Positive Liberty

I occasionally plug the Weekly Standard, not only for being the Neo-Conservative Publication of Record (useful in determining where we will invade next and how soon) but far more entertainingly because Andrew Ferguson writes there. Even better, I can recommend him to you on this occasion in the New York Times, explaining this year’s Republican Party platform. Enjoy.

St. Paul, MN, police raided the headquarters of a group planning to protest the Republican National Convention. Nobody was arrested, but a large group was detained for a while. No clear reason was given for the raid.

St. Paul Police spokesman Tom Walsh said they were executing a search warrant.

“The cause for the search warrant is not public at this time,” Walsh said.

That’s legalese for, “We’re preemptively raiding their headquarters to send a warning.”

I’ve had people tell me that libertarianism fails because it’s out of sync with human nature. I fully agree–the police state is where human nature leads us.

I just discovered that majority of quotations from Palin’s “Christian Heritage” resolution are misquotes. The actual underlying quotations do exist. She doesn’t cite them exactly as they are in the originals. When scholars want to do this, they have to use ellipses “…” and brackets [] or else they make an error [sic]. Most of Palin’s quotes are copying errors. Continue Reading »

Traitor is a slightly better than average suspense thriller with a significantly better than average performance by Don Cheadle in the lead role. Sadly, however, the same cannot be said of his co-star, Guy Pierce, whose American accent isn’t too awful until it is revealed through dialog along the way that he’s supposed to be a Southerner, too. Pierce is a good actor, but we might consider going back to those halcyon days when honest-to-goodness American actors, or at least Canadian ringers, were cast in such roles. Constant Viewer knows all about the wonderfully talented Hugh Laurie in House and all that, but enough is enough.

CV suspects Traitor may slip in and out of your local cineplex before you notice it was there, as it was not produced by one of the major studios and received precious little pre-release advertising. As the contemporary crop of Middle Eastern terrorists versus U.S. intelligence agency films go, Traitor is a perfectly respectable entry. If you like such movies but you waited to see it on DVD, though, you wouldn’t miss much at all.

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If you waited to see Babylon A.D. on DVD you wouldn’t miss much, either. Then again, that’s equally true if you don’t bother seeing it at all. Vin Diesel turns in an acceptable Vin Diesel performance in this hyperactive but unengaging road movie. The road in question leads from Russia over the Bering Straits, across which Diesel’s character must transport a young woman (Mélanie Thierry) and her governess (Michelle Yeoh) from Mongolia to Manhattan. There are nice performances in comparatively small parts here by Charlotte Rampling and Gérard Depardieu, but the plot is so tissue thin and the directing so uneven and distracting their efforts are largely wasted. As was CV’s time.

In Mr. Babka’s “Why I Don’t Want United Government,” reader Jeff Hebert makes some very interesting comments, including the following excerpt:

I find it very surprising that anyone seriously concerned with libertarian issues would support a Republican President this time around. The Bush Administration has had a sustained, hard push over the last eight years to make the “Unitary Executive” doctrine the de facto law of the land. It’s hard for me to imagine anything worse for our liberties than a chief executive with the powers and privileges of a monarch, and yet that’s exactly what Cheney, Bush, Yoo, and company have been working steadily towards.

John McCain has surrounded himself with people who hold the most extreme neo-conservative views in the party. He’s not just going to be four more years of Bush, he’s going to be four more years of the worst parts of Bush. If the idea of “anything’s legal if the President does it” doesn’t scare you way, way worse than universal health care (plenty of other Western countries have it and yet shockingly their nations have not imploded), expanded union power (ditto), and some changes to the way the FCC works, then I would respectfully suggest that your priorities are way out of whack.

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Barry Lynn and Jay Sekulow are debating the goods at their BeliefNet blog. Here is the exact proclamation: Continue Reading »

In my last post I noted that Price’s religious beliefs were one step closer to traditional Christianity than were those of his Socinian friend, Joseph Priestley. Price writes about his religious beliefs in great detail in “Sermons on the Christian doctrine as received by the different denominations of Christians” which thanks to google books can be fully accessed. As noted before, eleven delegates to the Constitutional Convention including Franklin, Hamilton and Washington subscribed to the book with Washington ordering four copies. Continue Reading »

Old joke:

Two Roman Catholic theologians, one a Jesuit and the other one a Dominican, are arguing about prayer and smoking. (Hey, I said it was an old joke. This was before smoking became a secular sin only slightly less heinous than child abuse.)

So, anyway, the Jesuit says there’s nothing wrong with praying and smoking at the same time, while the Dominican is equally adamant that it’s disrespectful to God and thus sinful. The argument goes on and on and finally they decide to submit the question to the Vatican, which they both do.

Months pass as, left to their own devices, months will, and finally the Jesuit and Dominican meet. As they see each other big smiles break out on both their faces. “I told you so!” the Dominican almost shouts. “What are you talking about?” the Jesuit says, “I just got word back from Rome recently that I was right.” “That’s impossible,” the Dominican says. “I just got word back from Rome telling me that I was right.” The two theologians stand there silently and bewildered. Continue Reading »

I want one of these.

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As often happens, it’s written by Roderick Long:

Those who see government power and corporate power as being in conflict, and those who seem them as being in cahoots, each have a point. The alliance between government and the corporate elite is like the partnership between church and state in the Middle Ages: each one wants to be the dominant partner, so there’s naturally some pushing and shoving from time to time; but on the other hand the two parties have a common interest in holding down the rest of us, and so the conflict rarely goes too far.

And it gets better from there.

I found this interesting bit on my brother’s blog. Apparently John McCain told a newspaper in Peublo, Colorado, that the Colorado River Compact should be renegotiated to give the southwestern members–Arizona, Nevada, and California–a larger share of the Colorado River’s water.

