Legislating Morality

The town of Black Jack, Missouri has rejected a measure that would unmarried couples to live together, provided that they have children.  Social conservatives have already shown the country that they are against same sex unions; in the same old-fashioned, close minded view they are now using governmental power to force all people who wish to live together to get married. 

 

The couple who attempted to fight this law have several children together and bought a house.  They now face eviction because the city has the audacity to issue "occupancy permits."  When someone is a land-owner, they should be able to live however they want on that land, as long as they do not cause direct harm to others.  We have the natural right to consent, what we consent to is under the control of nobody but ourselves. 

 

This situation illustrates why we need to end all licensing of marriage.  Why do we have to ask the government permission to marry?  What happens if the government starts saying no to "normal couples" because they lived together before marriage and therefore have committed sins, or had prior divorces?  What if in a state like Missouri, legislators inact a law removing children from such situations and giving them to married couples?  How far will people legislate morality?  Some people do not like gay marriage.  They have the right not to like it, they do not have the right to control it. 

 

If the majority always got its way, we would probably not have freedoms such as speech, religion, and due process.  The majority is OK with the government spying on us.  The majority should have no right to control any rights, rights are given to us by the virtue of our humanity, they cannot be taken away from us.

63% of those surveyed are idiots

63% of Americans in a recent survey said that they approve of the NSA illegally collecting phone records from various companies.  These records will supposedly be used to find terrorists.  So, if instead of calling your grandma you dial the wrong number and call some person, group, or business that's been labelled as "suspicious" you can be sent down to Guantanemo..  It's not that bad... yet. 

 

These idiots in the survey believe that "finding terrorists" outweigh privacy concerns.  Let's be frank.  We're not talking about a situation where there is one mastermind terrorist and we're trying very hard to track him down (although with a multiple hundred billion dollar defense budget, we can't do that either).  We are talking about potentially hundreds of thousands of people who could be recruited to do us harm.  Searching for terrorists in the USA is like fighting against the VietCong.  In the end, you're going to spend a lot of money and do a lot of harm to yourself while doing very little damage to the enemy. 

 

Terrorism is not an army that can be defeated.  Secure borders will not stop it, a police state will not stop it, and destroying all civil liberties will not stop it, these actions will just make us much more like them.  Do you think Osama belives in a right to privacy?  Do you think that he believes in natural rights such as the freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom to do what you want as long as you don't hurt anyone else?  Not likely. 

 

The NSA is an awful part of the government.  Responsible to no one, they veto search warrants into their illegal activities by denying clearance to other government agencies such as the DOJ.  An out of control agency such as this needs to be decapitated, the way to do that is to have congress cut off the flow of money, which in itself is probably classified. 

 

And thank you QWEST for having the balls not to bend over and let the government do its worst on you and your customers.

Nats Sale Almost Done

MLB is about to announce the sale of the Nats to the Lerner Group, and DC is already pissed off. Convicted crack smoker (and city councilman) Marion Barry is upset that the new ownership has "rented black people" to use in its group. As Steven Pearlstein points out, this is "a pathetic attempt to play the race card."

Of course, Barry's credit is about zero in the eyes of most of the people from Northern VA who brave SE to go to the Nats games. Not to mention the city bent over to MLB's demands to use just about 100% public financing for the stadium.

Both sides could have done two things to prevent this situation:

1. Public ownership of the team, Packers style. Sell nice looking, commemorative, non-transferrable shares to people for $100-200 each. People would eat those up, even non-Nats fans. You could easily raise the $450M cost of the team this way.

2. Sell things like engraved bricks to pay for the stadium. You pay $250, you get your name on a brick that goes in the stadium. Old school idea, but quite effective.

At any rate, I'm just happy I live on the free side of the Potomac and that I don't have to pay for any of this mess, other than tickets.

HFCS?

A recent study comparing the health of middle aged Brits to Americans has some strange results: Americans are much sicker than Brits, even when factors such as race, obesity, and standards of living are adjusted. The richest Americans are only about as healthy as low income Brits.

Personally, I think when they look closely they'll find that the problem is the HFCS that's replaced all of our sugar (sidenote: sugar tastes better, if you can ever get your hands on some coca-cola from Mexico, I recommend you try it, it usually outsells domestic coke when its on the shelves). Better start short selling ADM. Then again, they get more welfare than a city-slum full of crack smoking single mom's, since they control almost all the ethanol production in this country... oh well.

