Herbert Harrington of Wilmington wants to make us all safe by having automobiles equipped with cell phone jammers: A letter to the editor last Saturday had a great idea of installing cell phone jamming devices in autos when they are being driven, suggesting that this technology be developed. The devices are available right now on the Internet. The only problem: They are illegal to own in the United States. Is this a great country or what? All around us on Interstate 95, nitwits are having animated phone conversations, or texting (which is cell phoning on crack), and we can't protect ourselves. Cell phone jammers have an effective cone of protection of about 30 meters, and their use for individuals trying to protect themselves should be immediately made legal. Yep. This makes perfect sense. My son is having an asthma attack in the back seat of our car. We are racing to the hospital. My wife, in the passenger seat, is attempting to call 911 and get better medical instructions or...

At least that's what the NCCo instant ticket program for unsightly yards and properties really appears to be for. Last year, New Castle County collected $74,425 in fines for people violating code . But going through all that pesky red tape--you know, actual charges and a judge and all that--was apparently too time-consuming or too costly (kind of like those damn FISA surveillance rules), so authorities implemented the instant ticket . Here's how this new, highly efficient system works: Step one: some neighbor rats you out for an inoperable car parked in your driveway. Step two: an inspector shows up and writes you a $50 ticket. Step three: you either plead guilty and send in the money, or plead not guilty and send in the money. [Not much difference there, huh?] Step four: an official from the same organization that wrote you the ticket rejects your appeal [because, after all, that inspector doesn't have to worry about that funky old presumption of innocence thing]. S...

. . . as hard as that may be for some of you to believe. Check out When You Need Revenue, Just Turn Up the Screws . I'm not posting this to accomplish some sort of cheap shot against Dana Garrett, who's a social democrat and favors universal health care via single-payer and other publicly funded solutions with which I vehemently disagree. I'm posting it because it raises the point that we often forget in America: that we are a complex people, with beliefs that do not rigidly hew any particular ideological line in the face of things like, say, clear conflict of interest or casual abridging of the due process of law. Unfortunately, we spend far too much time in name-calling and sound-bites to remember that the commonalities that unite us are more significant than the political opinions that divide us .

This is how you advance the idea of a State that is above the laws. You find a group of people toward which the media and many Americans are unsympathetic, like, say, those polygamist families in Texas with the weird hair. Now that the Texas Supreme Court has ruled that the State acted inappropriately in seizing all their children, you'd think--rule of law and all--that what happens next is that those 400 children are returned to their families, right? No, not according to Texas District Judge Barbara Walther : A Texas judge refused on Friday to sign an agreement that would have paved the way for the first large batch of children taken from a polygamist sect's ranch to return to their parents, dashing hopes raised by a Supreme Court ruling in the case. Texas District Judge Barbara Walther wanted to add restrictions to the parents' movement and broaden the authority of Child Protective Services to monitor the more than 400 children in foster care before signing an agreement ...

My liberal and progressive friends often show cyber-smirks when I talk about coercive taxation or government intimidation . It occasionally feels like we live in completely different worlds. So maybe this will help them probe what has heretofore been invisible. Consider two favorite issues for Statists: mandatory seatbelt laws and restrictions on the private transfer of firearms. I'm not going to discuss the laws themselves , because that's usually a waste of breath. Either you understand the issues of personal liberty or 2nd Amendment rights, or you don't. What I want to do instead is discuss the overt tactics of intimidation and fear being used to make people toe the line. Case One: Click It or Ticket The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is in the process of spending its $7,500,000-- that's $7.5 million --advertising budget on this campaign to get drivers to buckle up. The precis on the NHTSA website makes it clear that this is consciously intend...

Sometimes when I read Nanny Knows Best , I can't decide whether I'm reading the sequel to George Orwell's 1984 or visiting the future of America if our Progressive Brethren and Cistern take power. For example: now it is being seriously bruited about that the British Government should fine restaurants for serving out-of-season (read, "imported") produce. The source of this ingenious idea (and the individual who is lobbying Prime Minister Harold Brown for its adoption) is none other than Chef Gordon Ramsay of Hell's Kitchen . The Orwellian logic behind this idea is that it would cause restaurants to rely on local produce, which would have a smaller carbon footprint because it would not have to be transported as far as, say, bananas from Guatemala. Unfortunately, this idea is already percolating just beneath the surface right here in the USA, where--for example--Progressive guru George Lakoff intends his healthy foods "strategic initiative" to emplo...

