Sunday, December 14, 2003

Charity for the Holidays. In the spirit of the season, I hope every visitor to this site will stop right now and make a donation to some charitable group that accepts NO government funding. Thank them both for what they do AND for not doing it with stolen money. I've composed a small list of charities for starters. Some are "official" 501(c)(3) (tax deductable) organizations. Some have refused even that minimal connection to government. Most are local, not national. Some are religious, some secular. Given my biases, a lot of them help animals, as well as people. (Some do both at once.) But all are doing something useful. And with the exceptions noted, they don't take your money against your will in the name of doing good. [Wolfesblog] 7:59:14 PM    comment () U.S. Forces Capture Saddam in Iraq Pit [AP World News] This is good news, and will certainly bring considerable goodwill from the people of Iraq. Unfortunately I have little doubt that the Feds will find some way to squander that goodwill in short order. I don't expect Saddam's capture to have any effect on the ongoing guerilla war--although no doubt the Crusaders will briefly insist that the resistance has been broken, before they go and find some new excuse for why the Iraqis aren't happy to be conquered. The real impact will be in providing Bush with a propaganda victory, which he will use to bolster his re-election chances. It will also make it easier for him to launch his next war of conquest (Syria? Iran?) after the election. 4:01:14 PM    comment () Human Events - What's Next for Big Brother? - a little-known part of the campaign finance "reform" bill. [kaba] Yet, perhaps the most ominous and Gestapo-like provision in the law is the provision--quoted on our cover page as summarized by Justice Stephen Breyer--requires that every broadcast outlet in America keep a record of every instance in which any American requests any broadcast time to deliver any message about any national political or legislative issue--even if it is not near an election, and even if it does not name an elected federal official. Why does the government need a record of when a citizen of, say, Bismarck, North Dakota, inquires about buying time from a local radio station to state his views about, say, government attacks on freedom of speech? For years, Americans who respect the 2nd Amendment have resisted a federal gun registry. Big Brother government does not need to know which law-abiding citizens might have a firearm in a bedside drawer because the Constitution says Big Brother government cannot infringe on the citizen's right to keep and bear arms. Nor does Big Brother government have the rightful authority to establish a federal speech registry--because the 1st Amendment says "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech." This law does exactly that. It is an abomination to a free people. Those who voted for it hoping the court would strike down its unconstitutional provisions--and the President who signed it conceding it was constitutionally questionable--made an egregious error. Now they have a duty to redress that error by repealing this law. [End the War on Freedom] I hadn't known about the speech registry aspect of this law--it's "little-known" because the news media, which has gained a monopoly on political commentary from this law, naturally declined to tell anybody what the law would really do. I won't be at all surprised if people trying to take out ads opposing politicans suddenly find themselves the target of IRS audits and inspections by various types of regulatory bureaucrats. Citizens who make too much of a fuss might even find themselves declared "enemy combatants." 3:00:34 PM    comment ()

© Copyright 2006 Ken Hagler. Last update: 2/15/2006; 1:58:17 PM.