Liberty and Power

• Apr 30, 2004
  

  White House Interference in State Elections

  by Liberty and Power

  A recent ruling by the General Accounting Office (GAO) will allow the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) to spend taxpayer funds to influence the outcome of state ballot initiatives that seek to reform drug policy. Any attempt to lesson the burden brought upon the citizens of this country by the war on people who use certain kinds of drugs will be opposed with those same citizens own money.

  However, as journalist Dan Forbes points out in a

• Apr 29, 2004
  

  Resolution at USM?

  by Liberty and Power

  Yesterday the appeal hearing took place for Gary Stringer and Frank Glamser, the two tenured professors at the University of Southern Mississippi who were fired on March 5 by President Shelby Thames.

  The hearing was surprisingly anticlimactic. It lasted less than a day, instead of the two days that were allotted for it, and the only actual testi

  

• Apr 29, 2004
  

  More on the Corruption of Rand's Objectivism

  by Liberty and Power

  As a follow-up to my post the other day on the corruption of Ayn Rand's radical legacy, I want to strongly recommend a superb new post by Arthur Silber at"The Light of Reason":"The Self-Appointed Moralizers, and Would-Be Executioners, of Objectivism."
  

• Apr 29, 2004
  

  Gallup Poll: Iraqis Now Support U.S. Withdrawal

  by Liberty and Power

  One of the last fallback positions for defenders of the Iraq occupation is that the"Iraqis want us there." The most recent Gallup Poll of Iraqis indicates otherwise. According to a poll of over 3,000 Iraqis, 57 percent now want U.S. troops to leave. One Iraqi told the pollsters:"I'm not ungrateful that they took away Saddam Hussein. But the job is done. Thank you very much. See you later. Bye-bye."
  

• Apr 29, 2004
  

  Inventing Iraq & How to Buy the Book

  by Liberty and Power

  Of the many books I have read of late on Iraq, I believe the best is Toby Dodge's, Inventing Iraq: The Failure of Nation Building and a History Denied (NY: Columbia UP, 2003).

  Dodge begins with the British efforts late in WWI and continuing into the era of the League of Nations Mandate System afterwards, to create a nation in the area we now call Iraq. It is a story of trial and error, starts and stops. What strikes one, however, is that the Brits learned from their mistakes and

  

• Apr 28, 2004
  

  ILLUSION AND REALITY

  by Liberty and Power

  This Saturday, May 1, sees the first anniversary of President Bush’s declaration that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended.” How much more destructive of life and limb does the fighting in Falluja (where at least 600 people died as a result of recent fighting) and Kura near Najaf (where 64 Shia Muslim militiamen were killed on Monday night alone) have to be before the media are prepared to state that major combat operations in Iraq have now resumed?

  The U.S. gov

  

• Apr 28, 2004
  

  Great Line

  by Liberty and Power

  "Liberals like to equate crime in the streets with 'crime in the suites.' But nobody is unwilling to go outside their homes at night for fear Martha Stewart will sell them some stock."

  —Thomas Sowell

  

• Apr 28, 2004
  

  Crucial Hearing at the University of Southern Mississippi Begins Tomorrow

  by Liberty and Power

  Tomorrow morning, at 9:30 AM Central time, the appeal hearing begins for Frank Glamser and Gary Stringer, the tenured professors who were fired on March 5 by Shelby Thames, the President of the University of Southern Missisippi, for questioning the credentials of Thames' handpicked Vice-President for Research and Development, Angeline Dvorak.

  The hearings will be taking place over the next two days, in a room

• Apr 28, 2004
  

  More on the Emmett Till Murder Investigation

  by Liberty and Power

  Reid McKee, a former Liberty and Power Blogger, who is now at Moteworthy has given his reflections on our investigation of the Emmett Till case at HNN. As he mentions, we both rode together through many of the sites involved in the case in the Mississippi Delta.

  One of them was the abandoned Bryant Store in the small hamlet of Money, Mississippi, the scene of the famous incident

  

• Apr 28, 2004
  

  Of Indians, Iraqis & Sovereignty

  by Liberty and Power

  Given the corruption in the BIA (the Bureau of Indian Affairs) not be be confused with the BIA (Bureau of Insular Affairs, staffed by our military, that used to run the Empire in the Philippines and elsewhere) as described in this article in The Village Voice,, maybe the"Neocon Tribe" can do a little"Nation Building" with Halliburton right here in the Good Old USA. The Lumbees here in NC, the largest tribe east of the M

  

• Apr 28, 2004
  

  You Gotta Serve Somebody

  by Liberty and Power

  I have a piece on the American Spectator online today that focuses on post-9/11 national service schemes. Among them is John McCain's. From the piece:

  Sen. John McCain's vision for national service is somewhat closer to James's"moral equivalent of war." In October 2001 McCain called for a quasi-militarized domestic national service corps as a way to address a"spiritual crisis in our national culture." What Senator McCain e