Bruce has a caption contest going.

World Net Daily has posted one of John Kerry's VVAW flyers (140k), which slams U.S. soldiers. It reads:

A U.S. INFANTRY COMPANY JUST CAME THROUGH HERE!

If you had been Vietnamese ---

We might have burned your house

We might have shot your dog

We might have shot you

We might have raped your wife and daughter

We might have turned you over to your government for torture

We might have taken souvenirs from your property

We might have shot things up a bit

We might have done ALL these things to you and your whole TOWN!

If it doesn't bother you that American soldiers do these things every day to the Vietnamese simply because they are 'Gooks,' then picture YOURSELF as one of the silent VICTIMS.

HELP US TO END THE WAR BEFORE THEY TURN YOUR SON INTO A BUTCHER or a corpse.

VIETNAM VETERANS AGAINST THE WAR

And this is the guy who wants to be Commander in Chief.

Former Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell has been indicted by a grand jury for fraud, bribery, and racketeering. As a former resident of that area during Campbell's administration, I am not at all surprised.

Despite several of his aides pleading guilty on related charges, Campbell calls the whole thing a witch hunt. It's only a matter of time before he plays the race card.

I couldn't help but notice the contrast.

Kerry daughters booed at MTV Awards -- World Net Daily
Kerry's daughters received prolonged booing at the network's Music Video Awards in Miami.

"From the moment Alexandra and Vanessa started speaking, the boos outweighed anything close to cheers," according to the Drudge Report.

Okay, so Drudge isn't exactly impartial. But check out the different tone of the story over at CNN.

Kerry, Bush daughters booed on MTV -- CNN
Reaching out to young Americans at MTV's Video Music Awards Sunday night, the daughters of President Bush and his Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry were met by loud cheers and jeers.

It was unclear exactly whom the cheers and the boos were meant for or why.

I found it all to be inconclusive, but you can judge for yourself.

Maybe Alexandra Kerry should have worn the dress.

The People's Republic of California is set to ban .50 caliber rifles in a feel-good effort to make their subjects feel safe from terrorists. Of course the law will have no impact on crime committed with .50 caliber rifles, mainly because their is none. And should their be a terrorist act committed with one in the future, it will only prove the futility of it all.

Frankly, California has banned so many different types of guns I am not at all surprised by this. Lets face it, California gun laws are so confusing even the police and district attorneys cannot keep up.

Once again, if the national .50 caliber ban takes hold, I'm buying one.

Once again, the Virginian Pilot just doesn't get it. They start off their anti-gun editorial by calling for the so-called "Assault Weapon" ban to be renewed, and then back it up by relying heavily on the flawed analysis of the gun-ban group, Violence Policy Center. It has been widely pointed out that the VPC study greatly expands to the term "assault weapon" to include firearms that aren't covered by the ban. But if they put so much reliance in the VPC, why don't they mention that Tom Diaz, spokesman for the VPC, called the ban ineffective: "If the existing assault weapons ban expires, I personally do not believe it will make one [bit] of difference one way or another in terms of our objective which is reducing death and injury and getting particularly lethal class of firearms off the street, so if it doesn't pass, it doesn't pass."

Perhaps even more disturbing is their cavalier attitude about the Bill of Rights.

Outlawing assault weapons won't violate the Second Amendment any more than outlawing machine guns. There's no sport in using these weapons to hunt.

First of all, machine guns are not outlawed just heavily regulated. And even that is a violation of the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment clearly states: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Have they not read the Consitution, or do they not understand the what "shall not be infringed" means? Imagine the reaction from the press if we claimed that the First Amendment only protected fiction, or didn't protect political speech.

Bush is down 14 points in California, but his point man in the state remains optimistic.

"We've made a sea change in organizing our party, and in reforms'' which have increased GOP registration by 300,000 in California and pumped up party coffers, said Parsky, who chairs the 343-member state delegation here.

"We've made great strides around the president,'' he said. "The president unites Republicans in California ... and the president has made it clear he's going to compete aggressively here.''

He may put in a good showing, but I still think it would take a miracle for Bush to win there.

In some college towns, students are having trouble registering to vote. Students with on-campus addresses are typically denied registration because the address is considered "temporary".

When your's truly was in college, a story circulated about how local authorities had tried to deny all students (on and off-campus) the right to register. They argued in court that the transient nature of students would skew local politics. In Blacksburg, a town of 35,000 (with about 30,000 of them students), that could very well be true. But judges ruled that you could not permit or deny a person voter registration based solely on how they might vote. If a student wanted to claim their residence locally, the town couldn't stop them. Apparently living on-campus has given them a mechanism to do just that.

Personally, I think a student that lives nearly 10 months out of the year away at college should not only be able to, but has a vested interest in local elections.

Republican Senator John McCain will be speaking at the Republican National Convention, and expressing his support for George W. Bush. Remember when this guy was the first pick for the Democrat Veep?

Lifelong Democrats Zell Miller and Ed Koch are also on the George Bush bandwagon.

"We are the majority. A majority of this country opposes this war ... a majority of this country never voted for this administration." -- Filmmaker and propagandist Michael Moore.

Ahh, "majority rules". A simple (and dangerous) concept for a simple (and dangerous) mind.

- A majority was responsible for slavery.
- A majority live off the taxes of the minority.
- A majority have nullified the property rights of the minority.
- And of course, a majority also never voted for Clinton.

There are different types of tyranny. The most well known is the subjugation of the many by the one. Many times throughout history, a single ruler has oppressed the masses. But there is also the subjugation of the one to the many. Today, with increasing frequency, the rule of the masses has oppressed the one.

But don't take my word for it:

"It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure." -- James Madison, Federalist Paper No. 51.

"Measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority." -- James Madison, Federalist Paper No. 10.

Here are the first pictures from the anti-Bush protests at the Republican National Convention.

Note the lack of body armor on the policeman.

So far, the Republicans seem to be handling the protests pretty well. Contrast this with photos from the protests at the DNC Convention in Boston.

Related articles:
Is this America? - 07/27/2004

The total gun ban in Washington D.C. is working so predictably, they've had to call out the national guard to help deter violent crime.

Tell that to Fairfax Democrat and anti-gunner Janet Howell, who seems to think that D.C. is a safer place to be.

Or perhaps the Washington Post Op-Editors who claim "Virginia is for gun-lovers" and praise the District because they "don't allow all these "freedoms"" should read their own paper.

