Am I the last to see this?

Today an anonymous user made controversial changes to Wikipedia’s article on the Second Amendment and five related pages. The IP address used, 141.156.208.66, belongs to bradymail.org, i.e. Handgun Control Inc. the Brady Campaign to Monopolize Gun Violence. Who’d have thunk it.

Meanwhile on my side of the fence, Mike Lorrey was temporarily banned from Wikipedia for unnecessarily insisting on loaded language like fascist. Some people never learn.

Alan Bock writes:

So it was time to break out one of the oldest canards in American political discourse – the assertion that anybody who questions any particular military adventure is – cue the boo track – a nasty old isolationist.

In a reasonably sane world such an assertion would have little or no traction. Impatience with wasteful spending and the unnecessary loss of American lives is hardly the same as wanting to withdraw from the world. The notion that military force is the most constructive way to engage the world is more than a little strange to begin with. To suggest that questioning a particular use of military force is tantamount to wanting to retreat behind our borders and have no contact with the outside world is almost beyond absurd.

The trouble, you see, is that all the other ways of engaging with the world are not orchestrated by The State, and therefore can’t be any good.

Brad Spangler provides contact info for the DA of Placer County, whose job it is to persecute Steve Kubby for trying to stay alive by unapproved means.

Libertango makes a couple of keen points about the war. (Cited by Terry Karney whom I don’t think I’ve seen since he was about sixteen.)

Alcohol Prohibition Was A Failure, says a Cato paper of 1991. (No kidding?) This is the first time I’ve seen the data so thoroughly laid out. Here’s another survey. (Both cited by Radley Balko.)

In an otherwise generally sound call for separation of church and state, 2%Co had this to say about democracy in Dixie (1789-1865):

. . . These slaves didn’t always like their lot in life, but according to your logic, Mrs Gong, they should have just shut up and slaved away. Hey, rule by the majority, right? They even had a nifty way of making sure that the white folks stayed in the majority — they made black folk equal to only 3/5 of a person. What a great deal! . . .

I put my quixotic toe in:

I’m surprised to see this [common] misconception propagated by such enlightened people. . . . If the slavers had their way at the Convention of 1787, slaves would have been counted fully, not 3/5. It was the Northerners who wanted slaves counted for zero. . . .

After going around a couple of times, 2%Co apparently agree with this point (though to avoid conceding that I said something accurate they present it as their own), but insist that it supports their original statement — and threaten to delete any further posts from me. It appears that they have done so, so I’ll repeat my conclusion here (as best I can recall it):

Now I admit I’m not clever enough to see how these statements can both be accurate, viz that it was in the interest of the same faction to reduce the representation of slaves in the census and to increase it; or why, given that slaves had no vote, any nifty trick was needed to ensure they remained a minority. If you can resolve this seeming contradiction, I’ll be delighted at learning something new; if you can say “oops” and move on, I’ll be impressed with your integrity. Since you refuse to do either, I guess I’m left with the hope that another reader – if you have any – will help me out.