and don’t stop until you catch your tail

Posted on Tuesday, 2005 September 20 by Anton

That droll Mr Bush recently said it would be bad to stop killing people and breaking stuff in Iraq before “the mission” is completed. Say what? I thought the mission was to take Saddam’s nukes and war-germs and bad chemicals away from him, and cut off his support for al-Qaeda; well, that was accomplished quite a while ago. So what’s the mission now? To find a retroactive justification for the invasion?

Posted in militaria | Leave a comment

intentions sometimes count

Posted on Sunday, 2005 September 18 by Anton

Jacob Sullum observes:

As I read the relevant Supreme Court decisions, if the [New York] police said they would randomly search bags [on the subway] for drugs, unlicensed guns or other contraband, mentioning in passing they would, of course, arrest anyone they happened to find with a bomb, the searches would be unconstitutional. But since they’ve said they are randomly searching bags for bombs, mentioning in passing they will also arrest anyone found with drugs, an unlicensed gun or other contraband, the searches probably will be upheld.

Posted in drugwar, security theater | Leave a comment

QotD

Posted on Thursday, 2005 September 15 by Anton

Will Wilkinson at TCS

A president who fattened farm subsidies, installed tariffs for steel and lumber, doled out a massive new prescription drug benefit, and nationalized airline security, folding it into a vast, cumbersome, dangerously ineffectual bureaucracy, is hardly channeling the ghost of Murray Rothbard.

Posted in politics | Leave a comment

Horatio Bunce and Davy Crockett

Posted on Monday, 2005 September 12 by Anton

A friend asked me why Ron Paul voted against a hurricane relief bill; was there something poisonous in it, or did he think it would be ineffective? I replied that I would expect Dr Paul to vote against any such bill on Constitutional grounds; and appended a link to the story, familiar to some of you, of how Davy Crockett was turned away from the Dark Side (or, as you may prefer, toward it).

Google’s first example of the story happens to be on Ron Paul’s own website. Rereading, I found that the text of that copy appears to be somewhat corrupt; so I looked for others. Indeed, the full story is substantially longer and more instructive. Copies at: Lew Rockwell; Patrick Henry On-Line (Martin Lindstedt); SlimPickins; Return of the Gods; TRIM (John Birch Society) (broken links removed 2020)

Later: Walter Williams collects some quotations from other early politicians on the same theme.

2020: The story is repeated at hushmoney.org, Healing and Revival, Constitution Society, Foundation for Economic Education; and debunked at Jim’s Corner.

Posted in constitution, history | 2 Comments

do cats count coup?

Posted on Monday, 2005 September 12 by Anton

Fluffie (age 12 years) continues to snub Pillow (age 5 months).

Last evening Pillow sneaked up behind where Fluffie was sitting, reached out and tapped her on the head. Fluffie merely got up and walked away.

Posted in pets | 1 Comment

the case of the missing keyword

Posted on Saturday, 2005 September 10 by Anton

The referral log usually has a few surprises. This week, my mathematical doodles were found three times by searches for words that do not appear on the page:

intimate
crystal candy
best girl friend

thanks to a previous post.

Posted in me!me!me! | Leave a comment

one lobe of the brain is dedicated to old advertising

Posted on Thursday, 2005 September 08 by Anton

Watching Pillow on patrol, guarding the hearth against MLO (mouse-like objects), stirs a tickle in my mind: About thirty years ago was there a long-running ad campaign, for some luxury good, that featured a black panther? Or have I imagined it, mutating the Blackglama “what becomes a legend most” campaign in which black fur was itself the product?

(Do I still have any issues of Scientific American from that period?)

Posted in humanities, pets | Leave a comment