The Question Libertarians Just Can't Answer - Answered!

h/t Daily Pundit

QOTD

Maybe of the year.

To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is it's justice; that is it's morality. — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

More Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Quotes.

Not so fond of "Big A" anarchists, myself; Proudhon is the source of the claim that "property is theft", as well as the idea that "property" is the oppression of the weak by the strong, whereas communism is the oppression of the strong by the weak.

I'm not sure how owning a house and a car means I am oppressing anyone. 

 Seen at, via.

Vote!

As I mentioned before, Washington State has gone to an all-mail format for voting. The State Secretary of State can't seem to remember that I retired 12 years ago, despite the fact that I have told his flunkys that several times, so I get to vote a little earlier than most.

Yes, I screwed the last one up. For some reason I was thinking that Wash's last name was "Washburn", realized the error after I had sealed the ballot up. "I thought I made a mistake once, but I was wrong." Wash's full name was "Hoban Washburne", Goram it.

QOTD

This goes to show that the Norwegians really do have a sense of humor. Nigel Farage

Perhaps appropriately, I was watching Atlas Shrugged, Part I, on Netflix and was surfing the net when I learned that the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to... the European Union. Nigel Farage's quote above sums up my reaction. Anyway, it's not like the bar is very high... h/t Bobbi.

Libertarians

They want to take over and leave you alone!

Great bumper sticker philosophy.  Too bad that many of the people who would be attracted by it would be repulsed by the corollary:

Libertarians:  We want to take over and make you leave the other guy alone!

even if most Libertarians, or ("small 'l'") libertarians, would do so by moral suasion, and making sure "the other guy" was able to defend himself, as opposed to actually, you know, somehow forcing you to mind your own damned business.

In my previous post I made a joking reference to the fact that the Libertarian Party  is commonly viewed as the Party of Legalization of Drugs, and little else more.  I really do think they should start emphasizing the economic liberty aspects of libertarianism, and let the whole "Declare victory in the War on Drugs and go home" thing wait until they have the ability to do more about it than debate esoteric points of political philosophy...

Speaking of which...

The AnarchAngel : Two libertarians walk into a bar...

Aretae's lovely wife ran out of steam just around the time we (just barely) started talking about compatibilism, utilitarianism, determinism, associationism, the veil of ignorance, the social contract, and the fundamental nature of rights.

See, we barely know Chris and Mel, other than by their blog, although I did enjoy swapping war stories with Chris, and Mrs. Drang talked spinning and other crafty stuff with Mel, at Gun Blogger Rendezvous IV.  I can just imagine him rubbing his hands in anticipation at being able to have that kind of discussion with fresh meat a new victim friend.

Me, my eyes glaze over just reading about it.  So that's another thing: Go ahead and debate those esoteric political philosophical points all you want with each other, but know your audience.

Fine, I'll wear the Wookie Suit

Following a link Tam put up in comments--which, BTW, got NPR all over my netbook, so if I suddenly find links to the Huffer Post, Kostipation.com, or Hopey-Chanegy.com, I know who to blame--I took the "Which Presidential Candidate" quiz.

93% Ron Paul, what a shock.  91% Gary Johnson.  Mittens was somewhere in the 80s.  I dunno who Jimmy McMillan or Virgil Goode are, but they scored higher than His Imperial Majesty, who only broke 50% because of "science issues", which seems odd, considering that's where the globull warmening question was...

SCOTUS ObamaTax InBoxer Rebellion

(h/t Snopes for their part of the title...)

The wrangling over the meaning and long-term effects of SCOTUS's, and especially Chief Justice Roberts', ruling on ObamaCare continues.

A few items from Instapundit (bits in italics are my observations):

• Instapundit » Blog Archive » FOLLOWING UP ON MY MARBURY OBSERVATION FROM THIS MORNING: Obama Wins the Battle, Roberts Wins the War… "By ruling that the individual mandate was permissible as a tax, he joined the Democratic appointees to uphold the law—while joining the Republican wing to gut the Commerce Clause (and push back against the necessary-and-proper clause as well). . . . Roberts’ genius was in pushing this health care decision through without attaching it to the coattails of an ugly, narrow partisan victory. Obama wins on policy, this time. And Roberts rewrites Congress’ power to regulate, opening the door for countless future challenges. In the long term, supporters of curtailing the federal government should be glad to have made that trade.” We’ll see.  (Maybe.)(See also: Marbury v. Madison - Wikipedia)
• Instapundit » Blog Archive » TIMOTHY DALRYMPLE: Five Possible Silver Linings In The ObamaCare Decision….  (Beautiful dreamer...)
• Instapundit » Blog Archive » MARK TAPSCOTT: Roberts Is Not The Goat In Supreme Court Decision.   (Links to several articles in which the writer presses the argument that Roberts actually did the Republic good, and doomed ObamaCare, with this decision.  Is the CJOTUS playing chess?  Should he be?)

