Scaring Women...

...and men.

Former First Lady Laura Bush has acknowledged that during the 2012 election cycle, there were a few Republican candidates that scared women.

I have some bad news for Mrs. Bush, the scary behavior isn't limited to a few candidates.

It’s not the contraception, everybody thinks it’s about contraception, but what this court case said was young people have the right to engage in sex outside of marriage. Society never gave young people that right, functioning societies don’t do that, they stop it, they punish it, they corral people, they shame people, they do whatever. The institution for the expression of sexuality is marriage and all societies always shepherded young people there, what the Supreme Court said was forget that shepherding, you can’t block that, that’s not to be done.

Folks seeking to ban sex outside of marriage are pretty scary too.  It's a pity that the GOP embraces such idiocy rather than expelling it.  Having one viable political party would really be nice for a change.

No, You Can't Watch

In the news recently comes a story about the latest technological revolution in the service of individual liberty.  A cryptographic dream...or nightmare...depending on your perspective.

Back in October, the startup tech firm Silent Circle ruffled governments’ feathers with a “surveillance-proof” smartphone app to allow people to make secure phone calls and send texts easily. Now, the company is pushing things even further—with a groundbreaking encrypted data transfer app that will enable people to send files securely from a smartphone or tablet at the touch of a button. (For now, it’s just being released for iPhones and iPads, though Android versions should come soon.) That means photographs, videos, spreadsheets, you name it—sent scrambled from one person to another in a matter of seconds.

...

If governments don’t come round, though, Silent Circle’s solution is simple: The team will close up shop and move to a jurisdiction that won’t try to force them to comply with surveillance.

“We feel that every citizen has a right to communicate,” Janke says, “the right to send data without the fear of it being grabbed out of the air and used by criminals, stored by governments, and aggregated by companies that sell it.”

 How cool is that?  Very cool!  Anything that limits the intrusion of government in our private lives should be considered a step forward for everyone.

Arming 12 Year Olds

In the news this past week was the story of a 12 year old girl that shot an intruder to her home in self defense.

A day off for fall break was anything but relaxing for a 12-year old Bryan County girl, when an intruder broke into her home on Michael Avenue.

Deputies say, the girl was home alone when a man she'd never seen before, rang the front doorbell. They say when no one answered the door, the man went around to the back of the house and kicked a door open. That's when authorities say, the girl grabbed a gun and hid in a bathroom closet.

The right person came out on top in this instance.  One should shudder at the possibilities after an grown man gets hold of an unarmed 12 year old girl.

While no one should wish for such a young girl to find herself in such a position, everyone should be glad that she was able to fend off her attacker.

[a day or so later]

Call this another one where a few moments of reflection would be wise.

I'm not suggesting that we arm 12 year olds.  I also wonder about parents that leave guns loose where 12 year olds can find them.  I believe the phrase "it just ain't right" was invented for such things.

However, we don't know....

• the girl
• her family (were they among the working poor?  did they spend the babysitting money on drugs?)
• the neighborhood where they live (leaving the home may not have been a good option)
• their access to decent childcare/supervision ($3 an hour for childcare is a killer if you only make $11 an hour.
• if something unusual happened where she was left alone (she expect to be met by an adult and wasn't)
• if she was taught firearms safety (that's good parenting)
• if she was taught firearms usage (also good parenting)
• if her folks were ordinary, law abiding citizens
• if her folks were drug dealers
• or anything else about the circumstances

My sole point is to indicate that guns are used for legitimate self defense purposes.  More frequently than the ideologues that want to curtail gun rights will admit.  Absent evidence that this little girl was a criminal, this was such a legitimate self defense use.

Infuriating Muslims

Recent news suggests that while terrorist jihadis are a problem, they are not the only problem.  Perhaps they are not the biggest problem.

While China remains a communist nation, that government does not practice the brutal form of communism used by Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, Castro, and similarly "enlightened intellectuals".  Yet those government apparatchiks still cling to the notion that individual belief is a suitable subject for government interference and direction.

Muslims living in China's western provinces have long been brutalized by China's government despite being overwhelmingly peaceful.  While they cling to the idea of an independent state, they do not act on this belief in any meaningful way.

But Beijing insists that there can be but one thought on this subject; subservience and acceptance of China's rule.  Their way of dealing with peaceful Muslims?

They burn the Muslim's mosque to the ground.  As with the Buddhists of Tibet, the Muslims of the western reaches of China have an absolute right of conscience; to believe in their religion without interference from the state.  The reaction of those Muslims was predictable and justified.

While an American government indebted to the Chinese government may find it tough to criticize such savagery, I do not. Communism....a slightly less brutal form of communism....is still alive in the world and a threat to any who profess a love of individual liberty.

News Flash - West Point Still Stands...

...even after a lesbian couple gets married there.  Congratulations to the newlyweds!

