Quick hits for a Sunday afternoon

1.  Yes, it's sappy, but this Brazilian cartoon about a three-legged puppy makes all kinds of important points about unconditional love.

2.  Josie the Outlaw calmly and quietly makes a really important point about police and the question of moral limits.  As someone said on the page, I'd love to hear what a thoughtful police officer has to say about this.

3.  Will the Aurum or other convertible forms of gold become a real, workable, non-State-issued currency?  And how fast will the Feds move to throw the organizers in jail if it seems like that is about to happen.  See the quote above, right under "The Delaware Libertarian" title bar.

4.  The Electronic Frontier Foundation grades President Obama's "reforms" in NSA spying.  When I give students grades that look like this, they usually aren't smiling . . .

5.  Meanwhile, Mr. Obama declares that marijuana is "not very different from ... cigarettes" and less dangerous than alcohol, but then offers an exceptionally idiotic "slippery slope" argument on part with opponents of marriage equality telling us that passage would lead to people marrying their pets.

6.  Finally, with some relevance toward the arguments I am making in my own campaign about corporate welfare, here's what Wal-Mart Subsidy Watch has to say about the deal that brought the nation's largest employer to Smyrna:

In addition to spending about $75,000 on infrastructure improvements, the city sold the land to Wal-Mart at a price that was about $2.8 million less than the market value. The state agreed to give Wal-Mart grants of up to $1.2 million tied to hiring levels.

Think about this for a second:  the government decided that the country's largest retailer, not a local business or business, should get a cut-rate price on the property.  Then it made infrastructure improvements for one of the wealthiest multi-billion-dollar corporations on Earth.  And, finally, the State of Delaware made the ingenious investment of over a million tax dollars to pay Wal-Mart to hire minimum-wage workers who now require food stamps and Medicaid paid for from . . . your tax dollars.