Liberty and Power

• Jun 28, 2004
  

  Free Saddam Hussein!

  by Liberty and Power

  [cross-posted at Austro-Athenian Empire]
  
  According to Saddam Hussein's lawyer, by officially relinquishing sovereignty over Iraq before relinquishing custody over Hussein, the U.S. has legally committed itself to releasing Hussein. Since Hussein has prisoner-of-war status and has never been charged with a crime, the transfer of sovereignty automatically
  

• Jun 28, 2004
  

  Iraq: Whitewash, Cosmetics and Stinking Toilets

  by Liberty and Power

  Americans have always believed that schooling -- even outside the context of a real liberal education - is, as the Jeffersonian mechanic William Manning, put it over two centuries ago,"The Key of Libberty."

  Much of our"aid" in Iraq has supposedly gone in this direction, to"win the hearts and the minds" of the people by helping the schools.

  A recent piece by Dan Murphy in The Christian Science Monitor,"Quick schoo

  

• Jun 28, 2004
  

  The Dangerous Fallacies of Confederate Multiculturalism

  by Liberty and Power

  A comment by Glen Whitman on the"Liberty and Diversity" conference we both recently attended prompted me to think about the implications of a conversation I had a couple of years ago over coffee. It was with a white professor who belonged to the Coalition for Diversity and Inclusiveness. The Coalition is a group of faculty and staff at the University of Alabama that advocates such"multicultural" crusades as mandatory
  

• Jun 28, 2004
  

  www.libertyandpower.com or www. libertyandpower.org

  by Liberty and Power

  Due to the creative help of Chris Sciabarra, those who want to visit Liberty and Power can now gain access through either www.libertyandpower.com or www.libertyandpower.org.

  The old official url (http://hnn.us/blogs/4.html) will continue to work as a well.

  Thanks Chris!

  

• Jun 27, 2004
  

  Have a Gay Old Time!

  by Liberty and Power

  While people on both sides of the political divide continue to argue about such things as gay marriage, hate crimes legislation, sodomy statutes, and so forth, I think it is important to note that the"Gay Pride" parades during the month of June were born of an essentially libertarian historical moment.

  On June 27, 1969, 35 years ago this very day, there began a series of riots in Greenwich Village, New York City

  

• Jun 26, 2004
  

  Greens Say No to Nader the Y2K Candidate

  by Liberty and Power

  Wendy McElroy's prediction that Nader would be a bust is proving true. The Greens have nominated a nobody instead of Nader thus badly wounding his campaign. The split in the leftist vote gives a potential opening to the Libertarians.....Who did they nominate again?
  

• Jun 26, 2004
  

  More on Nader as 'over-hyped threat' to Dems

  by Liberty and Power

  From the Indy Star,"Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader's name likely will not be on the Indiana ballot in November, his state coordinator said. Dallas Stoner said Nader's Indiana committee has collected only about 9,000 of 30,000 signatures needed to get the candidate's name on general election ballots. The deadline to collect the required number of signatures is noon Wednesday." Nader is not yet on any state ball
  

• Jun 26, 2004
  

  Police 'threat' increases

  by Liberty and Power

  A Michigan court has once again ruled that the police have absolutely no responsibility to"serve and protect" anyone except the local government. (I examined this theme in two articles "Prevent Violence: Disarm the Police" and "The Thin Blue Lie". In the"Thin Blue Lie" I criticzed the police not merely for not pro
  

• Jun 26, 2004
  

  Why They Hate Us

  by Liberty and Power

  “The focused and lethal threat posed to U.S. national security arises not from Muslims being offended by what America is, but rather from their plausible perception that the things they most love and value—God, Islam, their brethren and Muslim lands—are being attacked by America.”