The U.S. Military Academy's Cadet Chapel at West Point hosted its first same-sex marriage Saturday
Penelope Gnesin and Brenda Sue Fulton, a West Point graduate, exchanged vows in the regal church in a ceremony conducted by a senior Army chaplain.

The ceremony comes a little more than a year after President Obama ended the military policy banning openly gay people from serving.

The two have been together for 17 years. They had a civil commitment ceremony that didn't carry any legal force in 1999 but had longed to formally tie the knot.

The couple live in New Jersey and would have preferred to have the wedding there, but the state doesn't allow gay marriage.

"We just couldn't wait any longer," Fulton said.

Monkeying Around

Robb Allen makes a most apt analogy.

His basic point is one I try to make frequently;  that whatever authority you grant one party to do things for you, the other party will eventually be in power and use that same power to do things against you.  One of my greatest fears in the War on Terror is that successive exchanges of majority positions will expand government authority, diminish individual liberty, and leave us less safe.  That has been the cycle with respect to the War on Drugs and the War on Poverty.

I see little reason to expect to be disappointed this time around.

Take a look at Robb's post.  It's worth the five minutes it will take.

Why We Fight

And why we should not leave the war until it is won.

Insurgents beheaded 17 civilians in a Taliban-controlled area of southern Afghanistan, apparently because they attended a dance party that flouted the extreme brand of Islam embraced by the militants, officials said Monday.

...

The victims were part of a large group that had gathered late Sunday in Helmand province's Musa Qala district for a celebration involving music and dancing, said district government chief Neyamatullah Khan. He said the Taliban slaughtered them to show their disapproval of the event.

The last time we prematurely abandoned as war, over two million innocent civilians were slaughtered in southeast Asia by communists.  How many innocent Afghans, Persians, and Arabs will die if we abandon the Middle East to intolerant Islamic extremists that seek to rule that part of the world?

Aren't those innocent civilians worth saving?  Or are we a "I've got mine, Jack" nation when it comes to individual freedom?

Corporations Are Not People

While the current driving force behind the desire to make corporations not the legal equivalent as a real person [is the concern over political contributions], there are other issues in play as well.

A person has a finite number of years of life to spend.  So investing is based on a much shorter horizon.  Companies can last for centuries and make investing decisions based on a completely different perspective.

As a result, fractions of a penny have more long term power for companies than for people.

Then we have the stilted political playing field where a company can massage the law to their advantage over time.  A company isn't trying to feed a growing family, or save for a retirement.  In contrast, people have other uses for the money they earn.  Political campaign contributions are not high on the priority list of real people.

Another fiscal difference is the way debts are handled.  If a company goes under, then the assets are sold and someone loses money.  The people in charge of that failure are free to move on to another venture without any person fiscal repercussions.  When a person goes under, they are hounded into bankruptcy and are thereafter victimized with usurious interest rates for decades.

Needless to say, I have some sympathy with the idea that when the "rights" of corporations (and other legal entities like labor unions, churches, veterans groups, etc.) are in conflict with those of real people, the real people should win.  But I am not sure of the best way to solve the problem.  One option is the "People's Rights Amendment":

Section 1. We the people who ordain and establish this Constitution intend the rights protected by this Constitution to be the rights of natural persons.

Section 2. People, person, or persons as used in this Constitution does not include corporations, limited liability companies or other corporate entities established by the laws of any state, the United States, or any foreign state, and such corporate entities are subject to such regulation as the people, through their elected state and federal representatives, deem reasonable and are otherwise consistent with the powers of Congress and the States under this Constitution.

Section 3. Nothing contained herein shall be construed to limit the people’s rights of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, free exercise of religion, and such other rights of the people, which rights are inalienable.

The Volokh Conspiracy suggests that this may not have all of the great benefits that its' supporters envision.  I think they are right.

But that means that we still have a problem in need of a practical solution.  One that places all legal entities in a secondary position when it comes to their "rights" relative to the rights of real, live, oxygen-breathing people.

Why We Fight

Today in Afghanistan, young women can learn to box.

Have their photo taken.  Sadly, reflections of Afghan women appear to be the dominant photographic mode.  This is an improvement of sorts, I suppose.

Be rescued from life threatening living conditions...caused by husbands and their families, sadly enough.

Learn to play music!

And here is the price we pay for their liberation.

There is a price for freedom.  When we free others from bondage, we ensure freedom for ourselves.

Let us be grateful for their service and for the freedom they bring the world.


The Taliban created the conditions where a woman could not be photographed without her husband or father's consent.  Where no woman would have learned boxing....or reading or writing or mathematics.  Where women were considered property on par with livestock and often treated with less consideration than livestock with the approval of the former government.  Where music was banned.

