• RSS Feed

  Reclaim Liberty RSS Feed

• Recently Written

  • I.O.U.S.A. Movie Review
  • USDA Predicts Largest Jump In Prices Since 1990
  • I.O.U.S.A. Trailer
  • Consumer Prices Post Largest Jump In 27 Years
  • NYC To Scan All License Plates Entering The Island
  • Paulson Has Lost Control Of Economy (Did He Ever Have It?)
  • Federal Debt Ceiling Raised For The Sixth Time
  • $500,000,000,000
  • Higher Prices On Their Way (Again)
  • Ted Rall Opinion: Recession Year 8

• Categories

  • Economics
  • Election 2008
  • Inflation
  • Military
  • News
  • State Government
  • UK Government
  • US Government
  • World News

• Archives

  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • June 2007
  • May 2007

• Blogroll

  • Campaign For Liberty - The Ron Paul rEVOLution Continues
  • Libertarian Party - America's Premiere 3rd Party, Devoted To Freedom
  • Libertarian Swag - Get Your Libertarian Themed Gear Here!
  • Ludwig von Mises Institute - Austrian Economics
  • Shadow Government Statistics - Information On How The Government Uses Improperly Reports Things

• Admin

  • Register
  • Login
  • Wordpress
  • XHTML

• Search

President Bush has signed a bill for $162 BILLION for funding the “wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan.  In case you’re not keeping track, that means we’re spending $650 BILLION in Iraq, and almost $200 BILLION in Afghanistan.  $850 BILLION dollars, divided by the approximately 305,000,000 people in the U.S., comes to: $2,786.89 for every man, woman, and child in the US.

This logic was used by Nixon back in the day, and didn’t pass muster, but these days, it seems to - given our cowardly congress.  As they’ll apparently be giving the telecoms retroactive immunity for illegal wire-tapping, all wire-taps will be legal “after the fact” if the president decides so, and if his lawyers say that its legal.  (Do you think they’ll ever disagree?)  It’s a shame that real heroes like Mark Klein (pictured, thanks Ryan Singel at Wired.com) who have made an attempt to stand up for the rights of all of us will never get rewarded!

In an obvious example of “Well, duh…”, it seems that a New Yorker story by Seymour Hersh claims that the Bush administration has asked for (and gotten) $400 Million for covert operations in Iran, to effect regime change.  (Apparently the ’success’ of the last regime change is going to his head!)  Of course, the White House denies that any cross-border operations are taking place, or that such funding has benn appropriated.  And had it been appropriated, well, they certainly wouldn’t use it for that.  They have so many pressing needs here at home, why that $400 Million would go to help Americans of course!

According to The Huffington Post, it’s not just we Americans paying more for gas.  (Well, you Americans, I don’t own a car.)  It seems that the military will be paying more, A LOT more for oil.  There’s talk of making the Iraqis pay for some of it, what with all the oil they have and seeing as how we’re rebuilding their country with our money, but since we can’t actually keep their pipelines from being blown up every other day (where’s Iron Man when you need him?), that may not happen any time soon.

Without admitting guilt (!), the Us Department of Justice has agreed to terms in the lawsuit brought by Dr. Steven Hatfill.  You may remember Dr. Hatfill as “a former US army scientist, [who] sued the department, saying it violated his privacy rights by speaking to reporters about the case”, that case being the still unsolved anthrax attacks of 2001.  The Justice Department will “pay Dr Hatfill $2.8m (£1.4m) upfront.  It will also buy Dr Hatfill a $3m (£1.5m) annuity that will pay him $150,000 (£75,000) each year for 20 years.”  Your tax dollars at work.

According to MSNBC, there’s been a study of 100,000 cell phone users where those users were tracked while moving.  While it looks like this didn’t happen in the US (something tells me it was India), since both the country and the phone company details are being hidden, there’s no way to tell.  Apparently, the numbers were obfuscated, but I’m sure it would be possible for a smart person or a computer to undo that.  (It also means somewhere that data already exists in normal form!)  Either way, this raises a number of troubling concerns for those who wish to remain private and/or untracked.

If these people are correct, then this could be the largest threat to freedom to happen in this generation.