Guilty of Not Committing a Crime?

It used to be that in order for a crime to have been committed one person had to willfully violate another person's right to life, liberty, or property. In other words, harm had to have been intended as well as inflicted.

Today, however, a crime is merely an action that violates any one or more of the countless arbitrary rules and regulations implemented by the state, regardless of whether or not the action in question actually brings harm to anyone. This was seen most recently in the case of Daryl Fleck, a Crookston man whose drunken driving conviction was upheld by the Minnesota State Supreme Court.

(Read the full article here.)

Free Bernie Madoff

I agree with the Mises Institute's Jeffrey Tucker:

What, then, precisely, is the point of jailing him? He is no direct threat to anyone. Society would not be safer because he is in the slammer. He is not going to rob people or beat people up. He might write a book and donate the funds to charity or make some restitution to his victims. I, for one, would like to read that book.

Instead, taxpayers will be forced to pick up the tab for his living expenses. Victims get nothing. That's not justice. That's inhumane for both sides of the transaction: Bernie and us. ...

... So let us ask the unaskable: Just how unusually evil were Madoff's actions? Not that unusual. In fact, the whole notion of paying off past investors with the funds of present investors is at the very core of the Social Security system. At least Madoff sought the consent of his investors who let him care for their money based on their own volition. And at least he didn't attempt to defend himself with the claim that he was conducting wise public policy.

Fewer Cops = More Freedom

What do you call a massive layoff of police officers? A good start. Maybe people will start buying more guns and actually take responsibility for defending themselves.

The sad fact is that cops have become little more than uniformed tax collectors. Most of the laws they enforce serve no other purpose than to fill the coffers of greedy bureaucrats. The primary function of your average police officer is to protect and serve the interests of the state, not the citizenry -- unless, of course, protection is defined as responding to a crime after it has already been committed.

Cops with Nothing Better to Do

The infamous photo of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps taking a hit on a marijuana pipe has since led to eight arrests, seven for drug possession and one for distribution. Remember the good ol' days when cops went after real criminals?

But I guess since Richland County isn't exactly a hotbed of violent crime (PDF), they need to do something to look busy in order to keep the taxpayer dollars rolling in.

Caught on Tape: Cop Shoots Unarmed Man in Back

See the disturbing video here.

You can bet that if I wrestled an unarmed man to the ground and had a friend hold him down while I shot him in the back, I would be charged with murder.

Selling Your Vote Is a Crime

If you're a politician, you can bribe voters with cash hand-outs, "free" education, "cheap" health care, and any number of other welfare programs at taxpayer expense. But offer to sell your vote as a private citizen and you'll be charged with a felony.

Max Sanders, a 19-year-old college student in Minneapolis who offered to sell his vote to the highest bidder on eBay, was charged under a 1893 Minnesota law that criminalizes the sale and purchase of votes. Sanders now faces the possibility of up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Mike Freeman, a Hennepin County attorney with an ironic name, said, "We're not humorless in the county attorney's office and we're not in the horse-and-buggy age, but we decided it's something we just couldn't blow off. Sometimes in this business we need to make statements." The statement in this case: "You don't own your vote." Or, to put it in today's vernacular: "All your vote are belong to us."

What's sad is that those who are still coming down from their July 4th patriotic high cannot grasp the fact that this is a country in which the ruling elite play by a different set of rules. Land of the Free? Give me a break. Freedom in America is defined by hot dogs, beer, and fireworks.

Wake Up!

Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence M. Stratton on the legislation of tyranny:

The assaults of the Bush regime on civil liberty, the Constitution, and the separation of powers are more determined and more successful than its military assaults on the Middle East, which provide the "war time" justification for the attack on civil liberty in the United States. The regime and its supporters are determined to raise the president to dictatorial powers, at least in times of war, the initiation of which is being turned into a presidential prerogative.

Charley Reese on the Second Amendment:

The Founding Fathers were not urban neurotics like so many of today's politicians. They were almost all outdoor people. Guns were to them just tools, like their axes or plows. You couldn't survive in the wilderness without firearms, and at the time of our Revolution, there were only about 3 million people from Maine to Georgia.

Nor were there any police forces. There was no Secret Service, FBI or any of the other alphabet law-enforcement agencies. If you decided to travel, you traveled at your own risk, and you can bet people traveled armed.

Why refer to these articles in the same post? Because they both remind us of what this country used to stand for: individual liberty.

The government used to exist to protect the rights of the individual. Now, with so much power concentrated in the hands of a few "urban neurotics," Americans no longer understand what it means to be free. As long as the trains run on time, they aren't worried about civil liberties. As long as they can still hunt, they don't concern themselves with the unconstitutional infringements on the right to keep and bear arms.

Our "representatives" in Washington have for decades been dismantling the Constitution and every other check on political power. I'm not talking about some secret Illuminati conspiracy to take over the world. I'm talking about human nature. As Lord Acton stated, "Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely." Our freedoms are disappearing with every administration that assumes office. Republican, Democrat, it doesn't matter.

The only hope is for Americans to reclaim their country. Wake up and start paying attention before it's too late.

The "C" Word

You know, it's getting harder and harder not to be a conspiracy theorist in this country. Consider the case of the D.C. Madame, Deborah Jeane Palfrey. Here we had a woman running an escort service for D.C.'s elite and it was only when she decided to get out of the business that the government went after her. She threatened to name names and, lo and behold, she "commits suicide." And guess what? Not one mainstream media outlet has questioned the official report. No, that's the stuff of Internet conspiracy sites.

So, when you read stories like the one on PrisonPlanet.com, or listen to Palfrey say in an interview last July that she would not kill herself, that she was planning to fight the government in open court, it won't get noticed because the source of those reports is a site run by a well-known "conspiracy nut." Sure, Alex Jones sounds paranoid, but does that mean everything he says is bunk?

