StephanKinsella.com

Philosophy of Punctuation: For those who get worked up about proper use of commas, dashes, semicolons, and the like, see this fascinating article by Paul Robinson, author of Opera, Sex, and Other Vital Matters.

The Bleeping A: Drive: Al Hunt, Mark Shields, Charles Wrangle and Spam email excluded, there are not many things in life more annoying and irritating than the clacking-buzzing noise your PC makes when you accidentally ask it to look in the A: drive. Usually you realize your mistake as soon as you hit “click”; then you have to endure a frustrating agony of 5 or so seconds while you wait for the old A: drive to wake from its slumber and kick up, make a preliminary humming-clicking noise, tentatively blink its red light a couple times, then emit a grinding-crunch as it yelps at not finding a disk in its maw; God, it makes me want to shoot my PC.

Hey wait, did I just say that outloud?

Lincoln’s Chickens Coming Home to Roost?: Pat Buchanan has an excellent column in today’s WND, American roots of 21st-century wars. He argues that Jefferson’s revolutionary view that peoples are entitled to “self-determination,” that “All governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed” is in conflict with the logic of Lincoln in the Civil War. “[I]f we are true believers in self-determination, was Lincoln right to send a million-man army to crush a people’s rebellion to break free of his Union, as our forefathers had broken free of the British Crown. If America was a “union of free and independent states,” why was the South not free to depart?” And these conflicting ideas have been playing out on the world stage since WWI, when “In the name of self-determination, Wilson helped to carve the new nations of Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia out of the carcasses of the Russian, German and Hapsburg empires”; but, contrary to the principle of self-determination, in order to dismember Bismarck’s Germany “for the safety of France […], the Saar was put under French control, South Tyrol was given to Italy, 3 million Sudeten Germans were put under Czech rule, a corridor of German land and the city of Danzig were given to Poland, and the Prussian city of Memel was seized from a prostrate Reich by tiny Lithuania.” These Lincolnian actions of course helped a nationalistic Hitler rise to power in a humiliated Germany.

As Buchanan points out, states such as Israel, India, Russia, China, and Serbia “confront independence movements by Islamic peoples [e.g., West Bank Palestinians, Kashmir, Chechnya, Sinkiang, Kosovo] who are throwing in our face our own hallowed principle of self-determination, as Hitler did in the 1930s. And there is the same perplexity and moral confusion among Western elites now, as then.” Conversely, the states confronting independence movements invoke Jefferson’s opposite in their defense: “So, today, in Chechnya, Putin invokes Lincoln as Islamic rebels invoke Wilson and the young slave-owner Jefferson.”

A War on PTO [Patent Office] Deficiencies? (from KinsellaLaw)

Sean Hannity v. Harry Browne: Harry Browne, former Libertarian candidate for President, was on Sean Hannity‘s radio program a couple of days. It was an embarrasing performance for Harry. Harry thought the point of the interview was to discuss a recent op-ed of his. However, Sean was ranting about an apparently Libertarian Party “spoiler” strategy designed to take votes away from vulnerable Republican congressional candidates. Naturally, Sean wanted to ask Harry, the Libertarian, about this, when Harry came on. Harry immediately started complaining, saying he didn’t know he had been invited to talk about that, calling FoxNews a “conservative” network, which Hannity immediately shot down by poining out various prominent liberals who work there, like Kondrake, Combs, etc. Then Sean challenged Harry on the drug issue, and asked Harry if he would let a pregnant mother take crack or abort the day before pregancy–as I recall, Browne took the standard libertarian response that the federal government has no role here, that he opposes this morally but the woman should be free to do it just as she is free to smoke cigarettes while pregnant (I may have this part of Browne’s response slightly distorted, this is from memory). Browne should have explained that there is nothing wrong in principle with state laws that outlaw a pregnant woman aborting in the ninth monty or taking crack while pregnant.

The worst part was when Hannity insisted, cheerfully ignorant of the concept of federalism, that the point of the the constitution was to protect “individual liberty” and “therefore” the federal government can outlaw late-term abortions and the like. Harry then called Hannity an “idiot” and the interview went downhill from there. Harry kept saying (rightly) that the Constitution does not authorize the federal government to outlaw crimes; a confused and exasperated Hannity took this to mean Harry was against all “government” laws protecting people; Harry should have explained our federal system to Sean, but failed to do so. When the commercial came up, Hannity said they’d have to pause for a commercial, whereupon Harry said, “well, I won’t be back” and he stormed off in a huff. In short, Harry should not have called Sean an idiot; he should not have attacked FoxNews as being “conservative”; and he should have explained the constitutioanl concept of federalism and enumerated powers to Sean, but failed to do so. And he should not have walked off the set, or complained about being asked about Libertarian Party strategy.

Fascinating report by Bruce Bartlett, Potential oil supply refill? (Washington Times). About old oil fields in the Gulf of Mexico apparently refilling. The anti-industrialist, anti-capitalist, anti-technology leftists and luddites are sure to be disappointed.

(from KinsellaLaw)

WWII Propaganda Posters Updated for Modern Era: These spoofs of WWII propaganda posters are hilarious (some are crude). (Thanks to Karen De Coster.)

FBI resources switched from drugs to terrorism: About the only good news I’ve seen lately in the government’s response to the Terrorist Attacks: the FBI is reassigning about 400 agents from the anti-drug crimes division to counter-terrorism operations; and shifting another 59 from white-collar crime divisions. If we were really serious about fighting and preventing terrorism, we’d (a) stop intervening around the world and provoking anti-US sentiment; (b) specifically target criminal group and government leaders for assassination instead of bombing innocent civilians; (c) remove all restrictions on, and engage in, racial profiling (e.g. give certain Arabs/Muslims in airports heightened attention); and (d) stop wasting resources fighting victimless crimes like drugs and shift those resources to terrorism prevention. The FBI’s move here is at least a small step in the right direction.

The Supremes Weigh In on Patent Law’s Doctrine of Equivalents (from KinsellaLaw).

Don’t Mess with Texas or, A Yankee by Any Other Name Would Smell as… (from KinsellaLaw).