Let us not abandon those who teeter on the edge of being the victims of oppression before their oppressors have accepted liberty as the legitimate objective of humanity.
All the photos may be viewed here.

As Seen On Instapundit

Who saw it first on Facebook:

“The social contract exists so that everyone doesn’t have to squat in the dust holding a spear to protect his woman and his meat all day every day. It does not exist so that the government can take your spear, your meat, and your woman because it knows better what to do with them.”

Indeed.

Voter ID Is A Good Requirement

So says Artur Davis, former US Representative from Alabama:

The truth is that the most aggressive contemporary voter suppression in the African American community, at least in Alabama, is the wholesale manufacture of ballots, at the polls and absentee, in parts of the Black Belt.

Voting the names of the dead, and the nonexistent, and the too-mentally-impaired to function, cancels out the votes of citizens who are exercising their rights -- that's suppression by any light. If you doubt it exists, I don't; I've heard the peddlers of these ballots brag about it, I've been asked to provide the funds for it, and I am confident it has changed at least a few close local election results.

...

The case for voter ID, however, is a good one, and it ought to make politics a little cleaner and the process of conducting elections much fairer. I wish I'd gotten it right the first time.

Keep the above in mind when we go to the polls a year from today.  There are professional vote fraud agents in the land that sell their services for politics and profit.  And they are working to steal your vote.

h/t to Instapundit

Predictable Outcome Only Because It Has Been Predicted

Fans of "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand are doubtlessly familiar with the process that led to a government that would attempt such a thing.  They are also familiar with the most likely result.

This week alone has seen a ratings downgrade for Spain as well as a threat by agencies to review France's AAA status -- and the markets have taken notice. Once again, it would seem, ratings agencies are making things difficult for European countries.

Now, the European Union is considering doing something about it.


European Internal Market Commissioner Michel Barnier is considering a move to ban the agencies from publishing outlook reports on EU countries entangled in a crisis, according to a report in Thursday's issue of the Financial Times Deutschland newspaper.

Of course, that isn't good enough.  The EU also wants to put ratings agencies in a "no-win" position by:

The internal market commissioner appears to be taking a tough stance against the agencies. He is also pushing the 27 EU member states to take steps to ensure that investors can pursue civil action against agencies for "deficient ratings." He is also calling for addition ratings requirements for complexly structured financial products and steps that would create greater competition among ratings agencies.

Investors will find a place to invest.  If they cannot rely on ratings information for EU governments, then they will simply take their money elsewhere.  Given the need for financing and re-financing of government debt, this lack of cash will have predictable results.

Either the governments will start printing fiat Euros and thus begin a cycle of high inflation.  Or the governments will discover that dog catchers do not require 42 levels of supervision and a 1300 page handbook to catch dogs and cut their budgets accordingly.  Historically, the latter option has been the most effective solution as well as the most difficult to implement.

Ms. Rand provided the blueprint for the result of the former option.

Ten Years On...

I am not usually taken with overly passionate remembrances.  I participate in a few only due to my membership in a veteran's organization; the VFW.  While I have been known to 'wave the bloody shirt' infrequently, I am not terribly fascinated with such activities.

Yet here we are; ten years after.

Are You Kidding Me?

A couple of caveats before we proceed. 

First, I am overweight.  I'm working on it, but things are what they are.  If this story makes me a hypocrite, then so be it.

Second, I ride a motorcycle....with all of the additional risks that entails.  I always wear a helmet even though I support efforts to repeal our helmet laws so that others can make a different choice.

Third, I generally believe in leaving people alone to make decisions about how to run their lives.  I'd prefer not to be judged incapable of running my own life, so I try not to judge the capacity of others to run their lives.

Fourth, I long for the day when robotic implants are as common as candy corn.  If that was the case today, then my 1080p HD eyeball camera could have taken a snap shot of this guy that was travelling in the opposite direction across a bridge.  And you would be able to see what I saw.  I probably would have uploaded the picture to Facebook while waiting for the traffic light to turn green.

This one is hard to believe.

There I was riding my bike across a two lane bridge today.  Traffic was backed up and I was stopped in the middle of the span.  But traffic was moving well in the other direction.

Along comes this guy headed in the other direction.  For the moment, why don't we call him "Guy".

Guy weighs an easy 300 lbs.  He may weigh closer to 350, but it was hard to know.  And it was pretty obvious that he didn't get that heavy going to the gym.

Guy was riding the sort of little scooter that has become popular due to recent gas price increases.  I'm pretty sure that he weighed more than his scooter.

Here in Michigan, scooter riders are not required to wear a helmet.  So he wasn't.  He also only had a thin, Hawaiian style shirt.  No coat.  He did have some awesome glasses, so at least his eyes were covered.

Guy has trouble breathing.  At least, I suspect that he carries some sort of air/oxygen tank with him.  He had one of those flexible plastic tubes running from between his legs, up over each ear, and around to his nose.  So this isn't a wild inference on my part.

