Month: August 2013

First they decide Obamacare doesn’t really have to be implemented if the GOP and Democrats agree it doesn’t .  Then they decide they can exempt their staff from its legal requirements. Congress is  no longer a body of legislators, they’re a council of rulers. Now, Treasury is getting creative, joining the parade of abuses at…

Good question. That and more in a piece titled “Why Have Police In America Turned Into Such Ruthless Thugs?” It’s a very worrisome question I have struggled to understand, because when I was a kid, cops were cops, and many people saw them as friends of the law-abiding. No more: Once upon a time, the…

Another lie. Rod Coons and Florence Peace pay $403 a month for a family health plan that covers barely any medical care for either of them until he or she reaches $10,000 in claims in a given year. And that’s just the way they like it. “I’m only really interested in catastrophic coverage,” says Coons,…

While it will not matter to many people today except historians,via Glenn Reynolds I learned that new information is coming to light which demonstrates that the Watergate prosecutors — along with the sainted Judge Sirica himself — committed major ethical violations which denied the Watergate defendants their right to a fair trial. Sirica’s meetings with WSPF prosecutors…

H/T Frank in the comments.

H/T Colleen on Facebook. Also from Colleen a link to Everything you know about drugs is wrong. At the heart of “High Price” is the argument that current U.S. drug policies are not only morally wrong, but scientifically wrong as well, a game of politics and fear-mongering in which our government sanctions the widespread prescription…

Very good post from Tyler Cowen, and some great links: Paul Krugman has covered this topic a few times lately, most recently here.  For instance he writes: The main point, however, is that we are a very long way from classic monetarism, of the form that says that the central bank can control broad monetary aggregates…

As history shows, urban density is the sine qua non of the totalitarian state, because if people are packed together, they are much easier to monitor and control. Thus, it should surprise no one that there is a major, well-organized push coming from many directions to use all available tools to coerce people to live…

Thanks to a fake “protection” virus installed automatically by Firefox, I’m on my laptop while trying to save my regular computer. I not only did not install this virus, I didn’t install anything. Firefox did the dirty work of the virus authors — ostensibly a site called wips.com. I’m not alone. Other Firefox users are…

A legitimate American business that offered its customers email privacy has been destroyed by the government. It’s “crime”? Refusing to cooperate with the disgraceful and unconstitutional surveillance network which considers itself entitled to spy on all Americans. And if you think that’s bad, get this: they are not allowed to talk about it! That’s right.…

Here is a perfect example of what is wrong with this country: The U.S. Department of Commerce wants to crack down on the unauthorized streaming of video and audio content by reviving a provision of the Stop Online Piracy Act. In a report released last week, the Commerce Department’s Internet Policy Task Force called for…

Amazingly detailed video of what happens under your skin. Check out the capillary action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=MbXSPacvuak Mosquitoes, of course. You were expecting something else?  

You know you’re really living in a police state when NRO conservatives sound like libertarians. Here’s Mark Steyn: Too much law enforcement in America has lost all sense of proportion: If you need six armed officers to police a nonagenarian in an old folks’ home, seven armed officers to police a 20-year-old female you suspect…

A friend emailed me and asked what I thought of Oprah Winfrey’s new wig. Ever the spoilsport, I replied that I preferred Phil Spector’s wig: Not that I would wear such a thing to court (or deny that it was a wig), but I just think it’s more eye-catching than Oprah’s.

That is an outrageous injustice that cries out for redress. There are only two possible remedies. This column favors the fiscally responsible solution: abolishing the Women’s Bureau. The alternative would at least double our supply of comic material, but everyone has to make sacrifices. …  Other than Krugman, I know of no reasons why the…

New discoveries about the activities of our criminal government continue, and today I learned that the NSA data — which we were told was only being gathered to fight terrorists — is routinely made available to the DEA for use in drug cases. WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information…

On Facebook I found a link to what was described as a “very interesting read” which “explains a lot of what’s going on.” I’ll say. According to the article (in an online journal called EU Times.net), the United States is in the middle of a coup, or a civil war. These terms are not used…

An article in today’s WSJ reminded me that academicians can’t wait to get their mitts on data. They want personal data about the most personal habits of millions of Americans, and in this example, their ostensible goal is to “help” people who in their opinion are “at risk”  of becoming addicted to gambling: Similar to…

For an alternate view The Storm Ahead in China. H/T Communism vs. Democracy and Markets. Are these the only viable options?

Here is a comment I left at You Can’t Buy Your Way to Social Justice: If you are interested in social justice become an engineer. They have done more for the welfare of humanity than all the politicians and “social justice” types combined. And made a profit at it to boot.