Shared Article from The Huffington Post

Obama Delays Immigration Action Until After Election

WASHINGTON (AP) — Abandoning his pledge to act by the end of summer, President Barack Obama has decided to delay any executive action on immigr…

huffingtonpost.com

Of course, this is a shameful move from Barack Obama. Immigrants’ lives and families are being sacrificed, yet again, over and over and again, to opportunism and to crass political calculation. The careers of Democratic politicians are not more important than people’s lives and livelihoods. What makes it worse is that this move is as completely predictable as it is morally grotesque.

Progressive electoral politics is like building a vast, extraordinarily expensive, Rouge River-scale machine plant to build cars. Then, after the ribbon is cut, the plant opens to great fanfare, billions of dollars are spent, and a couple of go-karts are rolled off the line as a test, the manager up and tells you that there won’t be any more cars for the time being — because all the wear and tear on the machines would destroy their ability to make more cars, some day in the future. So until then you’ll have to wait. All the while the machine whirs along, drawing more power and costing more money all the time, but no more cars ever come off the line, because every time there might have been some output, it was sacrificed to make sure that the machine itself would keep idling smoothly. But it is so perfectly polished.

• Mutual aid opportunity. Shawn P. Wilbur, Two-Gun Mutualism & the Golden Rule (2011-05-06). You’ll find a new ChipIn widget in the sidebar of the blog (or on ChipIn), to support Laughing Horse Books, one of Portland, Oregon’s few remaining independent bookstores, and a radical, collective-run bookstore/music venue/meeting space for 25 years now. All the little things that tend to snowball when a business… (Linked Saturday 2011-05-07.)

• In Defense of Flogging – The Chronicle Review – The Chronicle of Higher Education. chronicle.com (2011-05-07). “Certainly my defense of flogging is more thought experiment than policy proposal. I do not expect to see flogging reinstated any time soon. And deep down, I wouldn’t want to see it. And yet, in the course of writing what is, at its core, a quaintly retro abolish-prison book, I’ve come to see the benefits of wrapping a liberal argument in a conservative facade. If the notion of tying people to a rack and caning them on their behinds ?@c3;a0; la Singapore disturbs you, if it takes contemplating whipping to wake you up and to see prison for what it is, so be it! The passive moral high ground has gotten us nowhere.” – Peter Moskos (Linked Saturday 2011-05-07.)

• Marie Curie. xkcd.com (2011-05-08). (Linked Monday 2011-05-09.)

• Bin Laden reaction roundup. John, Blagnet.net (2011-05-08). I have been much more interested in the various and sundry reactions, mainly from Americans, to Osama bin Laden's killing than to the news itself. The whole situation ought to inspire quite a bit of mixed feelings from any libertarian, and even from any sensible, sympathetic human being. Notwithstanding the… (Linked Monday 2011-05-09.)

• Urban Airport of the Future (1926) Matt Novak, Paleofuture Blog (2011-05-07). The fine people at Popular Mechanics recently published a book that deserves a prominent place on every retrofuturist’s bookshelf. The Wonderful Future That Never Was by Gregory Benford looks at technological predictions that appeared in the pages of Popular Mechanics from 1903 until 1969. The prediction below was an attempt to… (Linked Monday 2011-05-09.)

• No Laissez Faire There. Sheldon Richman, The Freeman | Ideas On Liberty (2011-05-06). (This article is based on remarks delivered at the meeting of the Association of Private Enterprise Education in April.) Friends of the free market tend to see the Gilded Age, roughly 1870-1890, as the closest thing in history to a laissez-faire economy. In some respects that is true — but… (Linked Monday 2011-05-09.)

• Jury Says it's Okay to Record the TSA. schneier, Schneier on Security (2011-01-31). The Seattle man who refused to show ID to the TSA and recorded the whole incident has been cleared of all charges: [The jury] returned not guilty verdicts for charges that included concealing his identity, refusing to obey a lawful order, trespassing, and disorderly conduct. Papers, Please! says the acquittal… (Linked Tuesday 2011-02-01.)

• Revolution in Egypt: Learn More! inciteblog, INCITE! Blog (2011-02-01). Are you excited about the grassroots revolution happening in Egypt?  Do you want to learn more about the background of what's happening and what the movement is organizing for?  Here are some resources: First, a recent video of a protester in Tahir Square in Cairo.  She explains the political goals… (Linked Tuesday 2011-02-01.)

