In which I wonder if I'm channeling Walter Sobchak.
- How about Canada's gun registration program that I talked about late last year? Cost soars for gun registry computer system, and the Ontario Minister of Public Safety and Security says
This is an unconscionable waste of taxpayers' money on an initiative that focuses primarily on law-abiding citizens.
Apparently the program which was supposed to come in at around $120 million (Canadian) is going to cost over $1 Billion. There's more in A gang that couldn't shoot straight. - It's time to Put Government on a Diet. I haven't really been all that excited about who's going to benefit from the tax cut GW proposed. Doesn't really matter to me whether I'll see any direct benefit or not. But if it takes over half a trillion out of the hands of the kleptocrats in DC, that's a good start. They can't spend the money on pork if they don't have it to spend in the first place. When Reagan used a similar cut in the 80s to get the economy going again, his critics said it was a
starve the beast
strategy. Starving the beast sounds more like a compliment to me than a criticism, and it's one of the only times (or possibly the only time) in my life that the federal budget shrank. - House Makes a Plea To Keep BlackBerrys, even though they infringe on a patent, and we all know how protective the House is of intellectual property, but couldn't you all just give us a break this once because we're hooked on this technology even though it infringes on your patents, so please don't shut it down, okay? After all, these owners of intellectual property, unlike the RIAA, haven't shipped a bunch of bags of money to D.C. Legislators aren't special and don't deserve special treatment in IP battles. Maybe that's a message that will get Congress to pull its collective head out of its keister over IP issues. [boing boing]
- Hear about the Los Alamos Nuke Storage Snafu? Here's another reason I don't much believe anyone who says
I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
If this was a private business, they'd either have to buy off a regulator or two or would get fined into backruptcy. But because it's a government lab, people will probably get promoted. [boing boing] - Senators vow to halt `data mining' project. It's nice to see someone other than Ron Paul and Russ Feingold finally notice that our civil liberties are being trampled. And hey! In Human rights / Trading away America's treasure the Strib finally notices that our civil liberties are being trampled. But in their typical pro-government thinking, they say:
Who is attacking it? The last gang you'd expect.
Well, actually when civil liberties are threatened, the gang that's doing the attacking is the first gang I'd expect. [strib]