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On stupid and confused “thickism” see various posts under tag thickism, and Cory Massimino, “Libertarianism is More than Anti-Statism,” C4SS (April 8th, 2014).

Some of my friends think this is a great post: Matthew Dawson’s (aka Wombatron) Why I Am A Left-Libertarian. While I like ole Wombatron, and find some nuggets of wisdom here, and an admirable (for a leftie) attempt at being clear and explicit, I have to demur. First, Dawson starts out without defining leftism or left-libertarianism; he just assumes you know what it is, and why it’s assumed to be non-libertarian: [continue reading…]

Great series of posts back on LRC a while back (referring in part to this clown): [continue reading…]

On the latest This Week in Tech, guest panelist and sci-fi author Jerry Pournelle has an interesting anecdote about his involvement with a copyright squabble between Fox and Universal in the 1970s concerning Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica. As noted on Wikipedia:

Battlestar Galactica was finally produced in the wake of the success of the 1977 film Star Wars. In fact, 20th Century Fox sued Universal Studios (the studio behind Battlestar Galactica) for copyright infringement, claiming that it had stolen 34 distinct ideas from Star Wars. Universal promptly countersued, claiming Star Wars had stolen ideas from the 1972 film Silent Running (notably the robot “drones”) and the Buck Rogers serials of the 1940s.

Pournelle says [go to about 1:15:45 of the TWiT episode] that after Universal was sued by Fox, he was paid $20,000 by Universal to help show that BG was not too similar to Star Wars. Pournelle says that to write a brief showing there was no plagiarism. He says,

I looked at it, and said, why, that’s easy. If you ask me which is the better movie, then no question, Star Wars is the better one. But if you ask me which is the most original, there ain’t an original frame in either one of ’em! They’re both derivative from fiction that was published centuries ago–for instance the male-pair bonding between Han Solo and Luke Skywalker was echoed in Battlestar Galactica–I said, yeah, and they both got it from Homer, didn’t they?

[continue reading…]

Update: For related posts:

• Libertarian Centralists
• The Libertarian Case Against the Fourteenth Amendment
• Healy on States’ Rights and Libertarian Centralists; Healy versus Bolick and the Institute for Justice
• Judicial Activism and the Presumption of Unconstitutionality (draft, 2005)
• Doherty on Slaughterhouse, Libertarian Centralism, and the Fourteenth Amendment
• The Heroic Gene Healy on the 14th Amendment: “If this be heresy—then make the most of it!”
• Incorporation and the Fourteenth Amendment: The 140 Year Old “Riddle”

He writes:

Pilon sees in the Fourteenth Amendment an effective check on such abuses. I see it as a source of further abuses. Collectivists in Congress and on the federal bench will seize on the expansive construction of the amendment Pilon urges to subvert the very liberties he seeks to secure. In so doing, they are unlikely to be restrained by what Pilon views as the proper understanding of the amendment.

Fragmentation of political power, even—perhaps especially—when such power is invoked in the service of our natural rights, is a surer guarantor of liberty than the goodwill of federal legislators and judges. I’d have thought that this was a respectable position for a libertarian to take. But if, as Bolick and McClaughry suggest, this be heresy—then make the most of it.

Update: For related posts:

• Libertarian Centralists
• The Libertarian Case Against the Fourteenth Amendment
• Healy on States’ Rights and Libertarian Centralists; Healy versus Bolick and the Institute for Justice
• Healy on States’ Rights and Libertarian Centralists
• Judicial Activism and the Presumption of Unconstitutionality (draft, 2005)
• Doherty on Slaughterhouse, Libertarian Centralism, and the Fourteenth Amendment
• The Heroic Gene Healy on the 14th Amendment: “If this be heresy—then make the most of it!”
• Incorporation and the Fourteenth Amendment: The 140 Year Old “Riddle”

From: Healy on States’ Rights and Libertarian Centralists, LRC blog, 2005:

In Gene Healy’s blog post about Liberal Federalism [archived here; also here–see below], he notes, “I’d like to think that the Republican assault on federalism would lead to a resurgence of decentralist liberalism” (emphasis added). As I commented there– it would also be nice to see a resurgence of decentralist libertarianism too.

