End the War on Freedom

The other day, I tumbled thirty once-fired .223 Remington cases, deprimed and neck sized them, and primed and charged them along with twenty other cases that I had tumbled, deprimed, and neck sized earlier. I charged all fifty with powder, then started seating bullets. The newer thirty were not properly resized. The bullets went all the way in until they were stopped by the powder. Guess I didn't press hard enough while resizing. I tried two or three before deciding that they were likely all bad. I seated and crimped bullets in the twenty properly resized cases, then set the thirty prematurely primed cases aside to fire at the range. I have read that you shouldn't attempt to deprime an unfired case. It's likely to go off in your press. You need to fire it in the gun first, then treat it as you would any fired case. Yesterday, I decided that a primer couldn't make that big an explosion, so I loaded a case into the rifle in the basement and fired it into a metal bucket that we used for emptying the ashes, sometimes hot, from the wood stove (we still have the wood stove, but we don't use it; our oil furnace is now attached to the chimney that used to vent the wood stove). The sound was like a largish toy cap. Sparks spit out of the front of the rifle barrel into the bucket, which rang like a dull bell. It was just loud enough to make hearing protection a good idea, but I doubt it could be heard outside of the house. It was fun, though a little tedious, to fire all thirty. At two cents per primer, it's almost worth doing this on purpose, though single loading empty cases into an AR-15 is a bit of a pain.

Salim Muwakkil at Common Dreams - Drug Warriors: U.S.'s Internal Taliban - The U.S. drug policy is as fundamentalist and irrational as the Taliban's interpretation of Islamic law. The medical benefits of cannabis far outweigh the small risks that come with inhaling smoke. [cures-not-wars]

Just as the Taliban forbid music, kite flying, close shaving and female education purely in the service of religious fanaticism, America adheres to an anti-drug dogma that similarly defies logic. The U.S. and the Taliban may be mortal enemies in the war on terrorism. But in the war on reason, they are soul mates.

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The Institute of Medicine report found no reported deaths associated with the ingestion of marijuana, although nearly 8,000 deaths resulted from the use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs like aspirin. Legal drugs like tobacco and alcohol account for the deaths of tens of thousands a year, according to the U.S. Centers for Health statistics.

Marijuana's benefits are so wide-ranging and its damage so minuscule, the federal government would avidly be proclaiming the drug's virtue were science and rationality the motivating factor. Instead, we are held captive by a fundamentalist mindset that refuses to acknowledge data that threatens its dogma.

Chris Floyd at The Moscow Times - Drapes of Wrath - Concerning the "disappearing" of the exposed breast of the Spirit of Justice. With a little introduction of the "man" who couldn't bear being photographed with it.

Ashcroft is of course a favorite of these pages: a draft dodger, a defender of slavery, an eager gobbler of Enron bribes, a panting raper of American liberties, a bug-eyed twanger of love songs to Jesus -- what's not to like? After his election to the U.S. Senate, he famously poured cooking oil on his head, in emulation of the anointing of King David -- for like that royal favorite of the Most High, Ashcroft too had come into "dominion over men." Unfortunately, he lost his Senate seat six years later -- to a dead man. His opponent was killed in a plane crash shortly before the election, but the good folk of Missouri -- who after all know Ashcroft best -- decided they'd take the corpse over the Crisco Kid.

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Ashcroft is also in charge of sealing public information from, er, the public, including those sad sacks in Congress -- acts of tyrannical censorship made to order for the Missouri mullah. Most recently, he blocked a Congressional probe of FBI collusion with Mafia murderers.

Blood and tyranny are all very well, of course, just part and parcel of a Christian soldier's righteous labors. But there's one thing no holy warrior can ever abide, no matter how oily or battle-hardened he may be -- the sight of female flesh. Those undulant curves, those elegant lines, the living glory of unadorned woman -- all this is abhorrent in the eyes of the Lord and his most faithful servants: squiggly Republican males.

And so it was last week that Ashcroft ordered the draping of two semi-clad figures in the Great Hall of the Justice Department building. These two historic statues, installed during the 1930s as part of a government arts program, depict the Majesty of Justice and the Spirit of Justice. Majesty is OK -- he's just a nice red-blooded American guy, with his naughty parts covered by a handy loincloth. But Spirit is a strumpet -- a tall, powerful female, arrayed in fetching dishabille, with one breast bared boldly to the world.

Joseph Brean at National Post - Take Canadian flag off Web site, government tells smokers' group - The feds in Canada have told Forces Canada to remove the Canadian "flag symbol" from their web site. Shore 'nuff. There's a blank space in the upper left-hand corner of the front page. Canada has some pretty extensive Look and Feel Standards including this Government of Canada Identifiers page from which I snarfed the flag symbol to the right of this paragraph. I believe this is the image they're rowing about. [grabbe]

Dale Amon at Samizdata - We're from Different Planets - Mr. Amon doesn't understand all the hand wringing over the conditions in the Gunatanamo Bay prison. He thinks the prisoners should be permanenetly neutralized and gives a couple of ideas for how to do it. Time will tell, but he's probably right. [samizdata]

These prisoners are excessively dangerous men. They are trained, drilled, lethal killers... every one of them. They will seek death for the opportunity to take some of us with them. No normal prison or prison guards will be capable of holding them. If it meant 50 of them had to die so one could grab a soldier's weapon, they would do so. They will quietly wait 3,5,10 years for a guard to slip, to forget what sort of people they are, to become complacent. They will revolt and kill and revolt and kill again until there are none of them left...

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