06 March 2009

Friday Evening Links

I normally hate these kinds of posts (looking back at past “grab-bags” of my own makes me shudder*), but I gots a birthday to celebrate tonight (not mine), and I have a few tabs o’ interest I wanted to throw up before the weekend began:

1. The Economist, famed journal of reasoned-moderation and must-read material of “thoughtful” undergraduate political science majors everywhere, endorses the legalization of drugs.

2. “What if California got out of the marriage business altogether?”

Beginning with that line, the L.A. Times suggests, in the light of the kerfluffle around Prop. 8, subsequent anti-Prop. 8 riot/protests, further subsequent anti-Prop. 8 witch hunts, and furtherer subsequent California Supreme Court hearing on the legality of Prop. 8, that maybe the government should get out of the business of determining marriages altogether. *Gasp!* You mean that the State shouldn’t be involved in the personal details of citizens’ lives? Treason!

3. Some pretty sound advice from economist Bruce Bartlett, suggesting a carbon tax is far preferable to a cap-and-trade tax. I post this now because I’m getting the feeling that the cap-and-trade debate is going to get rolling in the near future, and we liberty-minded folks need to start laying track ASAP. Cap-and-trade plans, while allowing for companies to act within a confined area, already steal two or three intellectual bases in the first place, such as: who gets to decide where we “cap” the industries? Based on what science? Furthermore: what kind of provisions are in place to prevent corruption, especially considering the current brobdingnagian size and scope of the federal government? Do we really think that the U.S. government, which can’t even run it’s SEC right, is capable of monitoring “pollution credits”? There’s sure to be more to come…

4. Death of Europe Update: An Italian court sides with a Maghrebi husband, wife, and son, who murdered their daughter/sister because the girl wanted to live a Western life and had dated a non-Muslim. The reason the court found convincing? That the victim had been, in the words of her family, “beaten up for her own good”.

5. I’ve already made it well known that I’m strongly in the anti-abortion camp, so you’ll know where I stand on this story. For others, however, the article still presents some good thought-food. The difference between a constitutionally protected act and outright murder is, apparently, moving the child a few inches from the woman’s body.

That’s all from my side, have a good night and great weekend.

Oh, and Go Blue! And Minnesota, you suck. (pax Lileks)

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*That’s what she said.

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