one strip at a time

Posted on Tuesday, 2003 February 25 by Anton

Day By Day makes a change from Republican-bashing cartoons by, you guessed it, bashing Democrats.
But tastefully.

Posted in cartoons | Leave a comment

the last veto

Posted on Tuesday, 2003 February 25 by Anton

Hey hey! Today’s headline in The Daily Review (Hayward, California) is: Jurors find merit in nullification. As I said before, nullification is not the whole story in the case that prompted this; but it’s good to see it in the air, as it were. Continue reading →

Posted in constitution | Leave a comment

essence

Posted on Sunday, 2003 February 23 by Anton

Ross Douthat writes in part:

No one doubts that pure libertarianism is simple, but that’s just why it remains on the ideological fringe — because it boils down the most difficult questions in human affairs to a simple equation, a What Would the Market Do bumper sticker.

Hey, thanks for the idea!

I followed a link or two from Glen Whitman’s Agoraphilia, packed with bloggy goodness.

Posted in politics | Leave a comment

selective violence

Posted on Saturday, 2003 February 22 by Anton

Duncan Frissell (Technoptimist) explains How to Invade Iraq Without Violating the Non-Aggression Principle (In case you felt the need to). Link from Daniel Boone (Nolo Consentire).

Posted in militaria | Leave a comment

the young empire

Posted on Friday, 2003 February 21 by Anton

In “An American Empire! If You Want It instead of Freedom, Part 1”, Richard Ebeling quotes Garet Garrett on the symptoms of imperialism. “Second, domestic-policy issues become increasingly subordinate to foreign-policy matters.” But perhaps this was inevitable; foreign policy is the one field in which the central authority is most thoroughly exclusive under the US Constitution (power is shared with the provinces to some degree in most other matters), and so naturally ambitious politicians would tend to be attracted to it and favor it.

I’ll think about whether and how to address this problem in my new utopian constitution – when I’m not wearing my anarchist hat!

Posted in militaria | Leave a comment

no favors

Posted on Friday, 2003 February 21 by Anton

Demons in a death penalty case – Ellen Goodman writes in the Boston Globe about the peculiar practice of forcibly medicating mad prisoners.

I am particularly struck by the ruling in Ford v. Wainwright that it is “cruel and unusual punishment” to put to death someone who was mentally incompetent – so incompetent that he didn’t understand his fate or the meaning of death or why he was condemned. I agree that it’s cruel to kill someone without letting him know why; but, y’know, if I were about to die but too addled to know what ‘die’ means, I think I’d rather be left in that state than have it ‘mercifully’ explained to me.
Continue reading →

Posted in constitution | Leave a comment

I’m just askin’

Posted on Friday, 2003 February 21 by Anton

When was the last time street protests had any effect on US policy?

Posted in politics | Leave a comment