My compliments to James Taranto to pointing out this bit of fuzzy math by Reuters.

"Now It's Official: Economy Shrunk"--headline, Reuters, Aug. 27

"U.S. gross domestic product--which measures total output within the nation's borders--expanded at a 2.8 percent annual rate in the second quarter."--Reuters, same story

This goes back to the definition of a cut.

The former Senator from Georgia, Max Cleland, has been circling the country campaigning for John Kerry and poking fun at President Bush. In a recent publicity stunt, Cleland showed up at Bush's ranch in Crawford Texas and tried to get Bush to answer questions. So you can imagine my surprise to learn that Cleland is actually a Bush appointee and is drawing a $136,000 paycheck for doing pretty much nothing.

It must be a slow news day.

Note the slight bit of editorializing CNN does in the URL by using the word rabble-rouser.

The college football season starts today and Virginia Tech kicks it off against top ranked USC. I will be at the game at Jack Kent Cooke Stadium, so if you watch it on TV be sure to look for me. I'll be the drunk guy yelling obscenities at the ref.

Despite what the Vegas oddsmakers think (18.5 points), I am confident we have a good chance to beat USC. They are from Southern California, and are thus not used to our clean, fresh, smog-free air. However it turns out, there is a 100% chance of drunken revelry.

A janitor at a British gallery apparently saw the bag of trash and promptly through it away.

A bag of rubbish that was part of a Tate Britain work of art has been accidentally thrown away by a cleaner.

The bag filled with discarded paper and cardboard was part of a work by Gustav Metzger, said to demonstrate the "finite existence" of art.

It was thrown away by a cleaner at the London gallery, which subsequently retrieved the damaged bag.

Over here in the United States, the National Endowment for the Arts spends millions of tax dollars a year on exhibits like this.

Geek reports that the state of New Jersey has greatly expanded the term "assault weapon". You'd be surprised what they are including now.

Spoons points out that in a bout of election year pandering, President Bush is claiming that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are the "only likely explanation" for global warming.

It guess that rules out the fact that the sun is burning brighter now than any time in the past 1150 years.

Mike Williams' NCAA career is over. They turned him down for reinstatement. A lot of pundits are slamming the NCAA and want Williams to be reinstated, but I think Stewart Mandel nailed it earlier this month.

Williams has no desire to be a student-athlete. Period. Don't believe me? Check out his comments to the local beat writers Saturday about his geography and cinema classes. "It's trying," Williams said. "People don't understand the situation. How you want to get up and take a flight back home. But I owe it to these guys to stick around."

How noble. He doesn't really want to, but for the good of the team, Mike is willing to sit through a couple of classes this summer. Never mind that every one of his teammates carries that cumbersome burden of having to actually attend college, as do the other 12,000 or so individuals fortunate enough to play Division I-A football. [...]

How's this for entitlement? Among the estimated $100,000 in expenses Mike Williams had to repay former agent Mike Azzarelli in order to be considered for reinstatement was the use of a private plane for a trip to the Bahamas. And that was after he'd been disqualified from the draft. He also got to receive world-class training at Competitive Edge Sports in Duluth, Ga. (a favorite among NFL prospects), get his face plastered on football cards and fulfill every kid's dream by landing an endorsement deal with Nike.

Sorry, Mike. Whether or not you paid back the money, whether or not you got screwed by the NFL, you don't get to live the life of a pro for four months then, when things don't work out for you, come crawling back to college. The classrooms at USC weren't designed as a place for future first-rounders to kill time.

I'm sure there will be a lot of political hay made from the Census Bureau's announcement that poverty is on the rise. The problem with the numbers stems from their definition of poverty:

The Census Bureau's definition of poverty varies by the size of the household. For instance, the threshold for a family of four was $18,810, while for two people it was $12,015.

Your level of income does not necessarily translate into wealth. For instance a person could have a really bad year and make $12,000 and follow it up the next year with $150,000. By the governments definition he's gone from rags to riches, but in reality, he's middle class.

Moreover, a person could have hundreds of thousands of dollars in the bank and be cruising around the world on a yacht. But since they aren't earning at least $12,000, he must be living in poverty.

By this standard, the four years I went to college I was living in poverty.

UPDATE: Neal has more:

The average American defined as "poor" by the federal government enjoys a higher standard of living than the average European; not the average poor European ... the average European. It's a scam, folks. A scam to enable more government. If a person has a roof over their head, food in their cupboard, a television set, a washer and dryer, a microwave, air conditioning and a car. Sorry folks, but that ain't poverty.

When Kerry told Bush he should try to stop the Swift Vets, Bush appeared to take the upper hand by lamented all 527 groups. But he is a fool for proposing this:

President Bush wants to work with Sen. John McCain to take legal action against "shadowy" outside groups that have been spending millions of dollars on ads criticizing the president and Democratic rival Sen. John Kerry, the White House said Thursday.

How can this not violate the First Amendment. That he is proposing government censorship is shocking!

Politicians do not own the political process, nor should they be allowed to silence us. Of course they would all feel just dandy if they could eliminate criticism of themselves. But that they are considering using the police power of the government to make it happen is tyranny. Bush should be tarred and feathered for persuing this.

And I would think the political backlash from this would be devastating.

Alice Cooper weighs in on rock musicians who wade into the political foray.

"If you're listening to a rock star in order to get your information on who to vote for, you're a bigger moron than they are. Why are we rock stars? Because we're morons. We sleep all day, we play music at night and very rarely do we sit around reading the Washington Journal."

"Besides," he continued, "when I read the list of people who are supporting Kerry, if I wasn't already a Bush supporter, I would have immediately switched. Linda Ronstadt? Don Henley? Geez, that's a good reason right there to vote for Bush."

Sadly, there are moronic voters out there that are so easily swayed.

"The truth, which is what elections are all about, is that the tax burden of the middle class has gone up while the tax burden of the middle class has gone down." -- John Kerry, quoted by the Associated Press, August 25, 2004.

If you wonder why your $39 cell phone plan ends up costing you $50 a month it probably has a lot to do with line items. You might assume that most of those taxes and fees are for mandates imposed by the goverment. But in the case of some mobile carriers, they could be a clever way for carriers to keep you from weighing competing plans equally.

The fees aren't taxes, though they may look that way on your bill. Wireless, long-distance and local phone service companies use fees like these chiefly to recoup normal business expenses, including property taxes and the cost of posting their rates on the Web.

