Everything is bigger in Texas they say, and Texas state troopers certainly qualify as among the biggest perverts, idiots, and petty tyrants in the land. The must-see video in this article shows two women being given roadside cavity searches because they were suspected of having a little pot on them. None was found. The female state trooper uses the same rubber glove when sticking her hands in the private parts, front and back, of the two women. Why is this woman not employed by the TSA? (She probably will be as soon as the TSA brass sees this video).

This of course will be defended by all those "family values" pro-war-on-drugs conservatives who never saw an instance of police brutality they didn't like.

With the passing of Judge Robert Bork, many praises from the conservative side of the political spectrum have been made, particularly for his support of antitrust legislation.

For an alternative viewpoint, see this publication: Block, Walter E. 1994. "Total Repeal of Anti-trust Legislation: A Critique of Bork, Brozen and Posner, Review of Austrian Economics, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 35–70.

No, says a friend. Ban public schools.

They want somebody to show up at their next corruption and power festival, so they invite Ron Paul. Boys, call his agent. That'll be $50,000 plus expenses. Maybe there should be a Nausea Fee, too.

What's wrong with America? One thing for sure: its government. Here's one example. There's an air base in Niagara Falls. It's a U.S. Air Force base called the Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station. It's run out of mission. It never had a good mission to begin with but that unproductive mission has run out. So now a local member of Congress has worked to get it a new mission, which would be DRONES. This too is unproductive, not to mention the other evils these are bringing as they are placed into use domestically. We already know their evil use overseas.

This will be approved today in the  Defense Authorization Bill being voted in Congress. Drones and the military in general are one big pork barrel. This is what the U.S. Constitution has wrought by centralizing defense in the federal government and creating a national defense monstrosity.

What else is wrong? There doesn't seem to be a political way ever to cut this defense materially even when everyone knows it's pork barrel waste. The system is dysfunctional. What else is wrong? To "sell" it, people like Hochul have to talk about 845 jobs or 553 jobs or some other total nonsense and make like it's a really good reason for the pork barrel. What else is wrong? A good many people saying and hearing this nonsense believe it.

I favor dissolving the U.S. government. If states will secede and pull their citizens' funds out of funding the federal government, that's one way to do it. Democracy stinks, but if every activity of the federal government were put to a popular vote (eliminating Congress) and if a 2/3 supermajority rule were in place, I suspect that the government would shrink drastically. The people would probably vote in some crazy stuff, to be sure, but if it were easy to vote on them again, all it would take is a little over 1/3 of the people voting against it to stop it. This is meant as a thought experiment, not a proposal. I favor dissolving the U.S. government altogether. That still leaves the states intact, however, and they can again start to logroll and form coalitions that reconstitute a federal government. At least it will be much harder for them to do it and much more visible to their citizens who are being taxed to pay for the boondoggles. Dissolve the states too, but as a first helpful step, dissolve the federal government. This is a  conservative measure and also a measure that conserves liberty. Thomas Jefferson was more radical. He wrote of Shays' Rebellion "God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion."

"So another mass-murder conducted by a product of government schools, in a government school, under the government-recommended/mandated care of a government-employed/licensed shrink, on government-approved and government-promoted mind-altering drugs, in a government-mandated weapon-free zone, protected by a government agency the government claims 'serves and protects' (though it is incapable of doing so). Clearly the problem is guns." (Thanks to Sam)

And you wonder why the Establishment wants to control the internet?

(Thanks to David Franke)

Anyone wondering why war propaganda always carries the day and always succeeds? Anyone wondering why Afghanistan is such a disaster?

As the Washington Post reports, neo-conservative warmongers supreme Fred Kagan and his wife Kim — members of the famed "think tank brigade" — were granted unprecedented access and authority to manage the Afghan war by General David Petraeus, including being granted the highest level security clearances and bypassing the general's team of military advisers — and even the White House.

From the article's description of the Kagan's obsession with reading "SCI" level classified material, which can only be accessed in specially designed rooms:

“They’d spend hours in there,” said one former senior civilian official at the headquarters. “They talked about how much they loved reading intel.”

No doubt they loved to share, as well.

