Well, the Supreme Court is on a roll, isn’t it?

First, they ruled that government can take property not for public use, but for purposes of increasing tax revenue. Now, developers of perfectly legal software can be held responsible if users use said software for illegal purposes. The former decision showed a marked disrespect for the Bill of Rights and the intent of the Founding Fathers, but the latter is just insane.

Here’s the gist of the ruling: anyone making a product that is used to break the law can be held responible just as though they had themselves broken the law. As an extension of this later ruling, gun manufacturers will no doubt be put on trial for murder. Those growing coffee beans will be put on trial for drug smuggling. Paint manufacturers are going to be held responsible for graffiti.

Not only is the substance of the ruling a bit silly, it will be a huge hindrance to the development of free software (and possibly any software), because there is almost certainly an illegal application for any software package that has any more practical use than a video game.

Who do we contact to start proceedings to impeach the Supreme Court?

Many people who are against the battles we’re fighting in Iraq will insist that, because Iraq has no direct links to 9/11, it is actually a secret, devious war fought purely because George W. Bush had a grudge against Saddam Hussein for his failed assassination attempt on his father (or, maybe it’s just a war to try to lower oil prices, or an attempt to show that he can finish something Daddy couldn’t, or a complicated plot by Bush’s puppet masters, Karl Rove and Dick Cheney).

These people tend to believe that September 11th was the first major event in the War on Terror. In fact, it was one of a long string of these sorts of events, but it was undeniably the biggest of them by far. Terrorist attacks by Al Quaida and similar groups on the United States (and their ally, Israel) have been occurring at an alarming frequency since the early 1980′s, and our response, prior to 9/11, had shown them that this nation hadn’t the courage to fight a war and win it.

I’ve linked it before, but this outline by retired blogger Steven Den Beste does a fine job of explaining the war in general, including the current phase of the War on Terror that is being fought in Iraq.

On Wednesday, Tigerhawk had an excellent piece exploring Stratfor’s George Friedman’s report about the Downing Street Memo. The whole thing is worth reading, and I think it serves as an excellent addition to Den Beste’s “Why Iraq” section of the outline linked above. What I found most intriguing is this excerpt (directly quoted from Friedman’s piece):

The mystery in the document, and the mystery since the summer of 2002, is why Bush almost never used these justifications but clung instead to the weapons of mass destruction rationale. Since it is clear that WMD was not his primary motivator, why did he not come forward with a clear explanation?

The obvious answer is that he did not have a better explanation. That would mean that he had no good reason for invading Iraq — he simply wanted to do so and did. You can pile onto this theories that he wanted to avenge the attempted murder of his father by Iraqi agents, that he is a stupid man who doesn’t think much, or that black helicopters took control of his brain. All of this may be possible. But in looking at Bush and reading this memo, there nowhere emerges an image of a man who thinks like this. There is a willful, unbending man. There is a decisive man who can make substantial mistakes and refuse to concede error. But it is hard to locate the stupid man of myth.

So why doesn’t Bush come plain with his reasoning? Better still, why doesn’t this memo — which cries out for a paragraph in which C explains Bush’s reasoning — contain a word on that? Why isn’t there even a mention that it is not clear what Bush is up to? Everyone in the room knows that WMD is a pretext for war, but the obvious next paragraph — an analysis of Bush’s real reasoning — simply isn’t there.

And not only isn’t that discussion there, but no one in the room seemed to be even curious about it. Either they had the least curiosity of any group of men on earth, or they knew the answer.

We continue to believe the answer is Saudi Arabia.

The comment section of this page is worth a read as well, but I think that this page (and the Den Beste page I linked) make an excellent case for the link between Iraq and the War on Terror, even though Iraq was never connected to the attack on September 11th.

( þ Q and O Blog )

…just public property that the public hasn’t taken yet.

I’ve been following, with great interest, the debates between Kevin Baker and his anarcho-capitalist critics. In general, I’ve agreed with Kevin, but his opponents raise a few good points.

As a thought exercise, I began trying to envision the way an anarchist society might provide the same protections as other societies, and most of my concepts came down to an “opt-in” pseudo-government that MOST people would end up joining simply for the infrastructure and security benefits.

The one thing that caused me the most problems was the ownership of property, real estate in particular. One of the primary reasons that I felt there needed to be a standard recognized “government” was that it could serve as a repository for “official” documents saying who owned what piece of real estate.

Now, though, the government is a threat to the private ownership of real estate, not a protector of our property rights. Kevin says this probably isn’t the straw that broke the camel’s back, but that it ought to be. As far as I’m concerned, it is the final straw. If Bill Von Winkle, who said he’s not leaving his home, needs someone to lie in front of the bulldozers with him, I’m willing to consider going.

Of Arms and the Law has an interesting post up, titled “Looking to future Supreme Courts:

Prof. Robert Cottrol of George Washington Univ. college of law has raised an interesting question in an email, which I’d like to put up for discussion. He prefaced it with a running joke he has — the problem with advocating the right to arms is the liberals don’t like arms and conservatives don’t like rights.

Later, he quotes Prof. Cottrol:

So perhaps the discussion we might have is over the long run will the second amendment be best protected by people who are generally hostile to the right but who have shown a broader commitment to individual rights or by people who are at least nominally in favor of the right but who have shown a rather weak commitment to individual rights generally?

It’s becoming more and more obvious that the Republican version of conservativism simply isn’t a viable alternative to the liberal Democrats. Given that the Libertarian party has a few too many of their own unique brand of kooks, I’m not sure whether there’s any political party that really provides a good home for me anymore.

You know, it seems like it wasn’t that long ago that I was criticizing those who were taking the (alleged) desecration of a Koran too seriously. I acknowledged that Newsweek should’ve done a better job verifying their (apparently false) story on the “flushed Koran”, but that most of the blame lay with those who took a symbol so seriously that they were willing to kill for it.

Now, those who are taking a symbol a little too seriously are the people in Congress.

Flag Burning isn’t something I condone, but aren’t there more important issues for Congress to be dealing with? How about cutting some spending? How about doing something to help out our school systems (vouchers, perhaps….)? Why are we bothering with trying to ban a form of expression that is fairly ineffective anyway? Isn’t Freedom of Expression supposed to be one of the things that makes this country great? If some people want to earn themselves the right to be dismissed out of hand in my eyes, why should we outlaw their ability to do so? How about doing something to protect those Second Amendment rights that so many states are chipping away at, instead?

Really, if this is what our legislators are going to do, they’ll be better off just “playing House” down in the basement. (See the Day-by-Day comic on the “playing House” subject.)