February 20, 2006

The Lies Are Worth A Shot
By Lady Liberty

When you live in mortal fear of something like many gun control advocates do, it seems that nothing is off the table where debate (I use the term loosely) techniques are concerned. Even when there's little for them to use in the way of argument fodder, they'll take what there is and fold, bend, spindle and mutilate it to suit their needs at the time. On some occasions, when there's nothing at all to use they'll simply fabricate their "evidence." And, like so many falsehoods or misrepresentations, the more the lies are repeated, the more believable they become to the credulous members of the public.

Perhaps the best example of a lie turning accepted truth is the so-called Kellerman study. In limited research first published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine in 1986, Dr. Arthur Kellerman co-authored a study that claimed to have shown that having a gun in the home dramatically increased the likelihood that someone in the house would be shot with that gun. In fact, the report said it was 43 times more likely a gun owner would shoot and kill a family member than that he'd shoot and kill anybody else. Unfortunately for Dr. Kellerman and for ecstatic gun control advocates everywhere, the study has been thoroughly debunked - repeatedly - since then. (Read the rest here)

Who is the enemy of free speech?
By Nathan A. Barton (TM and © 2006)

As we continue to fight the “Cartoon War” against those Muslims who (1) believe that it is evil to have a picture of Mohammed and (2) believe that they are commanded and allowed to impose shari’a (Islamic law) on the entire world (see footnote 1 for discussion of how many Muslims this may be), we are hearing more and more that the West is “hypocritical.”

This is, of course, because we (the West) do not allow free speech on some things, such as the Holocaust. Christians (fundamentalists and evangelicals in particular) are branded as even more hypocritical and intolerant because they “force” networks to remove programs from broadcast which attack their religious bigotry. (Read the rest here)

Even God is Engaged in Interstate Commerce
By Robert Greenslade © Nitwit Press

I recently received a phone call from a friend who was watching the evening news. He said the commentator was discussing the rural church fires in Alabama and the story included an interview with an agent from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. My friend was confused by the federal government's involvement in the case and wanted to know how fires on private property in Alabama had anything to do with the constitutional powers of the federal government. I told him there could only be one answer---God must be engaged in interstate commerce.

The following day an article in our local newspaper stated the fires were being investigated as a potential federal hate crime under the Church Arson Prevention Act of 1996. Since so-called federal hate crime legislation within the several States is the result of the United States Supreme Court unconstitutionally re-writing the Constitution from the bench, I knew my suspicions concerning the commerce clause were correct. The introduction for the Church Arson Prevention Act states: (Read the rest here)

Reject the War on Drugs
by Jacob G. Hornberger

Conservatives never cease to fascinate me, given their professed devotion to "freedom, free enterprise, and limited government" and their ardent support of policies that violate that principle. One of the most prominent examples is the drug war. In fact, if you're ever wondering whether a person is a conservative or a libertarian, a good litmus-test question is, "How do you feel about the war on drugs?" The conservative will respond, "Even though I believe in freedom, free enterprise, and limited government, we've got to continue waging the war on drugs." The libertarian will respond, "End it. It is an immoral and destructive violation of the principles of freedom, free enterprise, and limited government."

The most recent example of conservative drug-war nonsense is an article entitled "Winning the Drug War," by Jonathan V. Last in the current issue of The Weekly Standard, one of the premier conservative publications in the country. In his article, Last cites statistics showing that drug usage among certain groups of Americans has diminished and that supplies of certain drugs have decreased. He says that all this is evidence that the war on drugs is finally succeeding and that we just need to keep waging it for some indeterminate time into the future, when presumably U.S. officials will finally be able to declare "victory." (Read the rest here)

It's Your War! You Go Fight It!
By Doug Newman

According to the Denver Rocky Mountain News, a survey of high school students in Jefferson County, Colorado, just west of Denver, revealed that 25 percent of them opted out of allowing military recruiters to contact them. This is up from 13 percent one year before. In highly affluent Douglas County, south of Denver, the number is 55 percent.

As one high school junior in Boulder told "the Rocky": “The whole getting-shot-at thing - I have better things I want to do.”

This survey comes on the heels of a recent Pentagon study stating that the US Army “has become a ‘thin green line’ that could snap unless relief comes soon.” I know exactly where the Army can find such “relief.” (Read the rest here)

In Defense of Polish Plumbers
By Alvaro Vargas Llosa

Those modern Cassandras who continue to rail against the calamities that foreign workers bring to countries that do not keep them out at gunpoint ought to take a look at a new report from the European Commission. This executive body of the European Union (EU), an entity that has never been accused of promoting economic freedom, has just thrown a devastating report in the face of the 12 countries that chose to close the door to migrant workers from central and eastern Europe.

Two years ago, just as ten central and eastern European nations were about to join the EU, bringing the total number of members to 25, a continent-wide hysteria against “Polish plumbers” broke out. Convinced that the free movement of labor—a supposed pillar of the EU—would bring about a flood of poor central and eastern European workers desperate to earn better salaries or apply for welfare benefits in the richer nations, western Europeans began to demonize Polish plumbers. I remember being struck at the time by terrifying headlines repeating the same mantra from Madrid to Berlin: Polish plumbers were the new version of the bubonic plague. Consequently, of the 15 members of the EU at the time, only three—Britain, Ireland, and Sweden—decided to give workers from the ten new member countries the freedom to live and work almost without restrictions. The rest of the EU members imposed a seven-year delay on allowing those workers into their countries. (Read the rest here)

A Politically Incorrect Guide to Intelligence Failures
by Bob Wallace

My rule of thumb is that whatever the government says, I believe the truth is the exact opposite.

When we were told Iraq was going to nuke us, or send Drones of Death across the Atlantic, I knew it was nonsense, for two reasons, the first often talked about, the second, almost never.

The first reason is that Iraq has an economy that is one percent of the U.S.'s. That's smaller than the economy of South Carolina. The country had a total yearly governmental budget of about one billion. They didn't have enough money to build "Weapons of Mass Destruction," unless you want to count some nerve gas, which has been around since World War I. It's not that potent for mass killing, anyway, and certainly isn't going to be lobbed thousands of miles across the ocean into the U.S. (Read the rest here)

The Economy - What Does This Tell You?
By Ed Henry

Payroll tax surpluses are one of the first indicators of the job situation in America. The federal government always uses these surpluses for their own purposes, hopes you don’t notice, and immediately substitutes “special” Treasury bonds in so-called “trust funds” so you can someday pay these same taxes again, plus interest.

Setting that continuing crime aside for the moment, here’s the latest from the U.S. Treasury: (Read the rest here)

 

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