Hailing from, respectively, the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War (as in how to get us in more of them), the Kagans' prescription for success in Afghanistan was predictable: more. More surges, more troops, expand the war. If you withdraw troops we will trash you and the war. Fred Kagan played a similar role for President Bush: he was the biggest cheerleader for the Iraq "surge." We all know how that is going.

Read the rest of this entry »

You have a much greater chance of being killed in a school or a movie theater or a Post Office or at work by an American than anywhere else in the country by a foreign terrorist.

Yep, Mr. Moore refers to the psychotropic establishment as a bunch of criminals. Even Michael Moore can be right on occasion. Let us not forget Eli Lilly and its cover-up of its Prozac and that drug's very strong link to violent and suicidal behaviour. From an old Forbes article:

Lilly was strong at the time Taurel took over. It had been riding Prozac since 1987, with profits peaking at $3 billion in 2000. Then, in 2001, two years before anticipated, generic-drug manufacturer Barr Pharmaceuticals wrested Lilly's Prozac patent away. Lilly lost 90% of its Prozac prescriptions over a year and $35 billion of its market value in a single day. The stock still trades 30% below its Prozac high. Lilly's profits dropped 9% between 2001 and 2003, to $2.5 billion.

For years now, the alternative media (including me) has been covering the sick travesty of America as the world's leader in psychotropic pill popping. Depressed? Write a prescription. Welcome to America, a zombie milquetoast nation.

As as I have reported before, even pets aren't immune to our cultural ills. They are becoming zombies, too.

Even though Christmas is only a week away, there's still time to get your presents delivered by Amazon. Go here to see the ordering cut-offs and delivery options.

Here are a few of the great gifts you selected last week:

Norpro Cast Iron Round Bacon Grill Press;

Birchwood Casey Gun Scrubber Synthetic Safe Cleaner;

Smart Deep Concealed Carry Handgun Holster;

Streamlight Protac Tactical Flashlight 2L with White LED Includes 2 Lithium Batteries and Holster, Black;

Air Hogs - Pocket Copter - Bumblebee.

Best-Selling Books:

Libertarian Anarchy: Against the State, by Gerard Casey;

Pocket Ref 4th Edition, by Thomas Glover;

The Left, the Right, and the State, by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

Thank you for supporting LRC—at no cost to you—with your Amazon purchases. Please check our recent blog, which clarifies how to make sure your orders are properly credited.

This is from a story on CNN:

Dick's Sporting Goods, one of the largest sporting goods retailers in the world, says it has removed all guns from its store nearest to Newtown, Connecticut, and is suspending the sale of certain kinds of semi-automatic rifles from its chains nationwide.

So, Dick's action of suspending the sale of a politically incorrect type of gun will ... help keep weapons out of the hands of criminals? Really? I wonder if the executives at Dick's would celebrate this event if it had been announced that the 12-year-old girl who defended her own life had used a gun bought from Dick's? Of course not - the big media doesn't report those stories.

Like so many other children, Adam Lanza had been diagnosed with some type of disorder for which he was apparently heavily drugged. Since these mass killings are almost always linked to the assailant's use of "legal" pharmaceuticals, when will the Pharmaceutical-Governmental-Medical Establishment stop marketing and selling and hooking people on profitable, powerful, mind-altering psychiatric drugs? I thought we had a federal Drug Czar?

A 12-year old girl in Oklahoma was home alone when an intruder broke into her house. She grabbed her mother's gun—and eventually shot the intruder. (Oy! I wonder if gun control nut Nazi Bloomberg would be upset if he heard about this? Probably.)

[Thanks to Mike Rogers]

Five years ago, a school district in Harrold, TX came to the "startling" realization that the first person at a crime scene is you, the victim. The school district has allowed qualified teachers to carry concealed weapons in school just in case a policeman wasn't around (Ya think?) when the remote possibility arises of some CIA mind-controlled slave wacko barging into the school to start shooting up the teachers and children.

The CTO ad will be up one more day at Mises.org. What great applicants we've had, in terms of brains, experience, and love of liberty. The future is bright!

