Persons with no desire for self-control, anxious for the security of lives planned and controlled for them by others, may view with patient resignation the prevailing trend aways from freedom in the United States and in most other lands. Things are going their way. But anyone who views with alarm the growing interventionism will want to plan his escape soon. By tomorrow, or next month, or next year, he might have lost the will — and the capacity — to be free. The escape route, the path to freedom, lies in self-help, self-control, self-responsibility, self-reliance, self-improvement. And slow starters are unlikely to make it.

— Donald W. Shorack

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Keeping your job, in some states, could be tough in 2008.  Watch what you post online.

In the absence of strong protections for employees, poorly chosen words or even a single photograph posted online in one’s off-hours can have career-altering consequences. Stacy Snyder, 25, who was a senior at Millersville University in Millersville, Pa., offers an instructive example. Last year, she was dismissed from the student teaching program at a nearby high school and denied her teaching credential after the school staff came across her photograph on her MySpace profile. She filed a lawsuit in April this year in federal court in Philadelphia contending that her rights to free expression under the First Amendment had been violated. No trial date has been set.

Her photo, preserved at the “Wired Campus” blog of the Chronicle of Higher Education, turns out to be surprisingly innocuous. In a head shot snapped at a costume party, Ms. Snyder, with a pirate’s hat perched atop her head, sips from a large plastic cup whose contents cannot be seen. When posting the photo, she fatefully captioned her self-portrait “drunken pirate,” though whether she was serious can’t be determined by looking at the photo.

Millersville University, in a motion asking the court to dismiss the case, contends that Ms. Snyder’s student teaching had been unsatisfactory for many reasons. But it affirms that she was dismissed and barred from re-entering the school shortly after the high school staff discovered her MySpace photograph. The university backed the school authorities’ contentions that her posting was “unprofessional” and might “promote under-age drinking.” It also cited a passage in the teacher’s handbook that said staff members are “to be well-groomed and appropriately dressed.”

Read it all:  How to Lose Your Job on Your Own Time - New York Times

Musings, Rants | 1 Comment »

My Christmas wish is for peace and prosperity through the restoration of our natural rights.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

                 — The Declaration of Independence

It is long past the time to reevaluate our present government and to turn the tide of the status quo.  The road we are traveling leads to one destination, and one destination only — Economic Ruin!

There are two options to restore a Constitutional Government that would protect the rights of individuals and provide true opportunities for all.  The first is an outright overthrow, read revolution, of our government.  The second method would be to support the only candidate currently running for President who consistently pursues the end of the current warfare/welfare state in which we live.

The time is now to send a message to Washington, and the rest of the country.  Give yourself the gifts of Freedom and Opportunity this Christmas by studying and supporting Ron Paul for President.

John Hancock, Samuel Chase, Charles Carroll, George Wythe, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Adams, John Adams and 47 others, unanimously on behalf of the 13 States, dedicated their lives to free us from tyranny.  Don’t let their hard work be in vain.

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“Do you ever pray for the senators, Dr. Hale?” “No, I look at the senators and I pray for the country.”

— Edward Everett Hale, New England Indian Summer [1940]

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Draw your own conclusions.

That winner was the powerful investment bank Goldman Sachs, whose former chairmen include the current Secretary of the Treasury, the governor of New Jersey, and the Treasury Secretary under President Clinton. According to the Wall Street Journal, late in 2006, traders in its Structured Products department convinced bank executives that the “sub-prime market was heading for trouble.”

What did Goldman do? It sold off much of its “stockpile” of mortgage-backed securities. In addition, the bank’s traders bet—what is called “selling short”—that the market would go down.

This paid off handsomely: The bank generated “nearly $4 billion of profits during the [fiscal] year ended Nov. 30,” easily erasing mortgage-related losses in the rest of the firm.

Read it all:  Townhall.com::Selling Morality Short::By Chuck Colson

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The membership figures cover Meetup groups within a 50 mile radius of Buffalo, New York.

Ron Paul          255

Mike Huckabee  25

Barak Obama      6

The rest, including Hillary, Rudy, and Mitt, adds up to a big fat zip, nada, zero!

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The innovative advertising campaign will stream live coverage of its progress from the air via Justin TV, and provide those who really want to know with updates via GPS on the blimp’s very own web site.

Read it all from Wired.com:  Ron Paul Blimp Flies

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I received the following email today containing some very good questions about the Presidential race.  Saying that the mainstream media has been marginalizing Ron Paul is an understatement.  Read the following observations and draw your own conclusion.  The full text of the email is after the jump.

• If Huckabee is so well loved, why is no one donating to his campaign? People know these candidates need money to run an effective campaign. I guess Brother Huck’s supporters will pray on it!
• If Romney is so popular, why does he have to reach into his deep pockets and loan his own campaign $17 MILLION bux? Where are the donations from the little people?
• How is it John McCain shows higher in polls than Ron Paul, but no one will support him with the cash a candidate needs?
• If Fred Thompson is so popular as to be right up there with Rudy Julie Annie and Huckabee, why is it Ron Paul beats him in straw polls 32-15? Remember: These are Republican voters.
• How can Ron Paul continue to win all these straw polls by Republican voters, yet polls show no one would vote for him?
• How is it Ron Paul continues to raise so much money if no one except the “fringe” element out there supports him?
• Why does Ron Paul’s web site and his campaign show such popularity and numbers?

