Deeply Deeply Skeptical

"Americans should be deeply deeply skeptical of government power. You
cannot trust people in power. The founders knew that."

James Comey
FBI Director
October 12, 2014

Counting the Days

At work today, speaking of my impending retirement, someone said "You must be counting the days!"

Well, no. You'd think I would be, and it sounds odd even to me that I'm not. I really should have a big calendar, on which I gleefully mark out each remaining day with a fat red marker. If I hated my job, I'm sure I would be counting off the minutes until I could get free; but I don't hate it, it's just that I want to do other things now.

Retirement

I told my boss nearly a month ago that I was ready to leave; today I officially handed in my resignation. Huzzah! I've started training my replacement, telling my customers that I'm going, and cleaning off my desk.

Second Amendment

I've often thought that while I should, of course, have the right to any weapon I can buy, I'm not so sure that the guy down the street should be allowed to carry anything more than a plastic butter knife, non-serrated. That leads to the idea that if people are to have access to guns, perhaps there should be some requirement that they have some training. Larry Correia, however, points out that states with a training requirement are no safer than states with no requirement whatsoever. Mandatory training sounds like it would make things safer, but it doesn't. And policy needs to be set on the basis of what really works, not what sounds like it would work.

Billions of revolts

Americans revolt billions of times per day:

It’s not civil disobedience that I’m talking about. It’s the opposite: Civil disobedience is meant to be noticed. It is a price paid in the hope of creating social change. What I’m talking about is not based on hope; in fact, it has given up much hope on social change. It thinks the government is a colossal amoeba twitching mindlessly in response to tiny pinpricks of pain from an endless army of micro-brained interest groups. The point is not to teach the amoeba nor to guide it, but simply to stay away from the lethal stupidity of its pseudopods.

Declaration of Independence

An excerpt:

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed;

that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.

Larry Correia's Happy Tax Day

Larry Correia is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Monster Hunter International and Monster Hunter Vendetta, plus four other books to be released this year. And he's an accounting type, as you might have guessed from reading MHI. He has a beautiful rant on Tax Day which you should read now, and at every election.

Neda Agha-Soltan

Remember the Iranian girl who was killed in the protests stemming from the government-rigged elections? It happened one year ago today.

"No expectation of privacy"

The Federal government is trying to claim that it has the right to find out where we've been, based on cellphone information. The theory is that because the cellular company has to know where we are, that we have no expectation of privacy and the government should be able to know as well. In a word, no. I entered into a contract with the company with the expectation that they would keep my information private; furthermore, the government is restrained, in ways that a company would not be, by the Fourth Amendment. It's a little thing called the Constitution--ever heard of it?

China selling human parts

There's a Monty Python sketch which goes more or less like this:

Men in lab coats: Can we have your liver?
Homeowner: I'm not done using it!
MiLC (holding H.O. down and grabbing his wallet): What's this, then?
HO: An organ donor card, but--
MiLC: Need we say more?
HO: But that's in the event of death!
MiLC: No one that we've taken a liver from has ever survived, so that's all
right then.

The People's Republic of China has apparently taken this to heart--and kidney, and so on. If you're guilty of such heinous crimes as disagreeing with the government or practicing Falun Gong or even being someone the local Party chief doesn't like, you could find yourself strapped to a table, sliced open, and broken up for spare parts.

You're probably a criminal

At the Volokh Conspiracy, a blog on legal issues, Ilya Somin points out that "The vast scope of federal criminal law is a very serious problem", because people who haven't caused any harm to life, health or property can be subject to criminal charges. Since so many people are potential criminals, prosecutors will have to use their discretion in deciding which cases to pursue--and generally it's going to end up being the politically weak who suffer from that.

More on slavery

Our pastor referred to A Crime So Monstrous in today's sermon, and the International Justice Mission.