Rad Geek People's Daily

Here’s a sidebar from a recent story by Dave Winer about why he wants ports on his computers, and why freedom is more important to him than Apple style:

Reminds me of a story a Jamaican cab driver told as he was driving me from Montego Bay to Negril. This was a long time ago, when my Jamaican uncle was still alive and I was still a smoker. As we drove through a village, he pointed out the new cottages, and said they had been built by the Cubans. They have all the modern conveniences, running water, indoor plumbing, even electricity. But the people don’t want to live in them because Cuban-built houses don’t have back doors.

I asked why do they need back doors?

He laughed and said, when the police knock on the front door, it’s nice to have a back door.

— Dave Winer, Scripting News (2010-05-28): I don’t like wires but I do like ports

• THE ARCHEOLOGY OF LIBERTY: The Mises Institute has posted a ton. Jesse, The Perpetual Three-Dot Column (2010-06-11). THE ARCHEOLOGY OF LIBERTY: The Mises Institute has posted a ton of old issues of Liberty in pdf form. My writing appeared in Liberty from late '91 through early '97, and I was a staffer there from mid-'93 to the end of '96. So I've got a lot of old… (Linked Saturday 2010-06-12.)

• Free Bradley Manning! Sheldon Richman, Free Association (2010-06-12). SPC Bradley Manning, a 22-year-old intelligence analyst stationed at Forward Operating Base Hammer in the vicinity of Baghdad, was arrested two weeks ago for having supposedly sent Wikileaks the "Collateral Damage" video of US troops shooting Iraqi civilians.Justin Raimondo has the full story here.As Mike Gogulski notes in the comments,… (Linked Saturday 2010-06-12.)

• The Anthony Gregory Song Video. blog of bile (2010-06-12). This is a world of magic and delight. (Linked Saturday 2010-06-12.)

• Obama Theory of the Month. Jesse Walker, Jesse Walker: Reason Magazine articles and blog posts. (2010-06-06). Is Barack Obama a secret Muslim? communist? immigrant? extra in the video for "Whoomp (There It Is)"? Gawker weighs the evidence. (Linked Saturday 2010-06-12.)

• Inconsistent Idealization in Rawls. Will Wilkinson, Will Wilkinson (2010-05-26). Section 42, "Some Remarks about Economic Systems," in John Rawls' A Theory of Justice is peculiar, especially the discussion of public goods problems. Rawls cites James Buchanan and Mancur Olson as authorities on the nature these problems. However, these are political economists working from assumptions about behavior that Rawls specifically… (Linked Sunday 2010-06-13.)

• Any Doubts about which is the Roguest Nation? Sheldon Richman, Free Association (2010-06-13). From Physicians for Human Rights:In the most comprehensive investigation to date of health professionals’ involvement in the CIA’s “enhanced” interrogation program (EIP), Physicians For Human Rights has uncovered evidence that indicates the Bush administration apparently conducted illegal and unethical human experimentation and research on detainees in CIA custody. The apparent… (Linked Sunday 2010-06-13.)

• Unarmed Student Shot by Police. bosco, blog of bile (2010-06-13). On March 11th, 2010 police officers raided Derek Copp's apartment, shined a flashlight in his eyes and shot him in the chest. The raid was concerning an alleged sale of $60 worth of marijuana. The officer is currently facing a felony charge with a maximum penalty of four years. It… (Linked Sunday 2010-06-13.)

Q.: When does a government police officer who shot and killed an unarmed man actually get arrested and promptly charged with first-degree murder, within a week of the shooting?

A.: When he shoots a government soldier instead of one of us civilians.

Well. Maybe I’m not being fair. Maybe the speedy arrest and the severe charge isn’t just due to the fact that he shot a government soldier. Maybe it’s due to the fact that he did the shooting while he was off-duty, drunk, and getting into fights at a club — not gunning somebody down in the street while officially on the job.

Ha ha, just kidding. Back in September 2005, the last time this exact same government police officer shot an unarmed man off-duty in a drunken rage, the punishment he got for this drunken assault with a deadly weapon was an eight-day vacation from his job.

The purpose of government law enforcement has nothing to do with protecting innocent people from crime. The primary purpose of government law enforcement is to protect government force.

See also:

• GT 2009-06-11: The Police Beat: Now they want a task force…

Obama, the far left radical. This Modern World (2010-06-12):

Left Flank (Cont’d).

Read the rest of Re: Obama, the far left radical …

• Fun with Android. James, snellspace.com (2010-06-03). I started a new fun android project last night... think of it as something along the lines of a peer-to-peer version of twitter where you can post status updates to specific groupings of contacts. If the contact is also using the app, they'll get a stylized notification, there will be… (Linked Wednesday 2010-06-09.)

• songs listened to while writing this comic: martha (tom waits), if rap gets jealous (k'naan), around the corner (sarah harmer). all pretty much entirely unrelated, but Here We Are. Dinosaur Comics (2010-06-10). T-Rex has not yet heard of the work of Elinor Ostrom. (Linked Thursday 2010-06-10.)

• A Few Million Bodies Between Friends. the Medium Lobster, Fafblog (2010-06-03). Well now. Israel, the Palestinians, and Gaza. It's a sad story, and we're terribly sorry about it all, of course, feeling pronounced Official Regret in our pronounced Official Regretbones, and we feel compelled at this juncture to demand a request for an investigation into the possibility of an inquiry into… (Linked Friday 2010-06-11.)