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Liberty and Power

  • Jun 20, 2007

    Criminalizing the Classroom—Courtesy of Mayor Giuliani

    by Liberty and Power

    "Since the September 1998 takeover of school safety in New York City public schools by the NYPD [New York Police Department, an initiative promoted by Rudolph Giuliani when he was mayor of New York,] the number of police personnel in schools has spiked dramatically. Before the takeover, the school safety division employed 3,200 school safety personnel. By the start of the 2005-2006 school year, the number of officers had increased by over 50 percent to 4,625 SSAs. In addition to the unarmed S
  • Jun 19, 2007

    Did Yale's Skull & Bones Society Steal Geronimo's Skull and Bones?

    by Liberty and Power

    Legend has it that Yale University's ultrasecret Skull and Bones society swiped the remains of American Indian leader Geronimo nearly a century ago from an Army outpost in Oklahoma.

    Now, Geronimo's great-grandson wants the remains returned....

    President Bush and his father, former President George H.W. Bush, both attended Yale and joined the elite club. Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004, is also a Bonesman, as are many other m
  • Jun 19, 2007

    Free the New Youth 4!

    by Liberty and Power

    A new blog has been started with the objective of freeing four young Chinese imprisoned for exercising their natural rights to free speech and assembly."Free the New Youth 4!" can be found here. Here's the post explaining the blog:

    On May 28, 2003, Jin Haike (靳海科), Xu Wei (徐伟), Yang Zili (

  • Jun 18, 2007

    The Decline of the Right to Roam

    by Liberty and Power

    As someone who grew up in the 1960s (very much a high-crime era) in the Minneapolis suburbs, I routinely exercised the right to roam on weekends and during holidays. Long before we were ten, my friends and I took long unsupervised hikes onto railway tracks, factory sites, and cemeteries. Along the way, we rolled down steep hills in cardboard boxes, climbed into storm drains, and floated on make-shift r

  • Jun 16, 2007

    Psychologists in the Service of the State, and A Skeptical Look at Peer Review

    by Liberty and Power

    Torture. Alexander Cockburn describes how psychologists have advised on torture.

    "In 2002 the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff concluded that 'interrogation methods used were no longer effective in obtaining useful information from some detainees' and, as the Inspector General's report details, 'recommended that the Federal Bureau of Investigation Behavioral Science Unit, the Army's Behavioral Science Consultation Tea
  • Jun 16, 2007

    Popery Unleashed

    by Liberty and Power

    [cross-posted at Austro-Athenian Empire]

    Tom Knapp’s remark yesterday that “[t]he big problem with [Ayn] Rand was that over time she made it a point to isolate herself from anyone and everyone who demonstrated the kind of character that might lead them to run up the bullshit flag on her when necessary” reminded me of a critical rem

  • Jun 14, 2007

    "unmixed and unaccountable evil"

    by Liberty and Power

    Deeply controversial in the 19th century for its honest treatment of the subjects of divorce, unwed pregnancy, and class politics - North American Review called it"A wild phantasmagoria of unmixed and unaccountable evil" - The Magic Goblet was nonetheless one of Emilie Flygare-Carlén's most popular works. Flygare-Carlén, once widely read and highly regarded both in her native Sweden and across the English-speaking world, often considered the first professional Swedish novelist and
  • Jun 14, 2007

    Big Brother Wants To Read Your Email

    by Liberty and Power

    I'm pleased and proud that a short piece I wrote for The Freeman a couple years back has been selected by FEE for today's"Timely Classic." You can judge for yourself whether it's classic, but it's definitely timely. Well, sort of: it's from 1999, so the references to the Clinton administration aren't timely, but the prinicples at stake are:
  • Jun 13, 2007

    5th Sentence Meme II

    by Liberty and Power

    From Anthony Gregory

    Grab the nearest book.

    1. Open it to page 161.
    2. Find the fifth full sentence.
    3. Post the text of the sentence along with these instructions.

    Don't search around looking for the coolest book you can find. Do what's actually next to you.

    My nearest book was Drugs in America: A Documentary History
    edited by David F. Musto, M.D.
    "Alcohol Explored" Howard W. Haggard and E.M. Jel

  • Jun 13, 2007

    "And Blair has the gall to call the press cynical"

    by Liberty and Power

    So concludes Simon Jenkins in a searing commentary on the most recent scandal to envelop Tony Blair's administration during his final days in office. Forget the sale of life peerages to raise millions for Labour Party funds. This colossal bribery involved more than a billion pounds. That's serious money even for a Saudi prince.
  • Jun 12, 2007

    5th Sentence Meme

    by Liberty and Power

    From BK Marcus:

    Grab the nearest book.

    1. Open it to page 161.
    2. Find the fifth full sentence.
    3. Post the text of the sentence along with these instructions.

    Don't search around looking for the coolest book you can find. Do what's actually next to you.


    My nearest book was Thomas Szasz's The Lexicon of Lunacy: Metaphoric Malady, Mo
  • Jun 12, 2007

    Speaking up for Norman Finkelstein

    by Liberty and Power

    The Norman Finkelstein I heard speak at Stanford in January presented a very measured argument for the withdrawal of Israel to its pre-1967 boundaries. His informed and eloquent talk was very well received. He engaged the audience with his honesty and wit.

    I invite our readers to consider the testimony of the historian Raul Hilberg, one of the best-known and most distinguished of Holocaust historians. His three-volume, 1,273-page The Destruction of the European Jews is regarded as