Right Again. The passions of John Stuart Mill (previously).
posted on Oct 1, 2008 - View this thread

If you hadn't heard of Jim Crow before, this is where you can find a brief history on the subject (along with a radio broadcast of some of the people who were involved). Bayard Rustin's Journey of Reconciliation: America's First Freedom Ride (You Don't Have To Ride "Jim Crow") was a precursor [audio and video] to the Civil Rights Movement of the 50's and 60's. (Also, a look at the Jim Crow Museum and a walk down Jim Crow Road today.) [previously*]
posted on Apr 2, 2008 - View this thread

What do a balding man with a unique talent, shopping carts, and Extended Validation SSL Certificates have in common? Well, this: Liberty Fillmore: The Cart Whisperer (YT). Won't you think of the carts and visit No More Abandoned Carts today?
posted on Feb 28, 2008 - View this thread

Unqualified Reservations is a fascinating ongoing commentary on society and governance in postmodernity. He's currently on about the pwning of Richard Dawkins, after writing about Mediocracy and Official Journalism. It might be best to first read his earlier posts in which he defines the self-invented terminology he's fond of using, like: Formalism, The Iron Polygon, Universalism, Neocameralism, and The Rotary System.
posted on Oct 29, 2007 - View this thread

Lessons from Past Western Incursions in the Middle East. A speech by Juan Cole at the New America Foundation in which he discusses his new book, Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East, and the relevance and lessons of Napoleon's expedition in Egypt to the current American occupation of Iraq. A shorter version, covering many of the same points, is in this article: Pitching the Imperial Republic.
posted on Aug 26, 2007 - View this thread

Knob Creek Gun Range , a former military-munitions test range situated near Fort Knox is home to the "World's Largest Machine Gun Shoot and Military Gun Show". Run by private citizens excercising their second amendment rights (Kentucky has no state-level gun laws) the focus is on Class III firearms - things like assault weapons and anti-tank rifles, but also the occasional high-caliber sniper rifle and cannon. Hold my bourbon and watch this! (more)
posted on Jul 26, 2007 - View this thread

Peter B. Kaplan is a New York Photographer who made his name by climbing to high locations and taking amazing super-wide angle shots since the 70's -- most notably, the Statue of Liberty restoration project. He recently had to stop after 40 years because he started suffering from vertigo. After laying off ginkgo biloba, Kaplan’s vertigo and fear of heights has apparently disappeared.
posted on Jun 25, 2007 - View this thread

Spiritual Highs and Legal Blows - the power and peril of religious exemptions from drug prohibition
posted on May 23, 2007 - View this thread

Blog Against Theocracy --a blogswarm dedicated to the separation of church and state, ... Easter Weekend, April 6-8, 2007. Also see the non-profit joint venture between The Interfaith Alliance Foundation and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, First Freedom First.
posted on Apr 6, 2007 - View this thread

Ron Paul is now officially running for President. Some say his views, especially on Foreign Policy, make him a longshot.
posted on Mar 15, 2007 - View this thread

Washington State Legislature to Allow Dogs in Bars. And some people are just not happy about it. Dogs in bars. What's the big deal? Is it a health issue? In more civilized places, like Paris, they have been doing it for years - plague free.
posted on Feb 4, 2007 - View this thread

The Mayfair Set [Google Video]. A BBC Documentary series on how City of London bankers systematically dismantled British industry from the 1960s-90s and removed the power of the state to protect people from the greed of the market A thought provoking documentary from Adam Curtis whose other documentaries The Power of Nightmares and The Century of the Self have been previously discussed and well received on Mefi. It is almost four hours long but well worth the effort.
posted on Dec 2, 2006 - View this thread

Aaron Russo releases America: Freedom to Fascism on the net!
posted on Oct 13, 2006 - View this thread

The Philosophy of Liberty. Briefly cited here, this simple yet powerful Flash animation is one of the most elegant, expressive, and dramatic political statements I have ever seen.
posted on Aug 28, 2006 - View this thread

