February 24, 2001
Harry Browne sez:
We want a government so small that it can't monitor your e-mail, can't snoop in your bank account, can't tax your income, can't tell you how to live.
Unfortunately, the best argument for the complete repeal of the estate tax rarely is raised. It is that people who earn money have demonstrated by their ability to earn the money that they're far more competent to disburse it than politicians are.
Not that most liberals would agree. W
» posted by Mike
February 23, 2001
USATODAY conducted an in-depth look at urban sprawl. In the process, they had to tackle some nebulous issues: What, exactly, is sprawl? What causes it? How much sprawl is really a bad thing? And what factors are most effective in limiting sprawl?
They also uncovered the dirty little secret of anti-sprawl activists: despite having some of the toughest anti-sprawl laws in the nation, Portland, Oregon is second on the list of sprawled cities - worse than Los Angeles, and second only to Nashville.
Link from Derek. W
» posted by Mike
February 22, 2001
I really need to remind myself that sometime in the future, I should dust off this Ann Coulter quote
For the last couple of decades now, name-calling has been the principal argument liberals have deployed against conservative arguments.
...and see if it's still true. Link from Kevin W. W
» posted by Mike
What a bummer: Roll Call reports that Tunnicliff's, the two-hundred-year-old Capitol Hill landmark tavern, will shut down. Current owner Lynne Breaux, a distant cousin of the Louisiana Senator John Breaux, explained only by saying, "It's time." W
» posted by Mike
I'm becoming quite fond of Disturbing Search Requests. There's almost always some entry guaranteed to produce high-velocity fluid emission through the nostrils. (My name is Mike; I have a drinking problem.) Even better than the search requests themselves, are the bloggers' notes and thoughts - either alarmed, amused, concerned, or baffled - that accompany each entry. Be warned - some of these entries are not for the faint of heart. W
» posted by Mike
While this:
Hugh Rodham to return money he received for successfully lobbying for a pardon and a prison commutation Clinton granted on his last day in office. The Associated Press reported that Rodham was paid nearly $400,000 in the cases.
...may be distasteful, it's probably not illegal. I have to wonder what conversations inside the Bush White House are like, knowing that their agenda has been shoved from the front page by the continuing scandals of the 42nd President. W
» posted by Mike
February 21, 2001
Raging right-wing ideologue Jimmy Carter condemned Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich:
I don't think there is any doubt that some of the factors in his pardon were attributable to his large gifts. In my opinion, that was disgraceful.
With every passing day, and every additional denunciation from Clinton's fellow Democrats, it is becoming more clear that with just one act Bill Clinton has ripped a sucking chest wound into his possible future as a leader of the Democratic Party. And that, perhaps, is a greater penalty than any legal action or Congressional investigation could ever deliver. W
» posted by Mike
You might think that Verizon might have http://verizon.com work as well as http://www.verizon.com/ but you'd be wrong. You might also think that when you pull up the Customer Support page and click on the state of Virginia, you wouldn't get the upper-left quadrant of an error page in a non-scrolling pop-up window, but again, you'd be wrong.
Fortunately, I am not in need of customer service, but as WTOP radio is reporting, a whole lot of Northern Virginia customers are out of luck:
About 5,000 residential and business telephone services are out in Arlington, Falls Church and Fairfax County. The City of Falls Church said a private contractor installing the city's Red Light Photo System accidentally cut the telephone lines near the intersection of Broad and Annandale streets. It says Verizon telephone service expects telephone service to be restored no later than noon Friday.
Friday! Strangely, neither the Washington Post not the Washington Times saw fit to report this news. At least the manholes aren't exploding anymore. W
» posted by Mike
Under the Scottish Common Law, we have the option of shrinking him down to the size of a fieldmouse, and making him fight spiders for our amusement. W
» posted by Mike
February 20, 2001
Got this today in the e-mail:
"AV" rated downtown Tampa law firm, seeking two (2) nursing home, medical malpractice litigation attorneys with 107 years experience. Excellent writing skills and academic credentials required.
That's an average of 53.5 years of experience per attorney. I suppose they want to attack nursing homes from the inside. W
» posted by Mike
Crap. Sorry to hear the bad news, Kevin. W
» posted by Mike
The Key Vanishes: Scientist Outlines Unbreakable Code [New York Times - free registration required] :
In essence, the researcher, Dr. Michael Rabin and his Ph.D. student Yan Zong Bing, have discovered a way to make a code based on a key that vanishes even as it is used. While they are not the first to have thought of such an idea, Dr. Rabin says that never before has anyone been able to make it both workable and to prove mathematically that the code cannot be broken.
Once they publish a paper on their theory, the debate about exporting strong crypto is over. W
» posted by Mike
nickd.org presents fifty haiku in fifty minutes. Read together, these verses present a delightful look inside a deranged student's head during a boring class -yes, even Northwestern has a boring class or two. Individually, some of these are quite potent - don't be drinking anything you wouldn't want to come blasting out your nostrils.
This exercise reminds me of soemthing I did about this time last year: Haikus of a Contract Attorney. What is it about haiku poetry that is inherently funny in the English language? W
» posted by Mike
February 19, 2001
Recently released FBI hate-crime statistics for 1999 show that - as many have feared - enforcement of hate-crime laws is skewed against blacks. Of racially-motivated where the offenders race is known, blacks make up 20% of the reported incidents despite representing only 13% of the population as a whole. [the report in PDF format]
A Libertarian Party press release addresses the issue:
"Unfortunately, hate crime laws have boomeranged on blacks," said [an LP official]. "African-Americans thought that hate crime legislation would protect them, but instead they're being used as another legal weapon to prosecute them."
Meanwhile, there's no evidence that hate crimes have declined as a result of the new laws. W
» posted by Mike
Angus joins in:
I decided to support the Web Standards Project attempt to forcibly upgrade the Web: "Tired of hacks and versioning? Write valid markup and send 4.0 browser users to this page." I'm doing this partly because I think it's a worthwhile cause, but mostly because it will annoy people.
[Italics mine.] Maybe if enough people get annoyed because their bowsers don't work properly, they'll switch to any of the number of browsers that do. W
» posted by Mike
February 18, 2001
Some economists oppose cutting the marginal income tax rates. Some of them have been really wrong before.
Precisely five years ago this month, Mr. Krugman wrote an essay for the New York Times Sunday Magazine ("Stay on Their Backs," Feb. 4, 1996). In that essay, he contemptuously lectured the likes of "neo-Reaganite candidate" Steve Forbes and Wall Street Journal Editor Robert Bartley for foolishly believing that the economy could grow at 3.5 percent per year, a full percentage point higher than the 2.5 percent "speed limit," which Mr. Krugman argued was the long-term growth rate of the economy. As it happens, pretty much from the moment Mr. Krugman's article appeared through the end of last year the annual economic growth rate for the U.S. economy averaged 4.32 percent.
Are they smarter now? [Link from Kevin W.] W
» posted by Mike
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