Thursday, January 15

 

 Cheryl Cline is the guest editor today.

 

The Year Ahead: 2009, Part 2

MUST READ  Column by Glen Allport.

 

Good News for Liberty Buffs: Americans Don't Trust the Feds

“A recent Public Strategies Inc./Politico poll shows that Americans don't trust the federal government, and their level of trust continues to decline.”

 

Freedom in the World 2009 Survey Release

Freedom House finds that “2008 marked the third consecutive year in which global freedom suffered a decline. This setback was most pronounced in Sub-Saharan Africa and the non-Baltic former Soviet Union , although it affected most other regions of the world.”

 

Court Says Evidence Is Valid Despite Police Error

“The Supreme Court said Wednesday that evidence obtained after illegal searches or arrests based on simple police mistakes may be used to prosecute criminal defendants.”

 

The Dread Scourge of Unlicensed Christmas Desserts

The Superfluous Man on how regulation hurts small entrepreneurs the most.

 

Bioethicists Save Organ Donation by Tweaking the Definition of Death

According to Wired.com, “[m]aking cardiac cessation the measure of death would drastically curtail modern organ donation,” already hamstrung by the federal ban on free-market incentives.  It’s easier to redefine death than to legally sell an organ in the United States .

 

Smarter Than an 8th-Grader?

Garry Reed writes:  “Last September the state of Maine gave their kiddos a lasting lesson. They tossed out the test results of a writing exam because 78 percent of the nearly 15,000 eighth-graders who took it blew it.”

 

Percentage of Kids Solicited Online Drops, Harvard Report Says

And most of those sexual solicitations are between minors.

 

Andrew Carroll Arrested For Holding a Plant

A young man risks arrest to demonstrate the absurdity of victimless “crimes.”

 

Bailouts, Double Standards and Hypocrisy

“What we need is the genuine article:  a free market without special privileges or artificial scarcity, without subsidies and corporate welfare, and without market entry barriers and other protections against competition.  Of course, if we had that kind of free market, there wouldn’t even be a General Motors.”

 

Would You Have Been a Nazi?

Ronald Bailey thinks “Americans are not really any better at resisting the claims of authority than other people,” but that our “institutions of freedom” help keep us from establishing our own gulags.

 

Police Crack China Baby Sale Gang

A rise in human trafficking is just one unintended consequence of the state control of reproduction:  “The problem is exacerbated by strict birth control policies, which limit many couples to only one child.”

 

The Paycheck Fairness Act: Equal Pay Baloney from the Press

“The [Paycheck Fairness Act] would pressure employers to pay employees in predominantly-female jobs with pleasant working conditions the same as employees in predominantly-male jobs with unpleasant working conditions.”

 

Yes Means Yes?

“[A]ll too many people still have this Mars/Venus view of male/female relations...where the two genders are at fundamental odds with one another, and while they may need to temporarily set these differences aside for sex/procreation/matrimony, it is first and foremost A War, at least a cold one.”

 

Audience Atomization Overcome: Why the Internet Weakens the Authority of the Press

“In the age of mass media, the press was able to define the sphere of legitimate debate with relative ease because the people on the receiving end were atomized— meaning they were connected ‘up’ to Big Media but not across to each other. But today one of the biggest factors changing our world is the falling cost for like-minded people to locate each other, share information, trade impressions and realize their number.”

 

Why War?

“[M]ilitary force – at least the large-scale application of military force – is usually not the appropriate response to terrorism. In fact, a disproportionate response is exactly what terrorists are hoping to elicit as a way to garner sympathy and support for their cause.”

 

Inauguration to Be Screened in Theaters

 

We Cannot Allow Obama to Be the Torturer-Elect

Perhaps we should take away the popcorn.

 

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