Flight 93 Memorial

The Washington Post has a front page story about a Congressman from North Carolina holding up the $10M-$60M in federal money to go to a memorial for Flight 93, the plane who's passengers had the balls to stand up to Al-Qaeda and force the plane down (though some conspiracy theorists think it was shot down). 

 

I support the Congressman Taylor.  I do not think the federal government should be wasting tax money erecting memorials for every event that has changed this country. 

 

After 9/11, people all around the country started waving around dinky little flags and putting stickers of these flags on their car, where they would catch the mud and shit of the road.  Instead of a gesture such as that, maybe Americans should do what I did: donate $25 to the memorial fund.  I challenge anyone reading this blog to do just that.  If only 1% of Americans donated that much, we'd have more than what would be required for funding. 

Running to death row?

Zacarias Moussaoui said today that he wishes there were 9/11 style attacks "every day" to kill us, the infidels. The only person to be tried in connection with 9/11 isn't be tried at all. He has already pleaded guilty and is awaiting the juries verdict on whether he should be sentenced

Knowing the details of this case, I am even more against the death penalty. Having the government give him a lethal injection takes away the victims' rights at retribution and by that I mean torture followed by a slow death. Why have we made executions so sterile, especially in horrible cases.

The purpose of prison should not be punishment. The purpose of prison should be to confine those who currently cannot function within society until a time when they will be able to. That is why most crimes should receive thousands of hours of community service instead of jail. But what of those who we never want to reintroduce to society, like Moussaoui? They should be killed of course, but there is too much honor in the current system. Whatever goals the person was trying to achieve, his last few days should allow the victims or their families to inflict all their emotions on him, so that when he leaves it will not be peacefully. Or perhaps he can be used as a signal to others like him.

I think several days of torture, followed by death and being buried covered in pigs blood would send the right message.

Immigration

The news has been filled with stories on immigration, legal and illegal, this past week. There have been rallies, rants, and a political divide that is not partisan. The issue is that there are over 10 million "illegal immigrants" in the USA, most of them from Mexico.

There are two points of view on this issues with various shades in between. One view is that the influx of immigrants is harmful to this country; they use up our resources, do not contribute, and pose a risk to our culture. The other view is that many immigrants are very hard working, contribute more than their fair share, and help our economy.

Prohibiting immigrants from coming to a country where they will definitely obtain a job is bad public policy. Any Mexican who comes over here has many opportunities ranging from harvesting fruits and vegetables in California, raising Christmas Trees in North Carolina, and doing other tasks "that not even blacks want to do there in the United States," to quote Mexican President Vincente Fox. Many of these jobs are backbreaking jobs that pay only slightly above the minimum wage. Some have argued that we should have prisoners performing these jobs, but that is not efficient or practical (could you imagine how many extra guards would need to be paid to supervise this).

I have no problems with immigration. My family immigrated to this country, some of them over 300 years ago, some 50 years ago. Everyone reading this blog has ancestors who were immigrants. Should we deny this opportunity to people now? Some say, "well they don't speak English." Well, do you speak Cherokee?

On a larger note, thanks to the Federal Government, we have two major programs, Social Security and Medicare, that have unfunded liabilities of around $10,000,000,000,000 and $40,000,000,000,000, respectively. The US population is aging, with the baby boomers about to screw us over, unless we do that to them first. One benefit of immigrants is that they tend to reproduce in large numbers, potentially helping the worker:retiree ratio become something more manageable.

To those of you who say many illegals bring crime with them, I have a response: Detroit. A city of many criminals, almost all of them native-born US citizens.

Immigration. Good for them, good for us, good for the country.

The FUBAR Country's Courts Live On

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,188364,00.html

And people say we won.

Ban Pork and I'll Break Your Kneecaps

I'm not sure if the visitors to CNN.com just have a sense of humor or are really this inept, but there is currently a poll asking "Who would you rather have overseeing operations at US ports."

With over 50,000 voting:
36% Arab-based ports company
64% US-based Mafia

Well let me tell you something. Having Tony Sorprano running your ports might not be the best thing in the world, especially for all you law and order types. An Arab company running the ports is probably going to hire a much better US-based security force than any other company. Why? Because if anything happened on their watch, the fallout would be much more significant than what happened to the FBI on 9/11. The mafia is not going to do so much to protect the ports, just take some bribes and let everything go through.