"The explosion of line items has made it all but impossible for consumers to compare rates and shop around," FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps said in March. "You need a lawyer and an accountant -- preferably both -- to root out what you're being charged for and why."

Given that T-Mobile recently changed accounting practices and started counting fees toward their revenue, I wonder if there will be any SEC implications too.

If you want to deal with an actual person, Northwest Airlines is going to start charging you up to $10 a ticket. Likewise, they are going to start charging travel agents up to $7.50 to book tickets on Northwest. (Didn't they used to pay travel agents to book their tickets?) At United Airlines, frequent fliers who want to book an award ticket will be charged $15 if they choose not to book online.

Of course this is all part of air travel becoming a commodity. With there being little or no differentiation between the airlines, it's no wonder customers are always looking for the lowest price.

My prediction: This will spread to grocery stores. Right now you have the option of ringing up and bagging your groceries yourself. In a few years, customers will probably be charged extra (like they are for gas) if they still want full service.

The liberal idea of fair and balanced is getting Alan Alda to play a Republican on the West Wing.

Celebrities are lining up to support he anti-Bush campaign of Moveon.org. The "A-list" includes: Benny Boom, Moby, the Roots, Natalie Merchant, Kevin Bacon, Al Franken, Janeane Garofalo, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Norman Mailer's son, Woody Harrelson, Martin Sheen, John Sayles, Margaret Cho, Matt Damon, Rob Reiner, Illeana Douglas, Ione Skye, and Scarlett Johanssen.

Whew.

Spoons points out that Glenn gets as much traffic in a day as sites like this get in a year.

If the children are our future, we may all be doomed. Some educators are going the extra mile to turn America into a nation of sissies, and this year it shows more than ever. Now they want to ban red ink because it's too frightening.

When it comes to correcting papers and grading tests, purple is emerging as the new red.

"If you see a whole paper of red, it looks pretty frightening," said Sharon Carlson, a health and physical education teacher at John F. Kennedy Middle School in Northampton. "Purple stands out, but it doesn't look as scary as red."

The color red is scary? You've got to be kidding me!

Red's legacy as the color used in correcting papers and marking mistakes goes back to the 1700s, the era of the quill pen. In those days, red ink was used by clerks and accountants to correct ledgers. From there, it found its way into teachers' hands.

So we've been using red for hundreds of years. But now all of a sudden it's a problem. These people are crazy. (not mentally unbalanced, not socially unstable, they are crazy) Check out what some of the teachers have to say about it:

"I do not use red," said Robin Slipakoff, who teaches second and third grades at Mirror Lake Elementary School in Plantation, Fla. "Red has a negative connotation, and we want to promote self-confidence. I like purple. I use purple a lot."

Sheila Hanley, who teaches reading and writing to first- and second-graders at John F. Kennedy Elementary School in Randolph, said: "Red is definitely a no-no. But I don't know if purple is in."

I could see this easily translating to the grown-up world. Yeah, he's still fired, but we don't like to make the "pink slips" pink. It's too negative. We use purple with yellow polkadots to make the worker feel good about themselves on the way down to the unemployment office.

Related articles:
The Sissification of America VI - 04/20/2004
The Sissification of America V - 02/09/2004
The Sissificaton of America IV - 11/04/2003
The Sissification of America III - 07/28/2003
The Sissification of America II - 06/11/2003
The Sissification of America - 05/12/2003
The Empire Strikes Backpack - 01/06/2003
California trades back pain for eye strain - 10/14/2003

The Communist Dictator from North Korea, Kim Jong Il, has made his choice for U.S. President. Big surprise, it isn't Bush.

"The North Koreans made it very clear, politely, that they want Mr. Kerry to win the election," said Kenneth Quinones, a former U.S. diplomat who was in Pyongyang this month for a Korean studies conference.

"North Koreans are going to play wait-and-see," Quinones added in an interview in Tokyo.

Rather than negotiate peacefully with Bush, they seem to be biding their time to see if he gets booted from office this November. I wonder why would they rather negotiate with Kerry than with Bush?

Gun grabbers are working overtime to spread lies and deceit about the so-called Assault Weapons Ban. Check out some of these whoppers:

Labbe wrote that the assault weapons ban covers guns "no deadlier than my .22-250 deer rifle." However, most deer rifles are designed to fire a few bullets before being reloaded. Assault weapons can fire 150 bullets without reloading. I say that makes them far deadlier than the average hunting rifle. It takes just five seconds to spray 30 rounds from an Uzi semi-automatic assault weapon. The law bans features that would never be associated with hunting, such as grenade launchers, flash suppressors and barrel shrouds. Hunting rifles aren't the same as assault weapons.

If criminals can pull an Uzi trigger 6 times a second, I guess anything is possible. BWS designed a 300 round magazine for the Uzi 9mm. It stands over 5 feet tall and weighs more than 16 lbs fully loaded. That doesn't include the weight of the gun. Of course they also make a .50 caliber BMG entry weapon. And to think, pundits said a .50 BMG subgun was impossible.

There are plenty more lies, damn lies, and statistics in this piece, but they aren't worth giving any more attention. Mostly the author plays loose with the definition of "assault weapons", and then quotes statistics about gun deaths which not only includes all guns (not just "assault weapons"), but suicides and even defensive uses.

A month after signing the largest tax increase in Virginia's 400 year history, the Virginia Governor Mark "I will not raise taxes, I will not raise taxes, I will not raise taxes" Warner announced we were actually running a budget surplus of more than $300 Million. We are also expected to run an even larger budget surplus for the this fiscal year which started July 1st. After much criticism, Warner announced that he will accelerate the planned increase in personal exemptions.

Addressing a joint meeting of the General Assembly's powerful committees responsible for crafting the state budget, Warner said that the commonwealth's $324 million surplus -- which is fueled by higher- than-expected tax collections during the latter part of the fiscal year -- allowed him to begin the break Jan. 1, 2005, instead of a year later.

This change will provide each family of four with $400 of income free from state income tax, beginning with paychecks they receive in January," Warner told a packed room of lawmakers, lobbyists and state officials at the morning meeting.

That means a family of four will get $400, right? Well, no. It means that a family of four will get to deduct $400 off their Virginia income tax return. Assuming Virginia's highest tax rate of 5.75%, that would mean a tax cut of $23 for that family of four. Your's truly stands to haul in an extra $5.75

I cannot wait until Warner and his tax and spend cronies start selling this as a tax cut.