• “Free as in Sexist?”: Sexism in the Free Culture Movement. Joseph Reagle (2011-01-28). The introduction to my draft on free culture and sexism: In the summer of 2010, David Finsher and Aaron Sorkin’s film about the beginnings of Facebook (“The Social Network”) attracted much discussion about the portrayal of women in geeky projects. Tracy Clark-Flory (2010fpo), writing for Salon.com, wrote the film prompts… (Linked Tuesday 2011-02-01.)

• Early Corporate Welfare: "An act for the relief of sick and disabled seamen" Jad Davis, The jVerse (2011-01-31). A friend pointed out a fascinating article on "An act for the relief of sick and disabled seamen"[1] which the author points to as a precedent for Congress mandating health coverage for citizens of the United States. I don't have any disagreement with his conclusion, that the Constitution in no… (Linked Tuesday 2011-02-01.)

• Annual Bay Area Anarchist Cafe. kate, Anarchoblogs in English (2011-02-01). The Anarchist Cafe is on! Every year, the Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair is preceded by the annual Anarchist Cafe, an sober-space gathering with vegan dinner and performances, that provides a space for folks to gather before the madness of Bookfair weekend sets in. Much fun, good eats, lots of good… (Linked Tuesday 2011-02-01.)

• It's a Child, Not a Choice. Center for a Stateless Society (2011-02-01). “No, it’s not an anti-abortion rant… The problem isn't lack of competition within the government education mandate. The problem is the government education mandate.” (Linked Tuesday 2011-02-01.)

• Obama Marxism Watch — Be Very Afraid! Kevin Carson, Center for a Stateless Society (2011-01-06). For over two years, we unappreciated patriots have taken upon ourselves the thankless task of outing Barack Obama as a closeted Marxist and exposing his insidious socialist agenda for enslaving this country. While Obama sat in his Red Study Circle with comrades Geithner, Summers and Rubin, busily reading "Quotations from… (Linked Tuesday 2011-02-01.)

• Traffic Problems Will Disappear by Year 2000 (1955) Matt Novak, Paleofuture Blog (2011-02-01). From the 1958 Disneyland TV episode Magic Highway, USA The September 22, 1955 Lewiston Daily Sun (Lewiston, ME) ran a wonderful piece titled, “Hope For the Motorist: Traffic Problems Will Disappear by Year 2000.” Such unbridled optimism for the yet to be developed Interstate Highway System is downright cute. Well,… (Linked Wednesday 2011-02-02.)

• Store Fronts. Dorothy, Cat and Girl (2011-02-01). (Linked Wednesday 2011-02-02.)

• Hell No, We Won’t Fire. Jesse Walker, Jesse Walker: Reason Magazine articles and blog posts. (2011-01-31). When the troops won't shoot, the game's just about over: The Egyptian army has said it will not use force against protesters calling for the removal of President Hosni Mubarak ahead of a "million people" march. The military said it considers the people's demands "legitimate". (Linked Wednesday 2011-02-02.)

• Andrew Jackson. IOZ, Who Is IOZ? (2011-01-10). Is there a bigger, more sanctimonious boob in the whole blessed world than Keith Olberman? “Violence, or the threat of violence, has no place in democracy”? Um, uh, what? Tell it to the Cherokee. Tell it to the Iraqis. Tell it to Baltimore and Washington South of the Capitol. Tell… (Linked Wednesday 2011-02-02.)

• STANFORD Magazine: March/April 2010 > Features > Clelia Mosher. www.stanfordalumni.org (2011-01-12). In 1973, historian Carl Degler was combing the University archives, gathering research for a book on the history of the family. Sifting through the papers of Dr. Clelia Duel Mosher, who taught in Stanford's hygiene department around the turn of the 20th century, he came across a mysteriously bound file. Degler… (Linked Wednesday 2011-01-12.)

• Common Sense, or a functioning economy has no underclass. Marja Erwin (2011-01-12). 1. A government can’t solve systemic unemployment through stimulus. It can create temporary boosts which *mask* systemic unemployment; it may even have significant effects depending how easily it responds to spending and how slowly the unemployment rate approaches its normal level relative to the economic system.2. A functioning economy has… (Linked Wednesday 2011-01-12.)

• Reading Chomsky. Roderick, Austro-Athenian Empire (2011-01-12). The Good (in churlish brevity) I've just finished reading Noam Chomsky's Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post-9/11 World (it was a Christmas gift). Unsurprisingly, nearly all of it is excellent, and I highly recommend it. Chomsky lucidly explains how u.s. foreign policy is not only imperialist now but has been… (Linked Wednesday 2011-01-12.)

• The Taxpayers Won't Benefit. Sheldon Richman, The Freeman | Ideas On Liberty (2010-12-15). Why does everyone say the taxpayers will be winners when the banks, AIG, and GM repay their TARP and other bailout money with interest? The taxpayers won't see a dime! I doubt if any money will even go toward reducing the debt. The only real winners will be the politicians… (Linked Thursday 2011-01-13.)

