Category: Civil Liberties

They want to go after more than just soda, including milk shakes, movie theater popcorn, and other milk beverages. This is why Tam’s latest effort is more important than ever.

From Glenn Reynolds over at Instapundit:

Let me be clear. These people are not well-meaning do-gooders who have just gone a bit too far. They don’t actually “mean well” at all. They don’t mean well, they mean to be in control. They are power-fetishists, drunk on the joys of bossing the little people around. They are not good people. They are evil. They should be ashamed of themselves, but shame — like taxes — is for the little people.

And I think we have to get into the habit of telling them that more often. It’s much the same with many (not all) of our opponents.

Some of the folks who argue for it would do better for their cause not to argue for it. If you look at the RKBA movement, it’s generally lead by the people who are most into shooting. Most bloggers either are active competitive shooters, or have been competitive shooters at some point. In other words, shooting is a big part of our lives, so we are quite motivated to protect it. This is probably also true of marijuana legalization. But it presents a problem when having it be a large part of your life interferes with the ability to make good and coherent arguments.

For those of you who still have any doubts as to the miraculous healing powers of cannabis and THC Oil or do not believe that there is an ongoing international effort dead set on keeping this free and 100% organic medicine, along with all organic foods, supplements, and natural medicines from a diseased and dying global population… I am about to BLOW YOUR MINDS……

Apparently the government has a patent on some cannibinoid research. Unfortunately Cannabinoids are a class of compounds, and not necessary compounds which are psychoactive. There’s a fair amount of research into these classes of compounds and their receptors, with a goal to make drugs that can specifically target them. For instance, pot gives you the munchies. That’s a specific receptor. If it could be targeted specifically, it would be beneficial to people who, for medical reasons, need to enhance their appetite and eat more. None of this research is a good reason to legalize pot. In fact, the whole medical marijuana argument is a giant scam.

THC is not difficult to synthesize, and a synthetic version is already available as a Schedule III Compound, and an inhaler version will soon be on the market. For those who point to natural THC as being 100% organic, I would point out that Hemlock is also 100% organic. So is the extract of the castor bean. Nature can kill you, folks. She makes some of the most potent poisons known to man. While THC is not poisonous, inhaling smoke into your lungs will tend to damage your health.

That said, I support medical marijuana and decriminalization of weed, but just on general freedom principles, rather than on the principal that it’s necessary strictly from a pharmaceutical viewpoint. Some folks in the legalization movement act like if we just unschedule weed, it will be the end of human disease as we know it, and that’s just patently ridiculous.

After someone robs a bank, stop and cuff every single driver at a stoplight headed away from a bank, and search their vehicles.

“We didn’t have a description, didn’t know race or gender or anything, so a split-second decision was made to stop all the cars at that intersection, and search for the armed robber,” Aurora police Officer Frank Fania told ABC News.

You can stop someone with reasonable and articulable suspicion a crime has been committed. You can perform a cursory search of the individual and the immediate area for “officer safety.” (See Terry v. Ohio) But if this amounted to RAS I’ll eat my hat.

“Most of the adults were handcuffed, then were told what was going on and were asked for permission to search the car,” Fania said. “They all granted permission, and once nothing was found in their cars, they were un-handcuffed.”

So you cuff them first, then ask for permission? I would have told them to f**k off and let me go or get a warrant, but I think most people, in that situation, would just want to get it over with.

The really sad part is, from some brief research, whether handcuffing incident to a stop turns an encounter from a stop to an arrest is of mixed precedent. That means qualified immunity should hold. But that assumes they had RAS to stop at all, and here I think it can be argued that RAS does not exist. Thus, every once of these folks had their Forth and Fourteenth Amendments rights violated, and someone should be held to account for it.

Apparently you can be arrested for political speech in this country that someone finds offensive, if you get a judge that out of touch and senile enough. See more here from Popehat. This is just outrageous. I don’t think that Judge should ever be allowed to try a case, or sit on the bench again. Sometimes we have to beware of tyrants in robes just as much as tyrants in business suits. Perhaps even more so.

How Bloomberg keeps New York City’s crime rates low by violating civil liberties of its residents.

But that doesn’t mean the cops won’t take it anyway, and make you prove it’s legit before they’ll give it back. Civil Asset Forfeiture is one of the biggest infringements to civil liberties that government engages in under the guise of the War on Drugs. It’s another issue I’m surprised doesn’t get more attention from politicians who want to appear to be good civil libertarians, though I know these days that kind of thing is out of fashion.

And it’s not like I believe the government can never seize money, but the presumption of innocence should mean the government can’t seize ill gotten gains until one’s guilt has been proven, and the property implicated, beyond a reasonable doubt. Under Civil Asset Forfeiture, since the property is being charged, there’s no presumption of innocence.

A few years ago I bought a gas can, who’s spout was a screaming ball of suck. Eventually it broke to a degree where it would not easily dispense gas. So I go to the WalMart looking for a new gas can, and every other gas can on the self also looks like a screaming ball of suck. When I was a kid, our gas can had a plain old spout, with a little cap on the end, and a vent, with another little cap on it. Undo both, and it just worked.

Apparently the reason gas cans suck is, like the same reason every other product that’s stopped working in a past few years sucks: light bulbs, toilets, dishwashing and laundry detergent, and washers and dryers… the list goes on: government bureaucrats.

What I want to know is how this stuff isn’t becoming major campaign issues. Is a guy like Mitt Romney so afraid of the environmentalists that he doesn’t want to stand up for the freedom to buy products that work? Do a majority of American want to buy shitty products based on questionable public good? So why no politicians using the fact that the government is ruining consumer products as a rallying cry to bring in Americans who are sick of it? Seems like a missed opportunity to me. I think a lot of Americans are hungry for a politician who will stand up for them against the bureaucrats, instead of standing up for the bureaucrats, and those who enable them, against the rest of us. I can get why someone might not want to embrace legalizing crack or heroin, where you’d likely only hear cheers from the Wookie contingent. But this seems like a no brainer.