Since I started blogging, very few things disturb me dramatically. I have learned about government corrpution, special deals, backroom politics, as well as the overbearing DMV workers who want to be our masters . All of this seems the news de juer, but maybe to prove to myself that some things still shock me, there is the story of Custer County Oklahoma Sheriff Mike Burgess using inmates as sex slaves. As I reported earlier this practice is NOT uncommon in other insane square states either . Of course in a county with a relatively high rate of poverty nothing seems surprising anymore. The median income for a household in the county was $28,524, and the median income for a family was $37,247. Males had a median income of $27,066 versus $19,479 for females. The per capita income for the county was $15,584. About 12.40% of families and 18.50% of the population were below the poverty line, including 21.00% of those under age 18 and 10.50% of those age 65 or over. Making both young offender...

James Baker, Mayor of Wilmington, gave his budget address last night to the City Council. The big headline of his speech, triumphantly reported as such, was : "no tax increases this year" . This in spite of an incredible inflation-surpassing one year growth rate of 11% and the addition of at least 13 new city employees none of whom by the way is a police officer, given the violent crime explosion we have seen, or an otherwise essential employee. http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080321/NEWS02/803210339/1006/NEWS http://www.wilm.com/cc-common/mlib/1171/03/1171_1206039408.doc In keeping with Baker's theme that it is somehow praiseworthy that the city government has managed to scrape by with such paltry means as $141,800,000 for FY 2009 * while still taking real nice care of all those much-needed layers of bureaucracy and patronage, Baker reassured that at least several of these new taxpayer-funded jobs would be justified by the new revenu...

Over at Delaware Watch, Dana has an interesting post on The Spreading Totalitarianism of the Private Sector , which I recommend to you. I agree with many of his observations, if not necessarily his conclusions. After detailing the kind of enforced groupthink ceremonies at MBNA that George Orwell appeared to describe in 1984, he concludes [edited for brevity not to distort; go read the original]: I am not making a case for smoking or obesity. I'm arguing that in the US we locate the fear of authoritarian control over our lives in the wrong sphere of influence. We fear it's the public sector that primarily threatens our liberty when, in fact , it's the workplace in the private sector that is undermining our liberties.... Some mistakes are so elementary that one must resort to uttering truisms to make the point: Totalitarian control is totalitarian control whether it occurs in the public or private sector.... But we mustn't control the private sector democratically throug...

The controversial REAL ID Act, and its draconian laws that stamp each American citizen with an RFID chip is already finished. A group of German hackers developed an electromagnetic zapper to deactivate the cards and any RFID technology. Problem is someone from the EU hacked the hackers site. Their solution for hardcore RFID protesters is a lot easier than creating your own homemade electromagnetic pulse reaction by putting your real ID card in the microwave with a fork. Either way, the technology is already toast.... http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2006/01/05/german-privacy-hackers-develop-rfid-zapper http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REAL_ID_Act

... it's hard to find a political party in America to call your own. That was the message of Shirley's recent post in Delaware Curmudgeon and my response here . Something about that theme wouldn't let go of me. Libertarians (and I count Shirley among them on philosophy, not party) often emphasize minimalist constitutional government, for which we get lampooned on a regular basis by the remora feeding off the nanny state's leavings. But the most politically radical desire we have is to be left alone. Here's one of the experiences that crystalized for me the incredible mentality of social intrusion we've allowed to grow and fester in the former American republic: My twins were seven when my grandson was born. Because my daughter's only health insurance was Medicaid, she was informed that she would be receiving a visit by nurse two days after she brought him home. Not that she was eligible for such a service, but that she was required to have this nurse vi...

Random Net-wandering is a truly amazing thing. I picked this one up from a progressive blog-- Future Majority --which has tipped onto the story from the Electronic Frontier Foundation that the Federal government is now moving to tie funding for student loans at colleges and universities to a requirement that those same universities purchase ... DRM-based industry-sanctioned download services and deployment of network snoopware that spies on and disconnects college kids if they appear to be violating copyright (without any hard evidence or a chance for the student to present her side of the story). Now if we could just get them to realize that it's the same form of blackmail when the Federal government threatens to cut off highway funds to states that don't arbitrarily lower blood alcohol standards or make non-use of seat belts a primary offense. If the behavior is unethical in one context...?