Meanwhile...
Tamara takes exception to Roberts' claim that "It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices"

All those laws you guys have struck down as unconstitutional over the last couple centuries, whose "political choices" were you protecting us from those times? Had those other laws been imposed on us by insidious outsiders or something, so you could protect us from their consequences, but we gotta bend over and take this one because it turns out Nancy Pelosi is not actually from Betelgeuse? 

What the hell IS "judicial review" all about if not saying "Stop that! You people made foolish--even evil-- decisions"?

I suppose Chief Justice Roger B. Taney could answer that. I'm sure Dred Scott has looked him up to ask...

"How very interesting!"

Reading the post How very interesting! on Daily Pundit last week--behind again!--I read that the Cato Institute and the Koch Brothers had settled their dispute(s). 

Good.

Blah, blah, the new CEO of Cato is "John Allison (the former CEO of BB&T)"... and the post goes on to quote a New York Times article about Allison and BB&T:

After the Supreme Court upheld the right of local governments in 2005 to condemn private property and hand it to someone else for commercial development, he says, BB&T refused to make loans to developers who obtained property that way.
He also says BB&T decided not to offer the controversial “pick a payment” mortgages that got so many of its competitors into trouble. Such loans, also known as “option A.R.M.’s” or “negative amortization loans,” allow borrowers to make payments that don’t even cover the interest on the loans, which causes the amount they owe to grow.
“While we did not foresee the decline in the real estate market, we knew home prices would not continue to appreciate at 15 percent per year forever,” he says, adding that his bank knew that pick-a-payment loans would be trouble for many homeowners.
“We believe Rand’s concept of the ‘trader principle,’ where life is about trading value for value, where both parties benefit from the transaction,” he says.

 BB&T, which holds the paper on Alte Schloss Drang, is run on Randian Objectivist principles!

Another twist in the Obamacare Decision saga

In my previous, much updated post on SCOTUS ruling that Obamacare is Constitutional, because the Individual Mandate, previously explained away a s"No, no, no, it's NOT a tax, not at all!!!" is really a tax after all, I had linked to a post on Poor Richards News in which it was pointed out that, since the Individual Mandate originated in the Senate, it is, in fact, unconstitutional, since the Constitution decrees that all taxes must originate in the House of Representatives.

Today, David White Wolf @ Random Nuclear Strikes linked (Why The Next Lawsuit Will Destroy Obamacare) to a USA Today column (!) (well, Opinion Piece) which points out a few other issues with the debatable legality of said taxes: If ObamaCare survives the Supreme Court, legal battle has just begun – USATODAY.com

A thought...

I find mowing the lawn a good opportunity for cogitation. Or maybe I just hate it so much I rationalize it that way. Anyway, herewith the latest Deep Thought, Yard Work edition:

Mitt Romney is not the RINO in this election. Nor were Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum.

Ron Paul is.

John McCain was not the RINO in the last presidential election.

Sarah Palin was.

Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater were not the "real" GOP candidates they are painted as, but the Bushes were.

Anyone trying to claim that the GOP is the, or even "a", conservative party is fooling themselves, if by "conservative" they mean small, fiscally responsible government. Anyone claiming that the GOP or the RNC has "sold out" the GOP's roots, that it has "betrayed" Republican values, is wrong. At best.

Look, the Republican party was founded on the twin propositions that slavery should be abolished, ditto polygamy. Not exactly hot-button issues today. So the hot button topics the GOP has latched onto are simply different forms of government control from what the Democrats are pushing. Instead of government giving you everything it thinks you need, whether you want it or not, like the Democrats want, the Republicans want to prevent you from doing what you want, whether or not it might harm you, let alone someone else.

As the aphorism goes, the Democrats want government to be your Mommy, the Republicans want it to be your Daddy, and Libertarians want to leave you alone.

An Open Letter to Friends

If I get any email from any politician's campaign, but especially the sort of thing described below, from His Imperial Majesty, not only will you cease to be considered a friend, but I will explore reporting you for SPAM or other violations.

(The)form for the Obama Campaign's) "inspire" solicitation asks for an email address for your donation muse so that the campaign can "send them [sic] a message letting them know they inspired you to donate." The Obama campaign is deliberately sending spam to people who never signed up for it. You can also give a donation "in memory of" someone, and the site still asks for an email address. You can take the politician out of Chicago, but you can't take Chicago out of the politician.