As another blogger noted, the feds find conspiracies all the time. They level conspiracy charges against mobsters and anti-abortion activists. (Does RICO ring a bell?) They accuse big corporations of conspiring to hide the dangers of smoking. (Do you recall all those tobacco lawsuits?) They even use conspiracies as justification for war. (Remember the supposed Iraq-al Qaeda link?)

Ah, but those were real conspiracies. If, however, you dare to suggest that there might be a conspiracy or cover-up in the death of a woman who had the potential to destroy the careers and reputations of high-level members of the most powerful government in the world...well, you're just a kook.

Prison Nation

Lew Rockwell's latest essay takes a long, hard look at incarceration in America.

Agencies Losing Drug Money

What a shame. The Missouri River Drug Task Force and hundreds of other similar state and local law-enforcement organizations across the country are a little short on cash. It seems they rely heavily on federal funds (i.e., your tax dollars and mine) funneled to them by way of the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program -- and Congress cut that funding by 67 percent last year.

It's always good news when the unconstitutional use of tax dollars is curtailed. The downside, however, is that over-zealous narcs may try to make up for their budgetary shortfalls by stepping up raids to seize more money and property. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and, as everyone knows, crime has a tendency to rise during economic downturns.

Government Hypocrisy

Yes, I realize that the title of this post is a little redundant. Government is nothing if not hypocritical. For an example of what I mean, just look at what's happening in Baltimore, Maryland.

The Charm City has filed a federal lawsuit against Wells Fargo, charging that the mortgage company engaged in predatory lending practices and was discriminatory toward borrowers. According to John P. Relman, a Washington-based attorney who is representing the city, "When you have foreclosures, the property values drop, and you get less tax revenue. There's fire and police costs that come from abandoned and boarded-up and vacant properties. It leads to crime and drugs and school problems as the community is being destabilized."

The implication is that Wells Fargo is contributing to the collapse of society because it wants to foreclose on homeowners for delinquent payments. The city of Baltimore is simply standing up for the little guy, right?

The irony in all of this is that Baltimore has been foreclosing on homes whose owners are delinquent in paying their water bills. Not only that, but city officials are upset because state lawmakers are currently considering a moratorium on these foreclosures. An investigation by the Baltimore Sun last year discovered that homeowners owing "just a few hundred dollars in municipal debts -- including Baltimore City water bills -- often are hit with thousands of dollars in fees from private debt collectors and can lose their homes if they don't pay."

So, the very people who claim to be protecting the victims of evil, predatory bankers are themselves preying on the financially misfortunate. Hopefully, the citizens of Baltimore will begin to realize that their representatives in government, like all hypocrites, are only looking out for themselves.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell

It would seem having gays in the military is the least of our worries:

The Ever Expanding War on Drugs

Have you ever noticed how government treats virtually every social and political conflict as a war? We've all heard politicians talk about the war on poverty, the war on illiteracy, the war on illegal immigration (well, sort of) the war on drugs and, of course, the war on terrorism.

Of all the wars being fought, the war on drugs and the war on terrorism are the ones deemed most crucial by the federal government. You may recall the ads that ran following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, accusing recreational drug users of supporting global terrorist organizations. That ad campaign cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars and provided us a glimpse of Washington's continuing effort to merge these two wars into one glorious crusade.

That was the plan when DEA Administrator Karen Tandy spoke at a three-day international drug conference held in Peru last week. She said, "The American drug consumer is the single largest funder of terrorism in the Western Hemisphere." Issuing a call to arms, she pleaded, "It is imperative that we end drugs as a funding source for terrorists and for those criminal organizations seeking to destabilize existing democratic governments."

Tandy bemoaned the fact that Americans help finance the international drug trade to the tune of $65 billion. "In the past, we have seized less than one percent of that drug money," she said. "Today, the DEA has a new focus to follow drug money."

There is little doubt as to what the federal government is trying to do. The Bush administration has already proposed doubling the number of U.S. troops in Colombia - supposedly in an advisory, non-combat capacity – and increasing the number of civilian contractors in an effort to help reduce drug trafficking in the region.

Despite the fact that Plan Colombia has already cost the U.S. close to $3 billion in military and financial support, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has stated recently that his nation is in need of "even more effective aid." He said, "Colombia's problems are grave. We must not focus on recent progress; rather, we must focus on what remains to be done. In that sense, expanding U.S. assistance benefits us all."

And why shouldn't the U.S. expand its assistance to the stricken Third World country? Wouldn't that be tax money well spent? If illegal drugs can be linked to terrorism, and if terrorism is the single biggest threat to our national security, what are we waiting for?

Playing up that angle, Tandy said, "Afghanistan stands today at the urgent crossroads between becoming a democracy that values freedom and the rule of law and a society that subsists and is beholden to the drug trade. It is a challenge for the international community to build their criminal justice institutions."

To be sure, the problem of drug trafficking is not limited to the Western Hemisphere. In the past, the U.S. government was able to stem the Middle East drug trade by bribing the Taliban to crack down on the production of opium, the raw material used to make heroin. However, since our invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent ousting of the Taliban, production of opium has skyrocketed. It's a kind of catch-22. On one hand we crippled the government shielding the terrorists who want to destroy us, but on the other hand we restored one of the terrorists' major sources of funding.

So, are we safer now than we were two-and-a-half years ago? Is the expansion of the war on drugs a sign of progress or of frantic desperation? We can be sure of at least one thing: the size of the federal government and the desire of politicians to spend our tax dollars will continue to grow. After all, there is an election coming up, and as any employee knows, real results don't matter nearly as much as the appearance of being productive.