January 24, 2005

New Feature At The Price of Liberty
BEWARE - The Idiot Zone
Brought to you by Nathan Barton

IDIOT Zone sightings. (Collected from friends, e-mails, and articles)

IDIOTS In The Neighborhood: I live in a semi-rural area. We recently had a new neighbor call the local township administrative office to request the removal of the Deer Crossing sign on our road. The reason: "Too many deer were being hit by cars" and he didn't want them to cross there anymore.

IDIOTS In The Airport: A National Guard soldier on security duty got in trouble, when after handing his M-16 (and magazines loaded with ammo) to the screener and walking through the metal detector, he was found to have forgotten his pocket knife in his BDU jacket pocket. (Read the rest here) And send us your IDIOT sightings too.

Bush begins second term
By Nathan A. Barton © 2004

Well, what can I say? I didn’t watch the Inauguration, I didn’t listen to any commentary on it for the last two days, I didn’t go to any parties, or watch any balls or any parades. It wasn’t that I was protesting it - I have work, and am fighting a serious illness/injury, and I had neither time nor desire to see or hear it.

I thought it was foolish to spend 40 million dollars on it (the private donations, per estimates), but then I think that a couple of billion dollars are spent foolishly every day, starting with buying lottery tickets, tobacco products, and alcohol products and going from there to sports tickets, most video games, tapes, and disks, and a lot of other stuff. But I defend the right of people to spend their money foolishly, and am not hypocritical enough to condemn just one kind of foolish spending. (Read the rest here)

Libertarian Commentary on The News
By Nathan A. Barton © 2004

Freedom is most easily lost one piece at a time, just as frogs are boiled one degree at a time. Did the temperature go UP or DOWN this week? See below, but remember, it’s MY opinion, not necessarily that of TPoL, RRND, FND, or anyone else.

Protecting our personal freedom and information
In An Age Of Security, Firm Mines Wealth Of Personal Data
Washington Post (use tonmegub@washingtonpost.com, password: info - or go to www.bugmenot.com)
ChoicePoint and other private companies increasingly occupy a special place in homeland security and crime-fighting efforts, in part because they can compile information and use it in ways government officials sometimes cannot because of privacy and information laws. …Activists for civil liberties and privacy, and some lawmakers, say current laws are inadequate to ensure that businesses and government agencies do not abuse the growing power to examine the activities of criminals and the innocent alike.

Well, I’m starting with this one, although it is a few days old, because of the serious nature of this news: many businesses have no problem with being used by government to tyrannize and control its citizens, and in fact, the government market is desirable to many firms. Corporate thugs feed data to government thugs, bypassing the constitutional and other limits on government, and thus make a mockery of the constitutional protections on our liberties. Ask your state legislators to make it a crime for ANY person or government agency to contract to do something that would be illegal for a government agency to do directly, and then go to your state’s delegation in Congress and do the same thing. No, this isn’t the total solution, but it is a start. Make your friends and family aware of what is happening. Get them involved. (Read the rest of the Commentary here)

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