You'd think he and his minions would have gotten the idea after the second or third time they tried these creepy, vaguely Big Brother-ish schemes had failed that maybe The Chicago Way doesn't cut it when you get away from the Loop...

h/t James Taranto, WSJ, via Insty.

Well, isn't this special? UPDATE

Constitutional Expert: “President Obama … Says That He Can Kill You On His Own Discretion" Without Charge or Trial  (CSPAN segment with that quote at the link.)

I've disputed such claims before.  The National Defense Authorization Act contained some verbiage that some found worrisome, but I disagreed, on the grounds that the phrase "neither expands nor limits current authority" means just that, but many were interpreting "Neither A not B" to mean "A but not B."

Then again, Obama seems bound and determined to make my mockingly referring to him as "His Imperial majesty" reality.

UPDATE:  Looking up "Constitutional Law professor Jonathan Turley" on Wikipedia, we learn that he is" frequently regarded as a champion of liberal and progressive causes", and "someone who speaks truth to power".  (That phrase always makes me throw up in my mouth a little bit, it usually means "supports libtard causes no matter how silly.")

OTOH, it also says

However, Turley has a strong libertarian streak and sometimes infuriates the left^[10] with a contrarian position.^[22] For instance, he has said, “It is hard to read the Second Amendment and not honestly conclude that the Framers intended gun ownership to be an individual right.”^[8] In May 2009 the Daily Kos said that, "Jonathan Turley is an embarrassment!" because Turley had suggested that supreme court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor was not "brilliant" enough for the job.^[22][31] Moreover, Turley testified in favor of the Clinton impeachment.^[32]
In another commentary that outraged progressives, Turley defended Judge Henry E. Hudson's ruling declaring the individual mandate unconstitutional for violating the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, saying: "It’s very thoughtful—not a screed. I don’t see any evidence this is motivated by Judge Hudson’s personal beliefs. . . . Anybody who’s dismissing this opinion as a political screed has obviously not read the opinion."^[23]

So maybe he should give lesson on ConLaw to His Imperial Majesty...
h/t to Langenator on Bill Quick's Emergency Preps board for the additional G2...

Get my broker on the phone!

Consolidated tinfoil, BUY!!!!

The U.S. Senate, doing it's job for once, is set to consider S.1867, the National Defense Authorization Act, that is, the 2012 Defense Budget.

Certain individuals are engaging in PSH over portions of the bill, to wit, Subtitle D--Detainee Matters, and it's "subordinate clauses", Section 1031 and 1032.

Most of the panic centers around SEC. 1031. AFFIRMATION OF AUTHORITY OF THE ARMED FORCES OF THE UNITED STATES TO DETAIN COVERED PERSONS PURSUANT TO THE AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF MILITARY FORCE, paragraph D of which states that

(d) Construction- Nothing in this section is intended to limit or expand the authority of the President or the scope of the Authorization for Use of Military Force.

which is being construed as repealing the Posse Comitatus Act* and suspending habeus corpus.

Trouble is, paragraph b says

    (b) Covered Persons- A covered person under this section is any person as follows:

        (1) A person who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored those responsible for those attacks.

        (2) A person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.

I hate to sound like one of those sheep who always say "If you've got nothing to hide you've got nothing to fear", but it seems to me that this sets the bar kind of high for government oppression.

***

* Wikipedia:  The Posse Comitatus Act is an often misunderstood and misquoted United States federal law (18 U.S.C. § 1385) passed on June 18, 1878, after the end of Reconstruction. Its intent (in concert with the Insurrection Act of 1807) was to limit the powers of local governments and law enforcement agencies from using federal military personnel to enforce the laws of the land. Contrary to popular belief, the Act does not prohibit members of the Army from exercising nominally state law enforcement, police, or peace officer powers that maintain "law and order"; it simply requires that any orders to do so must originate with the United States Constitution or Act of Congress.
The statute only directly addresses the US Army (and is understood to equally apply to the US Air Force as a derivative of the US Army); it does not reference, and thus does not implicitly apply to nor restrict units of the National Guard under federal authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within the United States. The Navy and Marine Corps are prohibited by a Department of Defense directive, not by the Act itself.^[1][2] The Coast Guard, under the Department of Homeland Security, is exempt from the Act.

Google Learns a Valuable Lesson

Big Government: Google Learns Government Is Not a Good Business Partner:

Recently, Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, spoke with the Washington Post after his first appearance for congressional testimony, and the “take D.C. by storm” expectation certainly appeared to be catching up with Google as Schmidt vocalized his frustration.

