Delaware Libertarian

• So long, and thanks for all the fish

  The absence of new content here for the past few days has not been the result of any tragedy or work implosion.
  
  I have been thinking seriously about multiple commitments and where in my life I can make the most difference.
  
  Two years ago I started this blog [...]
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  Posted: November 24, 2009, 10:26am EST
  

• ... and thinking about all those queers would be too distracting right now

  So--not surprisingly--the US Senate cancels scheduled hearings on repealing DADT:
  
  WASHINGTON (AFP) – A planned November hearing by the US Senate Armed Services Committee to consider ending a ban on gays serving openly in the US military will be postponed, a spokeswoman indicated Friday.
  
  "We do not" [...]
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  Posted: November 21, 2009, 9:47am EST
  

• Breaking! DSU Trustees select Dr Harry Williams as next President

  
  No details on the maneuverings, but I have it confirmed that current Provost and Academic VP of DSU, Dr Harry Williams, has been announced as DSU's next President.
  
  In my (always humble) opinion, the best choice available to them.
  
  Good luck, Dr Williams. [...]
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 5:23pm EST
  

• Tom Englehardt's seven reasons to get out of Afghanistan now

  ... which he cast as if given in a speech by President Obama:
  
  1. We have no partner in Afghanistan. The control of the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai hardly extends beyond the embattled capital of Kabul. He himself has just been returned to office in a [...]
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 8:41am EST
  

• In which I announce my candidacy for Congress in Delaware's Second Congressional District

  ... because I think that I might actually have a shot there.
  
  The incumbent has been so ineffective as to be virtually invisible on the issues that matter to Delaware.
  
  He (or she, I could never tell) needs to go.
  
  My platform is simple:
  
  1) [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 12:34pm EST
  

• A bumper sticker, a Bible, and--oops--some Jews! Let's throw the whole thing out!?

  
  OK, it's tacky, and not really funny (neither were those T-shirts proclaiming that GHW Bush had wished that his wife had had an abortion before the nationa had an abortion for president), but is it really a reason to throw out the Old Testament?
  
  [...]
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  Posted: November 18, 2009, 4:04pm EST
  

• Only view this if you need proof that marijuana kills (at least the common sense of some LEOs)

  Nose-spur warning: put down the coffee.
  
  
  
  [h/t Kids Prefer Cheese] [...]
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  Posted: November 18, 2009, 3:55pm EST
  

• Leviathans

  There appears to be some sort of basic human compulsion that urges us to (a) amass wealth; (b) build larger and larger, increasingly hierarchical organizations; and (c) control other people's behavior even when said behaviors do not represent a threat to us.
  
  Otherwise I am at a loss to [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 5:20pm EST
  

• More Like This, PLEASE!

  Judge Andrew Napolitano is one of the most passionate, articulate, and unflappable advocates of liberty and limited government around today...
  
  He is the author of 2007's A Nation of Sheep, as well as The Constitution in Exile: How the Federal Government Has Seized Power by Rewriting the Supreme' [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 3:26pm EST
  

• And we still don't know what the mission is

  Sometimes it doesn't take paragraphs of analysis to get the point across.
  
  From Politics Daily:
  
  Half a million Americans have served two 12-month tours in Iraq or Afghanistan; 70,000 have served three combat tours; and 20,000 have served five or more deployments, according to Defense Department data.[...]
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  Posted: November 16, 2009, 11:31pm EST
  

• A two-day hiatus followed by some quick hits

  Soccer-induced fatigue rendered me incapable of producing any posts for nearly two days. No, not me: my daughter's team, the Western Family YMCA Bandits, won the statewide Kohl's Cup Tournament for rec leagues on Sunday, going 4-0-2. My daughter (who would like you all to know that she has not [...]
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  Posted: November 16, 2009, 10:50pm EST
  

• The wrong conclusions: American liberals are not Nazis (and I am amazed I have to say this)

  As much as I like Jeff, who blogs at Alphecca, he's way off the deep in with this obvious comparison of the Obama administration's initiatives and Hitler's Nazis in Austria and Germany, as presented by Kitty Werthmann in North Dakota.
  
