Ever wanted to hear famous anarcho-capitalist Murray Rothbard’s lectures on economic history? You too can hear them on mp3 at Rothbard Speaks. See RIAA? They do have a legitimate use. Fight the power.

This week’s award for most laugh-out-loud insane statement goes to Salon.com’s own David Horowitz for the following nugget of wisdom: The mission of the modern Republican Party is to give power back to the people, in Other people’s money [Salon]. Now, maybe it’s just me, but it seems like a party dedicated to corporate welfare, tax cuts for the ultra-rich, obliterating the past three decades of gains in women’s rights and queer rights, and imposing as sadistic a prison system as possible, is just a tad selective in the people that it is giving power back to.

This anecdote was the best, though:

I remember attending a charter meeting of Newt Gingrich’s GOPAC organization in Washington in 1995 to celebrate the Contract With America. Gingrich was on the podium saying that the contract was just the beginning; that devolving power to the states by ending federal mandates was just one step. Now, he said, we are going to devolve power back to the municipalities, and then to the communities and then to individuals. That is our plan. At this point, somebody in the audience stood up and shouted power to the people. Except for the dinner ties and the elegant setting, I could have sworn I was back in Berkeley in the ’60s again.

What compassion! What conservatism! What utter nonsense!

Slow Sunday. I’m swamped with reading that I should be doing, but instead I’ve decided to try out Blogger to try to get an easy way to put up new content on my web page. My web page has fallen into all kinds of outdatedness, to the point where even my New and Interesting links were getting stale. Hopefully this will help reverse that. We’ll see. I’m thinking of at least one short blog per day or two; maybe it will even happen. Stay tuned…