Bring a Gun to School Day

I recently finished reading an advance copy of Bring a Gun to School Day, an outstanding debut novel (novella) from Darian Worden. I review it in this week’s edition of The Libertarian Enterprise:

Erik Shylding, like Holden Caulfield before him, is the perfect embodiment of the alienated male teen of his day. Of course, in Holden Caulfield’s day, a fascination with guns would have characterized him as a healthy, normal young man. Times have changed.

Erik Shylding likes guns a lot, which in itself would be enough to get him branded a weirdo by his teachers and peers. He also likes hardcore music and black clothing, has the wrong friends, and goes through his school days simmering with anger. In other words, he “resembles” a typical school shooter, such as the one who just committed the worst school shooting ever at the novel’s opening.

The faculty and students at Suburban Regional High School have pegged Erik as a ticking time bomb. In their infinite collectivist wisdom, they deal with this perceived threat through a combination of condescension, ostracism and police state tactics that could only make matters worse and would have seemed absurdly over-the-top a generation ago. Today they seem entirely believable, if no less outrageous.

Read the rest of my review here.

Bring a Gun to School Day goes on sale May 20, but you can place advance orders at Amazon.

Save the Last Lap Dance for Me

It looks like the end of the line for another cherished New York institution. If the thugs at the State Liquor Authority get their way, Scores adult entertainment club will soon go the way of CBGB and the automat.

Scores West already lost its liquor license last night, apparently, as the result of alleged backroom prostitution involving some of the dancers. (Hey, not everyone has the time to take a train to DC to hook up with prostitutes.) No prostitution is alleged at the original eastside Scores, but the same two managers’ names are on the liquor license at both locations. Once they lose their liquor license at one location, they become “prohibited persons” who are ineligible to hold any other liquor licenses.

I spent more than a few evenings at the original Scores in the early ’90s, until I grew tired of paying $10 for a bottle of Bud and having tits in my way when I’m trying to watch Monday Night Football. Still, it will be a sad day for New York City if and when Scores closes its doors for good. The Disneyfication of the Big Apple that began under Giuliani continues.

And whoever came up with with the lede “Thanks for the mammaries!” for the New York Post article deserves a Pulitzer Prize.

Ethanol Kills

We all know (because Al Gore put it in a slide show) that global warming might lead to starvation in third world countries in a hundred years or so. But anti-global warming policy is leading to starvation right now. The government-mandated demand for ethanol is driving up the cost of grain to catastrophic levels:

“The reality is that people are dying already,” said Jacques Diouf, of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). “Naturally people won’t be sitting dying of starvation, they will react,” he said.

The UN says it takes 232kg of corn to fill a 50-litre car tank with ethanol. That is enough to feed a child for a year. Last week, the UN predicted “massacres” unless the biofuel policy is halted.

Hat tip: Hit & Run

I Don’t Think We’re in Mayberry Anymore

The sheriff’s car sure has come a long way since the days of “The Andy Griffith Show.”

This was used in that massive raid/kidnapping of the folks with the unapproved religion in Texas last week.

Hat tip: Lew Rockwell

Yes, Virginia, There is an Income Tax

It’s that special day again. To quote Homer Simpson, “Look at all those morons! I paid my taxes over a year ago!”

Whether you’re paying your taxes today, paid them in January, or plan not to pay them at all, there are a few things we should all be clear on. Yes, taxation is theft. Yes, the income tax is too high. (Anything above 0% is too high in my book.) And yes, there really is a law requiring you to pay an income tax.

You’d think that wouldn’t be controversial, but “tax honesty” hucksters like Irwin Schiff and Larken Rose have confused a lot of libertarians and other freedom-loving Americans about the law or lack thereof. The late Aaron Russo’s documentary America: Freedom to Fascism only compounded the misinformation, but a lot of people I know accept it as the unvarnished truth.

For the real unvarnished truth, I recommend George Washington University Law School Professor Jonathan Siegel’s thorough debunking of the no-such-law myth.

There really is a tax law. Maybe you can avoid paying your taxes without getting caught — and more power to you! — but don’t be fooled into thinking there is no law requiring you to pay them.

Barr’s Road to Damascus Takes a Detour

I hate being wrong, but I’m starting to get the sense that my early enthusiasm for a potential Bob Barr presidential run may have been misplaced.

To be sure, Barr has had a whirlwind of MSM publicity, mostly favorable to the Libertarian Party, since he announced the formation of his Exploratory Committee last weekend. But Barr is coming up way short on delivering an actual libertarian message. The issues section of his campaign website is sparse, and what little is there is a mix of libertarian (non-interventionism and civil liberties) and anti-libertarian (”Fair Tax” and closed borders).