British mums are pushing for tougher knife laws.

The mothers of two murdered Lincolnshire teenagers are demanding tougher punishments for people caught carrying knives.

The mother of schoolboy Luke Walmsley says the offenders should face the same sentences as those found with guns.

Why don't they just pass a law against murder?

The mothers' campaign is being backed by a national organisation - the Victims of Crime Trust.

Trust director Norman Brennan said: "Each year more people are murdered by knives than guns."

He said tougher sentencing for knife offenders should be a priority for the government when it returns after parliament's summer break.

What? More people are being murdered by guns? But guns are already banned.

Under current law possessing a firearm carries a mandatory five-year prison sentence, but offenders could be jailed for up to 10 years.

Anyone caught carrying a knife without good reason faces a maximum sentence of four years.

If the blade is less than three inches long the punishment could be as little as a £50 fine or a caution.

That's right, if these nuts were running the asylum the pen knife I keep in my pocket (and use every day at work) would get me an $90 fine.

What, you mean loud rock music won't deter a hungry bear?

Not even loud rock 'n' roll music could discourage a 350-pound bear that repeatedly raided plums and watermelons from a couple's garden.

Eldon and Gerry Nihues hung a radio from the plum tree, tuned it into a rock station and turned it up loud in hopes of scaring off the bear, which helped itself to about 50 watermelons, including 11 in one night.

"It was this crazy rock stuff that was playing, but it didn't bother him," Gerry Nihues said. "He'd eat the plums right out from under where the thing was playing."

The local Wildlife department trapped, tranquilized, and relocated the bear. I think a 12 gauge shotgun and some hefty bags would have been cheaper. Better yet, have the guy made into a nice throw rug in front of your fireplace.

Once again "hate crimes" are being treated more seriously than regular crimes. To me, murder is murder and should be dealt with accordingly, but in some areas murder is more serious when the killer doesn't love his victim?

Some 25 detectives have been called into the investigation. Among the possibilities they are considering is that the killing might have been a hate crime, Edmonds told reporters. The two were evangelical Christian camp counselors with plans to marry and open a Christian camp of their own.

Investigators at the scene along the rugged Sonoma County coast had found no evidence that robbery, sexual assault or suicide had occurred.

"They were shot in the head and that was it. It is very odd," Sonoma County community services officer Dave Huber said.

Note to hate criminals: rape your victims or steal their wallets next time so that police don't think the killings are too unusual. Who knows it might even lessen your punishment if you can prove you had a normal motive.

Reuters reports:

President Bush said on Monday advertisements by independent groups attacking Democrat John Kerry's service in Vietnam should be stopped along with all other ads run by independent groups.

The president said he wants to stop "all of them. That means that ad and every other ad." He was referring to a commercial by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, who have claimed Kerry lied about his record.

Unlike previous statements by the White House, Bush this time referred specifically to the ad attacking Kerry's Vietnam service record.

He did not specify what action might be taken to stop the advertisements run by independent groups.

Any specific actions taken to prevent campaign advertising is a violation of the First Amendment. In this author's opinion, the mere suggestion by political powers that be that 527 groups should cease and desist their ad efforts reeks of intimidation. Shame on both the Republicans and Democrats for even thinking such a thing.

And why is the press letting them get away with this? Could it be that they want to continue to enjoy a near monopoly on campaign speech? With 527 groups out of the way it's much easier for the media to continue furthering their political agenda. Otherwise you would think they would be the biggest proponents for keeping political speech unregulated.

That we are even discussing the regulation of political speech is appalling. Should specific action be taken on either side of the political aisle, it's time to gather up the tar and feathers.

Back in 1997, a group of friends got together to go see the movie Titanic. I was unable to go because Monk and I got stuck babysitting. When I say "stuck" I really mean "volunteered", and when I say "babysitting" I really mean "telling the kids to go play while we played games on the computer and got drunk." At the time, we both figured why bother. The movie seemed predictable enough: kids fall in love, boat sinks, she lives, he dies, blah blah blah.

A year or two later Monk finally watched Titanic on VHS. He told me to just put in tape two, but I never bothered. For years afterward I would hear people talking about the movie.

"Have you seen Titanic?" they would ask.

"You mean the iceberg movie? Kids fall in love, boat sinks, she lives, he dies. Nope, never seen it."

Many people wouldn't believe me, or would accuse me of lying. Or they would try to explain it to me like I cared.

"Well you see there's this boat, and an iceberg..."

Well, a few months ago I saw the DVD on sale for $10, so I broke down and bought it. I figured 7 years was long enough, so this weekend I finally freed the movie from it's cellophane prison and watched Titanic.

If you haven't seen it, aside from the obvious Iceberg vs. the unsinkable ship, the movie is about a slutty rich girl slumming it with a homeless transient on her way across the Atlantic. Her lack of virtue and morals are justly rewarded when a giant iceberg comes from out of nowhere to smite her and her forbidden lover boy. I found the movie to be quite watchable, but I still found myself actually rooting for the Iceberg. I also wanted the predictable villian, Billy Zane, to punch that smartmouthed brat in the face; just because.

They also made me wait nearly two hours to see a single boob shot of the comely tramp Gwenyth Paltrow Kate Winslet. I understand that they can't show too much and maintain their PG-13 rating, but come on. Kramer vs. Kramer was rated PG and they rewarded the audience with full frontal JoBeth Williams.

Overall, I'm glad I didn't spend $10 to see it in the theater. The movie's not bad so much as it is long, and dull. Okay, so maybe it is bad. Yeah, I know the movie won 11 Oscars, but aside from Best Picture and Director the rest were all nobody awards like Best Digital Iceberg Effects. Neither Caprio, Winslet, nor the Iceberg won any acting awards.

New Jersey governor McGreevey wrote an op-ed for the New York Times (a newspaper from a neighboring state) defending his decision to stave off a special election.

First, there are immediate public policy considerations and actions, which need to be completed. Simply put, there are demands and projects which need to be addressed and put in place now. [...]

Moreover, security concerns in light of the heightened level of terror alerts surrounding the Republican National Convention also argue for continuity of leadership.

He was so concerned about security he tried to appoint his lover, a poet and a foreign national, to head the state's Homeland Security Department.

The second major reason is that our 1947 state constitution establishes the Senate president as the official who would succeed a governor in an unexpired term. I acknowledge that the constitution would permit a special election to occur if I were to resign at or about the first week of September. But the constitution does not outline provisions or state requirements for the timing of a resignation. While the constitution does provide the mechanism for an election, the decision of when to make that resignation effective is a personal one.