The NPR affiliate here in New York City has inundated us every hour on the hour since the atrocity at Newtown’s public school with “news” about the tragedy, which basically consists of naked pleading for more control of gun-owners. But 4PM’s propaganda dropped my jaw with its honesty: One way to “get around the Second Amendment,” the announcer intoned (exact phrasing, though you’ll have to take my word for it as I can find no link on the net), is to microstamp bullets so cops can trace them. This lunacy comes from Elliott Spitzer, previously Chief John of New York State, whose priapic pursuits drove him from office but whose buddies in the corporate media identify him only as a “former governor.”

Of course, Spitzer’s idea will never become law. Imagine the CIA’s consternation right now if Newtown’s bullets had been “microstamped.” Or that of the average cop nationwide who can no longer blame the dead bystander on the perp when “microstamping” points to his poor marksmanship instead.

The Randoid Cato Institute calls for eliminating the charitable tax deduction. As Mises, not a beltarian, noted: "Capitalism lives through such loopholes." "Long live loopholes," added Rothbard. (Thanks to Daniel McAdams)

Suzanna Gratia-Hupp, in her classic testimony, addresses it.

"Or Facebook will suspend your account," notes Travis Holte.

1. Any group which doesn't agree with their political and economic views.

2. Any group that wants to stop the Banksters from making money off of the Federal Reserve (i.e., big government) and the military-industrial complex.

In the midst of the tragedy in Connecticut (when are we going to ban public schools?) and Our Rulers' exploiting that to steal our weapons, Eli Cryderman sent me a story on another topic that had me grinning — from US News and World Report, of all places. The headline reads, "South Carolina Lawmakers Propose 5-Year Jail Sentence for 'Obamacare' Implementation," and it just gets better from there. It seems that "South Carolina state Rep. Bill Chumley last week pre-filed a bill for the upcoming legislative session that would criminalize implementation of President Barack Obama's 2010 healthcare reform law. If his bill becomes law, any state official caught enforcing the healthcare law would be guilty of a misdemeanor and 'must be fined not more than one thousand dollars or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.'" Yeah, I'd like to see far harsher penalties, too — and we do, at the federal level: "Any federal employee or contractor enforcing the law 'is guilty of a felony and, upon conviction, must be fined not more than five thousand dollars, or imprisoned not more than five years, or both,' the bill proposes." Not quite tarring and feathering, but hey, it's a start.

Even better are the quotes from Bill Chumley. "'I think we're within our rights to do this,' Chumley explained to U.S. News. 'It's an obligation, I swore an oath to uphold the Constitution and protect the people.'" Staggeringly, Bill "'feel[s] very, very good about support ... I don't think it'll be a really hard sell.'" In fact, he's so cocksure about his bill's success that he's "seen [Gov. Nikki] Haley just once" since spearheading this effort and "'didn't want to bother her with this.'" Whoa! I may have to move to South Carolina.

US News continues, "Among the items in the healthcare law that irk Chumley are the individual health insurance mandate, 'the establishment of 150 or so more agencies,' 'the addition of many thousand new IRS agents,' and 'home visits to come out and see how you're living.'"

Such governmental crimes and assault once would have sparked rebellion. How refreshing to see South Carolinians standing  against Obummercare's totalitarianism!

When the FBI and BATF  burned 26 children to death at Waco, and 5o parents and other adults, too, conservatives and liberals cheered. Anyone expressing sympathy for the murdered was an "extremist" to be condemned by the SPLC and MSM. (Thanks to Steve Quayle)

Lew, the comical commie conspiracy theory nuts and racial racketeers at the Southern Poverty Law Center have only one purpose: to smear, libel, and defame any and all critics of out-of-conrol, unlimited governmental power. They are like all other totalitarian thugs, in other words. Their "intelligence reports" are a bundle of silly nonsense and contradictions. For example, they smear, libel, and defamed the Constitution Party and Oathkeepers for wanting to enforce the Constitution and its limits on state power, while at the same time also smearing, libeling, and defaming anarcho-capitalist critics of the Constitution who believe that it resulted in too much centralized governmental power. Their modus operandi is to pick out someone they don't like, such as you, me, Ron Paul, or Judge Napolitano, and claim that he was once in the same room with someone who is rumored to have once made a politically-incorrect statement. Case closed. Bring these men before a firing squad.

