I took a quick peek at an Amarillo newspaper headline that intrigued me. The article was addressing proposed reforms in the state Child and Protective Services (CPS). At first glance, I was encouraged. Maybe these reforms would address the countless abuses of CPS caseworkers who use their position to press their personal platforms regardless of the constitutional rights of their victims or of the community bullies who use CPS to bully their neighbors over largely unrelated disputes (I have files...

My neighbor's grandson is putting his application in for the town marshall's position. Now, he's a good cop as far as I know, but his big issue is drugs. The thing is, he knows I'm a Libertarian. While one the one hand, I hope he does get the marshall's position (I can see benefits to my children once they are teenagers having a good rapport with the town cop), I also know that it would be a bad idea to invite him over to the house regularly. Why? Well, even though my stoner days are lo...

Ok, here's a hypothetical scenario: Let's suppose you belong to a large social club. Here are the ANNUAL dues for the club: $8566 per household member for the national club (or, $34,000/family of four) $5104 per household member for the state chapter (or, $20,000/family of four) $800 per household member for the city chapter ($3200) This country club, in other words, imposes annual dues of over $57,000 for a family of four. Now, suppose the membership isn't optional. In order to LI...

I have been thinking about the assertion that a third party doesn't have a chance in this day and age due to media control, etc. Personally, I think it's a lot of bunk. My position on the "wasted vote" myth is well known, and I feel that, if anything, the internet has increased the chances for little knowns to make great political strides. And, although there's not much in the way of established precedents, I can point to phenomena from this past election to support my thesis. Howard Dean'...

Well, the latest "racial profiling" information came out, and our county, at least, has numbers that should be deemed acceptable. But the articles left me wondering about pockets in the country where minorities actually DO commit more than their "percentage" of crime. We have tried crime prevention techniques, we have tried education, but those seem to have worked to little effect. The prisons are overrepresented by minorities, meaning either a) we have a corrupt political system that targets mi...

I know I've told you in a previous blog that I have a tendency towards paranoia. But a lot of it stems from a time when I wasn't paranoid enough. I can't be specific, but suffice it to say, we were blindsided by a radical doctor who disapproved of our personal practices (all of which are legal) and attempted to place us on a de facto  probation by requiring weekly home visits from the public health nurse and a county social worker. She also demanded that my wife breastfeed our 16 month ...

I was amused at a look back at an old article I "bumped" recently. It was my first featured article, and in one reply, the comment was made "man, you bang the same drum over and over". Well, after months of blogging on JU, I have a reply to that, one that is much better than the one I initially gave (incidentally, no ill will to the individual who made that statement: I respect his views greatly). Yes, I bang the same drum over and over, and for many reasons. I bang the drum of freedom, the s...

So I went to our city hall today, the only place where I can access city ordinances. I asked the city secretary to see them, knowing what was coming. "Well, what do you want to look up?" Frankly, it was none of her BUSINESS what I wanted to look up. You cannot expect someone to follow a law if they don't have access to look up that law without a de facto Fifth Amendment violation in TELLING the city secretary what they are looking up. AT any rate, I was looking up a number of laws, both ...

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I can't remember who said that (although I could probably google it readily), but it's a generally accepted maxim as regards politics, and one that has been proven more often than disproven. It is also a maxim that is largely disregarded by the American left in their quest to create a utopia. Somehow they feel that an individual, once bestowed with the mantle of being part of a "government" is immediately immunized from the effects of...

Senator Robert Byrd makes a wonderful spokesman for the Democrats, doncha think? Seems the ex-Klansman and early civil rights obstructionist made a speech warning people about learning from the past, using Hitler's rise to power as an example. While his statements pretty clearly referenced the GOP, he denied that they were the target of his diatribe. Byrd = pot Bush = kettle

Texas is the latest in the list of states to consider banning cell phone use while driving, among a list of other considerations. While I personally feel that most people who use cell phones while driving are idiots and potential future Darwin Award candidates, I nevertheless do not welcome yet another potential intrustion on individual liberties. The selling point in this legislation is a father who lost his high school aged daughter because she creashed while talking on the cell phone and d...

Disclaimer: While I could easily write a piece on the Republican betrayal of their constituency as well, I have never been an adherent of the GOP platform. Therefore, I don't have firsthand knowledge. So those who will claim this as a partisan attack would do well to keep that in mind. I was born in 1970, and raised by the liberal of liberals. I have seen and studied much of the 1960's, and what readily comes to mind is the image of young college students campaigning for the Democrats under...

"Pro-life" is one of the most bandied about, politicized words in the American lexicon today. Its narrow definition is applied by the media only to those who not only oppose abortion, but actively lobby for its illegalization. But I have a different take on the issue. "Pro-life" is a combination of words whose meaning shouldn't be changed for political convenience. I consider myself prolife and apply the following definitions: Antiabortion: with a qualifier here, I am firmly against abor...

The title of this blog is (without the stream of exclamation points and question marks) the title of a propaganda piece of the liberal machine that aired on some cable TV channel yesterday. While I absolutely refused to watch it, the title of the piece was a clear and obvious reference to Rev. Martin Neimoeller's well known quote regarding Nazi Germany. And it was deliberately inflammatory, and obviously deliberately worded to imply that the recent responses to Ward Churchill are a persecutio...

For years, I have heard conservative Christians advance the argument that, because the word "kill" in the commandment "Thou shalt not kill" is rightly translated "murder", it does not apply to war or the death penalty.I am setting the former aside in favor of the latter for this particular argument. Yes,the word IS properly translated "murder". Then,we must ask if the death penalty is morally considered to be murder. My answer to this is: yes AND no. In the case of someone who is PROVEN to be...