Another eminently worthwhile post from jrfrench. Puts me in mind of when Number 6 insisted, "I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own."

"When laws are reasonable in the eyes of the average man, he respects them, keeps them, does his best to maintain them; therefore a minute Police Force, with powers strictly limited, is adequate to deal with the almost negligibly small criminal class.  A convention is laudable when it is convenient.  When laws are unjust, monstrous ( Read more... )

Try the Christian Nationalists on for size. Terry Gross, on WHYY's Fresh Air radio show, interviews journalist Michelle Goldberg, a senior writer for the online magazine Salon, and covers the Christian Right. In her new book, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, she writes that Christian nationalists believe the Bible is literally ( Read more... )

"The people themselves have it in their power effectually to resist usurpation, without being driven to an appeal to arms. An act of usurpation is not obligatory; it is not law; and any man may be justified in his resistance. Let him be considered as a criminal by the general government; yet only his fellow-citizens can convict him. They are his ( Read more... )

From David Brooks' NYT opinion column, today entitled "Kicking Arabs right in the teeth" on the recent UAE port-operations debacle, and other anti-Arab hysteria. Any typos are mine.

( Read excerpt )

"The Long March of Dick Cheney(reading Salon requires membership, or passing through a brief ad ( Read more... )

Got a teenager, or are you between the ages of 16 and 25? If so, you might want to read this, assuminmg you have no interest in being actively recruited by the military, or simply don't want the Pentagon keeping track of you without notification.

Think Wal-Mart's got the best prices in town? Think again - only the bottom-feeder items are the best, and the product is often Asian slave-labor crap. But that price gets you in the door, and is so low it makes you think all the other prices are low too, when they're really not, and were never intended to be - they've gotta make their profit ( Read more... )

A tough lesson on medical privacy by David Lazarus in the San Francisco Chronicle Wednesday 22 October 2003:

A woman in Pakistan doing cut-rate clerical work for UCSF Medical Center threatened to post patients' confidential files on the Internet unless she was paid more money.To show she was serious, the woman sent UCSF an e-mail earlier this ( Read more... )

Politics by PhotoshopWhen a New Jersey Republican needs a picture of adoring fans for his Web site, computer software and Dean supporters do the trick nicely ( Read more... )