I made this decision in the context of what I thought was in the best interest of the state. I truly believe that an orderly transition is important for continuity and stability. An acting governor is more inclined by title to finish the good work that has been started. Moreover, in this case, there will still be an election next year as called for in the constitution. There is a great cost to staging an election hastily; even a statewide race could get lost in a national election year and the momentum and investment made in still developing initiatives would most likely be diminished.

So his social programs, political agenda, and legacy are more important to the well being of the state than the distraction of free elections. If his resignation can wait three months, why not another few years? Will he even go through with it in November, or will there be more work to do?

With new federal overtime rules set to take effect today, a lot of people are confused as to who should be paid overtime and who shouldn't.

On Monday, new federal rules detailing which workers get time-and-a-half and which ones don't are due to take effect. The changes mark the first major overhaul of the federal overtime law in more than 50 years. In response, employers and employees alike are scrambling to figure out what they mean.

With some 500 pages of legalese to pour over, the task isn't easy. [...]

Look on the bright side: the previous rules spelled out these and other exemptions in roughly 30,000 words. The new guidelines take only 13,000.

You can't tell me that 500 pages and tens of thousands of words just to say who gets overtime and who doesn't isn't too much government meddling. It seems to me that all this regulation could easily be scrapped.

Far be it if for me to simplify things, but I would think you could just leave it up to the employee and employer. Just like salary and benefits are negotiated depending on who has the clout in the relationship, so could overtime pay. If you have a rare skillset or there is a high demand for your labor, you could negotiate overtime pay. Likewise, during periods of high unemployment when labor is cheap, employers could get away without paying overtime.

Why should the government have any say in what price I charge for my labor? If I want to work for free or charge doubletime, it should be my business and the business of my employer.

UPDATE: Not surprisingly, Neal Boortz and I are on the exact same page.

With all the campaign promises being bandied about and politicians looking to buy as many votes as possible, it looks like free government health care is inevitable.

"Free" health care sounds like a noble goal, but with it come all the serious problems of any new entitlement. Perhaps most obvious is that with any entitlement, the government has to compel someone to provide it. They can either force doctors to work for free, which is essentially stealing, or they can seize tax dollars from you and me to pay for it, which is essentially stealing. Most likely they'll do both; forcing doctors to work at a "discount", and then seizing tax dollars to pay for the discounted medical care.

If the Republican-controlled Congress enacted President Bush's entire health care agenda, as many as 10 million people who lack health insurance would be covered at a cost of $102 billion over the next decade, according to his campaign aides. [...]

Kerry, for example, estimates his health care proposals would cover 27 million people at a 10-year cost of $653 billion. But that assumes $300 billion in "savings" that the Bush team says might prove elusive. Without the savings, the cost of the Kerry package jumps to nearly $1 billion. [that should read $1 Trillion]

Both candidates are pushing for taxpayer provided health care. At least with Bush you're more likely to get much needed tort reform to help lower medical costs. Kerry seems to be more than happy to enrich his trial lawyer buddies while soaking the evil, hated rich to pay for it.

The Democrats are once again coming out in favor of censorship. This time John Edwards is claiming that Bush could stop ads being run by the independent "527" group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

Edwards, a senator from North Carolina, said President Bush could end the dispute if he were to say, "Stop these ads."

What should he do? Intimidate them? Use police power? Then he would be blamed for stifling free speech.

Both Kerry and Bush have filed complaints with the FEC about the ads. Of course, they both have Campaign Finance Reform and themselves to blame.

I just caught the tail end of a men's Olympic basketball game, where about $50 Million worth of NBA talent got schooled by 5 white guys on the Lithuanian team. Not to take anything away from the Lithuanian Olympians, but when is the last time you saw any white guys on an NBA team. They are still there, but they're usually warming the bench or taking drink orders for the real players.

So, I ask you, if a bunch of white guys on the Lithuanian team can beat a team of all or mostly black NBA pro athletes, why aren't there more whiteys in the NBA? Maybe the pro scouts should take a look around the eastern bloc for some fresh talent.

UPDATE: Opinion Journal takes a look at why Americans are cheering the Europeans in Olympic Basketball.

A mentally ill suspect in Indianapolis went on a shooting spree with an SKS rifle. Thanks to the handywork and bravery of the boys in blue, he's now taking the eternal dirt nap. Good work guys.

But unfortunately, situations like this are fodder for the gun grabber crowd. With the upcoming sunset of the 1994 Clinton Gun Ban, the usual suspects are clamoring for action to renew it.

"When the framers wrote that in the Constitution, I'm sure they didn't mean you have a right to bear arms if you are mentally ill. You can get one undetected at a gun show and you can go out and kill somebody with it." Representative Julia Carson said she has already signed on to a letter to President Bush asking him to stop the federal assault weapons ban from expiring Sept. 15.

"Rationally, hunters don't need an assault rifle to kill a rabbit."

No, you need a varmint rifle to kill a rabbit. The .30 caliber SKS isn't bad for larger game though.

Nevermind that an SKS is not affected by the Clinton Gun Ban, this politico thinks the Bill of Rights makes exceptions for certain classes of citizens.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

She wants to make it so that you can't own a gun if she can find a doctor to say you're ill. And for some reason she thinks the Second Amendment is about hunting. Perhaps she should actually try reading the Constitution that she's sworn to uphold.

John Kerry has filed an FEC complaint against the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth for running their anti-Kerry ads. Similar groups like Moveon.org have been running anti-Bush ads for years, and you've hardly heard a peep out of Bush. But as soon as Kerry starts taking some heat, he cries foul.

Personally, I think this strategy will backfire on Kerry. The media has been ignoring or working to discredit the Swift Boat Vets, but now, anyone who hasn't heard of the Vets soon will. It doesn't help that Kerry offers no evidence beyond mere accusation.

It was during a campaign stop Thursday that Kerry, a highly decorated Vietnam veteran, said the fact that Bush won't denounce the ads "tells you everything you need to know -- he wants them to do his dirty work."

Gee, no drawing conclusions there.

Bug Me Not appears to be back.

I have to take issue with this:

Google's Wednesday initial public offering, despite its failure to price as high or sell as many shares as the company had hoped, still made a host of existing stockholders instant millionaires and billionaires.