The good news to letting the mafia in would be, the prices of drugs like marijuana and cocaine going down, so it would be cheaper to throw a decent party.

Good Test Case

I've been saying this for years. Finally a court case to see what happens.

If a woman can get an abortion, a man should be able to financially abort his responsibility for the child. And give up any parental rights. Until that happens, abortion should be illegal.

Women have wanted equal rights for years. The Equal Protection clause of the Constitution is without a doubt being violated by the differences in which parental decisions are treated legally.

No Federal Funding for Harvard

The Universities lost this round.  Today the Supreme Court ruled that colleges that accept federal money must allow military recruiters on campus no matter what they think of the military ban on gays. 

 

I actually agree with this decision.  I am against the federal government giving money to anyone, especially a college like harvard that has an endowment of several billion dollars from its alumni.  If the federal government is going to give anyone free money, it has the right to attach whatever strings it wants, much like an advertiser can have a "morals" clause in a contract it signs with Kobe Bryant. 

 

The best thing Harvard should do is say "fine, we don't want your money," but that reaction would surprise me.  Usually when someone or some group has the choice of losing money, or taking it up the ass on principles, they will gladly and quickly bend over.

 

That being said, the military ban on gay people is really dumb.  It has cost them  hundreds of millions of dollars in finding replacements for skilled workers who they banned after finding out they were gay.  It is also blatantly discriminatory.  Lastly, with all of our problems with recruiting people to serve, why close the doors on any specific group?

Crash Wins

Crash won for Best Picture tonight. I must say, I feel that it was the best out of the candidates, though I have not seen all of them. I thought that Brokeback Mountain would win. I have seen Brokeback; while it is a very good and passionate film, I think Crash was a more dynamic movie. It also had a faster pace and was overall more enjoyable.

It is rather interesting that it came to a contest betwee a movie about racism and a movie about gays to win the award. Perhaps our society is more comfortable about sorting out one mess before the next one. At any rate, I recommend to my readers to view both movies, at least once.

I also saw Walk the Line over the weekend, which was a very good movie. I'm surprised Joaquin Phoenix didn't win Best Actor for his great portrayal of Johnny Cash, including some very good singing. I highly recommend this movie as well.

Bottom line, see all of these movies, especially Walk the Line and Crash.

More Wasteful Prosecution

A Fairfax County man has pleaded guilty to the felony of bigamy.  This is another example of an old law that is still being prosecuted, wasting tax dollars where they need'nt be wasted. 

 

Whether or not you feel bigamy (having more than one wife at a time) is wrong, that doesn't mean it should be illegal, and even if it should be illegal, should someone really be sent to jail for it?  All this is is a form of adultery, which I think most would agree while immoral is not illegal. 

 

Instead of wasting thousands of dollars with judges and jail cells, why not just make the guy pay some type of restitution to his "victims?" 

Fascism Wins

While the death of one pioneer of liberty (see below) cannot take away our liberties, one law can.  And it has.  The USA PATRIOT Act was renewed by the senate by a huge vote.  Suffice it to say, I recommend voting against any senator who voted for this piece of legislation when his term comes up.

 

The act's name actually stands for "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism."  The "appropriate tools" refer to (still) illegal wire taps, surveillance, record gathering, etc, that goes against the principles of the US Constitution.  Hitler could not have come up with a better law to quickly turn a country into a police state.  Actually, he did come up with the Reichstag Fire Decree, which does very similar things to the Patriot Act. 

 

Anyway, there are two schools of thought. 

 

Some believe that this is a good act because it allows us to go after terrorists, who cares if we lose civil liberties and our national identity as long as we are alive.  To those people, I say: Go to New Zealand, they are very neutral, very safe, you will be welcomed there, get the fuck out of my country because I DO NOT WANT YOU HERE.

 

The other school of thought can be represented by those who feel that "those who would give up liberty for security deserve neither" which was a principle of our Founding Fathers (particularly the man on the $100 bill, and believe me, he knew about terrorism and security). 

Harry Browne

Harry Browne, Libertarian Candidate for President in 1996 and 2000 died today, may he rest in peace.