The Violence of Conservatism by Jeffrey A. Tucker

So there we have it. The magic of the marketplace, delivering via your computer screen straight to your doorstep, for only a buck, hundreds of pages of the most violent rhetoric put between covers since Progress Publishers collected Stalin’s speeches.

This is conservatism. There’s no use in denying it. The war party and American conservatism are interchangeable and inseparable.

Will Wilkinson on State Autonomy and Electoral Triviality

I once went on a date with an EPA lawyer. I said to her, more or less, this is my guess about what you do . . . A new environmental law is passed. The EPA people decide whether they like it or not. If they like it, they enforce it. If they don’t like it, they think, “What would we like the law to mean?” They then try to find a way of interpreting the language to reflect their, rather than congress’s preferences. The lawyers then think about who will sue them if they interpret the law this way, and whether they would win the suit. If they can’t win, they reinterpret it in a way that maybe doesn’t reflect their preferences as much, but which is more likely to stand up in court. Once they’ve got a winner, they implement, and prepare for the likely suit.

She said, “That’s almost exactly what I do.”

Christopher Westley: Why Be Proud of Government Work?

Recently, when walking home from work, I was passed by one of those red monster pick-up trucks with an oversized bumper sticker on the back window that announced: FORMER MARINE.

It made me wonder why it is that Marines are the only federal employees who feel the urge to proclaim that they once were paid with taxpayer loot. You never see Volkswagens buzzing around town with a sign that says FORMER POSTAL WORKER, or Lexuses chugging down the street with a sticker proclaiming FORMER FEDERAL FISHERIES STAFF ACCOUNTANT.

Educated Guesswork relays graphs – purporting to be from the ONDCP, no less – showing that the retail prices of heroin, cocaïne and methamphetamine (as adjusted for purity as well as currency inflation) declined fairly steadily between 1981 and 2001, while THC (marijuana) peaked in 1991 and has since returned to near its 1981 price.

Remind me again, is the objective of the DEA to make drugs more or less available?

Ted Rall, of all people, on Why Kerry Should Stand Up for the Second Amendment

Civil disobedience at its finest (cited by Bill St Clair, who got it from Claire Wolfe)

The pointless “assault weapon” ban of 1994 is about to sunset, and the usual suspects are twitching.

The Violence Policy Center . . . notes the 1994 law does not cover new assault weapons that have entered the market place.
At the top of their list are the SKS assault rifles . . . .

Where have they been? My SKS was made in 1952.

Also about to be un-banned (knock wood) are 11-round magazines for the unbadged majority. I wonder how soon they will be available in fact.