Friday, May 19
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Taran Jordan is the guest editor today. Thanks to everyone who offered to help by editing columns. The response was overwhelming. STR has three new bumper stickers you can buy here. |
United 93 Brought Down by Gun Control Laws
Column by Don Hull.
Couple Arrested for Asking for Directions
MUST READ To protect and serve. (editor's pick)
Recommended "Congress has become a sad parody of itself. In his State of the Union address in January, Bush proudly said he had repeatedly ordered the domestic surveillance operation and would continue to do so. In perhaps the most bizarre moment in modern congressional history, members from both houses proceeded to give him a standing ovation — cheering their own institutional irrelevancy." Sickening. Column by Jonathan Turley. (editor's pick)
(editor's pick)
The military has built a vast domestic-intelligence network to fight terrorism -- but it's using it to track students, grandmothers and others protesting the war. An investigative piece from Rolling Stone.
Congress
May Make ISPs Snoop on You
AG Alberto Gonzales said it was a good idea to make ISPs store records of Americans’ online activities. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) is now his handmaiden – writing the law to make it so.
Brits
to Be Forced to Give Up PGP Keys
Un-frickin’-believable. The police state encroaches more heavily and deeply every day now. Don’t miss the quote from Bruce Schneier. Blog entry by Sunni Maravillosa.
Export-Fueled National Animal ID Program Raises Many Farmer Objections
"NAIS is not about disease. It is about profits for the big meat-exporting companies and the RFID tag manufacturers. States love it, because once NAIS becomes mandatory, they will charge a $10 or more premises ID fee per year. If you raise your own food, you end up paying a tax to do so," Jeffries said.
Online privacy and proxy service Cotse.net is suddenly blacklisted from the leading search engine’s results. And its proxy users can’t access Blogspot.com (owned by Google) blogs, either.
US
Military Loses Guns, Prisoners
Five prisoners, okay. But four planeloads of AK47s?
Arrr!
Microsoft’s Drivin’ Me Nuts Agin!
"UAC [a security feature in Microsoft’s new Vista OS] sometimes triggers an endless loop of dialogue boxes that can be curtailed only by rebooting, says Paul Thurrott, news editor of Windows IT Pro magazine. ‘Microsoft completely botched UAC,’ Thurrott says. ‘It's almost criminal in its insidiousness.’ "
"In the eyes of the world, us ‘libbetarians’ – and constitutional conservatives, and paleocons, and paleolibs, and militia remnants, and classical liberals, and just plain Don't Tread on Me folks – are trying to ‘save’ the world from the thing it most craves – the illusion of security. We're just annoying the pig, in other words." A hoot of a Claire Wolfe classic.
A
Year on the Hundred-Mile Diet
"When
the average North American sits down to eat, each ingredient has
typically traveled at least 1,500 miles...Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon
chose to confront this unsettling statistic with a simple experiment. For one
year, they would buy or gather their food and drink from within 100 miles of
their apartment in
Those
ARMs Are Starting to Hurt
And the hard numbers will give you the willies.
The
Case of the Shrinking Penis
"Wouldn't it be a tragic irony if those advertisements you see everywhere of macho, meat-chewing athletes with milky mustaches and xylophone abs become only mockeries of the truth: cardboard fronts hiding low sperm counts and shrivelled genitals?" A classic from Contrary Farmer Gene Logsdon.
Kirsten of Enjoy Every Sandwich reflects on the evolution of her political thought processes.
For many and varied reasons, people with principles take stands against the IRS’s demands.
Be patriotic. Buy a Japanese car.
To combat rampant consumerism, these Bay Area folks decided to go a whole year without buying anything new. Er...except food and underwear, that is. (Whew.)
The
World After the Dollar Collapses
"While Keynesians see the rise of gold as temporary - and will continue to assert their naysayer views as gold rises further - it will soon come to light that the 'world reserve currency' idea was the temporary thing, an anachronism of the industrial age." By Justice Litle.
"Dear Helicopter Ben Bernanke: Please remove the name of the Lord my God from your currencies. Neither my Lord nor His Son believed in the issuance of interest-bearing debt, and as you put your finger on the inflation index, please remember this: a subset of the 10 Commandments, to be found at Exodus Chapter 20, says, again with the eloquence of the non-lawyer, ‘Thou Shalt Not Steal'." By David Bond.
Thanks for the camouflage. Blog entry by today’s guest editor, Taran Jordan.
FedEx
Foxtrots with the Thunderstorm
VERY cool video link. The profit motive inspires a graceful aircraft dance between and around threatening clouds.
Melt
Down Pence? Dentists Go One Better
Brits, whose one- and 2-pence coins were mostly copper until 1992, begin to consider meltdowns as copper prices continue to soar. But tooth docs see no need to waste time on coins of the realm.
Slap
a Lady Cop’s Bum, Make the Sex Offender List
Even if she’s off duty and you’re a bit bottled.
High
School Seniors SWATted During School Prank
I doubt this TV news story was intended to be hilarious, but its pandering to the cops (or possibly tongue-in-cheek jab at the jackboots) is a chuckler. Oh, well. At least the principal had the sense to dismiss the cops and make the kids clean up the mess.
Selective targeting of employers by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has Mike Shedlock wondering what the Busheviks’ motives – and intentions – might be.
A photo blog.