  Werthmann, who lived in Austria during the Nazi' [...]
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  Posted: November 14, 2009, 10:59am EST
  

• Terrorism and hate crimes: rethinking a position

  One of the hallmarks of the current American political discourse is ossification: you can no longer seriously grapple with issues, because to be seen even considering a possible change in thinking is a sign of weakness and betrayal.
  
  The initial responses to my last post on the radicalization of [...]
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  Posted: November 14, 2009, 9:55am EST
  

• Of course Major Hasan qualifies as a terrorist--but that is the beginning rather than the end of the question

  To note: despite Hube's characterization, in the only post I have written about Fort Hood, I described Major Hasan as a lone-wolf terrorist.
  
  By lone wolf I mean that there is currently no evidence that his massacre at Fort Hood was ordered by, directly supported by, or part of' [...]
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  Posted: November 13, 2009, 9:59am EST
  

• President Obama's gay-bashing Christian problem

  I am reminded by the abrupt re-appearance of Pastor Donnie McClurkin, the rabidly anti-gay minister and early Barack Obama supporter, in a series of You-Tube videos chronicling his opinon that gay people are vampires that there is a specific reason why the President does not take any serious [...]
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  Posted: November 12, 2009, 10:28am EST
  

• In which I prefer the Mormons to the idiots apparently running the Diocese of Washington DC

  But, you know what? Individual subdivisions of the Catholic Church are entitled to whatever policy positions they like, as long as they get out of the business of taking the government's money.
  
  From WaPo:
  
  The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington said Wednesday that it will be unable to' [...]
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  Posted: November 12, 2009, 10:06am EST
  

• Organizations to which I belong that promote genocide or homophobia...

  ... because some of our commenters have the strange idea that belonging to any organization whatever makes you responsible for any sins ever committed by that organization or removes all credibility from your views.
  
  They also seem to believe that belonging to any organization represents a blanket public statement [...]
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  Posted: November 12, 2009, 9:16am EST
  

• Mmmm. Mmmm. Nothing like "reality-based" Government (from the "reality-based" left)

  It is just so much easier to lie and fabricate than to live up to all that hope/change with some honesty and accountability, admitting that the Obamaleft's hyper-government solutions are a big honkin' epic FAIL, arguably prolonging the pain and joblessness (just as FDR did through the Depression), except for [...]
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  Posted: November 12, 2009, 8:42am EST
  

• Did you ever wonder....

  ... that given our government's apparently insatiable appetite for our money, why it is we don't have universal health care already?
  
  Some folks suggest profits for Big Insurance and Big Pharma, but the thought occurs to me that even the most economically successful country in the world can only [...]
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  Posted: November 11, 2009, 7:19pm EST
  

• Mormon Church supports what many Delaware conservatives don't: equal rights for LGBQT Americans in terms of housing and employment

  Still trying to figure out what this means after they helped bankroll the attack against same-sex marriage in California, but it's progress.
  
  From Joe My God:
  
  Hours after the LDS Church announced its support Tuesday night of proposed Salt Lake City ordinances aimed at protecting gay and' [...]
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  Posted: November 11, 2009, 12:42pm EST
  

• Because only the government can truly institutionalize discrimination....

  We visit Phoenix AZ where the government has ruled that middle-class communities have the right to prevent the feeding of homeless people there.
  
  From Coyote [via AZ Republic]
  
  A Phoenix ordinance banning charity dining halls in residential neighborhoods withstood a challenge by a north-central Phoenix church.
  [...]
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  Posted: November 10, 2009, 8:03pm EST
  

• And as for those who continue to argue about gay soldiers and "the morale of the troops"

  Notice that they didn't actually discharge him, even though they knew he was gay, until after his second 15-month tour in Iraq. But then they made sure his Honorable Discharge marked him as queer.
  
  
  
  [h/t Joe My God]' [...]
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  Posted: November 10, 2009, 7:54pm EST
  

• For those who keep dragging out the old "cornerstone of civilization" argument...

  ... Dan Savage makes the killer historical point about the fact that traditional marriage has generally been about women as property, which is apparently the past that opponents of same-sex marriage yearn to recapture.
  
  
  
  [h/t Joe My God] [...]
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  Posted: November 10, 2009, 7:52pm EST
  

• Anita Done

  In case you missed it, Mao-loving Obama WH uppity-up Anita Dunn has been tossed overboard, err...she wants "to spend more time with her teenage son."
  
