June 13, 2005

Betrayal of Women - VAWA 2005
By Trudy W. Schuett

In Congress today, legislators of both parties from many states are congratulating themselves and each other, feeling good about themselves and their concern for battered women.

They are wrong. They are badly misinformed and misguided.

VAWA 2005 cannot help women much, if at all. Worse, it belittles their anguish, ignores their needs and insults their intelligence. In many cases, it makes a bad situation so much worse, it's a wonder this kind of approach has lasted a full decade, since originally being signed into law in 1994. At the heart of VAWA is the mistaken presumption that by removing women from their homes, jailing their husbands and indoctrinating their children, this will have a positive impact on intimate partner abuse. (Read the rest here)

Churches Promote The Worst Forms Of Tyranny
By Doug Newman

The Supreme Court’s recent ruling in the case of Gonzales v. Raich, asserting the supremacy of federal laws prohibiting the use of medicinal marijuana over state laws allowing such use, was reprehensible for a whole variety of reasons. (1) While I will not go into all of them here – indeed, I could write a book on the subject – I want to focus on the Christian response.

Let me distinguish between Christianity – i.e. what the Bible teaches – and churchianity – i.e. what happens in all too many contemporary churches.

Churchianity will respond to this decision in two ways: silence and endorsement. (Read the rest here)

Book Review: Out of the Gray Zone
By Claire Wolfe and Aaron Zelman
Susan Callaway, Editor

Do you ever turn the last page of a book, shocked to find that the story stops there? Not that the story is finished, of course, but that it just ends. Out of the Gray Zone is certainly one that ends suddenly in mid stride, making you wish it was the first of a large series. We can hope, I suppose, but Claire Wolfe and Aaron Zelman are not known for producing such a series, so we'll have to be content to use our imaginations to take this story forward into the future.

And what a future! If you hate all the cameras, ID nonsense and petty rules about each breath you take, you are in for a gut wrenching time in the Gray Zone. The nanny state has gone completely insane and our fears about being watched every second while drugged into compliance see the logical outcome here. In a population that is pretty much docile and overwhelmed with the power of the state, however, there is still a remnant that will not bend the knee or become one with their oppressors. (Read the rest here)

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Libertarian Commentary on The News
By Nathan A. Barton © 2005

Libertarian ideas need to be spread more, and the daily news offers each of us the change to plant some of those ideas with our friends and neighbors. Every time we find a stupid government trick or some example of tyranny by public OR private thugs, we can say, You know, wont it be nice one of these days when: and insert some idea about the benefits and advantage to letting people live their own lives, make their own decisions, and be responsible for their own actions. At least, I think so, and I kinda hope everyone associated with TPoL does, too.

World-Islamic War

U.S. Muslims desecrate American flag
Video shows group on street corner declaring Islamic dominance
WorldNetDaily.com
A group of American Muslims produced a video that shows its members on a city street corner declaring Islam's dominance over America as they tread on a U.S. flag and then rip it apart. In the video, released by the New York-based Islamic Thinkers Society, one of the Muslims is shown placing a sign on the flag that says, "Oh Muslims! Do you know your enemy? Isn't it obvious?" The group, tied to the British jihadist organization Al-Muhajiroun, said the demonstration was "in response to the desecration of the holy Quran by the Crusaders & Zionists at Guantanamo Bay," an allegation based on a retracted Newsweek story.

Yeah, kind of blatant, isn't it? It is things like this that make you realize that there may be a pit of truth in stories like the five (or more) arrests of Jihadists in California, many of them American citizens. Is this a reason to attack and condemn ALL Americans of Arab descent, or all Muslims? No, of course not, even if that is the natural human reaction. But many Americans who were or whose parents or grandparents were Arabs are just as much lovers of liberty as most other Americans. Many escaped from tyranny in their original homelands just as Americans of German, Russian, Italian, Chinese, Viet, or British ancestry did. And many people who consider themselves Muslim are no more faithful practicing Muslims than Teddy Kennedy is a Roman Catholic. (Read the rest here)

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