Since Barr is playing his cards so close to the vest, the libertarian blogosphere is vetting his recent public comments and writings to determine just what sort of candidate we can expect, should he win the nomination. Excerpts from some of his columns raise red flags.

First, just as year ago, long after Barr had joined the Libertarian National Committee and supposedly changed his mind about the drug war, he wrote the following about the U.S. policy towards Columbia:

Recognizing Colombia’s essential role in our country’s campaign against illicit trafficking in cocaine, the Bush administration and prior Congresses have responded to Mr. Uribe’s efforts by funding “Plan Colombia” to the tune over its seven-year lifespan of more than $5.0 billion. While critics interpret the fact that Colombian-processed cocaine stills arrives in our country as evidence Plan Colombia should be defunded or dramatically reduced, in reality this support for Colombia’s efforts will continue as an essential component of our anti-drug program. If Congress truly wants the plan work better, the solution would be not to dry up funding but to provide more flexibility for its implementation.

“An essential component of our anti-drug program”? For a former drug warrior, Barr sounds an awful lot like a current drug warrior.

Then just last week, the supposedly anti-interventionist Barr wrote the following about Columbia’s tensions with Venezuela:

While Washington’s current national security worldview remains focused like a laser beam on Iraq and Afghanistan, fires smolder and burn elsewhere. Shifting at least a portion of that concern and those resources to South America, and especially to the Andean region that currently is near the boiling point, is critical to our security. There may not be weapons of mass destruction lurking in the jungles of Venezuela, Colombia or Ecuador (there weren’t in Iraq either, of course), but arms are flowing into the area. Venezuela, for example, is buying billions of dollars worth of Russian military equipment. Leftist guerrillas and narco-terrorists remain firmly entrenched in the region, and evidence that other terrorist groups are using the area for problematic purposes is mounting.

So Barr understands the folly of our interventions when it comes to Iraq and Afghanistan, but he advocates “shifting at least a portion of that concern and those resources to South America.” We need “resources” (presumably military resources) in South America like a hole in the head.

Bob, you got a lot of splainin to do!

Showdown at the Statehouse Corral

We interrupt our coverage of New York and national politics to bring you this scene from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where Governor Deval Patrick wants to prosecute online poker players:

The video is from the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society, whose founder Dr.  Charles Nesson will be the guest speaker at the Manhattan Libertarian Party’s May 12th meeting.

Rosie Mendez: “The First Amendment is Our Permit”

I just noticed the April e-newsletter of my council member Rosie Mendez in my inbox. It reports that Mendez introduced an excellent piece of legislation that would override the parade permit rules adopted by the NYPD a year ago requiring any group of 50 or more to obtain a permit. Currently, anyone in such a group without a permit is subject to arrest. And she’s using some very familiar language:

“Groups wishing to assemble and stay within the limits of the law should not be required to obtain a permit; the First Amendment is our permit” stated Council Member Mendez.

Now where have I heard that before? Oh yeah, I said it in 2004. But that’s cool. Now if only Rosie could take that same attitude toward the Second Amendment and gun permits.

Flashback: Libertarians Vs. Bob Barr

Before he was “exploring” a Libertarian presidential candidacy, before he was on the Libertarian National Committee, before he was a lobbyist for the Marijuana Policy Project, Bob Barr was the biggest drug warrior in Congress. He was so bad on the drug war that the late, great Ron Crickenberger, political director of the national Libertarian Party, was inspired to create this 2002 anti-Barr ad starring medical marijuana patient Cheryl Miller.

Why do I dredge this up now? Hasn’t Barr sufficiently repented for his past sins? Well, yes and no. He’s certainly gotten a lot better on a lot of issues since leaving Congress. However, he also has a track record that isn’t easily dismissed. Ron Paul may be a Republican, but he also has an impeccably libertarian voting record in Congress. Barr doesn’t have that, and he needs to realize that he has to make an extra effort to prove he’s now on the side of angels.

I want to support Bob Barr. I started the online petition to encourage him to run. But I also expect Libertarian candidates — especially at the highest levels — to be clearly libertarian. If Barr wants the nomination, he has to earn it by coming out with some unequivocally libertarian campaign positions, particularly on those issues like the drug war where he erred so badly in the past.

Eric Sundwall Interviews Mike Gravel

Eric Sundwall from the capital region Libertarians has a fascinating interview with former Democratic Senator and current Libertarian presidential candidate Mike Gravel. I don’t think he’s a real libertarian, and I sure don’t agree with him on everything, but Gravel sure is a deep thinker and an interesting guy.