  
  Reason's Tim Cavanaugh sends it up :
  

  Jake Tapper reports that Anita Dunn, tongue-chewing White House communications director, acolyte of' [...]

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  Posted: November 10, 2009, 1:54pm EST
  

• And, as usual, the Libertarian Party will miss this boat as well

  Thanks to the underlying homophobia evidenced by the likes of Bob Barr and Wayne Root (both of whom conveniently believe that States have rights when it comes to policies like same-sex marriage), the Libertarian Party is missing its opportunity to pick up the undying loyalty of one of the most [...]
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  Posted: November 10, 2009, 8:27am EST
  

• Leslie Gelb exposes the truth about Afghanistan and General McChrystal's numbers game

  It's in today's Daily Beast, and even though it has been said here and elsewhere before, reaching the MSM with this story is a good thing. General McChrystal is being not just disingenuous but damn near dishonest, as Leslie Gelb details:
  
  The key for McChrystal is getting the [...]
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  Posted: November 09, 2009, 8:11am EST
  

• Albert Einstein ... introduced by George Bernard Shaw

  
  
  Can you even imagine being in the room?
  
  [h/t Cosmic Variance] [...]
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  Posted: November 09, 2009, 8:02am EST
  

• George Orwell would be proud: Freedom means Oppression

  Consider the person who writes this in the wake of the Fort Hood massacre:
  
  The Muslims in this country have to cooperate with law enforcement to identify the jihadists among us, so we can be protected from them. Otherwise, at some point, the threat of spontaneously-arising jihadists from [...]
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  Posted: November 07, 2009, 9:44pm EST
  

• Stoopid stoopid Americuns should be borrowing more money while out of work

  Let's see....
  
  10.2% unemployment. Check.
  
  Millions more unable to afford health care and afraid they will either lose their homes or their jobs. Check.
  
  Many worried Americans trying to pay off their credit cards, stop buying unnecessary shit, and actually save some money. Oh. No.' [...]
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  Posted: November 06, 2009, 11:15pm EST
  

• Signs of the apocalypse: Dave Burris and Donviti both back

  ... and both worth reading.
  
  Dave Burris.
  
  Donviti's The Wage Slave.
  
  Visit often. Comment. Cringe. I will.' [...]
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  Posted: November 06, 2009, 2:42pm EST
  

• Serious question: will this be considered a racist statement?

  In a WaPo story criticizing the Obama administration for a long series of mistakes in Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy, this sentence appears:
  
  Daniel Levy, a veteran Israeli peace negotiator now at the Century Foundation in Washington, summed up the administration's efforts in recent days as "amateur night at the Apollo'" [...]
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  Posted: November 05, 2009, 9:57pm EST
  

• Don't worry if you can't find H1N1 vaccine for your kids: Goldman Sachs has its supply

  ... courtesy the rest of the government:
  
  To the list of hundreds of schools, hospitals, and community health centers that have received limited allocations of the H1N1 swine flu vaccine, you can now add some of New York's largest employers. In the past week or so 13 companies,' [...]
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  Posted: November 05, 2009, 9:42pm EST
  

• Shame on the Diocese of Wilmington

  Bankrupt and pleading poor mouth with regard to settling child sexual abuse cases, on 16 July 2009 our Diocese still found $200 to send to Maine for the campaign to overturn same-sex marriage.
  
  Look, the Catholic Church is against same-sex marriage. But to discover that in our cash-strapped [...]
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  Posted: November 05, 2009, 7:55pm EST
  

• Great intel we were getting from that Wali Karzai...

  You'd think he might have helped the CIA twig to the fact that most of the American-trained Afghan police force had, uh, been infiltrated by the Taliban:
  
  Following this morning’s incident, in which a long-serving Afghan policeman shot five British soldiers and then disappeared into the Helmand Province,' [...]
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  Posted: November 05, 2009, 10:49am EST
  

• Now Here's A Famous Member of Congress's Son Whose US Senate Campaign I Can Support Wholeheartedly

  Congressman Ron Paul's son, Rand, has now risen to the top of fundraising and polling in his pursuit of a U.S. Senate seat from that great state of Kentucky.
  
  via Agitator Radley Balko :
  
  

  [...]

