Possession and distributing are against the law, aren’t they? So why is it legal for them to do it? Hmmm, could it be…because agents of the State are subjected to an entirely different set of laws and standards than what the rest of us are victim to? Just like libertarian theory predicts would happen in any monopolistic state?

I don’t have much to say about the Horn incident, just these quick thoughts: I kind of think the dispatcher was right to discourage Horn from confronting them and certainly from shooting them, because deadly force should (ideally) be used only as self-defense when your well-being is directly threatened. I understand that a free society needs private citizens to protect their property and protect each other, but fatally shooting two people in the back who were robbing your neighbor, when your neighbor wasn’t home, seems excessive to me. But, on the other hand, I’ve never been in a burglary situation, and I don’t know how I’d react knowing that burglars were right next door and could come to my house next. I’d rather shoot too early, before they came close to my house and started directly threatening me, than shoot too late after they had already broken in, or shot at me, or attacked me with their crowbar or something. Or, before they had gone to another neighbor’s house, where everyone was asleep and owned no firearms to defend themselves.

Secondly, the two criminals were Colombian immigrants who were on parole…from previous drug charges. What a surprise: the Drug War ruins two immigrants’ lives by causing them to be arrested for drug possession/trafficking, a completely victimless crime that only harms anyone because it is made illegal by the monopolistic State, and it makes them desperate enough to resort to a life of real crime. But, I don’t know their whole story, they might be legitimately shady characters who have committed real crimes like burglary before. It sounds just typical of the life-ruining character of the War on Drugs, though.

Third, read this exchange between Joe Horn and the 911 dispatcher, after he had shot the burglars:

Dispatcher: “Put that gun down! There’s officers out there without uniforms on. Do not shoot anybody else, do you understand me? I’ve got police out there…”

Horn: “I understand, I understand. I am out in the front yard waving my hand right now.”

Dispatcher: “You don’t have a gun with you, do you?

Horn: “No, no, no.”

Dispatcher: “You see a uniformed officer? Now lay down on the ground and don’t do nothing else. Lay down on the ground, Mister Horn. Do what the officers tell you to do right now.”

They have special uniforms, so they are exempt from the actions and considerations that you might apply to ordinary citizens. I’m not stretching this to make an issue out of nothing, here. I know that the reason the cops were there is because they were called there and, proper or not, it’s their job to protect us against and investigate crimes. These particular circumstances are not what I’m focusing on; it’s the attitude that police officers are held to a different set of standards and (oftentimes) laws because they are official agents of the State and their uniforms prove it. The dispatcher is saying, You may have been right or wrong to shoot those burglars, but you aren’t of the same legal status as these uniformed officers, so you can’t walk around with a gun like they can; you can’t address them standing up and armed like they will be. (The dispatcher could also have realized that at the scene of a crime where two people had already been shot, the cops were likely to be prepared to shoot, too, so Horn better do all he can to avoid provoking their trigger-happiness.)

What do you think that 911 dispatcher (and millions of others) would have thought about this scenario: Two police officers had a house surrounded because there were burglars in it, and when the burglars came running towards the cops, the cops shot them dead, and then a few more police officers come to the scene. Do you think anyone would expect the two original cops to put their guns down, come out from behind their cars or from the vicinity of the bodies with their hands up, and then lie down with their hands behind their head, waiting for the new cops to tell them what to do? Obviously not. They are not considered ordinary citizens and are not held to the same standards that we are in many situations—in any situations involving crimes and shootings. (If you think police officers are unlikely to exhibit so little restraint and shoot people unjustifiably, please read this blag more often, as you have a lot to learn.)