Writes Jeff Brown:

I was a chaperone for my son's kindergarten class field trip to a Catholic Daughters of Charity convalescent home for nuns. After singing several Christmas carols, the children lined up to tell the Sisters what they wanted for Christmas. My son was near the end of the line, and after about twenty other children had spoken of wanting video games, action figures, sports equipment and such, my son stepped up and loudly proclaimed "My name is Matt, and I want gold!".

He just about brought the house down, and one nun nearly fell out of her rocker.

It is wonderful to know I'm having a positive influence on him. Perhaps he's not too young to be introduced to Anarcho-Capitalism after all...

Glenn Greenwald on the menace and meaningless of a favorite State epithet. (Thanks to Roy Drake)

Paragould Police Chief Stovall, left, swears in reservists last July.

"The fear is what's given us the reason to do this,” insisted Todd Stovall, the head functionary of the paramilitary occupation force afflicting Paragould, Arkansas, as he announced that the city would be placed under martial law for the supposed purpose of deterring crime. “Once I have stats and people are saying they're scared, we can do this. It allows us to do what we're fixing to do."

What Stovall and his fellow tax-feeders are “fixing to do” is to leave the city’s streets clotted with SWAT operators toting AR-15s and official permission to harass anybody who comes within eyeshot.

The marauders “are going to be in SWAT gear and have AR-15s around their neck,” grunted Stovall at a town hall meeting held last Thursday at the West View Baptist Church. “If you’re out walking, we’re going to stop you, ask why you’re out walking, check for your ID.”

“We’re going to do it to everybody,” Stovall explained, anticipating objections. “Criminals don’t like being talked to.”

Read the rest of this entry »

That is how many U.S. soldiers during the "Great War" whose services were lost per day due to V.D. See also "Love, Sex, and War" and this on sex and the military and this on rapes by U.S. soldiers after D-Day. And people in some churches clap and cheer when some Christian young man stands up and says he is going to join the military?

CBS News reports — erroneously — that the TSA has apologized for its horrific abuse of Shelbi Walser. You remember her: the 12-year-old girl with brittle bone disease whom the agency’s sadists “detained” for an hour at Dallas-Fort Worth, reducing the poor child to tears while separating her from her mother. The Nazis more cruelly tormented their victims, but still, deliberately depriving a sick little girl of her mother and bullying her until she cries, well ... with every day and every atrocity, the TSA approaches ever nearer its mentors’ satanic benchmark.

At any rate, the TSA has released a statement about Shelbi’s ordeal that doesn’t even remotely resemble an apology. Rather, it defends the utterly indefensible and barbaric while propagandizing for the TSA, insulting our intelligence and blatantly lying:

“We regret that the experience of this young lady was not a positive one as we always strive to screen passengers with dignity and respect while ensuring the safety of all travelers. Everything TSA does is designed to protect against another terrorist attack. In all likelihood, this traveler would have presented no risk, yet we could take no chances. She alarmed for explosive residue and TSA took the necessary steps to resolve the alarm.”

Nauseating, isn’t it? Contrast this self-serving prattle with the apology you have received from an entrepreneur when his service or product failed to satisfy you: does he blame you for failing to have a “positive experience” while excusing himself because, heck, he’s got a business to run and everything he does is designed to fill its coffers?  Read the rest of this entry »

Republican House Speaker John Boehner wants to raise your taxes by a trillion dollars.

"Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi filed an emergency rule Tuesday outlawing twenty-two new synthetic drugs." This includes those "that mimic the effects of cocaine" and "marketed as 'bath salts.'" Oh, what would we do without such wise overlords to keep us safe. I think that only a fool would use bath salts as a drug, but I also think that people have a right to do foolish things. As I titled my recent book, the war on drugs is a war on freedom. I have written specifically about bath salts here.

. . . from crashing into the World Trade Center . . . on 9/11, or so we are told, but they can find Santa Claus and "save Christmas," says Regnery Publishing.

If you must join the military, I suppose manning the NORAD Santa Tracker would be one of the less offensive things you could be doing.