A little background for those who don’t follow western water issues, which are among the most contentious and fascinating but little known politics in the country. (The Eastern media don’t cover it much, because it mostly plays out in flyover country–places where news execs go to rent a fancy cabin and do a little flyfishing while interacting with the locals as little as possible.) The Colorado River Compact was created to deal with the issues of using the water in the Colorado River. It’s a classic collective action problem: no one state has an incentive to conserve the water, but collectively their incautious use is destructive. Mexico is also a partner to the Colorado River, but not to the Compact, and often so much water gets taken out that the river dries up before reaching Mexico, and what does get there is a sludge of agricultural pesticide runoff. (In contrast, the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec are Associate Members of the Great Lakes Compact, so Canada’s voce is heard in those matters.)

But traditionally California has gotten the lion’s share of the water, and Arizona, with an ever-growing Phoenix, keeps claiming more and more. Recognizing that a long-established use of water is harder to reverse than a new claim to more water, the more northerly states in the Compact, particularly Colorado, which is also ever-growing, have been fighting tooth and nail to prevent California and Arizona from getting rights to more water, which would limit how much Colorado could use.

So McCain’s comments, if played up by Obama, could easily cost him Colorado’s electoral votes. Colorado, having had an influx of Californians in the ’90s and ’00s, keeps edging closer to going into the Democratic column. Had it done so in either 2000 or 2004, the Democrats would have won the presidency. McCain’s odds of winning the presidency without Colorado–slimmer than Kate Moss’s ass.

John McCain has just announced his pick for his next wife vice president, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. (Hey, I’m just the first to say it–you know everyone’s going to be thinking it.)

This is a weird pick. Obviously he’s trying to pick up independent Hilary supporters, but I’m not sure how many feminist-leaning women will be inspired by an old guy’s pick of an attactive younger woman. Alaska doesn’t offer him any votes he wasn’t going to get anyway. She’s a first term governor with no relevant experience of any kind whatsoever.

I think, in the end, this just will create more questions about McCain’s judgement.

[P.S. Some conservatives apparently think this will help McCain with evangelicals.  A gay friendly former pot smoker who names her kids after TV witches isn't going to swing many evangelical votes.  I know they were "good" witches, but believe me, evangelicals don't believe in good witches--to them it's all satanic.]

Okay, so it isn’t quite official yet, but major news outlets are reporting that McCain has picked Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be his vice presidential running mate.

I admit, between having an African American presidential candidate and a female vice-presidential candidate who isn’t the laughably inept Geraldine Ferarro, this race suddenly looks more interesting than the average TweedleDeemocrat versus RepubliDumbican contest. (In as much fairness as I’m ever likely to grant Ferarro, if Walter Mondale had picked the Pope as his running mate in 1984, he probably wouldn’t have carried the Vatican.) Geez, who’d a thunk the Libertarian Party ticket represented the only traditional offering of two middle-aged white guys?

Palin has next to no experience, making even Obama look like a senior statesman by comparison, but both Carter and Ford proved decades ago and George W has since confirmed that there’s no such thing as minimum required qualifications, the Constitution aside, for serving as president.

Meanwhile, I was amused that some accounts claim Palin is also a self-described “maverick.” I hope James Garner is getting royalties for this.

The Democrats are likely to expand their lead in the House and the Senate. Obama is running a Great Society liberal’s campaign. Uniting both ends of Pennsylvania Ave. would be bad.

Gridlock is good.

Until Obama flip-flopped on the FISA vote, and it became apparent the Democrats didn’t understand the need to stop their silly oil drilling ban, I liked Obama better than McCain.

Now I don’t like either of the leading candidates, and I think the results will be more bad than good whichever one of them wins.

I am very opposed to the Bush foreign policy, and I think McCain will continue that. I also hate McCain’s positions on carbon taxes and political speech. He’ll have aid and comfort from the Democrats on these positions.

But McCain will, overall, accomplish far less than Obama will. And it’s that bi-partisan (or uni-party) accomplishment that I’m really concerned about. I don’t want both ends of Pennsylvania Ave. to come together to, “get things done.” When they get thing done, it costs us money, time, and hassle. It restricts our choices. It takes away our rights and liberties.

Gridlock is good.

What’s at stake in this election is the level of legislative success. Barack Obama would be able to get a great deal more of his agenda passed than would John McCain.

And here’s what Obama’s going to do once elected, that will have permanent, detrimental effects… Continue Reading »

From WCCO in Minneapolis.

Minneapolis Police Chief Tim Dolan handed out honors to a team of officers involved in a botched raid at an innocent family’s home more than seven months ago.

A few days before Christmas, the SWAT team, acting on a tip from an informer, burst into the house looking for a gang member’s guns. The homeowner, Vang Khang, was not a gang member but he was a gun owner, and hearing someone break into his home he grabbed his shotgun so he could protect his six children.

He fired at the intruders, who fired back. The SWAT team members were uninjured because they wore protective gear. No one else was harmed although the house was riddled with bullet holes (fortunately for Vang Khang, it appears as though the Minneapolis SWAT team doesn’t spend much time at the practice range).

A police investigation determined that they police had received bad information from the informant. Nevertheless, the police chief honored the officers involved with medals and commendations, saying:

“This is a perfect example of a situation that could have gone horribly wrong, but did not because of the professionalism with which it was handled.” … “The officers put themselves in harm’s way. They were shot at and shot and deserved to be recognized,” said Dolan in a statement defending the awards to the SWAT team

10 bonus points for the best comment (deadline: 9:00 AM Sunday (Eastern time).