Assuming he was connected to his tank, one might reasonably wonder about the consequences of his tank sliding out from between his feet while he is motoring along.  Alternatively, the tank might have been tied tightly to the scooter which opens up the question of what happens if he gets into an accident where is bike goes one direction and his body goes another.

The cherry on top of this modest vignette?

The cigarette dangling from his lips as his scooter went putt-putting on by!!

Why Economic Freedom Matters

And yes...I did see who sponsored the video.  That does nothing to undermine the argument being made.

News From Muslim Lands

War?  Infidels?  Beating up women for driving cars?

Nope.

This time the news, via the WaPo's Jennifer Rubin, is of a proposal from the King of Morocco that his country adopt a new constitution.  One that would grant far greater authority to elected officeholders, create a judiciary, enshrine rights for women and minorities, and establish the King of Morocco as the guarantor of the right of people of all faiths to worship freely.

On Friday Bashar al-Assad was slaughtering his own people. Iran continued to hold two Americans in prison. Moammar Gaddafi remained in power while the House of Representatives and President Obama bickered about the War Powers Act. And in Morocco a new “landmark” constitution guaranteeing equality for women, empowering an elected parliament and chief executive, and mandating an independent judiciary was rolled out. It’s a measure of just how much the squeaky wheel dominates the media and the U.S. government that there was virtually no U.S. coverage of the historic event, and that as of Sunday night the State Department had not issued a statement.

...

The constitution and the speech explode several myths: diversity isn’t possible in a Muslim country; tribal and ethnic divisions make a nation state problematic if not ungovernable; Islam and the secular rule of law are incompatible; and human rights will inevitably be sacrificed if democratic reforms expand in a Muslim country.

 Why our nation's leaders have not seen fit to recognize this historic proposal is a mystery.

Would You Take A Flag To A Pawn Shop?

link

Burn That Qu'ran - Iranian Edition

I think I could come to like these guys. 

The biggest difference between these guys and the nutjob in Florida that did the same thing?  The nutjob lives in a free country where free speech is prized more highly than religious sensitivities.  As a result, the likelihood that he will ever pay anything more than a modest "price" for his "offense is quite low.

Conversely, the two guys in the video face a variety of pretty horrific deaths if their identities ever become know.  They are courageous heroes in every sense.

Neal Stephenson Quotes

Courtesy of Instapundit comes this little historical gem:

The twentieth century was one in which limits on state power were removed in order to let the intellectuals run with the ball, and they screwed everything up and turned the century into an abattoir. . . . We Americans are the only ones who didn’t get creamed at some point during all of this. We are free and prosperous because we have inherited political and value systems fabricated by a particular set of eighteenth-century intellectuals who happened to get it right. But we have lost touch with those intellectuals.

There are folks that claim that anti-intellectualism is all the rage in America.  I think it sort of depends of what one is calling "intellectual" as there are some ideas that can be dressed up in as many pretty university degrees as you like and they still won't be more than the rhetorical equivalent of pig in poop.

Curiousity about Mr. Stephenson led to this quote:

"The difference between stupid and intelligent people -- and this is true whether or not they are well-educated -- is that intelligent people can handle subtlety. They are not baffled by ambigous or even contradictory situations -- in fact, they expect them and are apt to become suspicious when things seem overly straightforward."

Examples are left to the student as an exercise.....

Let Him Keep It - He's Finally Earned It

I've been hearing a rising chorus of voices urging....demanding....that Mr. Obama return his Nobel Peace Prize.

I think he should keep it.  He has finally earned it.

There was no peace for the Libyans that were being oppressed by Gaddafi's dictatorial regime.  When they sought to use their individual human right to protest their oppression, a right supposedly guaranteed by the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that regime took what little 'peace' those Libyans had when it took their lives.

By ordering the American armed forces to enter into that conflict, Mr. Obama has moved to secure peace for the defenseless and an opportunity for a better life for any Libyan that did not enjoy Col. Gaddafi's favor.  No person should ever be forced to seek succor via acts of obeisance and obedience to their government.

Yet that was the reality in Libya last week.  Who knows what next week will hold.

But this week Mr. Obama has led this nation to take a stand against oppression.

As we did at Normandy.

As we did at Osan.

As we did at Hue and in the Mekong.

As we did in El Salvador


As we did in Beirut.

As we did on Grenada.


As we did in Panama.

As we did in Kuwait.

As we did in Somalia

And...yes...as we did on the streets of Baghdad and Kabul.

While our tactics have been on rare occasions unworthy, our purpose remains clear.

Freedom for all that desire that opportunity.

Let Mr. Obama keep his Nobel.  And perhaps the Nobel committee could work on awarding one to Mr. Bush for his efforts to extend true peace to those who had none.