Is this America's new meme? Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS), May 18, 2006: "I am a strong supporter of the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment and civil liberties. But you have no civil liberties if you are dead." (via) Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), December 19, 2005: "None of your civil liberties matter much after you’re dead." Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI), responded to Cornyn: "Give me liberty or give me death." Good on that. First Amendment, Fourth Amendment (General Hayden's version), civil liberties.
posted on May 20, 2006 - View this thread

Power Surge: The Constitutional Record of George W. Bush Not much of this report from the Cato institute will be surprising to MeFites, but it is a great document [31 page PDF] that summarizes Bush's consistent disregard for the Constitution and drive for greater executive power.
posted on May 3, 2006 - View this thread

Police abuse remains one of the most serious and divisive human rights violations in the United States. The excessive use of force by police officers, including unjustified shootings, severe beatings, fatal chokings, and rough treatment, persists because overwhelming barriers to accountability make it possible for officers who commit human rights violations to escape due punishment and often to repeat their offenses. This reporter went out to discover just how hard it would be to anonymously file a complaint report. As it turns out, he was threatened, roughed up, and even intimidated by the suggestion that he would be shot. After reporter Mike Kirsch filed this story, the retaliation was swift and one would have thought, illegal.
posted on Apr 5, 2006 - View this thread

LibertyFilter is an aggregator of freedom-focused bloggers, with some original content of its own as well. Great way to keep up on current happenings (good and bad) regarding our rights. Note, however, not much actual filtering seems to occur.
posted on Dec 2, 2005 - View this thread

Liberty ship bow art of Sausalito.
posted on Apr 6, 2005 - View this thread

Freedom's Not Just Another Word (NYT). The Sumerian "ama-ar-gi," found on tablets in the ruins of the city-state of Lagash, which flourished four millenniums ago, derived from the verb "ama-gi," which literally meant "going home to mother." The Latin libertas and Greek eleutheria both indicated a condition of independence, unlike a slave. Freedom, however, comes from the same root as friend, an Indo-European word that meant "dear" or "beloved." It meant a connection to other free people by bonds of kinship or affection, also unlike a slave. Liberty and freedom both meant "unlike a slave." But liberty meant privileges of independence; freedom referred to rights of belonging.
posted on Feb 7, 2005 - View this thread

Giant's bizarre obsession with dwarf continues: confess to the NYPD that you smoked a spliff in Amsterdam, you're in the clear; but tell 'em you smoked a Havana, and you could get locked up for 10 years & fined $250,000. Land of the free, my ass....via Ben Hammersley. US Treasury .pdf here: including hotline for narcing on Arnie, Harvey, et al...
posted on Oct 14, 2004 - View this thread

Human Development Report 2004 Cultural Liberty in Today’s Diverse World
posted on Jul 15, 2004 - View this thread

How I Lost the Big One Lawrence Lessig on losing Eldred v. Ashcroft: "We had in our Constitution a commitment to free culture. In the case that I fathered, the Supreme Court effectively renounced that commitment. A better lawyer would have made them see differently."
posted on Mar 3, 2004 - View this thread

Lost Liberties? Salon has an interesting two part series on the tensions between antiwar protesters and law enforcement. Part 1: "Outlawing dissent: Spying on peace meetings, cracking down on protesters, keeping secret files on innocent people -- how Bush's war on terror has become a war on freedom." Part 2: "A thousand J. Edgar Hoovers: State and local police are taking it upon themselves to investigate antiwar activists -- and in the computer age, the threat to our civil liberties is even greater than it was in Hoover's day." Does Protester = Criminal?
posted on Feb 20, 2004 - View this thread

Bush looks to ban gay marriage and implies gays are "sinners." I'm not surprised; I guess the neo-cons got jittery when Bush refused to do their bidding and have asked for the value of their campaign contributions.
posted on Jul 30, 2003 - View this thread

Civil liberties and privacy may be priceless, but they may soon have a price tag. In this NYT article, describes efforts by the White House Office of Management and Budget to quantify the cost of enhanced security and lessened liberties. "As long as they're going to deal with monetary evaluations, I told them they should start asking about the cost of destroying democracy," said Mr. Nader.
posted on Mar 11, 2003 - View this thread

