digamma.net - notes

I’ve never understood stuff like this:

I am a 20 year old from Tyler, TX currently attending college with a declared major in political science. Up until this point, I had always been aware that I contained within myself a strange mixture of liberal and conservative viewpoints which I never had a word to describe. I have always tended to be socially liberal, and yet felt passionately that about limited government and the need to restrain federal power (a traditionally conservative viewpoint)…. I finally have a word to attach to my political beliefs: libertarian.

I see this same coming-out story a lot in libertarian media. But how do you get to be a 20-year-old Poli Sci major without knowing what libertarianism is?

I am currently in France investigating the country’s embrace of Islamofascism and hatred of Western Civilization. Everyone has been very kind to me, but it’s all a ruse. John Murphy told me so. All my croissants will be deducted as digamma.net business expenses.

Dan Brown is quite a bad writer, but he sure makes intercontinental plane rides pass.

I also watched Patriot Games on the plane. 24 has really done a good job of ripping off Tom Clancy. They didn’t even change Jack Ryan’s first name.

UPDATE: John J. Miller, not John Murphy. Thanks to RETARDO.

So the left-leaning judges on the Supreme Court ruled this week that local governments can seize homes basically for any “public interest” they want.

Meanwhile right-wingers in the House of Representatives wants a Constitutional Amendment to ban flag-burning.

I think we can compromise here.

Since leftists burn flags, clearly they don’t need them that badly. Meanwhile right-wingers are spending their hard-earned money on the stars and stripes.

Henceforth, the US government should claim eminent domain over all American flags belonging to Democrats and redistribute them to Republicans. After all, if building a Wal-Mart constitutes “public interest", certainly preventing criticism that could harm the government does too.

Next in line for confiscation and redistribution? You guessed it! Abortion clinics.

This just in: Hillary Clinton, in cooperation with generous donors from the Chinese government, plans to open a chain of communist indoctrination centers around the country.

Just kidding.

Here’s another good one: Halliburton just got a $30 million dollar contract to build a new detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, right after Dick Cheney made public statements in favor of the camp’s existence.

Oh, wait, that’s actually true.

Via Kevin Drum.

Listening to one of the leftist radio shows (either Democracy Now or Free Speech Radio News) on my way home tonight, I heard FAIR’s Janine Jackson giving a speech on the virtues of “democratic media". Jackson was listing all the problems in America that could supposedly be remedied with “democratic media", and one of them was the unjustified war in Iraq.

It seems to me that the Iraq war had widespread popular support. Thus, wouldn’t any truly “democratic” media have to reflect that support? Otherwise it would be undemocratic - elitist, even.

I wonder how much attention the demos would really want to pay to the author of articles like Fear and Favor: How Power Shapes the News and Anything But Racism: Media make excuses for “whitewashed” TV lineup.

The best part of the debate over the Hinchey Amendment (roll call here) isn’t in the Washington Post’s account.

Representative Souders of Indiana told this story of died from the effects of MDMA after her friends decided that the best way to treat her was not to take her to a hospital, but rather to give her marijuana.

And they did this, according to Souders, because they heard marijuana was medicinal.

Now, I’ve heard Advil is medicinal. If I give it to someone who’s bleeding to death, should we ban that too?

Whatever Souders is smoking, I want some.

A shoutout to the 54 Democrats who voted No on this amendment - I don’t ever again want to be accused of not caring about sick people by Democrats when I disagree with their healthcare policies.

I watched C-SPAN all morning waiting for the debate on the Hinchey Amendment, but the debate over Representative Flake’s amendment to lay off on Cuban-Americans sending gifts home was a fair bit more interesting. Most of Flake’s fellow Republicans argued that Castro’s regime profits by ransacking every package sent to Cuba, and most of the Democrats made the moral argument that people in Cuba need all the gifts they can get.

Flake closed the debate brilliantly - it’s entirely possible, he conceded, that gift packages will be seized by the government. But, he argued, as Americans the choice of sending them still lies with the senders.

It lost by 6 votes.

Via Matt Welch at Reason, I find Pushing Back, a truly despicable weblog paid for out of your and my tax dollars.

Most of the entries this week are dedicated to giggling at cancer patients who won’t be able to alleviate their suffering with marijuana lawfully in the wake of the Raich decision.

Every penny Americans are forced to spend on this drivel is a penny they can’t spend publishing their own opinions. And that, my fellow Americans, is censorship.

Greatest flamewar ever.

A guy starts out looking for some female companionship, and 19 posts later ends up claiming responsibility for 9/11.

I love the Internets.

Justice Thomas:

If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything–and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers.

That “no longer” has been true for about 60 years, but this case marks the end of what some people thought was a turn toward federalism by the Supreme Court. Are radical right wing judges trying to roll back the new deal? No, they’re citing Wickard v. Filburn approvingly.

Damn.