Category: Uncategorized

(From Cox and Forkum)

Freedom-loving Americans suffered a major defeat today, and they face another blow to liberty next week. In Kelo vs. New London, the Supreme Court voted that local governments can seize private property for private uses, so long as it serves the “public benefit.” The ruling legitimizes the already common practice of coercively redistributing private propery to maximize tax revenues. (Which are ultimately the only standard of the “public good” local governments recognize.)

According to the majority ruling of Justice John Paul, “economic development” qualifies as “public use.” Is there anything that qualifies as “private use?” Clearly not, since even the private production and consumption of marijuana can be regulated under the commerce clause, according to the June 6 ruling of Gonzales vs. Raich.

After repudiating property rights, our politicians voted for censorship today, when the House passed a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning. The vote is scarier than ever because it stands a good chance of passing the Senate next week, opening the way for ratification by the states. The consequences of the ban are much more serious than a ban on the single incident of flag burning recorded last year. Senator Orrin Hatch thinks that “acts of flag desecration are offensive conduct [that] we ought to ban in the interest of protecting the greatest symbol of our country.”

Senator Hatch is a fundamentalist Mormon. What “offensive conduct” will he vote to ban next?

(Not that it will do any good, but complaining to my congressmen made me feel a bit better.)

(Crossposted to the Egosphere)

ThoughtCrime in Australia:

A Christian pastor found guilty of vilifying muslims says he is prepared to go to jail in protest over Victoria’s racial tolerance laws.

Two pastors involved with the Catch the Fire Ministries were last year found to have vilified Muslims at a Christian conference, and on a website, by suggesting the Koran promotes violence and terrorism.

The tribunal says an apology is appropriate.

It has ordered the pastors to publish a statement acknowledging their legal breach and has requested an undertaking the comments would not be repeated.

Credits to Felipe

Interesting read:

American George Weller was the first foreign reporter to enter Nagasaki following the U.S. atomic attack on the city on Aug. 9, 1945. Weller wrote a series of stories about what he saw in the city, but censors at the Occupation’s General Headquarters refused to allow the material to be printed. Weller’s stories, written in September 1945 [and recently discovered], can be found here.

I kid you not:

Two employees of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have been charged with animal cruelty after dumping dead dogs and cats in a shopping center garbage bin, police said.
Police found 18 dead animals in the bin and 13 more in a van registered to PETA. The animals were from animal shelters in Northampton and Bertie counties, police said.

Great article on mises.org: The Myth of the Cell-Phone Addiction.

Following up on my previous post, a man was sentenced to 20 years last week for looking at child porn on the Internet. The man did not save any porn to his computer, but rather had it in the cache of his Internet browser. As the defense unsuccessfully argued, a computer user has no control over the contents of his browser cache – content is automatically downloaded to the cache when a user enters a website. Depending on your browser, others pages of a website may be downloaded from pages you don’t ever visit. Under the law, possession of child porn is treated as child sex exploitation, with a minimum of 5 years in prison.

Continue reading porn in America, part 2

This story begins in 1983, when a 15 year old with used a fake California Driver’s License and birth certificate to get a state identification card that identified her as Kristie Elizabeth Nussman, age 21. In the next three years, she became the adult industry’s first superstar, making about 107 porn films and winning numerous awards. She formed her own adult film production company, got a luxury apartment and a Mercedes and dated a number of much older men. Her screen name was Traci Lords.

Continue reading The DOJ goes after porn

Chinese bloggers posting their thoughts via Microsoft’s net service face restrictions on what they can write.
Weblog entries on some parts of Microsoft’s MSN site in China using words such as “freedom”, “democracy” and “demonstration” are being blocked.
Microsoft said the company abided by the laws, regulations and norms of each country in which it operates.
…The censorship is thought to have been introduced as a concession to the Chinese government.
…Also being restricted on the free parts of the site are journal entries that mention “human rights” and “Taiwan independence”.

Users who attempted to use these words… were greeted with a message stating: “This item should not contain forbidden speech such as profanity. Please enter a different word for this item.”

Realistically, Microsoft must either forfeit the potentially huge China market, or obey China’s laws. Like Yahoo, Google and other Western companies, Microsoft has clearly chosen the latter. What do you think is the ethical choice?

Crossposted on the Egosphere

There has been a trend in the UK to outlaw driving, and ridiculously low speed limits combined with speed cameras are one of the main weapons of the environmentalists. To avoid the cameras, UK drivers are resorting to tricks like spray-on mud to obscure license plates and GPS devices which warn drivers when approaching speed traps.