About a dozen insiders as well as friends, family and some folks just lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time sold portions of their Google holdings for a total of more than $464 million.

The Washington Post doesn't say who these lucky people were that apparently were walking down the street and had a chest full of Google shares fall into their lap.

I'm sure they aren't talking about the Google founders, who with some hard work and diligence, managed to build a multibillion dollar company the size of General Motors. Certainly they are talking about Andreas Bechtolsheim, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, "who invested $100,000 in 1998 before the company was even formally organized." Sure, Bechtolsheim's stake is now worth $326 Million, but tying up your hard earned money for 6 years is hardly "luck". It takes a lot of fortitude to hand over $100,000 to two guys with little more than a vision and a dream.

No, I think this is just another example of liberal bias. Investors in Google weren't working hard and making smart decisions to earn their millions. No, they just happened to be lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. Maybe someday you or I will be lucky enough to have the Brinks truck pull up to our house and just start tossing sacks of money onto our lawn.

I think I'll cut out of work a few hours early, and buy some lottery tickets and beer on my way home to wait for it.

Someone probably got fired over this. (WMV: 973k)

You have to love ad-bots. They pick up key words in a news article and run with them. Check out this story from CNN/SI about American gymnast Carly Patterson. Patterson won the all-around gymnastics award, a first such win for America since Mary Lou Retton in 1984.

Now check out the advertising links on that same page:

But it's been around since July. Because I wouldn't stand a snowballs chance in hell of winning, I would never actively campaign for anything like this. (cough) click here (cough)

This is getting tiring. Open carry in Virginia is NOT NEW, as the Philadelphia Inquirer would have you believe.

One night recently, 30 people walked into a Fuddruckers restaurant in northern Virginia, most of them openly wearing handguns.

They weren't law-enforcement officers, and they weren't desperadoes. They were law-abiding Virginians, celebrating the state's newly strengthened pro-gun laws.

Virginia - like 36 other states, including Pennsylvania - has a law that requires local courts to issue permits to all nonfelons who want to carry concealed handguns. But the state requires no permit to visibly carry a handgun.

A statute that went into effect July 1 further bolstered the state's gun laws by prohibiting any Virginia locality from enacting any regulations at all on gun ownership, carrying, storage or purchase.

The Commonwealth of Virginia has never regulated open carry. It has been a right of every Virginian for almost 400 years. On July 1st, a state law went into effect that nullfied any local restrictions on firearms. The goal was to have uniform laws throughout the state, so that gunowners wouldn't inadvertently commit a felony by crossing to the other side of the street and entering a different town. There were one or two localities (like Falls Church) that banned open carry.

But these are not demonstrations. In fact, the 30 people in question were members of VCDL going out to dinner after a monthly meeting. As far as I know (I've never attended one), they've been doing these for years.

If you've heard about any of these news stories, you'll notice that they all have one thing in common. People are open carrying in restaurants. The reason they are open carring in restaurants, is because they are obeying state law. When Virginia passed shall issue legistion back in the 1990s, they took away concealed carry in restaurants that also serve alcohol. It had previously been legal, but now is illegal. Thus the only way to carry in a restaurant is openly.

Something many folks don't realize is that gun control laws were initially targeted at Blacks and immigrants. Both slaves and free blacks were debarred the use of arms. In the North, similar gun control laws were passed in response to large waves in immigrants flooding into America.

Gun control in both the North and the South is inherently racist, and was intended to be that way from the start. Even today you'll notice that the most stringent gun control laws are in inner-city urban areas; places where lots of immigrants and black people live. The term "Saturday Night Special" also has a racist connotation.

(And in case you didn't realize, local and federal anti-drug laws followed a very similar path; initially being targeted at Blacks.)

The Ninth Circus Court of Appeals is telling the RIAA and MPAA to leave P2P software alone.

"Under the circumstances presented by this case, we conclude that the defendants are not liable for contributory and vicarious copyright infringement and affirm the district court's partial grant of summary judgment," the Ninth Circuit wrote in its decision (PDF). "In this case, the Software Distributors have not only shown that their products are capable of substantial noninfringing uses, but that the uses have commercial viability."

Basically they are saying that software makers should not be held liable for the criminal misuse of their products. Especially since those products have been shown to have a legitimate use. (I wonder if the 9th would rule that way about firearms?)

What this means for the RIAA is that they need to continue suing their customers for copyright infringement on an individual basis.

Axis of Evil member, Iran, is threatening to make a preemptive strike against the United States and/or Israel.

Six Days Bitch.

Bugmenot.com, the website that posted logins and passwords for newspaper websites, seems to have disappeared. Is their site just down, or was it taken down by the media establishment?

Given the media's obvious desire to protect their right to collect reader's personal information for direct marketing purposes, methinks the latter.

UPDATE: It looks like their host pulled the plug on them.

There is a lot of hoopla surrounding Congressman Bereuter's criticism of the Iraq war. It's being trumpeted by all the news organizations, and is sure to be fodder for Democrats.

But what you aren't hearing much about is that "Maverick" Senator from Georgia, Zell Miller, who has not only "broken ranks" with the Democrats, but is actively campaigning for Bush. Mr. Miller, a lifelong Democrat, will even give a speech at the Republican National Convention.

Neal Boortz points out Kerry's latest flip-flop.

"I will have significant, enormous reductions in the level of troops ...In the Korean peninsula perhaps, in Europe perhaps." -- John Kerry, August 1, 2004.

"Why are we withdrawing unilaterally 12,000 troops from the Korean peninsula at the very time that we are negotiating with North Korea, a country that really has nuclear weapons. This is clearly the wrong signal to send at the wrong time." -- John Kerry, August 18, 2004.

Of course, the August 1st speech was made before President Bush announced his plan to pull troops out of Korea and Europe. Kerry should be saying, 'See, he's stealing my ideas', but instead opts to takes the anti-Bush path.

Yet another congressman wishes Saddam Hussein was back in power. Only this time it's a republican. But he appears to be blaming himself.

Breaking ranks with his party and reversing his earlier stance, a senior retiring Republican lawmaker said Wednesday the military strike against Iraq was "a mistake," and he blasted a "massive failure" of intelligence before the war.

The unexpected four-page statement came from Rep. Doug Bereuter of Nebraska, who until earlier this month was the vice chairman of the House Intelligence Committee -- a panel that reviewed much of the evidence the administration cited before going to war.

