Libertarianism

Government Failure…

This entry was posted in Capitalism Domestic Terrorism Drug Laws Economics Law Enforcement Libertarianism on by

Radley Balko summarizes a set of statistics about the government’s efforts to suppress the market for recreational drugs:

By nearly every metric — drug use, spending, availability, purity, price — the drug war has failed. Throughly. And that’s before considering the trespasses on our civil liberties our government has undertaken to achieve that failure.
Read the rest. The magnitude of the failure is really quite astounding.
So, who is benefitting from the $60 billion being spent annually by local, state and federal governments?

Shining a Light on CBS and Fox

This entry was posted in Constitution Election 2004 Libertarianism Talk Radio on by

Well, it is always better that congress spends time and resources on hearings rather than making sound bites about and voting on legislation though both hearings and legislation are wastes of citizens resources.
Yet, I suppose, Hugh Hewitt’s proposal for congressional hearings concerning Fox News would be entertaining:

Hearings now, immediately, would signal broadcasters and news executives everywhere that partisan maneuverings under the guise of news gathering–especially those that occur late in an election season–would be subject to close Congressional scrutiny.
And, as he says, the First Amendment will forstall “Sanctions against rotten, agenda-driven journalism…”
Apparently, right and left wing talk radio including folks like Rush, Medved, and Savage are not news gatherers or I’d expect Hewitt to include them in his hearings as well. And, if these folks are not news gatherers shouldn’t they exhibit some truth in labeling? You know, non-ficton or pulp fiction, or, maybe, fantasy?
Whoops, Hewitt was talking about hearings on the CBS memo screw up.
If much less power were vested in the executive, legislative and, yes, the judicial branches of US government this issue would be a drop of rain in the ocean. It is long past time to start slicing back.
Update: I see that Walter was tackling this Hewitt hearing idea yesterday and the day before.
Update (9/17): Rick Peitz notes in the comments that Rush does “…does occassionally specify that his program is for entertainment purposes..”

Hands Off!

This entry was posted in Capitalism Constitution Government Law Enforcement Libertarianism on by

Vice Squad notes today that this article suggests that the Sioux Falls, SD city council spent some time dealing with adult behavior:

This insufficient criminalization of voluntary adult activity could not be tolerated by the Sioux Falls City Council, who closed the “loophole” on Monday. I hope that they were a bit more specific than what this article reports: “An ordinance approved Monday night makes it illegal to touch someone in exchange for money.”
Apparently they were a bit more specific as they amended:
…the Revised Ordinances of the City by adding a section prohibiting sexual touching for compensation,…
What’s not clear is exactly what they mean by the words sexual and compensation.1
There is a clue to the first in the news article linked above. At the state level South Dakota plans to clarify their law:
…by characterizing prostitution as any sexual contact that involves touching of female breasts or the genitals of either sex for the purpose of sexual arousal or gratification.
While this seems to limit the definition of sexual touching to a subset of possible erogenous zones this sentence like the first one above begs for additonal clarification as it appears to label all sexual activity of these types as prostitution. I suspect that they really are not planning to target those high schoolers in the backseat of their cars or husbands and wives. But, then again, this is South Dakota…
Oh yes, the above use of the word compensation is unbounded so it could reach a myriad of forms of compenstion, e.g., a job, a dinner, a marriage, mmmm, even, pleasure. Let your imagination run wild, well, not too wild…
1The site that appeared to have their City Code online did not respond.

A Few Questions for the Candidates

This entry was posted in bush Capitalism Constitution Democracy Election 2004 Federal Government kerry Libertarianism on by

Here is Roxanne’s opening:

Dear John Kerry and George “W standing for Women is a lot like Putin standing for Democracy” Bush:
I no longer give a shit about your Vietnam-era exploits. It doesn’t matter to me if you were once a drunk-driving, cocaine-tooting mama’s boy or if you were an effete BMOC.
More importantly, though, go read her questions for the candidates.
You may not agree 100% with the positions implied by the questions but this is the level at which any meaningful campaign should be occurring. That it isn’t confirms more firmly my belief that the whole mess needs to be redone.