Here an Iraq war veteran (James Strong, Army, Sergeant) explains why the war was "worth it" for him:

It was worth it for me. I was a full blown neo con. Born in Britain, I got my US Citizenship specifically after the close 'election' between Kerry and Bush. After 911, I was one of those born again Christians who is all for destroying anyone who dares look at Israel wrong. I joined the military as a 30 year old, walking away from a good job and putting my wife and kids through the hellish experience that is the modern 'oft deployed' US military. I was hailed as a great patriot by everyone at my church. I joined as 'counterintelligence agent'; the definition of which is producing mis-information for the enemy; only to find out that only enemy I would be mis-informing was the US public and the regular "Joe's." I was blown up, shot at, ambushed, lost my good friend, saw many many innocent Iraqi's killed. I saw time and time again that when an innocent Iraqi is killed, he or she (no matter what age) is immediately identified as (likely al qaida). I saw how easy it is to get caught up in a mob, and how difficult and costly it is to do what is right in the US military. Something, I am ashamed to say, I usually did not have the courage to do. I did things I cannot even mention. I firmly believe there is only one force in the universe powerful enough to deal with terrible things I did, the blood of Christ. In the months and years after, instead of reciting the Warrior's Creed, Psalm 51 became my creed (attached below). "Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God…" Read the rest of this entry »

The conservatives (LDP), founded by the US during the occupation and still representing the empire's interests, propose massive new money-printing and much more belligerence towards China.

More proof that the regime and the MSM, effectively State media, are joined at the hip, and both hate and fear private truth telling.

I am very much taken with Rich Carlson's letter. It reminded me of an article of mine on LewRockwell.com. I have never been to Iran. Rather, I met my Iranian friend, Houshang, in Canada (don't ask; it's a long story). He very much fits the characteristics of Iranians mentioned by Rich Carlson.

So, thank you, Rich.

Writes Paul Cernac:

Lew, congratulations! You have been vilified for opposing taxes, war, torture, and police brutality.

You have been vilified for promoting freedom of thought and of the market.

I know that you are proud of Austrian ideas spreading around the world, but this surely must be a feather in your cap.

BTW — I came across the paleo diet on your website. I have been on the paleo lifestyle for nearly a year and I love it. What is humorous and challenging is not the diet, but trying to explain to people that you enjoy eating the paleo way and that you enjoy skipping on the standard American diet. It is stunning that people have been so conditioned to think that eating franken-food is worth the costs.

Invasions of privacy harm a person without necessarily harming their body or property. The bodies need not pile up for us to say that invasion of privacy is a bad thing. I'm going to discuss one specific case and afterwards explain my position on harm to the person. I remind the reader that privacy has many facets, and its defense or analysis doesn't rest on one case, like this one.

This case is Brents v. Morgan, discussed in Post's 1989 California Law Review article.

"It appears that in 1926 in the town of Lebanon, Kentucky, W.R. Morgan, a veterinarian, owed a debt of $49.67 to George Brents, a garage mechanic. Brents made several unsuccessful efforts to collect the debt, and in frustration finally put up a sign, five feet by eight feet, in the window of his garage facing one of the principal streets of the town. The sign stated:

"Notice.

"Dr. W. R. Morgan owes an account here of $49.67. And if promises would pay an account this account would have been settled long ago. This account will be advertised as long as it remains unpaid.

"Dr. Morgan sued Brents for damages, alleging that the sign had 'caused him great mental pain, humiliation, and mortification,' that it exposed 'him to public contempt, ridicule, aversion, and disgrace,' and that it had caused 'an evil opinion of him in the minds of tradesmen and the public generally.'"

The Kentucky Supreme Court found that Brents had invaded Morgan's privacy.

Read the rest of this entry »

The murder of 27 people, including 20 children, in Connecticut is utterly shocking and evil in every respect. Yet, many of the politicians who have demanded the president use all of his "powers" to impose punishment upon those who were innocent of this crime had no problem nearly 20 years ago when U.S. Government forces massacred 76 people, including 26 children, at Waco.

People like Sen. Charles Schumer, one of the loudest voices calling for draconian gun control laws in the wake of the murders, also was one of the loudest voices defending the FBI for its role in the murder of the children at Waco. As many Democrats have told me, the people at Waco were "nut jobs," "wackos," and the like, so it really was OK that they were slaughtered. (Yes, I know there are a few Democrats who were horrified at what happened, but I don't know any personally, and I work in a place where almost everyone around me is a Democrat and a liberal Democrat at that.)

