You take the good news where you can find it, I guess:


Damned if I know why this was the Air Force's business, anyway. I suspect they started this because the mighty intellects at the Pentagon observed that the word "cyberspace" contains "space", though of course network technology and rocketry are two totally different fields. It's a relief to see this suspension, because it's a safe bet that they were working on cyberspace offenses as much as defenses.

I don't like Larry King -- something about the man makes me cringe -- but I may tune in to his show tonight in order to get more info on the 'did he or didn't he?' scandal surrounding McCain's performance during the Saddleback interview on Saturday. The interviewer mega-pastor Rich Warren will be the guest in the hot seat and I want to assess further whether or not I was deceived by McCain. In this week's ifeminists e-newsletter, I wrote:



(BTW, you can subscribe to the free e-newsletter at ]ifeminists ; click the "Subscribe" button at the bottom of the left column)

So what's the what of the scandal? It now seems likely that McCain's stellar performance was due to previewing the questions.

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We know about how various political systems would deal with your owning two cows, but what about various financial instruments?



(Hat tip to Groklaw NewsPicks.)

Common Dreams News Center trumpets the headline California Becomes First State to Condemn Use of Torture in 'War on Terror'. The condemnation was specifically "aimed at preventing California health professionals from engaging in coercive interrogations of detainees at Guantánamo and other U.S. military prisons. Senate Joint Resolution 19 instructs the state’s licensing boards to inform California doctors, psychologists and other health professionals of their obligations under national and international law [specifically, the Geneva Convention] relating to torture. The boards will warn the licensees that they may one day be subject to prosecution if they participate in interrogations that do not conform to international standards of treatment of prisoners."

I find it difficult to applaud the measure...not because I disagree with its content. I am still too stunned by the surrounding circumstances: SJR19 took three years to win approval in what is arguably the most 'progressive' state in America and 49 states have yet to make a similar statement. Moreover, the article states, The California State Senate gave final approval to the resolution in a 21-13 roll call vote. In other words, thirteen members of the California state senate voted to allow doctors to continue participating in torture -- 34% of them endorsed the policy explicitly and under their own names. That is, when their names were called, 31 senators spoke up to say (the equivalent of) "I endorse torture by doctors". This stuns me.

My thanks to LewRockwell.com for pointing me to this piece by Cory Doctorow, on the latest damnfoolishness of the recording industry. I particularly appreciate his observations on how the industry is trying to circumvent the rule of law:


As I've said before, just because a private enterprise has the right to do something, doesn't mean that libertarians have to like it or approve of it. And when the record companies and Internet Service Providers enlist the government in their schemes -- as in the U.K., U.S., and Canada -- then they deserve no respect at all.

Clay Bennett's Obama; Glenn McCoy's Olympic Score; Pat Oliphant's The Bear; Michael Ramirez's Russia's Most Effective Weapon; Steve Sacks' Democratic Convention Protest; and, Dan Wasserman's Putin's Soul.

I realize this has been blogged to death already, but it deserves quote of the week status:


I submit that anyone so thoroughly out of touch with reality has no business commanding the armed forces of Grenada, let alone the U.S. You call this "experience"?

Murray Rothbard's theoretical approach to history included the idea and importance of what he called "the lone crazy." The lone crazy is a wild card -- the individual (or small group) who seems to appear out of nowhere and acts in an unpredicted manner that dramatically and forever alters the world as we know it. An example would be the nationalist zealot Gavrilo Princip who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife in Sarajevo in 1914 and, so, sparked World War I.

Murray's point was that the best-laid plans of policy-makers can be shattered by a single bullet fired from one man's hand; future history is neither predictable nor amenable to social engineering. This Rothbardian theory came to mind while I was thinking about the current conflict between Georgia and Russia which, admittedly, involves a whole lot of non-lone crazies. But the sudden conflict stands as another example of how the balance of global power can suddenly and surprisingly shift. While neocons were making other plans, Russia abruptly asserted its status as a super-power that would not brook interference with its zones of influence. (In stating this, I do not mean to show admiration or sympathy for Russia...or Georgia, for that matter.)

While the West (largely the U.S.) was busy planning to include Georgia in its zones of influence -- e.g. through inclusion in NATO -- Russia acted in a lone crazy manner that changed the conditions of history/politics in this region. Arguably, given how important Russia is to the Middle East, the conflict with Georgia has changed that history as well. Certainly, it has exposed the weakness of America/Bush who can do little more than shake a forefinger at Putin and Medvedev.

The latest addition to this site's archive is Liberty's Library...

Over the course of Benjamin Tucker’s periodical Liberty (1881-1908), the subscribers were often regaled with “recommended readings”—in essence, the “must” titles for individualists to have on their bookshelves. Those books and periodicals are listed here. The descriptions are Liberty’s own, usually rendered on the last page of the issue where books were offered for sale through the Liberty office (Boston) and then Tucker’s own bookstore (New York).

Access Tucker's recommended library here or by clicking on articles in the toolbar above and, then, proceeding to "Individualist Anarchism -- History."

Thanks to Thoreau at Unqualified Offerings, I learn that Barack Obama's real birth certificate has finally been unearthed. Also Glenn McCoy's I'd Take a Bullet For You, Clay Bennett with Ready to Lead! and Pawn Shop,
Berkeley Breathed's "Naughty CEO" nightmare, and finally xkcd with the clearest explanation yet of another problem with voting machines.

(First appeared April 2008; Foundation for Economic Eduction; The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty)

By Wendy McElroy

H. Beatty Chadwick, a former corporate lawyer, has been imprisoned in a Pennsylvania county jail for over 13 years even though he has never been arrested, criminally accused or tried. Chadwick is imprisoned on ‘contempt of court’ charges that sprang from a contentious divorce. His case dramatizes an ongoing debate over the use and misuse of civil contempt imprisonment.