• What "Undercover Boss" Could Be. Steven Horwitz, The Freeman | Ideas On Liberty (2010-12-15). Recently I stumbled across the TV show Undercover Boss.  A CEO poses as a new employee at one of his firm's factories or stores in order to see how the company really runs.  In the episode I watched, the CEO of the Johnny Rocket's restaurant chain spent time working in… (Linked Thursday 2011-01-13.)

• Winner of Beth A. Hoffman Prize for Economic Writing Named. Foundation for Economic Education, The Freeman | Ideas On Liberty (2011-01-12). The first annual Beth A. Hoffman Memorial Prize for Economic Writing has been awarded to Kevin A. Carson, the Foundation for Economic Education announced. Through the generosity of a FEE donor, the prize has been established to honor the memory of Beth A. Hoffman by recognizing the best article on… (Linked Thursday 2011-01-13.)

• If Martin Luther King Were Alive Today, He’d Be Just Like Me. Jesse Walker, Jesse Walker: Reason Magazine articles and blog posts. (2011-01-13). You know all those articles that purport to say what George Orwell would believe if he were alive today, in which Orwell turns out to have had a change of heart on every significant subject where the author disagrees with him? You can do that to Martin Luther King too:… (Linked Thursday 2011-01-13.)

• Food:Class:Working Class. bfp, flip flopping joy (2011-01-03). I've been wondering why food for working class people is always represented as "manly man food" that is greasy, heavy, thick food. I mean, I get the origins of working class food as thick greasy meat based food—fish and chips, for example, has enough heaviness and calories to last through… (Linked Thursday 2011-01-13.)

• Szasz in One Lesson. Sheldon Richman, Free Association (2011-01-13). (First posted in 2006, and now amended. The relevance to the Tucson massacre is self-explanatory.)This is something I came up with some time ago to summarize a good deal of what Thomas Szasz, a great libertarian and hero of mine, has been saying for half a century.If neuroscientists discovered that… (Linked Thursday 2011-01-13.)

• Radio Theater. Jesse Walker, Jesse Walker: Reason Magazine articles and blog posts. (2011-01-14). Get ready to suspend your disbelief. One of the most resilient acts in theatrical history has returned to the D.C. stage: the We're Going To Defund Public Broadcasting show. Every time this play gets revived, the director alters the story slightly to reflect recent events. This time the performers are… (Linked Friday 2011-01-14.)

• Unbundling Government, by Arnold Kling. EconLog (2010-06-29). This week is Secession Week at Let a Thousand Nations Bloom. I have no problems with the S word, but I also use the economic expression “unbundling.” For example, Ed Glaeser writes, In a sense, the gulf between the political attitudes of New York City and Montana can be understood… (Linked Wednesday 2010-06-30.)

• The Power to Tax is the Power to Destroy. Unqualified Offerings (2010-06-30). This is actually not primarily about taxes. Or about destroying. Or about Dave Weigel. But it is an interesting point from Jim Henley about what’s new — and what’s not new — in the ethos of journalistic bloggers, and why newspapers don’t understand it. (Linked Wednesday 2010-06-30.)

• apology not accepted. Dinosaur Comics (2010-06-30). “So hey did you guys hear about the G20 in Toronto last weekend? The event itself was kinda a non-event but the 1 billion dollars Canadians spent on security was kinda – insane? We built a big wall around the downtown core of the city, and the chief of police announced that there was a new secret law passed wherein anyone within 5 meters of this fence had to produce ID or be arrested. And then, after the event, he announced that he made the law up because it suited his purposes? HILARIOUS. Toronto police Chief Bill Blair, ladies and gentlemen.” (Linked Wednesday 2010-06-30.)

• eye of the storm 2010-06-30 11:05:51. Captain Capitulation, Anarchoblogs (2010-06-30). one thing that occurs watching the kagan hearings: i am very glad i have not lived her life. so when they ask her about memos she wrote in the clinton admin, strategizing on avoiding a ban on partial-birth abortion, she's all like 'i was working for a president who had… (Linked Wednesday 2010-06-30.)

• Parking Lots. Dorothy, Cat and Girl (2010-06-30). (Linked Wednesday 2010-06-30.)

• Porkymandias. Roderick, Austro-Athenian Empire (2010-07-01). And on the pedestal these words appear: My name is Robert C. Byrd, Senator of Senators: look on my works, ye mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains: round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away. (Linked Friday 2010-07-02.)