Month: May 2003

Carter Laren at Capitalism Magazine –

American Gestapo: A Primer – we’ve got at least as much to fear
from our own alphabet soup of federal “police” as we do from foreign
terrorists. Mr. Laren reminds us of the proliferation of armed
agents. [grabbe]
bq.
As the U.S. government tightens its grip on der homeland, citizens are
constantly reminded of terrorist threats from religious zealots in the
Middle East. While these threats are real and should be eliminated,
it is vital that Americans–especially rational
intellectuals–denounce and combat the ever-growing network of thugs
hatched from Washington itself. It is probably a good idea to do this
sometime before all “unpopular” Americans find themselves staring down
the muzzle of a machine gun.

After all, if the ATF, IRS, DEA, INS, and other paramilitary agencies
are allowed to operate freely from within America’s borders, then what
good are the U.S. Marines?
[End the War on Freedom]

President Bush’s “New” Emphasis on Religion Is Hardly New. There is no question that President Bush has placed religion front and center in his Administration. Recent press coverage would seem to indicate that this is a new approach – one that is specific to this Republican Administration, and that is part of a conspiracy of fundamentalists to gain political power. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

Virtually all of President Bush’s initiatives, when it comes to religion, were presaged by Clinton Administration policies and attitudes. Indeed, a strong case can be made that Clinton set the stage, and Bush is doing no more than following in his footsteps. (link)

Another one for the “thanks a lot, Clinton” files. [Al-Muhajabah’s Islamic Blogs]

Equal Opportunity Expulsion?. French television reporters weren’t the only hacks blocked at LAX from entering the United States to cover the E3 gaming conference, after failing to produce the required but rarely demanded journalist visas. A British tech journalist, who didn’t want his name used, writes in:bq. It happened to a lot of UK visitors, too. The criteria for search and expulsion in one case appeared to be a question, asked at customs, if the visitor intended to interview someone while they were in this country. […]

I got a relatively frantic e-mail on Monday the 12th from the editor of one of the magazines I write for … because his reviews editor got stopped, searched, and deported from LAX within a couple of hours of his landing. I had to run off and cover E3 in his place. Another editor I know came to E3 with a friend, and that friend was deported at customs. Immigration officials have now confirmed the handcuffing and expulsions, describing the procedures as routine. Meanwhile, public relations employees who told border guards they were here to work at E3 were whisked right through, on the Visa Waiver program that allows 90-day trips for “business or pleasure,” but not journalism. [Hit & Run]

I don’t know what possessed the government to do something so absurd, but it’s probably got something to do with the fact that responsibility for entry at LAX (and other airports) has been taken over by the new KGB.

No Mexican Stand Off. A new RAND Corp. study by economist James P. Smith finds that Hispanic immigrants, including Mexicans (the largest single Hispanic subgroup), move up the American economic ladder as quickly as other immigrant groups.

From RAND’s summary:

The descendents of immigrants from Mexico and other Hispanic nations complete substantially more schooling and have higher incomes than the generation before, according an article by Smith published in the May edition of the American Economic Review, the most prestigious and widely read scientific journal in economics.

The generation-to-generation educational gains made by Hispanic men are greater than that seen among native-born white and African American men. However, by the third generation the educational gains appear to drop off as Hispanics begin to look much like the rest of the U.S. population, the RAND research found.

This is good news, of course, even if it confounds anti-immigration types on the one hand and those invested in seeing Hispanics as in continuing, dire need of special assistance on the other.

Smith says a good educational system has played a key role in upward mobility.

Read Glenn Garvin’s great 1998 story on bilingual education for one way to improve Hispanic school performance.

And speaking of Garvin–currently the Miami Herald‘s TV critic–and immigrants, read these two other great pieces by him: “No Fruits, No Shirts, No Service: The real-world consequences of closed borders” and “Bringing the Border War Home: What will Americans pay to keep out immigrants?”

More Reason resources on immigration are here. [Hit & Run]

Libertarian Party Press Releases –

Plan to confiscate Iraqi weapons may victimize innocent civilians,
Libertarians say – and how! [End the War on Freedom]

Of course the government doesn’t care about the well-being of Iraqi civilians. They’re perfectly willing to victimize innocent American civilians, so why should anyone expect that they would hesitate to victimize the people of a country they’ve conquered?

It turns out that there’s a lingering aftereffect of the bug I found in “Tinderbox” with trying to save when the Finder view font is Japanese. Apparently Tinderbox also can’t save to a folder with a florin (ƒ) in its name if that folder was named while the view was set to a Japanese font, even if it’s an English font when the save is done.

I have a whole bunch of folders with florins in their names (a florin is a Mac user’s abbreviation for “folder”), so perhaps it would be better if I just save files to the desktop and move them later. Hopefully the problem with Japanese fonts will be fixed soon.

John Ross –

Abortion, Mole Removal, Helmet Laws, and Waiting Periods, or
Doesn’t Anyone Have Principles Anymore? – Mr. Ross
relates a discussion he had in 1998 with members of NARAL (the
National Abortion Rights Action League). They wanted the government to
keep its laws off of their bodies, but had neglected to think through
that principle. Hehe.
bq.
By this point, I realized our conversation was not typical for a
candidate looking to receive an endorsement from a special interest
group. I was sure they preferred me over my opponent, however, as he
wanted to make abortion a federal crime (more about that in next
week’s column.) Given that fact, I continued to talk about their
philosophy. I asked if they opposed waiting periods for
abortions. They did. A right delayed is a right denied, they reminded
me. “So, have you talked to the gun rights groups, who also oppose
arbitrary waiting periods for the same reasons you do, about joining
forces?” They hadn’t done that, either. “Well, how about the cancer
patients who want to use medicinal marijuana? That’s a ‘Keep
your laws off my body’ issue. Have you talked to those people?”
Again the answer was no.
[End the War on Freedom]

Peaceniks, Terrorists, Whatever. “You can make an easy kind of a link that, if you have a protest group protesting a war where the cause that’s being fought against is international terrorism, you might have terrorism at that [protest],” says Mike Van Winkle, a spokesman for California’s Anti-Terrorism Information Center. “You can almost argue that a protest against that is a terrorist act.”

Never fear, folks: He said “almost.” Our freedoms are safe!

[Via Unqualified Offerings.] [Hit & Run]

I’m not surprised. That’s the same sort of thinking (if it can be called that) that labels people opposed to the conquest of Iraq as “pro-Saddam.”

Gold is now over $370/ounce!

Hey, War Supporters. Good thing the neocons have no sense of history, or they’d worry about this: in the decades to come, fewer and fewer people will be able to hear about the Iraq war without snickering and shaking their heads. [LewRockwell.com]