So, while people try to gain partisan advantage because of what happened Friday, we might remember that many of these same people would not care at all if a lot of other children were gunned down by government workers or immolated in fires the government officials deliberately set because, after all, their parents are "wackos."

“You never have a `right’ to resist arrest,” insists Des Moines-based attorney Harley Erbe (who is wrong, of course). There are two reasons why Mundanes must immediately submit to “commands” issued by the state’s costumed enforcers, Erbe explains:

“First, officers’ safety is a [sic] paramount consideration. People always think that their arrests are unfair or unlawful; if citizens then had a right to duke it out with law enforcement every time they held that belief then a lot of officers and citizens would be hurt.”

The word “paramount” means “supreme.” Thus Erbe is saying that whenever an armed state functionary decides to abduct you at gunpoint, his safety is always the foremost consideration.

Second, Erbe continues, “the streets are not the time or place for a debate on the legality of an arrest or whether the arrestee has committed a crime.  Those are matters to be determined in courtrooms by judges and juries.”

This is a variant of the advice that used to be offered to rape victims: It’s safer to submit than to fight back, because resisting will only make matters worse. It also ignores the fact that merely being arrested is sufficient to ruin an innocent person’s life — or at least to steal a considerable portion of it. This is underscored by the case of Pittsburgh resident Sara Reedy, who was both the victim of a sexual assault and an unlawful arrest.

Read the rest of this entry »

I do, but here is the perfect, delicious, healthy substitute: Squeeze a lemon (being sure to roll it on the counter first, to make it jucier) into a glass, add liquid stevia to taste, then fill the glass with Pellegrino or some other sparkling water. It is so good!

UPDATE from Adam Munter

I have a soda siphon. And 100 chargers are just $33. Always fresh seltzer! My Grandpa (RIP) used to get seltzer delivered in NYC when they still did that, then moved onto these.

Writes Rich Carlson:

I recently had an opportunity to visit Iran. Family and friends warned me not to go because everyone knows the people in Iran all hate Americans. I went anyway, in large part because listening to you and Ron Paul has changed my way of thinking. Before my personal paradigm shift, I would have believed all the warnings. Now, I am glad I ignored them. I found the Iranian people to be among the friendliest I have ever met anywhere in the world. I have new friends there that I will hold dear to my heart for the rest of my life. It was an amazing experience that I really do owe to you and Ron. Thank you.

When I joined the Army back in 1974 I recall a question on the application about serving in the Peace Corp. I asked the recruiter about the significance of the question. He told me that people who serve in the Peace Corp tend to become very attached to the people in the country where they served. If we ever go to war with that country the soldier might not be willing to fight. I recall thinking that perhaps everyone should be required to serve in the Peace Corp so nobody would be willing to fight anyone.

Oh how I wish a million Americans would visit Iran and meet the people there. If more Americans could see for themselves what I saw, they would demand our government change its policies toward these wonderful people.

I met the enemy ... and I love them.

In communist East Germany, whose official name was German Democratic Republic, "a secret police force spread throughout a society". America is building its American Stasi openly. Some parts of its operations will be open, and critical parts will be secret. Many Americans will support it. No matter whether the American Stasi is open or secret, each isolated American will face a powerful foe, even more powerful than the Stasi, in a one-sided contest whose outcome is predetermined.

The GDR had 16.7 million people. The Stasi had thousands of spies and an estimated 100,000 unofficial collaborators. That's the equivalent of 2 million in America. They can be found. They will come out of the woodwork like cockroaches.

The captured Stasi files on East Germans are 65 miles long, excluding 16,000 sacks of shredded documents that are being reconstructed. The American Stasi's files will be, for all practical purposes, infinite, because of the advances in technology and information storage. The facility being built at Bluffdale, Utah is designed to hold inconceivably large amounts of data. See here and here. For a government denial, see here.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Southern Poverty Law Center is upset with me, as usual, this time for being a "neo-secessionist." Of course, secession is one of the the great libertarian principles, as Mises, Rothbard, Ron Paul, Hoppe, and so many others have argued. And it extends to the individual. We all have the right to secede from the State. But first we must intellectually secede: here’s how to express your support for this freedom on your car, your laptop, your dorm door, or anyplace else. And it's only $2. Just don't drive near the SPLC. Unlike us, they're not committed to non-violence.

