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From Dr. Ron Paul:

The American Republic is in remnant status. The stage is set for our country eventually devolving into a military dictatorship, and few seem to care. These precedent-setting changes in the law are extremely dangerous and will change American jurisprudence forever if not revised. The beneficial results of our revolt against the King’s abuses are about to be eliminated, and few Members of Congress and few Americans are aware of the seriousness of the situation. Complacency and fear drive our legislation without any serious objection by our elected leaders. Sadly, though, those few who do object to this self-evident trend away from personal liberty and empire-building overseas are portrayed as unpatriotic and uncaring.

Though welfare and socialism always fails, opponents of them are said to lack compassion. Though opposition to totally unnecessary war should be the only moral position, the rhetoric is twisted to claim that patriots who oppose the war are not supporting the troops. The cliché “Support the Troops” is incessantly used as a substitute for the unacceptable notion of supporting the policy, no matter how flawed it may be….

Patriotism is more closely linked to dissent than it is to conformity and a blind desire for safety and security. Understanding the magnificent rewards of a free society makes us unbashful in its promotion, fully realizing that maximum wealth is created and the greatest chance for peace comes from a society respectful of individual liberty.

Ron Paul is not only the last chance for Republicans in 2008, he may well be the last hope of the Republic. The fact that this hope is a forlorn one does not excuse those who knowingly turn their backs on it in favor of dictators and Empire.

Portis, that is. I’m extremely interested in the Michael Vick dogfighting story due to its potential to influence the coming season, and I understand that if the laws have been broken, then NFL Commissioner Goodell will have no choice but to suspend Vick and any other NFL players that are involved. Although I suspect that Atlanta would be much better off without Vick than with him… especially if such a suspension would save them from having to pay part of his massive salary.

However, I don’t understand the rationale for banning dogfighting and cockfighting in the first place, let alone the laws against being a spectator at such events. There is something deeply twisted about a society that bans dogfights while simultaneously funding abortions, gassing millions of canines and running massive state lotteries. It’s especially bizarre that people who support dogfighting bans often wish to ban “dangerous breeds” entirely.

In other words, they believe that canine genoocide is desirable because certain breeds are prone to enjoy killing, but it’s undesirable to let the dogs kill one another. This isn’t just a massive violation of private property rights, it’s simply irrational. Shouldn’t we also prosecute National Geographic cameramen who not only attend Bighorn ram fights, but ACTUALLY GO SO FAR AS TO FILM THEM!

I very much like dogs. And while I enjoy human martial arts, I have no interest in ever attending a dogfight, nor has the thought of pitting my Viszla against anything more dangerous than a squirrel ever occurred to me. (And to be honest, it was entirely his idea, I was surprised he wasn’t afraid of the ferocious killer tree-rat.) But I see no legitimate moral or ethical basis for either banning dogfights or exterminating dog breeds.

For those who say it should be banned because it’s cruel to derive entertainment from pain, I note that I don’t see any moral or ethical basis for cutting out the tongues of teenage gossips either.

This Time Magazine article appears to note the ironies involved:

In the U. S. men can fight men in public, but the law decrees that it is cruel for them to match their dogs or chickens…. At week’s end, after tender care by Missouri Humane Society’s Veterinarian Carl Brenner, both dogs were in fine fettle, but were being held for probable asphyxiation….

I’m sure the dogs were tremendously grateful for their “rescue”.

Ann Althouse muses on female fatness:

The whole subject of the number itself is quite fascinating. There’s a mystique about the 200 mark, and lately I’ve gotten the feeling that there are a lot of Americans who don’t think a woman is particularly fat until she hits 200, and that there is a different group of people who think 125 is the point where fat begins.

Yeah, put me down for the latter category. Depending, of course, on the height; a woman shouldn’t weigh 125 unless she’s pregnant, unusually muscular or nearly six feet tall. 200 pounds? That’s ridiculous, it’s heavier than the average NFL cornerback at 5’10”, 190.

In many cases, I don’t regard fat people as being the most culpable for their state, however, as it’s often obvious that it is the parents who are primarily to blame. I was in the grocery store two days ago behind a very slightly overweight mother whose chubby seven year-old son was happily sucking down a huge soda that she’d obviously just bought him. Such poor dietary parenting not only creates bad habits, but sets people behind the weight ball from the start.

Unsurprisingly, the woman who goes 224 thinks that Americans need to rearrange their thinking. But I don’t see why fat people shouldn’t be banned from restaurants the same way smokers are, now that the principle of free association has been paved over in the so-called interest of the public health.

If you’re fat and want to get down to a normal size, stop drinking soda, (which you should stop in any case), stop snacking between meals and exercise every day, alternating 30 minutes of running or biking one day with 90 minutes of lifting free weights the next. Don’t worry about getting big from lifting, muscle takes up far less space than fat. The general rule is that fat girls do aerobics, fitness models lift.

You’ll start seeing results within four weeks. Unlike dieting, it becomes easier to stick to over time, not harder, thanks to the endorphin addiction.

I found this interview to be very interesting and I know the guy:

What is the Internet moving towards as an electronic entity? Do you agree with the assessment that it is turning people into inadequate socialites?

I think that as an entity, the Internet is in serious danger of choking to death on its own excrement, e.g., spam, viruses, Flash animations, etc.

As for whether it’s turning people into inadequate socialites: define “inadequate.” It changes the way people interact with each other, but then so do televisions, ATM machines, iPods, and self-service gas stations. Any technology that reduces the need to interact face-to-face with other people changes a person’s social patterns. Is this a bad thing? No, it’s just a change.

