Theft is despicable. I’m not saying that it’s necessarily worse than assault or murder, but while those actions may be the result of elevated passions in the heat of the moment, theft rarely is. Theft is a cold, calculated act designed to deprive an individual of their owned property. Perhaps the only thing more contemptible…
Category: Thinking Out Loud
Terrorism as Propaganda
Today’s Drudge headline for the last several hours has been “TERROR SCARE IN KANSAS” and the link takes you to an NBC News story proclaiming that “Feds say they disrupted suicide bomb plot by worker at Wichita airport.” For the 90 percent of readers who don’t make it past the headlines, the impression is that…
Person of the Year
The decision by Time Magazine to select Pope Francis as its “Person of the Year” instead of whistleblower Edward Snowden is quite frankly, unsurprising. Even as Snowden continues to reveal the heinous crimes which are being daily committed by the world’s most powerful statist regimes, the Pope is using his platform to call for a…
80 Years Later, the Horrors of Prohibition Continue
Exactly 80 years ago today, America’s disastrous experiment with prohibition on alcohol came to its long-anticipated conclusion. At the time there was widespread rejoicing — and rightly so. The termination of prohibition not only brought an end to the unnecessary persecution and prosecution of tens of thousands of innocent individuals who had harmed no one…
NSA-style Parenting
A watch that tracks your child’s every move? And just in time for the holidays! I suppose that some will view this technological advancement as a boon to concerned parents, but I can’t help but believe that there is nothing quite as dehumanizing as tracking an individual’s every move — at least until reading minds…
The Villains Win Again
The situation that unfolded Saturday night in Idaho’s Treasure Valley sounds like it was authored by a Hollywood scriptwriter. A 45-year-old woman driving home in her minivan suddenly finds herself being pursued by a group of heavily-armed men intent on kidnapping her and imprisoning her in a cage. Desperate to protect herself from these violent…
A Jury of Slaves
The DeKalb County Court in Georgia made headlines this week when it was reported that its online questionnaire for jurors included “slave” as an option for occupation. While the term was quickly scrubbed from the website, I believe that it was actually quite appropriate because the American system of compulsory jury “service” is in fact…
Compliance Training
The government is calling it a “federal survey,” but when cars are stopped at a police roadblock, directed into a parking lot, and asked by federal contractors for samples of their breath, saliva, and even blood, I would suggest that there is a lot more than a “survey” going on! American citizens (and indeed, individuals…
Donut Fail
There is something deliciously ironic about the case of a man impersonating a police officer in an attempt to obtain discounted donuts, and the cops setting up a sting operation to catch him. Aside from the obvious jokes about donuts, there is the fact that being a well-paid state enforcer funded by property coercively expropriated…
War is Hell
There is no honor in the shedding of innocent blood — it’s birthplace or proximity to truly guilty individuals notwithstanding. Those who engaged in the carpet bombing of cities (including the intentional targeting of civilian neighborhoods), the use of nuclear weapons, indiscriminate chemical warfare, the invading and occupying of homes and villages, and the murdering…