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The arrogance of the State has no limit

Tim Kennedy, who's murder conviction was overturned after 14 years in prison, will be retried. (See the Associated Press article, "Man in two killings bonds out," in the Denver Post.)

Pending retrial, Kennedy is out on bond.

In overturning the conviction, El Paso County judge Thomas Kane specifically "cited flawed evidence and prosecutors' failure to turn over evidence to the defense."

At the bond hearing, Assistant District Attorney Dan Zook argued that Kennedy should not be allowed bail because he "is dangerous" and a "danger to the community."

You know what's really dangerous to the community, Mr. Zook? District Attorneys that fail to turn over evidence. 

The "left" used to believe in freedom.

I encourage everyone to surf the Ludwig von Mises Institute website. It is one of the best, if not the best, collection of pro-freedom essays and scholarly work anywhere.

Today, I came across an article originally published in 1952, written by Dean Russell. The essay is captioned "The First Leftist."

A snippet:

It is true that this organized force of government can be used, and should be used, to restrain and punish persons who commit evil acts — murder, theft, defamation, and such — against their fellow men; but this force that is government cannot be used to force persons to be good or brave or compassionate or charitable or virtuous in any respect. All virtues must come from within a person; they cannot be imposed by force or threats of force. Since that is so, it follows that almost all human relations and institutions should be left completely outside the authority of government, with no government regulation whatever. But this seems to be a difficult idea for most persons to grasp.

Indeed, it is.

Rockies fire manager Clint Hurdle / Monforts still rich with publicly funded stadium

Firing Hurdle is like putting a band aid on a severed limb. As long as the Monforts own the team, the Rockies will fail. If you can't play with the big dogs, stay on the porch. 

Unfortunately, the Montforts will always be on the porch, counting their revenue sharing and enjoying the profits from a beautiful, publicly funded stadium.

We have poor people in this state, and they helped pay for Coors Field so the Monforts can stay rich. How perverse is that?

Corporate welfare is ridiculous. If a corporation can't make its own money, it should as hell shouldn't have taxpayer money.

My first "Letter from the Chair" for the LP Colorado newsletter

I am honored to follow Travis Nicks as the State Chairman of the Libertarian Party of Colorado.

With both the federal and state governments taking over more and more of our lives, the LP in Colorado has a tremendous opportunity for growth.

It is our job to take advantage of that opportunity.

Each of us is an ambassador for freedom. We need to emphasize the positive aspects of self-ownership, self-determination, and yes, even rational self-interest. We should never apologize for believing in the power of the individual over the power of the state.

The negative aspects of statism, government control and bureaucratically planned economics will all be self-evident. It just takes some longer than others to come to this realization. As more and more people realize that government is not the answer, we need to be ready to provide them with the only alternative: Freedom.

The Libertarian Party is the only party that believes in freedom. We need to welcome those that believe in freedom and are looking to find a political home. We are that home.

The only one.

I ask that each of you have a discussion about freedom with a non-libertarian friend. Keep it friendly, of course. Let them know the Libertarian Party actually believes in freedom, unlike the other political parties that just give it lip-service. You probably will not convert anyone in one conversation, but you will plant the seed in their head. Planting the seed is the first step.

My goal is to have 20,000 registered Libertarians in Colorado in the next two years. We currently have close to 12,000. If each of us can convert just one person to the cause of freedom and the LPCO, we’ll make that goal and more. Much more.

I look forward to serving as your Chair. Please contact me with any thoughts or questions. My email is StateChair@LPColorado.org . My cell phone number is 303-588-2731. Let me hear from you.

And let freedom ring.

David K. Williams, Jr.

Obama: "Screw the poor."

The Denver Post applauds "President Obama's decision to greatly accelerate higher fuel efficiency and emissions standards for automobiles." (See today's editorial "Pedal to the metal on fuel standards.")

Of course, higher fuel efficiency means new cars will cost more money. When anything costs more money, it disproportionatley affects the poor. Rich people will write a bigger check when they want a new car. Poor people do not have that option. They will have to do without.

So what? Poor people's needs are secondary to a greener planet.

The Post recognizes the cost of the regulations but, like Obama, shrugs them off:

Critics say the new rules will add $1,300 to a new car's price tag. Obama says the cost on fuel savings over the life of the car — about $2,800 — would cover the cost of the improvements.

