August 19, 2005

NH State Trooper Harasses the Wrong Little Lady
"Firearms and Freedom", the newsletter of Gun
Owners of New Hampshire

Dear Lt. Brown:

On June 16, 2005, at approximately 11-12 PM, I was walking on Warren Street past St. Paul's School as I have for ten years. I have lived on Warren Street since 1995 and regularly have run and walked Warren Street in that area.

While walking along, dressed in a pair of black stretch pants and a bright tan pullover, I noticed a vehicle coming toward me. I tend to walk heading into traffic and I could clearly see that the vehicle was going to pull over by the roadside, so I simply skirted the vehicle as it pulled over and continued walking. After the vehicle had pulled over, I happened to notice the reflection of its lights and realized that it was a police car, as the blue lights had been activated.

However, because I was simply walking and the trooper had no reason to detain me, I didn't pay attention to the car. I had an MP3 player with earphones in my ears and was listening to music. However, at some point I became aware of someone saying "State Police. Stop." (Read the rest here)

Evolution or Intelligent Design? None of the Government’s Business
by Sheldon Richman

You’d think that with all he has to do — including fighting the global struggle against violent extremism, or whatever they’re calling it this week — President Bush would be too busy to make the really big decisions: such as what ought to be taught in science class. But our renaissance man of a president is apparently up to the task. Does he write poetry after dinner and paint before breakfast?

When asked recently if the view known as “intelligent design” should be taught alongside Darwinian evolution, President Bush said, “I felt like both sides ought to be properly taught. I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought. You’re asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes.”

But this is not an abstract question about the open marketplace of ideas. It is a concrete question about the science curriculum in the government’s schools. If Bush can’t see those essential details, then maybe he is too busy to be meddling in the issue. (Read the rest here)

VAWA Reauthorization: Billions for battered women, not a penny for battered men!
by Mark B. Rosenthal

For thirty years now, researchers have known that wives kick, punch, stab, or shoot their husbands about as often as husbands kick, punch, stab, or shoot their wives. But federal law ignores the facts and instead uses the power of the purse to get states to impose Kafkaesque policies that punish victimized men and reward violent women.

Back in 1975, the First National Family Violence Survey turned up results that surprised even the sociologists conducting the survey. Wives attack husbands about as often as husbands attack wives. And wives attack first about as often as husbands attack first, which is strong evidence that women's assaults on men can't be explained away simply as self-defense.1 But battered women's advocates were intent on portraying domestic violence as something only men do and only women suffer from. So they'd conveniently leave out the part about women's assaults on men whenever they cited the study's results.2 (Read the rest here)

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The Mailbag for Friday

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

For some reason, Freedom News Daily and Rational Review News Digest have not updated in the last 24 hours, so I have a more limited selection of news to report than usual. I generally use about 80% of the news stories that FND/RRND put into digest format, plus stories I find myself from a wide variety of sources, and stories sent by my own correspondents, including Knights of the Liberty Round Table. Still, there is a fair amount of news of interest to talk about today.

US Producer Prices Jump Sharply
BBC News
US wholesale prices are rising at the fastest rate in nine months, fueling concerns that inflation is returning. The cause is rapidly increasing energy prices, with the price of gasoline at the pump now averaging $2.55 a gallon. Prices paid by wholesalers gained 1% in July, and are now at an annual rate of 4.8%, the Labor Department said. The price of energy rose by 4.4% in the month, with gasoline costs up by 10.4%. Analysts are warning consumers could face even higher prices at the pumps. The news comes a day after consumer prices jumped sharply.

There are few commodities that can trigger inflation all by themselves, but petroleum (diesel and gasoline) is certainly one of them, especially in the US. As I've suffered through massive increases (20 cents in one day, in the Black Hills, the last day of Rally), I've given more thought to the impact of fuel prices on other basic supply costs: for example, most of the Black Hills' basic bread (not the fancy stuff from the Safeway Bakery) comes either 350 miles from Sioux Falls or 400 miles from Denver: the only large commercial/wholesale bakery in the Black Hills was closed five years ago by its parent company. That amounts to a lot of diesel. Other products are in a similar case, including about 98% of what Wal-Mart sells: the railroad (also diesel-powered) ships only the bulkiest of bulk commodities. So unless oil producers (especially in the Middle East) do something about prices, we can expect far greater jump than this 1% in August and September. Welcome back to the 1970s! (Read the rest here)

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