[Update: see Healy versus Bolick and the Institute for Justice]

Healy, a Cato Senior Editor, is a great opponent of “libertarian centralism”: see Healy’s great articles: States’ Rights Revisited, from The Freeman, and the following 4 articles from LRC (all linked at his LRC archive) : Contra Centralism (libertarian states rights scholar Gene Healy takes on Clinton Bolick, Roger Pilon, and John McClaughry, advocates of liberty through federal power); Roger Pilon and the 14th Amendment (Gene Healy, the libertarian legal scholar who’s brought sanity to discussions of an evil amendment, continues his work); Libertarian Reflections (Gene Healy on Waco, Paul Johnson, neocons, war, and left-libertarian nonsense); and The Squalid 14th Amendment (ratified by trickery during the federal military dictatorship over the South, this treacherous appendage to the Constitution is an attack on liberty and its American political foundation, states rights); see also my pieces: Supreme Confusion, Or, A Libertarian Defense of Affirmative Action, Barnett and the 14th Amendment; and Happy Bill of Rights Day — The Problem with the Fourteenth Amendment (which contains links to other articles on this). See also the HNN discussion thread Should We Celebrate Enforcing the Commerce Clause against the States? (2), in which some libertarians oppose the notion of federalism (discussed in Libertarian Centralists and Europe). [continue reading…]

Update: For related posts:

• Libertarian Centralists
• The Libertarian Case Against the Fourteenth Amendment
• Healy on States’ Rights and Libertarian Centralists; Healy versus Bolick and the Institute for Justice
• Judicial Activism and the Presumption of Unconstitutionality (draft, 2005)
• Doherty on Slaughterhouse, Libertarian Centralism, and the Fourteenth Amendment
• The Heroic Gene Healy on the 14th Amendment: “If this be heresy—then make the most of it!”
• Incorporation and the Fourteenth Amendment: The 140 Year Old “Riddle”

Someone asked me thoughts to online writings that make the best libertarian case against the 14th amendment. Here is my reply:

The “libertarian” case against it … well that’s a different issue than the legal case. The best legal case is in my view in Raoul Berger’s works, and in the Slaughterhouse decision itself [for Berger, see his work scanned in here; see also here]. My view on the legalities is that if nothing else, the 14th amendment is not clear about what privileges or immunities means. And, given that the broader you construe P-I the more power you grant to the central state, basically eating away at the core federalist structure of the Constitution itself [a great writer on this is law prof Tom McAffee; some of his stuff is here; see also my post The Unique American Federal Government], eroding the “vertical separation of power” and the “limited and enumerated scheme” of powers delegated to the feds, then you have to give the P-I clause a narrow reading and you have to construe any ambiguity against a grant of power to the feds. This is because if you find a right in there, that is a grant of power to the federal government to have jurisdiction over the states on this matter. [continue reading…]

An acquaintance passed on to me this PDF file of a Powerpoint presentation on global warming by MIT Professor Richard S. Lindzen. As my friend said, “it is a powerful rebuttal to those who are sure that humans are causing global warming.” The file is: Global Warming: What is it all about?, Rockhurst University, February 11, 2009.

Missouri GOP Calls for Revolution notes that “Missouri’s Lafayette County Republican Central Committee has put up a billboard proudly advising citizens to prepare for the violent overthrow of the US government.” The billboard (see right) reads: [continue reading…]

I saw this sign by the 610 loop in Houston today, and snapped this picture with my iPhone. The sign displays an ominous looking Texas state agent, and the words read:

THE EYES OF TEXAS ARE UPON YOU: Cellular Phone Users: please call 911 to report criminal activities or emergencies.

You know, like if mommy and daddy don’t recycle or pay their taxes.

[LRC cross-post]

I wonder if leftists are happy about the recession and unemployment–think of all the wage-slaves that are being freed of their shackles!

As I mentioned in Radical Patent Reform Is Not on the Way, in in In re Bilski, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) modified previous holdings regarding the patentability of software or business-method patents in upholding the rejection of patent claims involving a method of hedging risks in commodities trading. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court and oral arguments were heard earlier this month. This entire area of patent law is very arcane, but the main issues and the oral arguments are explained very well by the heroic IP-abuse reporter Joe Mullin in Bilski v. Kappos Oral Arguments: Supreme Skepticism Toward Method Patents.

Take a look at Mullins’ discussion of the oral arguments–it’s fascinating seeing the Justices grapple with the absurdity of patent law. A few choice excerpts: [continue reading…]