One small county in Arizona has abrogated citizens’ rights to allow dancing on their property. After spending over $100,000 in efforts to comply with harrassment regulations, restaurant owner Dale Bell and his son Spencer say, “They’re going to have to take me on all the way to the Supreme Court, because I don’t believe that you can tell people…that they can’t dance”.
In response to the Washington Times article, Michael Goldfarb of the Weekly Standard manages to whine about an inferred victimization of his ethnicity and attack Ron Paul supporters in one fell swoop:
…but let me just say to Ron Paul supporters everywhere, and on behalf of the New Right (by which I assume Paul means the Jew Right), get lost.
Get lost? Chump, this is my party. First, God forbid we characterize big government conservatism with a term that rhymes with “Jew”. Sure, it’s your ethnic background we have beef with, as opposed to the more obvious ideoligical differences.
Second, you’re about to find out that conservatives (the definitive kind) aren’t just a wing of the Republican party. We’re the base. I cannot wait to watch your grimacing demogogue straight-talk his way out of a win. We *do* plan to get lost for this election. It’s gonna hurt you.
Third, I enjoy reminding you of this inconvenient fact: Paul is the favorite candidate for military donations and the troops comprise the biggest group of Paul donors. I love watching you Kristolites alienate the military.
Allah didn’t beat you to the punch. He just thought of something you didn’t. In response, I note that aside from his summary descriptions of Paulnut’s motivations (over which he would certainly get his ass handed to him if he engaged us in debate) and his musings over the left calling Paul the most principled Conservative, he forgot that McCain already made the same claim, “you are working for the most honest man in Congress [Ron Paul]” (Yes, it checks out).
Bring it. Both of you.
Thanks to Sully
Everyone is hatin’ on Hillary. Maybe everyone is wrong.
The blogosphere has lit up with Hillary-hate. Andrew Sullivan says that the Daily Kos leads the way, yet Sullivan strikes me as a pretty anti-Clinton himself, “the next generation can still stop [the Clintons]”. And, of course, the right-wing cannot help itself. Hewitt interviewed Chris Hitchens, who is super-duper convinced that Clinton will be the next president, not for her merits of course, but for her power-lust.
This seems indicative of the general sentiment that I encounter. My Democrat friends certainly echo Obama’s frustration with Clinton. My Republican friends go insane when I tease them that I’d rather vote for her than McCain. Everyone handicaps her chances against The Maverick. They say her ‘experience’ jig will be up in the general election.
Nonsense. Hillary Clinton could spank McCain in a way that Obama could never hope to. You see, this election proposes an odd twist of ideologies. Actually, it’s more like a wringing of ideologies- as in, McCain is wringing the last drops of conservatism out of the Republican Party and moving back toward a Nixon-esque authoritarian mix. But he has neither Nixon’s brains nor temperance and he would never be able to pull this nonsense in a debate against sharp-tongued Clinton.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton doesn’t strike me as all-that-liberal. Not compared to McCain’s brand of confuso-conservatism. And not compared to Obama’s liberalism. Really, the Democrats have no choice but to entertain fiscal conservatism now that unprecedented debt levels, the collapse of Social Security, and the most expensive war in history are all up in their grill. And let us not forget that she was a Goldwater Girl, so she must have some libertarian sympathies. Sure, she proposes Universal Health Care, but faced with seemingly insurmountable financial challenges, I am forced to wonder if anyone as characteristically sharp as Hillary Clinton would really try to push it if the other side framed health care as a fiscal disaster. She cannot charm a Democratic Congress like Obama. She cannot coerce a lily-livered Congress, like McCain. In that sense, she just may become a de facto conservative.
The beauty of all this is that disaffected, limited-government conservatives are looking for a new home. Sure, Rush Limbaugh is pushing Clinton because he doesn’t want to risk an election against Obama, but he has always been anti-McCain, big time. Ann Coulter’s endorsement of Clinton in the McCain vs. Clinton hypothetical strikes me as even more genuine. And these two are more right-wing than us strictly limited government-types, who don’t really side with McCain on anything. Now that Buckley has a grave to roll over in and with Goldwater and Reagan already gone, the conservative diaspora is a vote-in-play. Clinton could line up with the fiscal conservatives like tough old adversaries fighting the greater fight together. She could fight McCain’s moderation as the opposite kind of moderate; liberal where he is conservative, conservative where he is liberal, she could make a case for constitutionalism, while he waxes authoritarian about presidential powers. She would beat him up in debates.
She didn’t cry.
Some children attend school to learn. But when the principle of Locke High School in Watts, California afforded them the opportunity to do that, the teacher’s union saw to it that he was removed. The parents, their children, and charter school specialist Steve Barr struck back. Watch to see who wins.
Ok, Drew Carrey isn’t actually *on* medical marijuana, but the episode would be interesting if he was.
I’ve always argued that we should never make something illegal when we can make its more ill effects illegal. For instance, we don’t have to make drinking illegal simply because drinking and driving is a terrible thing; we can make drinking and driving illegal itself.
However, when it comes to people smoking herb, the worst effect is that the level of negligence could increase in society. As an illustration, if I was walking down the street and a piano was about to fall on my head, I would rather have a drunk standing nearby than a stoner. The drunk would at least let out some slurred sound to warn me, whereas the stoner might just watch it fall before he realizes what happened. You can’t really legislate against that. Not like you can against drinking and driving. The logical extreme is that we would have to reconstruct expectations to accomodate a society that is constantly dumbfounded by its own shoelaces.