How brave of Congressman Bereuter to blame his very own committee for any mistakes made in Iraq. But I'll never understand this glossy explanation that Saddam was an innocent victim in this whole thing.

"I've reached the conclusion, retrospectively, now that the inadequate intelligence and faulty conclusions are being revealed, that all things being considered, it was a mistake to launch that military action, especially without a broad and engaged international coalition," Bereuter wrote in a four-page letter to his constituents.

Read "without France and Germany". God this 'unilateral' argument is getting really old. For the sake of the argument, if we did go it alone, who cares? We still got the job done. Why is a broad international coalition so important if they aren't needed militarily? Is the objective somehow more noble just because France and Germany are on board? I don't buy it.

Bereuter was particularly critical of the pre-war intelligence, which described an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But no such weapons have been found since the U.S.-led invasion.

Well if you can't find it, it must have never been there right? All those Kurds must have gassed themselves. And the Iranians too. Also, nevermind those sarin gas canisters found by U.S. troops. They were obviously planted by George W. Bush.

Another question that springs to mind is, if we went about this war without an international coalition, just who were we leading in that "U.S.-led invasion"? (Oh that's right... government contractors mercenaries from Halliburton.)

Democrats are showing grave concern for voters being disenfranchised this go 'round. That is, unless you intend to vote for Ralph Nader.

Ralph Nader's efforts to get his name on ballots in important swing states as an independent candidate for president are becoming mired in legal challenges and charges of fraud by Democrats who have mounted an extensive campaign to keep him from becoming a factor in this year's election. [...]

But he is entangled in an assortment of lawsuits, including ones in states that may be the most contested in November. He is in court in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Arizona, and faces potential suits in Oregon, Iowa, New Hampshire, West Virginia and Nevada.

He is also in court in states like Texas (for Bush) and Illinois (for Kerry) that are not expected to be battlegrounds. But the legal challenges there are diverting his time and resources.

This is coming from the party that forced 122 year old Frank Lautenberg onto the ballot for NJ Senator, even though the deadline was so close that absentee ballots had already been mailed. In forcing the ballot switch just days before the election, Democrats like Senate Minority Leader Tom Dashle claimed that violating election law was necessary, in order to give voters a choice.

When it comes to Nader, Democrats are no longer pro-choice.

So these are the type of guys Schwarzenegger was talking about. European men are being shamed into urinating like women.

German men are being shamed into urinating while sitting down by a gadget which is saving millions of women from cleaning up in the bathroom after them.

The WC ghost, a £6 (metric for $10) voice-alarm, reprimands men for standing at the lavatory pan. It is triggered when the seat is lifted. The battery-operated devices are attached to the seats and deliver stern warnings to those who attempt to stand and urinate...

"Hey, stand-peeing is not allowed here and will be punished with fines, so if you don't want any trouble, you'd best sit down," one of the devices orders in a voice impersonating the German leader, Chancellor Gerhard Schroder. Another has a voice similar to that of his predecessor, Helmut Kohl.

The manufacturers of the WC ghost, Patentwert, say they are ready to direct their gadgets at the British market.

Their prototype English-speaking WC ghost says in an American drawl: "Don't you go wetting this floor cowboy, you never know who's behind you. So sit down, get your water pistol in the bowl where it belongs. Ha, ha, ha."

They also plan to copy the voices of Tony Blair and the Queen.

I don't know about you, but if I lift the lid (in Germany or elsewhere) and get yelled at, I'm peeing in the sink.

Somehow I missed the memo that Greeblie blog is no more. I knew Dave was on a semi-hiatus, but apparently he's gone and pulled the plug. I shouldn't feel too sorry for myself though, apparently the Axis of Greeblie didn't know either.

For me this is just another sign that I don't read other weblogs nearly as much as I used to. One reason the blogroll is so small is because I keep it to blogs I read. If I narrowed it to blogs I read every day, you'd probably have trouble finding it.

Well, I guess it's clear that Dave isn't coming back, so if I can remember my blogroll password, I'll smite his name from the list.

Kim du Toit tells the story of a man protecting his family.

Mr Caeiro claimed he was woken by his 28-year-old wife's screams at 2am on Saturday when the burglar came into their bedroom.

He said the 6ft tall intruder had pulled away their 14-month-old daughter's cot from the side of their bed causing the child to fall on the floor and cry.

Mr Caeiro said: "This man was kneeling at the side of my bed and started touching the legs of my wife.

"My wife woke up screaming and then I woke up. The man then ran downstairs and went out through the kitchen door."

Mr Caeiro, who is 5ft 6ins, rang 999 to report the break-in and was told by police that because the intruder was no-longer believed to be in the house they would be there in 15 to 30 minutes.

He said: "I looked out into my yard and saw a shadow. I was frightened and I grabbed the bread knife from a rack because my first thought was that I had to stop my family being harmed. I opened the back door ... then this man attacked me with a metal bar.

"He hit me on the shoulder and I was knocked back into the kitchen. The door opened and the man tried to come inside.

"I stabbed him in the leg and then we ended up fighting and I stabbed him in the chest.

"We fought for about a minute outside ... then he managed to break away and run down the alley at the back of my house."

The police finally showed up, and promptly arrested, guess who... Mr. Caeiro. That's right, this occured in the United Kingdom where self defense has been outlawed. Mr. Caeiro was supposed to pick his 14-month old baby up off the floor, gather the rest of his family, and cower in the closet until representatives of the government arrived. Since he opted to defend his family himself, Caeiro faces possible assault charges which will likely carry a more serious penalty than what the predator faces.

I can't speak for everyone, but most people I know would respond to someone tossing their baby onto the floor and fondling their wife's legs, with extreme prejudice. The pair of pliers and a blow torch type of prejudice.

The CNN Headline reads: "Convicted rapist suits up for college ball"

The AP story reads: "A jury acquitted Dixon of rape, but he was sentenced to 10 years in prison on the molestation charge... On May 3, the Georgia Supreme Court overturned the felony conviction and its 10-year sentence."

Professor Mike Adams has decided to do what he can to help combat violence against women. He realizes that sometimes the best way for a 5-foot 120-pound woman to keep from becoming a victim, is to equalize herself with a handgun. A 6' 4" - 250 pound rapist doesn't stand much of a chance against a Glock. Adams is offering his services and expertise (free of charge), but he's not finding too many takers.

That reminds me, it's been a while so here is my obligatory link to an article by the Independent Women's Forum on disarming women. This should be required reading for all women.

