SA@TheDC – ‘Fixing’ Big Government is Not Conservative
Texas Judge Beats Disabled Daughter for ‘Illegal’ internet use
I think these are types of people generally attracted to government jobs — judges, sheriffs, world bankers, politicians and bureaucrats. They make money by exercising violence against peaceful people. Here, the violence spills into their domestic life.
gawker.com/5855478/reddit-video-apparently-shows-texas-family-judge-beating-disabled-daughter
(warning, disturbing video)
On Rothbardian Theory of Taxes
79-year-old arrested for handing out “Jury Info” fliers
Julian P. Heicklen, a 79-year-old retired chemistry professor, has often stood on a plaza outside the United States Courthouse in Manhattan, holding a “Jury Info” sign and handing out brochures that advocate jury nullification, the controversial view that if jurors disagree with a law, they may ignore their oaths to follow it and may acquit a defendant who violated it.
Then, last year, federal prosecutors had Mr. Heicklen indicted, charging that his activity violated the law against jury tampering.
. . . .
“No legal system could long survive,” they added, “if it gave every individual the option of disregarding with impunity any law which by his personal standard was judged morally untenable.”
(Read more)
Israel punishes Palestinians for Unesco membership: Withholding tax revenues and accelerating settlement construction – But it’s Palestines bid for membership that will kill peace talks.
Israel last night announced that it would accelerate settlement construction and withhold tax revenues from the Palestinian Authority to punish it for joining the UN’s cultural arm.
enjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, convened his inner cabinet yesterday to study proposals to sanction the Palestinian leadership after it won overwhelming international support on Monday for its bid to join UNESCO.
While some kind of punitive action was expected, the severity of Israel’s response suggested that Mr Netanyahu had bowed to pressure from right-wing ministers intent on exacting the heaviest penalty possible for what they saw as an act of Palestinian effrontery.
An Israeli government official defended the measures, saying that Mr Netanyahu had been left with no choice but to respond robustly to Palestinian “unilateralism” in its pursuit of UN membership and by what he claimed was the growing radicalism of Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority. (Read more)
Romney: U.S. ‘Should Not Play The Role Of Leader’ In Mid-East Peace, ‘Follow’ Israel Instead
If Mitt Romney becomes president, there are a lot of important foreign policy decisions that he’d leave up to others. Most notably, Romney often says that whatever the generals decide, that’s the course he’ll take in Afghanistan (although he backtracked on that stance when pressed recently).
Now it seems that a President Romney will allow the Israeli government to decide American policy toward that country. The free daily newspaper Israel Hayom — a media outlet closely associated with right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — asked Romney if, as president, he would ever consider moving the American Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. In his answer, Romney made some astonishing claims. First, that his policy toward Israel will be guided by Israeli leaders; second, on the Jerusalem issue, he’d do whatever Israel tells him to do; and third, he does not think the United States should take a leadership role in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:
ROMNEY: The actions that I will take will be actions recommended and supported by Israeli leaders. I don’t seek to take actions independent of what our allies think is best, and if Israel’s leaders thought that a move of that nature would be helpful to their efforts, then that’s something I’ll be inclined to do. But again, that’s a decision which I would look to the Israeli leadership to help guide. I don’t think America should play the role of the leader of the peace process, instead we should stand by our ally. Again, my inclination is to follow the guidance of our ally Israel, as to where our facilities and embassies would exist.
The policy that the American Embassy reside in Tel Aviv and not Jerusalem pre-dates the current administration. In fact, as Lara Friedman notes at Americans for Peace Now, the U.S. “does not recognize the sovereignty of any party in any part of Jerusalem (East or West)” and it’s “a policy that dates back to pre-1948, and has been followed by every U.S. Administration since, regardless of the President or party in the White House.”
Mock Union Protest Sign
Everything you get from government . . .
The United States ARE . . .
Is the United States, or are the United States?
If one were to consult nearly every textbook written on the subject of the United States after the Reconstruction era, one would certainly choose the former grammatical arrangement by default. Consensus seems to have it: the United States is. But what performs the action is? Is it the “United” or the “States”? Traditional logic seems to fly in the face of post–Civil War standard American English, because logic would not allow us to make the “Union” that hides in the shadows behind the adjective “United” perform the verb that the States are supposed to be performing of their own volition.[1] Only “States” can perform an action when the noun phrase “United States” appears in the subject position. Clearly, the United States are, and they are by the rules of logic.
This problem in the application of subject-verb agreement may seem like a small quibble, but perhaps every issue at stake in the American political scene between the era of the Civil War and today’s increasing mess of government intervention can be boiled down to this same grammatical quandary. Is the United States, or are the United States? The difference lies in where we can place the power of action. Do the states, as the representatives of the people, have that power, or does the unitary power of the federal government retain a monopoly on the power of action?
In 1903, one particularly perplexed grammarian of the states’-rights position tried to tackle this issue in a letter to Harper’s Weekly. Alarmed by the change in grammar, which seemed to be making its way into the state machinery, he wrote,
It seems to be practically impossible to convince some persons of what ought to be self-evident, namely, that the text of the Constitution of the United States cannot be altered or amended in the slightest particular except by the machinery for emendation expressly provided in the text of the document itself. A paragraph is going the rounds of the press to the effect that the question whether the “United States” should be regarded as a plural or as a singular noun has been definitely settled by the Committee on the Revision of the Laws, which, it seems, in reviewing the Federal Statutes, has presumed to decide that the United States is.[2]
James Madison, the great architect of the Constitution, preferred are to that consolidated is precisely for the reason that the United States are not the singular United State.[3] Indeed, the “United State” has the ring of something dark and ominous, perhaps something not unlike Mussolini’s conception of the state as a unico mystico of man and government machinery: “No individuals or groups (political parties, cultural associations, economic unions, social classes) outside the State.” (Read more)
Christmas comes early for Germany after 55-billion-euro accounting error
The discovery of the mother of all accounting errors at a troubled bank under government protection has made Germany some 55 billion euros richer, the Finance Ministry said late on Friday.
The discovery of a whopping accounting error has made Germany instantly 55.5 billon euros ($78.5 billion) richer.
The error was caused by a double booking at the state-owned bad bank, created to handle the toxic assets of bankrupt Hypo Real Estate bank, which was nationalized in 2009.
Freeing up the cash means that German national debt, as a percentage of gross domestic product, dropped from 83.7 to 81.1 percent. The error was caused when accountants subtracted funds, instead of adding them. (Read more)
Truth vs Politics
Even in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, 1 + 1 does not equal 5.
Guns don’t kill people, Drug cartels armed by our government kill people
Did he mean this as a joke?
Bureaucracy in Greece Defies Efforts to Cut It
tories of eye-popping waste and abuse of power among Greece’s bureaucrats are legion, including officials who hire their wives, and managers who submit $38,000 bills for office curtains.
The work force in Greece’s Parliament is so bloated, according to a local press investigation, that some employees do not even bother to come to work because there are not enough places for all of them to sit.
But as Europe looks for any sign of hope that Greece is on the road to reform, there are growing concerns about its ability — and willingness — to trim its payroll, a crucial element in bringing expenses under control enough to win continued international financing. (Read more)
I’m pleasantly surprised to see this reported on. Usually, anybody who calls for cuts is condemned as a right wing fascist nut job.