  That’s what an anonymous senior CIA analyst writes in his newly published book,

• Jun 25, 2004
  

  The University of Southern Mississippi: The Tyrant Is Badly Wounded

  by Liberty and Power

  Over a month ago, I last reported on the situation at the University of Southern Mississippi. It didn't look too good then, for the state’s Institution of Higher Learning Board of Trustees, after chewing Shelby Thames out in a long, closed meeting, ended up publicly reaffirming that he would remain as President of USM. While so many professors were expected to be out of town or preoccupied with research during the summer, the opportu

  

• Jun 25, 2004
  

  Demolish the Duopoly

  by Liberty and Power

  [cross-posted at Austro-Athenian Empire]
  
  OpenDebates.org is hosting an online petition to include third-party candidates in the presidential debates, as well as to make the debates less like press conferences and more like
  

• Jun 25, 2004
  

  It's Happy Hour in America

  by Liberty and Power

  I really don't know about this new ad from CREEP. The dollop of Reaganite optimism, coming after interspersed images of a raving Al Gore, Hitler, Dick Gephardt and Michael Moore is jarring. And I object to the slogan,"this is not the time for pessimism and rage." Why not? When's a good time?

  What's with this fascination with optimism anyway? It's dangerous."As the British psychologist Richard P. Bentall

• Jun 24, 2004
  

  John W. Dean's Book on Harding

  by Liberty and Power

  How did I miss this? John W. Dean of Watergate fame had a book this year on Warren G. Harding. It is a short but generallly effective defense of Harding. It is a part of a Times Books presidential series edited by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. no less! Dean begins,"Warren G. Harding is best known as America's worst president. A compelling case can be made, however, that to reach such a judgment one must ignore much of the relevant
  

• Jun 24, 2004
  

  Nader goes bust?

  by Liberty and Power

  In what could be a disagreement with Pat Lynch's evaluation, I think Ralph Nader is likely to be the Y2K of the upcoming election. That's the latest wisdom on how the much-ballyhooed Nader will effect the November elections: namely, not at all. So many people are abandoning him that there is now a Repentant Nader Voter site. As an on-site photo indicates, the group's bumper sticker consists of an old"Unrepentant Nader Voter" one with a piece of
  

• Jun 24, 2004
  

  Life and Satire Inch Closer

  by Liberty and Power

  Sadly, just one of the stories below is parody. Without clicking, can you guess which one it is?

  1) The Beastie Boys install a virus that damages the computers of fans who try to rip MP3s from their new CD.

  2) RIAA sues vehicle owners who share radio music with passengers.

  3) Orin

  

• Jun 24, 2004
  

  Relative Prices of Lobbying and Fundraising

  by Liberty and Power

  (Crossposted at SCSU Scholars.)

  According to Michael Tinkler, the British marquee universities have caught on to teaching-for-profit very late in the game.

  They are all busy recruiting American students for one year degrees - a Masters of Studies, at Oxford. Oxford, you see, has decided to move from its current position of appro

  

• Jun 24, 2004
  

  Enough with the Nadar Love Already......

  by Liberty and Power

  I got into a huge argument with a friend in the UK last week about media bias. I claimed that while conservative howling over a thoroughly left-wing biased might be overstated, it was obvious that most major news outlets are dominated by liberal leaning reporters. Inevitably that makes objectivity impossible. He disagreed based some research he's done on news content, but we both agreed that a much bigger problem is that reporters aren't trained to know much about the stories that must write.
  

• Jun 23, 2004
  

  Our New Hero?

  by Liberty and Power

  Last year a friend confided to me that a prominent WSJ reporter had been told by then candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger that he was essentially a closet libertarian who could help to lead the national Republican party towards our side. I was, and still remain, skeptical about the Terminator, but this NYT piece about Governor Arnold certainly peaks my interest. Social moderate, fiscal conservative, and already at odds with
  

• Jun 23, 2004
  

  Wild Wild West

  by Liberty and Power

  

  Like Radley, I'm a big fan of HBO's Deadwood. If you feel the same, you may enjoy this link, which has some information on the historical characters the show's based on, like Calamity Jane, above. Turns out Al Swearengen was a real guy, an

  

• Jun 23, 2004
  

  Austro-Athenian Space Opera

  by Liberty and Power

  [cross-posted at Austro-Athenian Empire]
  
  I've made two discoveries that I highly recommend.
  
  One is a website called onelook.com/reverse-dictionary.shtml. On this site one can type in a definition and get a list of all the words that definition might fit -- a task it seems amazingly good at.
  
  The other is a libertarian science-fiction trilogy by John C.