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Liberty and Power

  • Jul 6, 2004

    Go Directly to Jail

    by Liberty and Power

    If you'll forgive a little self-promotion, I had a piece in the Chicago Sun Times over the weekend on the problem of overcriminalization. Excerpt:

    Last month, at the Port of Miami, federal agents rousted sleeping vacationer Hope Clarke from her cruise ship cabin, handcuffed her, and hauled her off to jail. Her crime? A year ago, while visiting Yellowstone National Park, Clarke had forgotten to put away her marshma

  • Jul 6, 2004

    Ignorance, or War Propaganda? You Decide.

    by Liberty and Power

    I see that the learned Senator Joseph Lieberman said the following, while talking about the battle against the insurgents in Iraq:

    SEN. LIEBERMAN: These are the very same people who attacked us on September 11.
    Really? I had absolutely no idea. I thought the people who attacked us on September 11 were Al Qaeda terrorists, and that 15 of them were Saudi Arabian -- and that a lot of the Iraqi insurgent
  • Jul 6, 2004

    Jack Webb is Cool

    by Liberty and Power

    Jack Webb is most often remembered as the uptight, law and order cop in"Dragnet," so effectively satirized by Dan Akroyd in the 1980s.

    For this reason, I had to do a double take when I first heard"Pat Novak for Hire," a radio show from the 1940s. The lead character, played by Webb, is a cynical and rather amoral detective on the San Francisco waterfront. His nemesis is a corrupt cop, Inspector Hellman, and his best friend is a dissipate bar room philosopher. The dialogue is hyper-Chan

  • Jul 6, 2004

    Down to One Choice

    by Liberty and Power

    Tyler Cowen and I were kicking around who Andrew Sullivan might vote for in the coming election because of Bush's record on gay rights. Kerry's decision to pick John Edwards should seal the deal for Andrew and any fan of liberty - you MUST vote Libertarian. Edwards is clearly as bad as Gephardt on trade, which to me is the key litmus test issue for libertarians today. Done deal - vote LP.
  • Jul 6, 2004

    From Mild Smacking to Outright Sadism, Torture and War: The Lie of "Well-Intentioned" Violence

    by Liberty and Power

    I had begun this essay with a different title: A New Law for Adults -- Moderate Assaults Now Permitted. Can you imagine for one moment that anyone would assent to a law of the kind suggested by that statement? Think about the howls of justified outrage that would greet a proposal to pass a law stating:"After review of many studies and having consulted the opinions of numerous experts, we have concluded that it is sometimes acceptable for one spouse to smack the other, if he or she does so t

  • Jul 5, 2004

    Was the American Revolution a People’s War?

    by Liberty and Power

    My thanks to David Beito, our esteemed leader, for mentioning my article on “the American Revolution and Iraq,” at The Independent Institute web site. The last of the two articles from which it was partially excerpted appeared today at the HNN web site, entitled,"Was the American Revolution a People’s War?" To read that piece, click here.
  • Jul 4, 2004

    Fourth of July Hemp Festival

    by Liberty and Power

    In certain circles hemp festivals are considered somewhat disreputable, there are people smoking marijuana, dressed outlandishly, and sometimes engaging in incoherent rants on stage. It is argued that these events are bad for the image of the drug law reform movement. My response to someone contending this is to suggest they visit the Holocaust Museum and take a look at pictures of the Jews boarding the trains for the camps. Many are very well dressed conservative looking people. If a society is
  • Jul 4, 2004

    What Mean These Stones?

    by Liberty and Power

    Last Fourth of July I posted the following editorial on my blog. Here it is again:

    Is the Fourth of July -- or Independence Day, as I still like to call it -- a day for celebrating the United States of America, or is it instead a day for celebrating the principles on which the United States was founded? I suspect most Americans would answer:"both." But the nation founded in 1776 parted company a long time ago with t
  • Jul 2, 2004

    Killer Geese and Cute Coyotes

    by Liberty and Power

    One of the unresolved tensions in modern environmentalism is how to both support wildlife unconditionally and deal with the externalities of having nature around. Liberals often can't see the inconsistency of saying they want nature around without thinking about how having nature around is going to create a lot of problems for modern human society. Now I wouldn't be particularly concerned about this if it were just liberals who thought this way, but I'm sorry to say that I fear this"animals at
  • Jul 2, 2004

    Does anybody remember civil liberties?

    by Liberty and Power

    Last weekend I attended an LF conference on punishment and was struck by the fact that at no time during our discussions did we really address the war on terror or Iraq. Perhaps it was the group, which was dominated more by theorists, or the fact that our nation has disturbingly accepted the abuses by the executive branch government in"detaining" all sorts of folks it encounters who don't wear three pieces suits or look suspiciously Semitic.

    Therefore the Supreme Court's decisions in thre

  • Jul 1, 2004

    Rous'd from Icy Trance

    by Liberty and Power

    [cross-posted at Austro-Athenian Empire]

    Contrary to what the news media have been blaring, the most important news story today is not the sordid kangaroo-legal jousting between the deposed Iraqi despot and the puppets of the victorious American despot.

    Of far deeper sign