The Christ-child lay on Mary's lap,
His hair was like a light.
(O weary, weary were the world,
But here is all aright.)

The Christ-child lay on Mary's breast,
His hair was like a star.
(O stern and cunning are the kings,
But here the true hearts are.)

The Christ-child lay on Mary's heart,
His hair was like a fire.
(O weary, weary is the world,
But here the world's desire.)

The Christ-child stood on Mary's knee,
His hair was like a crown,
And all the flowers looked up at Him,
And all the stars looked down.

Over the past few weeks several otherwise reasonable foreign policy "realists" around Washington have been -- mostly in behind the scenes discussion groups -- hoping against hope that the Susan Rice float to replace Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would crash and burn. They even took some comfort in the McCain/Graham tag-team to lambaste Rice over her agreeing to bamboozle the public with some bogus talking points about the Benghazi incident, where a US ambassador and several CIA contractors were killed by one of the many militias who have with NATO help turned Libya into a murderous mafia state. No doubt most of these sober thinkers understood that the two senators were grandstanding in the extreme but as the blows were landed they enjoyed the sight of blood.

They whispered among themselves, "Please make it Kerry or Hagel. Anyone but Susan Rice!"

In fact what no doubt really happened was some variation on an old Washington trick: float by proxies a name sure to attract controversy and opposition as a lightening rod; hang the not-yet-officially named candidate out to be struck repeatedly by the lightening until the rabid opponents have exhausted themselves after a good dose of substance-free criticism; then, when the smoke clears, announce the candidate intended all along, whose record and policies are in fact nearly identical to the lightening rod candidate but who will by virtue of appearing after the bloviators have blown themselves out sail through the process. Everyone congratulates himself after the exercise in Washington operetta: the critics who can report that they sunk an unacceptable candidate and the administration who will have a candidate nearly identical in approach but with an extended period of immunity from criticism.

Kerry, a lugubrious faux patrician, is in many ways the anti-Rice. He couldn't even get excited about running for the presidency, so the president could be forgiven for hoping to end the hyperactive whispering in his ear at all hours on the glories of "humanitarian interventionism." But despite differences of style, on all major issues Kerry is more like Rice than not. He loves the empire and serves it enthusiastically. After Rice's Benghazi defenestration, first job is to save the policy.

Read the rest of this entry »

How awful to watch Obama take the focus off the slain children and their families, and direct it on to himself, the State, and the unceasing hunger for more power. He tries to play a religious role--the State hates and envies God--and calls the dead "our children," to diminish the place of their parents. The State has long sought to abolish the role of parents, of course, and substitute its judges, cops, teachers, and social workers.

Then back to Washington, and time to sign more death warrants for Muslims, including children.

UPDATE The messianic character of the presidency is pure blasphemy, points out Will Witcher. He saw one headline that called Obama, "The Nation's Comforter."

You may well say, Duh. As usual in their "Hate-Watch" emails, the agit-prop types at the Southern Poverty Law Center are confused as well as hateful. And see the comments! The whole episode is a reminder--as if we needed it--that Communists, Socialists, National Socialists, Fascists, Conservatives, Neoconservatives, and Modern Liberals are united in their love for the State, and their antipathy to anyone who thinks differently. Like their ancestors, some of these people want concentration camps for thought criminals. The SPLC also claims that Anarcho-Capitalists are "cousins" of  the Patriot movement. In fact, we despise nationalism, and far from adoring the Constitution, think that it was an oligarchical coup against the far more libertarian Articles of Confederation. As Hans Hoppe has noted, every adoption of a constitution in world history marks a step-up in centralization and power, and the US was certainly no exception. Anarcho-Capitalists are also anti-war and anti-empire. Domestically, we  see the threat or initiation of violence against the innocent as the province of criminals. It's why we reject the State, root and branch. We agree with the founder of Libertarianism, Murray Rothbard, that the State is nothing but a "gang of thieves writ large." How neat, BTW, to see Murray's phrase, Anarcho-Capitalism, come back into use. He wanted to differentiate us from anti-private property types who call themselves anarchists. Rothbardianism is back in every sense, of course, especially among the young, and the State-lovers are worried.