To say that it is bad is to say that change is inherently bad and we should all be living in tribal villages, listening only to live music, and never interacting with anyone outside of earshot or walking distance. Granted, thanks to the Internet I now have more communication with people in Australia and Europe than with my neighbor across the back fence, but on the other hand the people in Australia and Europe are far more interesting and intelligent than my neighbor. I’d rather be communicating with them.

The medical community continues its ethical death spiral:

The federal government is undertaking the most ambitious set of studies ever mounted under a controversial arrangement that allows researchers to conduct some kinds of medical experiments without first getting the patients’ permission.

The $50 million, five-year project, which will involve more than 20,000 patients in 11 sites in the United States and Canada, is designed to improve treatment after car accidents, shootings, cardiac arrest and other emergencies.

The three studies, organizers say, offer an unprecedented opportunity to find better ways to resuscitate people whose hearts suddenly stop, to stabilize patients who go into shock and to minimize damage from head injuries. Because such patients are usually unconscious at a time when every minute counts, it is often impossible to get consent from them or their families, the organizers say.

Of course, they could simply do a campaign to get people to sign up for the program ahead of time, like organ and blood donors. But that would cost money, and obviously money is far more important than ethics.

A great commercial. Courtesy of Evangelical Outpost.

I always find it mystifying that so many people continue to put such credence into the ideas pushed by awful people who lived unhappy, self-destructive lives:

The author of Peyton Place, says Foner, ‘was doing something on a cultural level that was extremely important. She was telling women it was OK to be sexual beings – to have the aspirations that men had.’

So an ugly, untalented woman who neglects her children managed to end up abandoned, bankrupt and dead at 39, naturally she is held up as a romantic figure worthy of emulation.

Cobbling together one novel of other people’s seamy stories is hardly a mark of literary greatness, if Metalious is to be considered an artistic success on the basis of the sales of the only book she managed to write herself, how much more greatness must we accord that multi-disciplinary genius, Jenna Jameson?

I think literary freaks of this sort are much to be preferred instead.

In which I steal a page from Jamie’s book. The VP’s commencement address at West Point:

We’re fighting a war on terror because the enemy attacked us first, and hit us hard. Scarcely 50 miles from this place, we saw thousands of our fellow citizens murdered, and 16 acres of a great city turned to ashes. Others were killed within view of the White House, at the headquarters of our military at the Pentagon. Many heroes emerged that day, both on board an aircraft over Pennsylvania and among the rescue teams, and they, too, died in the hundreds.

These are events we can never forget. And they are scenes the enemy would like to see played out in this country over and over again, on a larger and larger scale. Al Qaeda’s leadership has said they have the right to “kill four million Americans, two million of them children, and to exile twice as many and to wound and cripple thousands.” We know they are looking for ways of doing just that — by plotting in secret, by slipping into the country, and exploiting any vulnerability they can find.

And that’s why last week, the President joined forces with the U.S. Senate to grant them Z-visas and probationary U.S. citizen status in the hopes that they will decide to join us rather than kill us.

The Fraters Libertas draw attention to declining male wages:

In 2004, the median income for a man in his 30s, a good predictor of his lifetime earnings, was $35,010, the study says, 12% less than for men in their 30s in 1974 — their fathers’ generation — adjusted for inflation. A decade ago, median income for men in their 30s was $32,901, 5% higher than 30 years earlier.

I’m not one of those of hyper-sensitive “mens rights” freaks who like to embrace male victimhood at the drop of a hat, but I can’t imagine any story about women’s wages incuding a possible explanation that “maybe women are just not working as hard as they used to.” I suppose that once a generation of men is given the label “slackers” when they first enter adulthood, it’s easy to speculate that one of the reasons they’re falling behind previous generations in their thirties is lack of effort.

There is one reason that men in their 30s are earning less. It is that many more women are working. Unlike immigrants, women don’t create any additional demand by entering the work force. The Law of Supply and Demand is an iron one. If supply rises faster than demand, the price falls. That has been the case for labor, because with the expanded labor pool, the price of labor has naturally fallen.

That’s how it works. The unfortunate effect is that the more women that choose to work, the more women who don’t want to work will find that they have to because their husband can’t earn enough to allow them to stay home. It’s a vicious circle. So, if you’re a married woman with a job you’d rather not have, be sure to thank your feminist sisters.

I note that the base point, 1974, was one year after US hourly wages peaked.

The real cost of low-skill third-world migration:

Roughly one third of immigrant households are now headed by immigrants without a high school degree. My research, based on Census data and other government sources, shows these “low skill immigrant” households receive, on average, $30,160 per year in government benefits while paying $10,573 in taxes. Thus each such household costs the taxpayer $19,588 per year. Overall, the net cost to U.S. taxpayers is $89 billion per year. My report suggests that the country would benefit fiscally by having fewer low skill immigrants, who are net tax consumers, and more well educated immigrants who are net tax payers.

So my previous calculations underestimated the BENEFIT of repatriating invaders by a factor of five. Not only would repatriating every single illegal and low-skill legal immigrant be extremely affordable, from a financial perspective it is a complete no-brainer.

I note that even in the New York Times very loaded poll question, 33 percent favored deportation of illegals who have been here more than two years. And that 67 percent who favored some means of allowing them to stay drops to 26 percent when the actual amnesty plan is considered.