From numbers tabulated by The Glittering Eye: the horizontal axis is the tax-consumption ratio, the vertical is the logarithm of income per capita. One extreme outlier is omitted, without guilt as it’s a special case.

In a perfect world the dots would represent counties, scaled for population, shaded according to the popular vote. But any of that would mean exerting effort.

Ron Paul, last of the small-government conservatives (in public office), warns of a scheme for mandatory mental “health” screening of children. Astraea hosts a longer similar piece.

My friend Mike Linksvayer links to some good info about voting methods. See in particular why the problem of “tactical” voting does not go away with Automatic Runoff (Australian ballot).

Greg Perry, born with one leg and three fingers, passionately denounces the Americans with Disabilities Act in the December issue of Liberty.

In 1990, I thought about going to Washington to campaign against this farce when Congress was discussing it because I knew it would be horribly misused, cost America far more than estimated, and end up causing more problems for those who were truly handicapped. I decided not to go. I had severely underestimated the ADA; I still kick myself. (And believe me, kicking myself is a challenge!)

I guess you’ve all seen the secession map by now, in one form or another. I’m not keen on being governed from Ottawa or México, myself, but how much worse can it be than a “Jesusland” relieved of its inhibitions?

Assuming for the sake of argument that the “Blue States” do withdraw from one federation and seek to join another, would they have us? The population of New York is equal to that of Ontario and Quebec (Canada’s biggest provinces) combined. California is about equal to all of Canada, or one-third of Mexico. Once they’ve got the gloating out of their system, the legislators to north and south will find plenty of reasons not to welcome all of the putative applicants.

So: if a realignment of boundaries does occur, I reckon it’s sure to increase the number of sovereignties in North America. Though most of them may be more distateful than the present selection, I only need one libertarian country.

Furthermore, if movement between the new states and federations is not seriously impaired (as should be politically difficult), competition is likely to drive most of them in a vaguely libertarian direction.

It amuses me to have a go at translating this Livejournal entry by François-René Rideau (“Faré”):

. . . in taking positions based on static emotions disconnected from causal mechanisms, [the socialists] come to advocate absurdities. The more Swiss cheese, the more holes; the more holes, the less cheese; therefore, the more cheese, the less cheese. Correlations with moving referent, variation of the constant, semantic slippage — an anti-conceptual mentality, impaired from proper reasoning, exposes itself to such sophisms.
. . .
Enemy of the people and of the other enemies of the people, alone in the world where man is man’s wolf, where each is the enemy of all — behold at once the spectre that socialism demonizes and the prophecy that socialism realizes.

To which I suppose a socialist would say, I know you are but what am I?

Some of Faré’s entries are in (excellent) English, by the way.

The Manchester Guardian (Oct.27):

Torture is simple – amazing results can be achieved with the everyday household objects that any Blue Peter presenter might recommend. And it’s really sexy – think of all that painstaking attention to genital areas. Better yet, it’s about power – having the power to make somebody into something. The kind of exhilarating stuff you’re not supposed to try at home. Never mind that even Malleus Maleficarum (the original torture manual for the Spanish Inquisition) cautioned that its victims might say anything to make it stop – torture is definitely about truth and about justice springing in a really surprising and frankly rather ill-defined way from unjust and criminal acts, and don’t forget, if we don’t do it to them, they’ll do it to us.

Cited by the Future of Freedom Foundation. There’s a daily mailing of links, but I don’t see offhand how to subscribe.