Successful societies possess several important attributes including Private Property Rights, the Rule of Law, and Freedom of the Press.

Private Property Rights guarantee that owners may reap the benefits from investments of money and time in their homes and businesses.

The Rule of Law guarantees that all member of society play by the same rules.

Freedom of the Press and its close relatives Freedom of Speech and Open Records, guarantee that citizens may receive enough information to make informed decisions.

Vladimir Putin is the latest strongman to tighten his grip in a manner similar to that of Hugo Chavez in Venezula and Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.

The future of the Russian people does not look good.
Full Story

A Web site that matches roommates may be liable for what its users say about their preferences, a fractured three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled yesterday.

The Ninth Circuit appears to take both a broad view of who is a covered by the Fair Housing Act and a narrow view of the protections provided by the Communications Decency Act.

Apparently if you are an homosexual, you are required to accept an Evangelical Christian or a Muslim as a roommate.

If you are a Ninth Circuit Federal Appeals Court Judge, inconsistency can be both a state of mind and a way of life.
Full Story

The Department of Defense has banned soldiers serving overseas from accessing YouTube, Metacafe, IFilm, StupidVideos, and FileCabi, the social networking sites MySpace, BlackPlanet and Hi5, music sites Pandora, MTV, 1.fm, and live365, and the photo-sharing site Photobucket.

The ostensible reasons given for the ban are excessive bandwidth consumption, compromed security, and reduced productivity.

One might draw comparisions between this decision and similar bans by Chinese, Vietnamese, and Iranian governments.

In making the comparison consider the substantial differences between totalitarian regimes and a free one. One of those differences is the free flow of information. That availability of information from a wide variety of sources provides the citizens of the free society with a perspective on what they are doing and what their country is doing. In a free society, the citizen decides.

In China, Vietnam, and Iran, not just the military, but the entire population has been involuntarily conscripted to listen to the party line. The American soldiers are volunteers. They want to be doing what they are doing.

They deserve to have as much information as is available.
Full Story

I seriously doubt that the friends and families of those killed in violent attacks would believe that any of the following objections would hold water in light of their losses. Only those with no personal experience in a similar situation would genuinely believe such “Pollyanish” ideals could be real solutions in saving lives.

10. We should teach negotiating skills.

9. You fail to understand that this is just a manifestation of male violence against women.

8. You are just proposing more violence. It just begets more violence.

7. This will just opening the schools up to legal liability.

6. You fail to recognize the root causes.

5. This should be a police matter.

4. It’s too soon after this tragic event.

3. You call for the men to step up, but ignored the women.

2. There needs to be time for the healing process.

1. The cause is the backward American “gun culture.”

Rather than waiting for SWAT and the other paramilitary representatives to show up after the carnage is over, Americans need to re-learn and practice the self-reliance that made this nation great.

It looks like your buddy, Jim Schutz, already took his first shot.

—————————– FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ————————–

From: Friends and Alumni of Virginia Tech
Release Date: April 26, 2007
Event Date: 10:00 AM, Saturday, May 5
Where: Blacksburg Recreation Center, 725 Patrick Henry Dr., Blacksburg, VA.

Subject: Safety Options for Education

“Duck and cover” is done. The safety advice from the Civil Defense drills of the 60s is inadequate to meet the threats of the 21st Century.

A group of friends and alumni of Virginia Tech have raised the money to host a Safety Options Presentation at 10:00AM, May 5, at the Blacksburg Recreation Center, in Blacksburg, home of Virginia Tech.

The purpose of the seminar is to make the public, the media, and the legislature aware of the range of education safety options available.

Response Options will demonstrate some of the safety training they teach for middle school and high school students and discuss how similar training might be used for colleges.

The theme of the seminar is “Hokies Will Prevail.”

FFI: Russell Fish (972) 702-0817
Pam Faber (757) 469-6990
Greg Crane (Response Options) (877) 652-9461
Full Story

If you have a nose for criminal statistics, the Bureau of Justice Statistics can give you a snoot full in both PDF and spreadsheet form.

Topics covered include –

* crimes of violence (rape, gender sexual assault, robbery, assault) and theft (pocket picking, purse snatching, burglary, theft, and motor vehicle theft), with data on victim characteristics (gender, age, race, ethnicity, marital status, education, income, and residence)
* crime characteristics (time and place of occurrence, distance from home, weapon use, self-protection, injury, medical care, economic loss, and time lost from work)
* victim-offender relationship
* victims’ perceptions of substance use by offenders and of offender characteristics (age, race, and gender)
* whether crimes were reported to the police and reasons why
* police response time for reported crimes
Full Story

The head of the Democratic Party said Wednesday that the best way to get presidential candidates to talk frankly about issues is to lock out the media. Dean said. “If you want to hear the truth from them, you have to exclude the press.”

This is an existential statement. Does it matter if a politician tells the truth but the public, to which the politician is responsible, has no way to know because the media was banned?

Is a person any more of a hero or less of a crook if nobody knows? Dean’s position seems to be that information causes dishonesty. Others might argue that dishonest people causes dishonesty.
Full Story

Venezuelan strongman, Hugo Chavez, has taken over the the nation’s oldest private television network, Radio Caracas Television.

A state run television station will replace RCT.

Government control of the organs of information distribution is a symptom of the command and control society that Venezuela appears to approach. A government that cannot tolerate criticism is a government that cannot be considered legitimate and is usually a government that becomes corrupt.
Full Story

Virginia Tech college student, Cho Seung-Hui had been judged mentally ill and a danger to himself and others yet his parents didn’t know. Virginia Tech was prevented from telling them by FERPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

FERPA was one of a series of “privacy” laws passed following Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas’s discovery of previously unknown “penumbras” in the 1965 case, Griswold v. Connecticut.

Abortion advocates invoke FERPA as the legal tool to allow minor girls to receive abortions without informing their parents.

In the long running Texas open records case, the Dallas Independent School District invoked FERPA to avoid disclosing the names of incompetent public school teachers.

A related law HIPPA, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, is used to prevent the disclosure of the identity of AIDS infected individuals to their potential sexual partners.
Full Story