Like I said years ago, the article makes several key points:

• Less than 5% of 911 calls dispatched to police are early enough to actually prevent a crime.
  
• Police and government organizations have no legal obligation to protect you as an individual.
  
• Firearms proficiency can take only a few hours of practice.
  
• While martial arts training may "equalize" the disparity between a woman and an attacker, multiple attackers have an advantage.
  
• Firearms proficiency can make ANY woman strong enough to fend off attackers, regardless of their size or strength.
  
• In more than 92% of "defensive gun uses" simply brandishing a firearm, or firing a warning shot is enough.

Draconian gun control laws and mandatory waiting periods only serve to put law abiding citizens at risk. Forcing or encouraging women to rely on restraining orders and the 9-1-1 system as means of protection is not only foolhardy, it's dangerous. A lot of good a court order does when she's dead. Maybe they can paste it on her tombstone.

It's no secret that France and Germany have been the source of a lot of anti-American sentiment as of late. As far back as 2002, support for U.S. efforts in the war on terrorism has been waning. But now that we've decided to pull tens of thousands of troops out of Germany, the Germans want to know what gives.

"Base closures would hit us very hard," fretted Ole Kruse, spokesman for the Bavarian city of Wuerzburg, home of the U.S. Army's 1st Infantry Division.

Baumholder, a town in rural western Germany, will lose $150 million a year if the U.S. military training area leaves, Mayor Volkmar Pees complained today to the Associated Press.

"We view this with great concern," Bamberg spokesman Steffen Schuetzewohl chimed in.

To put that number in perspective:

The district of Birkenfeld is one such area that could be hit hard. Up to 20 percent of GDP is dependent on the Baumholder military base in the region where parts of the 1st Infantry Division are now stationed.

Apparently the German moral convictions only go so far:

Despite substantial anger among the German populace at US actions in Iraq, and protests at some bases, many Germans see the economic considerations outweighing moral ones when it comes to a continuing presence of American troops in the neighborhood. Officials have begun doing what they can to convince the Americans to stay.

"We're now in negotiations with the Americans, trying to make it appealing for them to stay at their current sites," said Eric Schaefer, press spokesman for the Interior Ministry of Rhineland-Palatinate, where several bases including Baumholder are located. "We're talking to the US about not just closing the base, but using it differently, perhaps as a training ground."

But keep in mind that these base closures are not new ideas. Base closures have been happening for decades. Bush campaigned on the idea of scaling back foreign military bases, and Clinton used the savings from base closures to pay for military improvements and advancements in equipment.

The Governor of Illinois announced plans to set up a prescription drug program that will violate federal law by importing drugs from other countries and bypassing FDA testing and approval. I've already covered the dangers of importing prescription drugs, noting that:

Buying medicines from Canada may sound reasonably safe, but how would you feel if you knew your drugs were coming into Canada from Bangladesh, Brazil, or Iran. Canadian imports from those countries has increased dramatically, and it's mostly being fueled by U.S. demand. These and other countries like China and the Philippines are known to counterfeit drugs, and all of them are increasing shipments to Canada.

These shipments are processed through drug clearinghouses and usually go uninspected. It is precisely these clearinghouses that Illinois plans to use:

The state won't import the drugs itself, but it plans to contract with a Canadian company to connect Illinois residents with a network of foreign pharmacies that have been approved by state health inspectors. [...]

The clearinghouse Blagojevich proposed Tuesday would be an "aggressive expansion" of the governor's previous push to import drugs from Canada only, and the drugs it would allow access to would be illegal and unregulated by U.S. agencies, said William Hubbard, FDA associate commissioner for policy and planning.

The Governor estimates that savings would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $91 Million to $1.9 Gazillion Billion, depending on the scope of the program.

Of course, what Gov. Blagojevich doesn't say is that Illinois is opening themselves up to untold Billions of dollars in liability if some bad drugs get through. I have a feeling that trial lawyers (like John Edwards) will be chomping at the bit to represent anyone with negative side affects from illegally imported drugs.

If you think I'm overstating the potential for danger, keep this in mind. The Galen Institute reports that:

When asked about the potential impact of U.S. pharmacies limiting shipments to Canadian pharmacies, a Canadian pharmacy owner and non-pharmacist told surveyors for the Minnesota Board of Pharmacy, "We won't have any problem getting drugs. We have creative ways to get them."

Does that sound like someone from whom you want to buy your meds?

Of course all these medicines are sold with liability disclaimers. The foreign e-pharmacies disclaim all liability if you get sick or die from their medicines. Likewise, states that encourage folks to buy drugs from Canada also try to disclaim legal liability. Of course, they can't exactly do that. By promoting behavior that is illegal, the state and local governments are setting up a hazardous condition. Because of the inherent negligence, the state has no protection from liability when someone is injured as a result. State laws vary, but most courts have agreed that negligence offers no liability protection, no matter how many disclaimers people sign.

The bottom line is that public officials need to tread lightly on the subject of drug re-importation. Not only are they breaking federal law, but they are setting themselves up for potential lawsuits. The short term savings just aren't worth the risk. In the long term, it could end up costing much more than it saves.

(Editor's Note: I feel it necessary to point out that I do hold stock in a major pharmaceutical company. I don't think that has biased my opinion, and I stand by the facts I have presented here. But I still think that I should at least let you know.)

I have to chuckle every time I hear the government accuse people of price gouging.

Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist filed lawsuits Tuesday against two hotels he said engaged in price gouging and other unfair practices as people fled Hurricane Charley.

These are the same people who use the threat of lethal force to seize money from citizens to pay for government goods and services. I wonder if the state of Florida temporarily rescinded their hotel and restaurant taxes in the wake of the storm? I doubt it.

I'm too lazy to cover the subject thoroughly, so I'll let Neal Boortz take a whack at it:

First we have the guarantee in the United States Constitution that the government will not interfere with the operation of valid contracts between individuals. An agreement by one to sell and another to purchase a chain saw for three times its common retail price is a contract between two individuals. As long as that contract is voluntarily entered into, and there is no fraud involved, and the parties are of the legal age to execute a contract ... the government has no legitimate cause to intervene.

I'm told that yesterday some reporter from the Fox News Channel said that chain saws were being sold in the path of Hurricane Charley for "more than they're worth." Think about this for a moment. If you needed a chainsaw to clear some trees around your home, would you willingly go out and pay more for that chainsaw than it is worth to you? The value of that chainsaw increases with your need for it. I