2. April, 2003 - back to ranting
- Things are still hectic and not terribly pleasant around here. I’m not ready to write about it, so I’m going back to ranting about that freedom stuff.
- You bet there are issues with governor’s pay-for-arrest plan. It probably doesn’t charge enough to cover the costs of arrests, and it probably charges too much for many protesters to pay. And it’s probably unconstitutional. Not that that’s ever stopped the government from passing a law. [strib]
- Big Brother Is Watching You Shop, using credit card records to track
terrorists
(and the rest of us).
- Minnesota hunters, anglers now must provide Social Security numbers, as will anyone who wants a drivers license (that’s been optional until now). The bill’s not law yet, but it’s expected to pass easily. It’s being forced by blackmail at the federal level.
Collect the numbers, or lose $350 million per year in child support money.
Feh.
- Bar Association wants
pirate
WiFi regulated. See, that’s because WiFi is basically a way for people to share pirated files, not a useful tool that lets me surf the web from the front steps while watching the neighbor gals play frisbee in the street on a beautiful day like we had yesterday. No sir, it’s no good for that at all. Better ban it. Or maybe the lawyers should move to places where cute neighbor gals playing frisbee in the street. [boing boing]
- Margaret Atwood writes A letter to America.
You’re the 21st-century Romans. Your admiring friends used to know you well: land of the brave, home of the free. Now, as you obsess over the omens of war, we wonder if you know yourself.
It gets better from there. Go read the whole thing.
- Are Scott, Carly and Larry risking time at Camp X-Ray? Well, Mike Hawash apparently did by giving to the same sort of charity they did. Mike’s a US citizen who’s being held, and as far as anyone on the outside can tell, has been stripped of his rights. [boing boing]
- Ebay Inc Gets Letter From US Attorney Of Missouri saying that PayPal has run afoul of the USA PATRIOT act. Ebay’s also shutting down half.com, which sucks, since that’s where I get most of my books. The two don’t appear to be related.
- Michael Moore Reconsidered. Okay, so most of the
facts
in Bowling for Columbine turn out to have been made up. I have to agree with Evan that if I seriously believed even half of what Michael Moore claims to, I’d be stockpiling sniper rifles in a buried strongbox at the park.
The strangest thing about this is that while so many of the assertions in his documentary
are false, people just don’t seem to care. Now if only there was a way to find out what the hell was actually happening in Iraq (and in the inner sancta in D.C.). The TV news sure isn’t telling us much in the way of facts, and it appears most people are just happy being lied to.
Copyright 2009, Dave Polaschek.
Last updated on Mon, 15 Feb 2010 13:53:42.