Many people view contempt of civil court as an uncommon and relatively benign sanction that is flexed only to enforce court orders or respect for the court. If the sanction is seen to have bite, it is usually in connection with high-profile cases in which journalists refuse to reveal their sources and, so, are imprisoned until they relent or it is clear that further imprisonment will not compel compliance.

In reality, such imprisonment seems to be commonplace and it can devastate lives. Arguably, the most common form of civil imprisonment is for non-payment of child support. When a ‘deadbeat’ parent is jailed for non-payment by a family court judge, the actual charge is contempt of civil court. How many ‘deadbeats’ are imprisoned each year is unknown because family courts are not required to maintain such records and rarely do so. This means that family court judges act with less transparency and, so, less accountability than those in other venues. Moreover, there is no national database of ‘deadbeat’ parents incarcerated each year. In short, there is an amazing lack of data on such imprisonment, with estimates ranging from tens to hundreds of thousands.

What is contempt of court?

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Your article "Return of Debtor's Prison?"was outstanding. I had written a treatise on this (Contempt of Court--Arbitrary Excess of Power) several years ago, and it can be found at my website.

One of the critical issues with civil contempt is that it now has a standard of proof of clear and convincing evidence. This is higher than the civil standard of preponderance of the evidence, but lower than the criminal standard of beyond reaonable doubt. Clear and convincing evidence requires much more than a judge's say-so. Now, it requires a full-scale investigatory matter requiring a trial by jury, or at least the right to appointed, competent, effective counsel (I've had situations where real estate and patent lawyers were appointed to people facing contempt and jail time, when they needed an attorney knowledgeable in constitutional law, criminal law and family law). Given that 49 out of 50 states (NH is the only one that doesn't) now require appointment of counsel for indigent parents in child support enforcement cases, there is no difference in civil contempt and enforcing a child support order. In fact, child support orders have been declared as judgment debts on the date they are due by every state. Child support has been defined as a "civil" debt and not a "special kind of debt" by all of the the Federal Courts of Appeals that have had these cases before them on interstate criminal matters.

The issue is not whether the matter turns on the "civil" or "criminal" aspect of the case, but whether it deprives a person of liberty. If it does, according to most states' caselaw, statutory law and constitutions, then there can be no imprisonment without full criminal due process, e.g., right to trial by jury, right to appointed competent, effective counsel, right to present evidence, witnesses and testimony, right to an ability to pay hearing, etc.). In the Chadwick case, the PA courts are out-of-bounds with their ruling. This is because it has gone past the remedial and is now past the punitive. The theoretical ability to be jailed for the rest of one's life without any due process has been brought to fruition by this case.

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Anarchist and rationalist Stefan Molyneaux of Free Domain Radio repute offers several books as free audio or .pdf downloads with the request that you donate whatever you believe the content was worth to you. Among the titles available for free: Everyday Anarchy and Practical Anarchy.

Looking back, I see that I have made twelve posts entitled "Building Freedom." And really, I'm just nibbling around the edges. I haven't spoken at all about nonviolent resistance, or countereconomics, or education, or the "locomotive franchise" (voting with your feet). Nor have I yet mentioned Harry Browne's How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World, still recommended reading after all these years.

It was not my point to say that you must or should be doing these particular things. Rather, these were intended as a few examples of what I have done. To quote Sunni Maravillosa:


However, I do intend these to be a mild rebuke to those who insist on political action as the Only Way that their lives can be steered back to freedom. I'm not speaking of those who include voting in their arsenal of many strategies -- I have a different bone to pick with those people, but I credit them with recognizing that freedom can be sought, and seeking it themselves, in a multitude of ways. No, this rebuke is reserved for those whose only effort toward freedom consists of sending a check to the Libertarian Party, and then showing up on election day to put an "X" in the Libertarian box. Those who will not lift a finger to free themselves in any other way. 'Cause, ya know, that would be work.

You don't have to follow any of my strategies. But if you want me to believe that you're serious about freedom, you have to do something other than punching a chad. Otherwise you've embraced the servile mentality...waiting for someone else to free you.

P.S. my first draft of this post was entitled "The One True Way"...and then I visited Lunaya Pravda and saw a new post "One True Path". Well worth reading...and perhaps a mild rebuke to my excesses.

A buzz term is appearing with increased frequency in the literature and programs surrounding education at both the public school and university levels: Cultural competence. Parents would do well to ask, "What is it, and how could it affect my children?"

The term “cultural competence” first arose in connection with health care services, where a standard definition is, "services that are respectful of and responsive to the cultural and linguistic needs of the patient." This means, for example, health care providers should be able to communicate with a non-English-speaking patient. They should take other cultural differences into account as well; for example, a clinic might arrange for a female doctor to perform a pelvic exam on a Muslim woman.

The term has migrated from health care to education, however, where its definition has shifted. In theory, cultural competence in the classroom can involve nothing more than training teachers to be more effective with children from diverse backgrounds. For example, a teacher may take a student’s race into account when assigning readings in history that are most likely to interest him.

But the term is notoriously vague and elastic in its application. This is not surprising. After all, its two component words – “culture” and “competence” – are themselves difficult to define.

Most of the formal definitions that are offered in policy statements clarify little. The one offered by the National Association of School Psychologists is typical, “Cultural competence is defined as a set of congruent behaviors, attitudes, and policies that come together in a system, agency, or among professionals and enables that system, agency, or those professionals to work effectively in cross-cultural situations.”

The best way to slice through such obscuring jargon and arrive at an understanding of cultural competence is to examine how it functions as a policy in the school system. In practice, the term often looks like political correctness being applied in a new manner.

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