Savings over the longterm do nothing to help the single-mother sitting in the showroom when she needs the money NOW to buy a car. But so what? Her needs are secondary to a greener planet.

The statist creed: "The people are stupid."

From the front page of today's Denver Post:

"Credit-card reform, behind the scenes"

The article discusses how Colorado Senator Mark Udall worked to get the bill passed. No doubt he did. The article fails to mention, at all, the notion that people are smart enough to decide which credit card they want and which one they do not. The idea behind the bill is that people are too stupid to decide what terms of credit they might want to have, and the benevolent federal government needs to protect us poor vassals from ourselves.

The sub-head on the article reads, "A solid idea and four years of work still needed the right time and crisis."

Calling the bill "a solid idea" is a value judgment, not a fact, and should only appear in an editorial or column.

Ask Governor Ritter to veto SB 241

SB - 241, which mandates the use of force to take DNA from innocent citizens for a government database, passed the Colorado legislature this year. Unless Governor Bill Ritter vetoes it, it will become law. He may sign it at any time, so don't dally in contacting his office.

Please call or email the governor's office and ask him to veto the bill.  His number is (303) 866-2471. His staff logs the calls, so just let them know you want the governor to veto SB 241. 

To email him, you must use the email form on the Governor's website. The directions are relatively simple, even for a government form.

You can even send a fax to (303) 866-2003. Don't forget, of course, that one should always be polite.

Here is what I sent to him via the email form:

Subject: Veto SB 241

Governor Ritter:

Please protect the concept of "innocent until proven guilty" and veto this Orwellian expansion of government power over innocent citizens.

Of course, law and order is very important, but so is the concept of privacy, the Fourth Amendment, and the problem of government abuse of information and power.

Please protect the citizens and veto this bill.

Thank you for your time.

Wrongfully jailed without recourse

In her Sunday Denver Post column, "Justice not on city's to-do list," Susan Greene lament's the City of Denver's incompetence.

She lists people wrongfully picked up and incarcerated on warrants by the Denver Police Department, including:

• A man 7 years younger and 90 pounds lighter than the one listed in the warrant;
  
• A man with the same name as the one listed in the warrant (it took EIGHT DAYS to release the wrongfully incarcereated man);
  
• A retired man locked up on a warrant for a "long-dead" man;
  
• A black man arrested on a warrant for a white man.
  

And there are people that think giving the police additional power is a good idea. The police can't handle the authority they currently have. I can only imagine what they'll be able to do once they start collecting innocent people's DNA. 

And it's not like we are talking about minor inconveniences being imposed on the public. We are talking about being wrongfully arrested and locked up. 

Somehow I don't think Patrick Henry would countenance that. We shouldn't either.

Black is black, even if you insist it is red.

Denver Post columnist Susan Greene whines about a recently built scrape-off "McMansion" in her neighborhood that is now empty and in foreclosure. The column is captioned "Big house not worth the buildup."

She says, "Some annoyed longtimers see the monolith as a monument to the housing bubble and unregulated banking system."

Unregulated banking system? It is amazing how well worshipers at the altar of the State, like Greene, have thoroughly adopted Orwellian thought. Regulated = unregulated in this make believe world.

Go to the searchable, online Code of Federal Regulations. Type "banking" into the query form. Read how "unregulated" the banking system is. Look at the dates of the regulations. They are not new. They existed before her McMansion was built.

To blithely call the banking system "unregulated" is either misinformed or dishonest. Neither helps the discourse.

Words have meanings. When those meanings are bastardized for political purposes, or just so a columnist can meet her weekly quota of drivel, meaningful discourse becomes impossible.

We need more government authority over our personal health care

According to Forbes.com, their is a debate going on about whether or not Medicare should pay for "virtual colonoscopies" or not.

Medicare and Medicaid's decision Tuesday not to pay for a less invasive colon
exam known as virtual colonoscopy has some experts applauding the move, while
others claiming it could cost patients' lives.

I'm just glad that the decision to have a virtual colonoscopy isn't being left in the hands of ignorant doctors and their stupid patients. As long as the decision is in the hands of bureaucrats, we can all rest easy.

Let's put these guys in charge of health care!