The Patriot Act. Ashcrft's TIPS program. FBI surveying your Public Library consumption history. Freedom in America isn't what it used to be, and in most cases, the changes have been foisted on the public, sans referendum.
Have you heard the name Lt. General Michael V. Hayden before? Probably not. Probably cuz he's king spook. aka Director fo the National Security Agency.
Here's a transcript of his testimony before congress about pre and post 9/11 national security issues.
Its a really scary read. Why? Because his assessment comes across as more level headed, even handed and realistic on this prime topic than the President and everyone in congress put together. (YMMV)
Who'd a thunkit?
Briefly, he tells Congress "that they can best help him by going back to their constituents and finding out where the public wants to draw the line between liberty and safety.” More importantly, he talks to the people about security, not at them. Where's the line gotta be? [found on /.]
posted on Nov 7, 2002 - View this thread

"British Liberty, RIP"
A leader article on the danger represented by the British Government's new Statutory Order and the need for Parliamentarians to step in and resist. (The Order will allow a wide range of organisations access to phone and internet records - The Guardian's own story with details is here.)
Ben Franklin has been quoted here many times before, but I have no hesitation quoting him again: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
posted on Jun 11, 2002 - View this thread

DigitalConsumer.org is trying to get Congress to pass a six-point Consumer Technology Bill of Rights to protect the legitimate rights of honest consumers who buy copyrighted content legally. You can read about the issue and the group in Walt Mossberg's WSJ column.
posted on Mar 14, 2002 - View this thread

From the Sunday NY Times comes an article detailing an unprecedented roundup of Arabic people living in the US, some as naturalized citizens, but most under varying types of visas, (oftentimes lapsed). And release bonds are but non existent The gov's strategy seems to be to try to cast a wide net and scoop up as many "likelies" to put a wrench in "The Base's" homeland terror machine. Calling it "widescale racial profiling" like the well documented Japanese internments of WW2, defense lawyers and civil libertarians are getting constitutionally antsy about the roundup, which they say accellerated noticably after the 9/22 warnings of imminent attack. Is their alarm well founded or reflexive and hollow?
posted on Nov 4, 2001 - View this thread

Justice O'Connor foresees cutbacks in personal liberties. Sandra Day O'Connor, during remarks given at the groundbreaking ceremonies for a Law School Building at NYU, cautions Americans that we may face restrictions in our personal freedoms. No real specifics in the remarks, but intriguing in that she would be among those having the final say as to the constitutionality of any laws that arise out of the "War on Terrorism". She poses some interesting questions in her remarks. And she is considered to be one of the moderate Justices.
posted on Sep 30, 2001 - View this thread

The Liberty Alliance Project has been formed. What a marvelously patriotic name. I bet you can't guess what it's about without reading the link. Come on, I betcha can't. Just try.
posted on Sep 27, 2001 - View this thread

Take my 4th Ammendment, I don't want it ...I find it amazing that some people will actually sign up for this. Basically you put a decal on your car that tells the police they can pull you over without cause, between 1am and 5am. Ostensibly to prevent car theft, and late-night joyrides by teenagers. Even if I didn't drive late at night all the time, this strikes me as a foolish bargin, giving up far too much, for far little benefit.
posted on Jun 5, 2001 - View this thread

Louisiana legislation decides that Darwin was "racist." It's not just the fundamentalist right... now it's Democrats pushing for the demonization of evolution. The full text of the resolution (in PDF format) can be found here. This is a Salon article about it. And this is the full text of "Darwin's Descent of Man", so that someone can point to me where exactly is Darwin suggesting that some races are "more evolved" than others... I mean don't they read the books before they start putting stickers on them?
posted on May 21, 2001 - View this thread

Do you have too much Freedom?
Might be interesting to all except for the ideology sales pitch at the end. Here is where the warning that it is a Harry Browne/Libertarian penned article goes. George Bush is a Communitarian?
posted on Feb 28, 2001 - View this thread