Consider one other scenario: What if, instead of Joe Horn, the next-door neighbor had been an off-duty police officer, and he had shot the burglars just as Horn did? Do you think he, or the police who came to the scene, would have thought the off-duty cop needed to leave his gun in the house, come out with his hands up, and lie down waiting for instructions? Don’t be foolish. He would have said, No, it’s okay, I’m a cop! Or, if he lived in the same city he worked in, his own police force would probably be the one coming to his house, so they’d know him… Either way, he wouldn’t be treated the same as an ordinary citizen. You might say that’s fine and that’s the way it should be because the cops should be held to different standards, but I’d say, one, there is no moral or philosophical basis for such a double-standard, and, two, as long as you admit this is true, that’s a good start.

The point of this longer-than-expected early-morning post was to relate the story that Chris, a 47-year-old caller to WRIF FM, told on the air this morning. He was out in his back yard grilling when he heard something weird in the woods behind his and his neighbor’s houses. It sounded like lumber being moved or loaded or something. He got his bright-orange hunting gear on and took his handgun out into the woods, and saw three young men loading up a bunch of lumber and wheels and other equipment from his neighbor’s shed into their van!

When one of them noticed him (I guess he wore his bright-orange to protect himself against hunters or trigger-happy criminals or something…I don’t know, but they saw him when he got 40 or 50 feet away), the guy started walking towards Chris. Chris asked them what the hell they were doing, and they said they knew Mr. McMahon, his neighbor, and they had permission to be there and take his stuff. When the guy walking towards Chris got pretty close, like 5-10 feet away, Chris pulled his handgun out and told him to back off and continued asking them why they were there. The guy stopped walking towards him and started listening then. Chris kept the gun pointed at all of them, and told them they could all come back to the shed later that night or the next day when its owner was home, because there should be no problem if they have his explicit permission, should there? They didn’t agree to that, so Chris made them unload all of the stuff from the van back into the shed, and they drove off.

About an hour later, cops showed up in Chris’s driveway, confiscated his gun, handcuffed him, put him in the back of their police car, and locked him up in a jail cell for 24 hours.

What had happened was one of the guys he encountered in the woods had called the police to report what Chris had done to them—threatened them with a gun even though they had a right, had permission, to be there and take Mr. McMahon’s stuff. The police immediately and by default assumed that the man with the firearm was in the wrong, and so arrested him without an investigation and took his gun even though it was his property. (If ordinary citizens did this, it would be called kidnapping and theft.) Next, the police went back to the shed in the woods to meet up with these people and supervise their taking of this lumber and other equipment from Mr. McMahon’s shed.

Perhaps you can tell by the fact that I’m relating this story on my blag and by the way I’m telling it that, of course, these were criminals and the cops were completely wrong. I guess it was after Chris got home from jail, he talked to his neighbor McMahon, who called the police and said he had no idea who any of those guys were and in no way, shape, or form did they have permission to even be there, much less take his stuff!

The police released Chris after 24 hours—maybe because that’s how long they keep someone while an “investigation” is ongoing or maybe because they found out he was completely in the right—and it took Chris several months and $1500 to get his gun back, which belonged to him, was stolen by people who had no place to take it, and which wasn’t used in the commission of a crime.

Oh, and it turns out two of the three criminals were on parole.

A few closing thoughts: The police assume by default that the person with the gun was in the wrong, but the police will always have guns and they never assume one of their own is in the wrong. They stole Chris’s gun and held him in a cell for 24 hours, but not only will they not be charged with theft or kidnapping, Chris had to pay them fifteen hundred freaking dollars to get his own perfectly legal and justified property back. Third, if he did charge them with wrongful arrest or theft, they would never be convicted and would probably not be brought to trial. If he brought them to small-claims court for his $1500 in fines and fees, he would never win (the courts are part of the same monopolistic justice [sic] system as the police department!). The cops were negligent in failing to ascertain who these criminals were and whether they had any legitimate reason to be there taking stuff out of someone’s shed. (By the way, what balls those criminals have, calling the cops and then taking equipment out of this shed right in front of them!) And, lastly, do you think Chris or his neighbor would choose to subscribe to these police-protection and adjudication systems in the future, if they had the choice? Do you think many people would, after they heard about this?