(more…

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The decision to move the Gateway Harbor concerts out of North Tonawanda to Lockport is short-sighted at best.  NT’s mayor’s animosity toward the concert promoters certainly did not help the situation.

After a six-year run in North Tonawanda’s Gateway Harbor, the massively popular Molson Canal Concert Series is moving to the City of Lockport.

North Tonawanda Common Council President Brett Sommer confirmed late Tuesday that the decision by promoters had been made to move locations, leaving the Twin Cities shut out of the free shows that drew tens of thousands annually to the Erie Canal’s shore.

Sommer, a Republican, criticized Democratic Mayor Larry Soos for making comments that Sommer said “opened the door” for promoters to seek a new venue outside the Tonawandas.

Soos on Tuesday denied saying he wanting the concerts to leave, though he told the Tonawanda News near the end of the 2007 series that the promoters could “take it to Wheatfield.”

The Gateway Concerts were close and convenient for many people, especially residents of the Tonawandas, Amherst, North Buffalo and Kenmore.  Lockport will have a tough time attracting many of those residents.

The location along the canal in NT was ideally suited for concerts.

Read it all:  Niagara Gazette - NORTH TONAWANDA: Molson concerts to leave NT

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Over the last few months, I’ve received hundreds of e-mails from people asking me to interview Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, so I did.

It’s refreshing to interview a politician who doesn’t mince words. It’s even more refreshing to interview one who understands the benefits of limited government.

Here, then, is the first in a series of columns on my talk with Ron Paul. Some of Paul’s answers are shortened.

Read it all:  Townhall.com::My Interview with Ron Paul::By John Stossel

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Rarely do you see the words common sense and health care used in the same sentence.  Vote for Ron Paul for President if you favor a commonsense approach to fixing our health care system.

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Yesterday, while Christmas shopping at the Walden Galleria, my holiday spirit took a nose dive due to blatant government waste of our taxpayers’ dollars.  I was thoroughly disgusted seeing several Border Patrol agents littered throughout the mall.  One of them planted herself facing the upper entrance to Sears (inside) as if she expected illegal aliens to pop out any second.

The coup de grâce, at the end of my shopping excursion, was stumbling up a storefront office/propaganda center for the Border Patrol.  Perhaps next Christmas season we will have an office for the Ministry of Disinformation.

Government Waste, Rants | 4 Comments »

December 5, 1933 marks the repeal of prohibition.  Today is a good day to reflect on everything that is still prohibited.

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T he gay marriage issue shouldn’t be anyone’s business except the two people involved.

“Why do people – gay or straight – need the state’s permission to marry? For most of Western history, they didn’t, because marriage was a private contract between two families. The parents’ agreement to the match, not the approval of church or state, was what confirmed its validity.”

It wasn’t until modern times (the late 1800s) that the state began to dictate the terms of marriage, Coontz explained. In the 1950s, she added, the state used the “marriage license as a shorthand way to distribute benefits and legal privileges.” But these days, with so many prevalent family situations and obligations, a marriage license no longer is the easiest way to sort out financial and familial obligations. The easiest way to sort out such matters is through private contracts, not by having the state impose one particular vision of marriage on everyone.

Ironically, conservative and liberals have very inconsistent positions on this issue.

Conservatives, who claim to believe in states’ rights, are promoting federal bans on same-sex marriages. Liberals, who tend to favor federal solutions, are claiming that pro-gay-marriage states such as Massachusetts have the right to set their own marriage terms.

Read it all:  Get the State Out of Marriage by Steven Greenhut

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The following description of the Ron Paul phenomenon reminds me of the lyrics from a song by Genesis, Firth of Fifth —

The path is clear
Though no eyes can see
The course laid down long before.
And so with gods and men
The sheep remain inside their pen,
Though many times they’ve seen the way to leave.

Here’s the description from the Salon.com article:

“. . . perhaps the best explanation of the Paul phenomenon came from Rammelkamp, the young man from Long Island who had taken on significant credit card debt for the Paul campaign. He told me that to understand Paul, I had to think of the American people as a baby elephant, chained to a tree. “It realizes that it can only walk 5 feet in each direction. It realizes that it is a slave. When it grows old enough, it is strong enough to break away from the tree. But it doesn’t know.” He pauses, to let this sink in — the American people are a captive animal unaware of its own power to claim liberty. “When was the last time you tried it?” he asks me of breaking free. “Maybe you are strong enough.”

Ron Paul in New Hampshire | Salon News

Technorati tags: Ron Paul, liberty, freedom, President, campaign, Genesis, Firth of Fifth, sheep, elephants

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