“So we get hauled in front of the Congress for developing a product that’s free, that serves a billion people. OK? I mean, I don’t know how to say it any clearer,” Mr. Schmidt stated to the Post. “It’s not like we raised prices. We could lower prices from free to . . . lower than free? You see what I’m saying?”

But the real zinger that many conservatives and maybe even more liberals in the tech sector will be surprised to hear came when Schmidt noted, “Regulation prohibits real innovation, because the regulation essentially defines a path to follow,” he said. “[This] by definition has a bias to the current outcome, because it’s a path for the current outcome.”

Eric Schmidt: Coming soon to a Tea Party rally near you!

Good!

Judge Declares Law Governing Warrantless Cellphone Tracking Unconstitutional - Digits - WSJ

In a succinct one-page ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Lynn N. Hughes of the Southern District of Texas declared that the law authorizing the government to obtain cellphone records without a search warrant was unconstitutional.
“The records would show the date, time, called number, and location of the telephone when the call was made,” Judge Hughes wrote in the decision, dated Nov. 11. “These data are constitutionally protected from this intrusion.”
Judge Hughes’ decision comes as the U.S. government is facing increasing judicial challenges to its practice of obtaining information about the location of individuals without a search warrant. Last week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case where the government placed a GPS tracking device under a vehicle and monitored the driver’s movements for a month without a search warrant.
During the argument, Chief Justice John Roberts said to Michael Dreeben, deputy solicitor general of the Justice Department: “If you win this case then there is nothing to prevent the police or the government from monitoring 24 hours a day the public movement of every citizen of the United States.” The Justice Department argues that people have no expectation of privacy on public roads.

via.

Word

View From The Porch: Okay, that's an easy one...

Last QOTD, I promise!

I swear, they are trying to repeal the Industrial Revolution.
Tamara, in Maybe we can do for bubonic plague what we did for malaria!, which is certainly the Blog Post Title of the Day.

Note to self, add rat poison to Big Box Store shopping list, alongside incandescent bulbs...

Speechless

Not that I think anyone is going to read this that hasn't already seen it at Tamara's, but this is outrageous.

If you haven't watched the video there, it sort of glosses over the fact that the warrant was being served on the victim's estranged wife, who is never actually named.  (The accompanying artiocle says she is estranged, the video does not.)  It opens by saying that "Police and Federal Agents kicked down his door" and ends with
the Stockton PD's claim that the jackbooted government thugs requeste don eofficer for "police presence", but that offier did not actually participate in the raid-good.  They then claimed that the victim and his children were "not held against their will."

HE WAS HANDCUFFED IN THE BACK OF A POLICE CAR IN HIS UNDERWEAR FOR SIX AND A HALF HOURS!

This crap has always been been outrageous.  It's bad enough when a local PD gets the address wrong, whether through human error or stupidity, and kicks down the wrong door, and especially when a Marine combat veteran gets murdered by some badge wielding thug (Sheriff Dupnik is a disgrace, all by himself), but...

A Department of Education SWAT Team?  Are you kidding me?

Attempting to serve someone who defaulted on their student loans?  Fine... but I question whether it needs even one Federal agent with a badge and a gun, and if it does, the US Marshal's service should be able to provide that.  That's what they're there for.

Maybe bringing in someone who's got some professionalism will avoid turning "You've defaulted on your loans" into another Waco.

And that's what really pisses me off about these situations, that it seems that no one, in Stockton, or in Waco, or in Ruby Ridge,ID, ever even considered simply knocking at the door and asking "Mrs. Wright/Mr. Koresh/Mr. Weaver? We need to speak to you...  Well, we have a warrant, so, one way or the other, yes you will." 

"The easy way or the hard way" is cheap melodrama but sometimes, it's an accurate description, and, even if you have done nothing wrong, if The Man has a warrant, cheap melodrama may be your best case sceanario. 

Especially if The Man sends the Keystone Kops.

Courtesy Pandora Radio, Wookie-suiter Serenade

New bigscreenteevee came with installed innert00bz widgets, including Pandora Radio. I've been listening to my Pandora "The Corrie's" channel while putting off mowing the lawn.  Just heard this:

Wow.

QOTD #2, 03/15/2011

No matter how hard you wish, no matter how hard you hope, no matter how much compassion you can fit in your stupid compassionate heart, no matter how much you happen to like some program that helps somebody do something wonderful… math never lies and interest never sleeps. Caring don’t pay the bills.
Larry Correia, "Happy Tax Day"

I'd make the entire post a "Quote of The Day", but that might be overkill.  Not that the author of the Monster Hunter International books would worry about a little thing like "overkill."

That paragraph comes about halfway through, so you'll have to read the first half to get there, and then you might as well read the rest...