From Reason.com

She's got legs

Over two years, the city of New Orleans sent Mary Kieff some 226 parking tickets, with fines totaling nearly $20,000. Kieff insisted she hadn't violated any laws. Finally, after a local TV station got involved, the city admitted that she should not have gotten the tickets. Kieff has a "ZZ Top" personalized license plate, and the city uses ZZ as the code for vehicles without license plates. City workers were entering that code in the wrong place, and the result was that she was getting every ticket issued to a vehicle without a license plate.

The Immorality of the Greens

Denver Post columnist Susan Greene takes Colorado Governor Bill Ritter to task for not being "green" enough.

In her column today, "Tri-State's green paint just won't stick," she disagrees with Ritter's praise of Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, a rural co-op that she says "generates  a quarter of Colorado's power."

She takes Tri-State to task because "less than 1 percent" of the power generated by the company "comes from renewables" and "at least 72 percent of its base load, and counting, comes from coal."

Not once does Ms. Greene mention that "renewable" energy is far more costly to produce than coal based energy.  By ignoring the costs, she can ignore reality. The rest of us can not.

The reality is that "green" energy is going to make it too costly for some to heat their homes.

Higher energy costs hurt the poor more than they hurt the rich. The rich can just write a bigger check every month. The poor do not have that option.

Renewable energy has its benefits. But ignoring its costs is dishonest. 

Raising the prices of a basic need on the poorest among us - without even considering the impact on them - is callous and immoral.

Let's put these guys in charge of your health care!

The kind of planning and efficiency the government routinely provides was amply illustrated on the front page of Sunday's Denver Post in two separate articles.

States' red tape a sticking point in safety nets

WASHINGTON — As millions of people seek government aid, many for the first time, they are finding it dispensed American style: through a jumble of disconnected programs that reach some and reject others, often for reasons of geography or chance rather than differences in need.

Bridge plan goes nowhere

DURANGO — A three-lane bridge, envisioned as the centerpiece of a $54 million highway project, is sitting between a cow pasture and a mesa as the state struggles to get rights of way to connect it to actual roads.

You can not make this stuff up. 

The sad part is that the majority of people in this country want to give the government MORE authority. 

Let's put these guys in charge of your health care!

From the front page of today's Denver Post:

"Delays in food stamps tackled

A state computer system is still causing backlogs; a new vendor aims to unclog it."

It's official...

Get your own certificate at Reason.com

Roe v. Wade

Now that Barack Obama must make his first nominee to the United States Supreme Court, pundits will revisit Roe v. Wade. I am not sure why, since there can be no doubt Obama's nominee will agree with his predecessor, David Souter, that the decision should stand. But Obama will be asked about it. He already has.

According to this AP article published in the Denver Post:

As a candidate for the White House, [Obama] said he would not use a litmus test for nominees but observed that he thought the landmark 1973 Roe vs. Wade ruling that gave women the right to end their pregnancies was correctly decided.

Here is where wording is important. What does one mean by "correctly decided?"

If it means one agrees with the policy behind the decision, Obama spoke correctly. He clearly agrees with the policy behind the decision.

However, if it means that one agrees the decision is based on precedent and the language found in the Constitution, it makes no sense to say it was "correctly decided."

Harry Blackman, the author of the decision, created from whole cloth a "penumbra of rights" to justify the decision. Whether or not one believes there should be such a thing, it is not in the Constitution. To twist a document that specifically lists certain "enumerated powers" of the federal government and to expand government reach beyond those powers listed is fiction worthy of H.G. Wells.

As policy, the holding of Roe v. Wade is certainly open to reasonable debate. As a legal opinion, it is purely creative writing.

Whether or not one believes something is a good idea should be irrelevant to whether or not that thing is constitutional. Otherwise, there is no limit to what "good ideas" the Supreme Court can foist upon us.

David Souter's Replacement

From the AP:

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama pledged yesterday to name a Supreme Court justice who combines “empathy and understanding” amid "speculation the next justice could be a woman, a Hispanic or both."

Given those criteria, BlueCarp makes these helpful suggestions:

Joan Baez

Rosemary Casals

Rebecca Lobo

Salma Hayek

Any of these fine empathetic and understanding latina women would make a superb Supreme Court Justice.