The phi­los­o­phy of gun con­trol: Teenagers are roar­ing through town at 90 MPH, where the speed limit is 25. Your solu­tion is to lower the speed limit to 20, out­law any vehi­cle that has a round hood orna­ment or that can carry more than 10 gal­lons of fuel, require sen­si­tiv­ity train­ing and manda­tory annual test­ing for all licensed dri­vers, require all vehi­cle pur­chases to be doc­u­mented at a deal­er­ship (with a 10-day wait­ing period), and spec­ify the locks on the garage where the vehi­cles are stored (with their wheels removed and stored in a locked con­tainer on the other side of the home). Mean­while the most dan­ger­ous inter­sec­tions are changed from stop­lights to yield signs, and res­i­den­tial and school zone reg­u­la­tions are tight­ened with ‘no-stop’ rules so strict that even police can­not stop to set up a speed trap, thus giv­ing the speed­ers free reign in the very areas they are likely to do the most damage.

Tony B.

Left wing — right wing: Same stink­ing car­rion bird in between.

The Ulti­mate Answer to Kings

Maybe the guy just enjoys get­ting awards for things he didn’t do.. Okay, first he gets the Nobel peace prize forty sec­onds after the elec­tion, before he even had a chance to break all his cam­paign promises about end­ing the wars — and cer­tainly before he got us all into a new one for no very good reason.

Now he gets a prize for trans­parency in gov­ern­ment. Oh, wait — you didn’t hear about that? No rea­son you should have, I sup­pose…

Pres­i­dent Obama finally and qui­etly accepted his “trans­parency” award from the open gov­ern­ment com­mu­nity this week — in a closed, undis­closed meet­ing at the White House on Monday.

The secret pre­sen­ta­tion hap­pened almost two weeks after the White House inex­plic­a­bly post­poned the cer­e­mony, which was expected to be open to the press pool.

[The Ulti­mate Answer to Kings]

At least gov­ern­ment has become more effi­cient in one way: they’re so good at mock­ing them­selves that there’s hardly even any need for any­one else to do it. This is right up there with Bush com­par­ing the “lib­er­a­tion” of Iraq with the Phillip­ine War of Independence.

The Myth of the Rule of Law. The fact is that there is no such thing as a gov­ern­ment of law and not peo­ple. The law is an amal­gam of con­tra­dic­tory rules and counter-rules expressed in inher­ently vague lan­guage that can yield a legit­i­mate legal argu­ment for any desired con­clu­sion. For this rea­son, as long as the law remains a state monop­oly, it will always reflect the polit­i­cal ide­ol­ogy of those invested with deci­sion­mak­ing power. Like it or not, we are faced with only two choices. We can con­tinue the ide­o­log­i­cal power strug­gle for con­trol of the law in which the group that gains dom­i­nance is empow­ered to impose its will on the rest of soci­ety, or we can end the monop­oly. [Vol­un­tary Bound­aries]

Our New Terrorist-Tainted House Home­land Secu­rity Com­mit­tee Chief.

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) is the new chair­man of the House Home­land Secu­rity Committee.

This dude knows all about ter­ror­ism, since he has spent decades doing big-time fundrais­ing for the Irish Repub­li­can Army.

Muckraker/hell-raiser/freedom-fighter Will Grigg has an excel­lent piece on King’s hypocrisy on LewRockwell.com today.

[BOVARD]

It’s def­i­nitely appro­pri­ate, given the bla­tant hypocrisy of the Evil Empire, to appoint some guy who used to be Osama bin Laden for white peo­ple to this posi­tion. After all, this is the same coun­try that con­quered Iraq using ter­ror­ism as a pre­text, and then appointed a ter­ror­ist as pup­pet ruler.

Oli­garch Booed.

When the second-ranking Koch brother, David, took the stage at the Brook­lyn Acad­emy of Music to dis­cuss his sup­port for the Nut­cracker, he was booed. Not for his taste in bal­let. David is the co-funder of Belt­way “lib­er­tar­i­an­ism,” régime Tea Par­ty­ism, the Repub­li­can party, etc.

UPDATE And see this from EconomicPolicyJournal.com.

[LewRockwell.com Blog]

The peo­ple at LewRockwell.com have long had a rather bizarre obses­sion, bor­der­ing on derange­ment, with the Koch broth­ers. Appar­ently now they’ve con­vinced them­selves David Koch is a vam­pire or some­thing, if he was around to co-found the Repub­li­can Party in 1854!

Schools exist to teach chil­dren two things: con­for­mity and sub­mis­sion to author­ity. Any­thing else a child learns is com­pletely inci­den­tal. This is why bul­ly­ing per­sists. Forc­ing chil­dren to go to school and be around bul­lies is part of train­ing them to believe they have to sub­mit to hor­ri­ble peo­ple for the rest of their life.

Ror­shak

Right­ful lib­erty is unob­structed action accord­ing to our will within lim­its drawn around us by the equal rights of oth­ers. I do not add ‘within the lim­its of the law,’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it vio­lates the rights of the individual.

Thomas Jef­fer­son

How many fed­eral laws would I be break­ing…. …if I sug­gested that the world would be a bet­ter, cleaner place if this per­son and all his syco­phants choked to death on cans of caf­feinated alcohol?

I note that Sch**er adds a nice incon­gru­ous touch:

Let This Serve as a Warn­ing to Any­one Who Tries to Ped­dle Dan­ger­ous Bev­er­ages to Our Kids, Do it, And We Will Shut You Down

[The Ulti­mate Answer to Kings]

Nat­u­rally I don’t spend much time in gov­ern­ment build­ings, but I know that both pris­ons pub­lic schools and cour­t­houses have drink­ing foun­tains. I don’t think there’s any bev­er­age on Earth that’s killed more peo­ple than water…

If tyranny and oppres­sion come to this land, it will be in the guise of fight­ing a for­eign enemy.

John Adams