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  Posted: November 05, 2009, 8:25am EST
  

• David Anderson & Hugo Chavez : Socialist Birds of a Feather

  Hey David, it's not just all about economics.
  
  Socialism seeks to socialize a nation (or the world) to mandated norms of behavior and lifestyle, most usually accomplished by state control of economic ways and means.
  
  But we all know such totalitarian statism is never content with, nor limited' [...]
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  Posted: November 05, 2009, 8:08am EST
  

• CIA paying off Harmid Karzai's drug-trafficking brother...

  ... is what the headlines should read, instead of attempting manufacture phony outrage and comparison with the Cheney/Libby leaking of Valerie Plame's name a few years ago.
  
  Predictably, the two-bit press--both nationally and locally--attempts to make this a serious issue, ala Rasmussen:
  
  Well, last week, The [...]
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  Posted: November 05, 2009, 6:55am EST
  

• I pledge allegiance to the United States of Sodom

  My friend Waldo first introduced me to the term Christianist, and--for a brief time--I thought it was a derogatory term for Christian. Then I realized that the definition was something more like this:
  
  one who advocates the reordering of society and government in accordance with fundamentalist Christian [...]
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  Posted: November 04, 2009, 12:05pm EST
  

• If Rolling Stone is correct, then both Generals Petraeus and McChrystal need to go

  ... because in this country Generals execute the policies of the civilian government, they don't set it.
  
  This article deserves a full read:
  
  In early October, as President Obama huddled with top administration officials in the White House situation room to rethink America's failing strategy in Afghanistan,' [...]
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  Posted: November 03, 2009, 7:36pm EST
  

• It's funny....

  .... when I get a link--either positive or negative--from Delawareliberal I get a noticeable jump in my traffic reports--sometimes a couple hundred extra hits in a day.
  
  But when Delaware Politics notices me .... nothing.
  
  I wondered why.
  
  Here are the current Alexa rankings.
  [...]
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  Posted: November 03, 2009, 6:02pm EST
  

• Time to remove the Diocese of Portland (Maine) tax exempt status

  Given that the Bishop of the Diocese instructed Marc Mutty, his Director of Public Relations, to go on leave from the Church in order to run the anti-same-sex marriage campaign in Maine, while continuing to pay his salary from Church coffers.
  
  Funny how that little detail is missing [...]
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  Posted: November 02, 2009, 6:11pm EST
  

• ... and just in case you thought all those bail-outs were working out ...

  From Politics Daily:
  
  The Treasury Department's purchase of nearly $46 billion of Fannie Mae's preferred stock made U.S. taxpayers major owners of the government-sponsored enterprise. This investment so far has not been very profitable for the taxpayer --- Fannie Mae lost just under $40 billion in the first [...]
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  Posted: November 02, 2009, 5:57pm EST
  

• Just for the record I proudly allow my children to have sex with demons

  ... or at least that's what Pat Robertson's CBN says I did when I let the little tykes go out Trick-or-Treating:
  
  Decorating buildings with Halloween scenes, dressing up for parties, going door-to-door for candy, standing around bonfires and highlighting pumpkin patches are all acts rooted in entertaining familiar spirits. [...]
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  Posted: November 02, 2009, 11:04am EST
  

• Obama Administration continues to expand Bushco State Secrets doctrine; supporters remain silent

  This is what Senator Barack Obama said of the Bush State Secrets doctrine while running for President in 2008 [and defending his own vote for telecom immunity]:
  
  I wouldn't have drafted the legislation like this, and it does not resolve all of the concerns that we have about President' [...]
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  Posted: November 02, 2009, 10:35am EST
  

• Red-baiting and vomit: the new face of David Anderson's Delaware Politics

  Having remained silent on the continued drift of Delaware Politics toward loonie-land long enough, two recent David Anderson posts simply cannot be ignored.
  
  The mildest is his reportage on the attempt to roll back same-sex marriage in Maine, which is conspicuous by its absence of reporting the tactics [...]
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  Posted: November 02, 2009, 8:24am EST
  

• Here's a question for you

  First, the set-up about Goldman Sachs' potential violations of securities laws via McClatchy:
  
  WASHINGTON — In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a' [...]
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  Posted: November 01, 2009, 11:28am EST