Virginia Libertarian

NYC Sues Virginia Gun Shops Again

“We’re very particular,” he said. “If it’s more than one person that comes in the store, we pay close attention to what they’re doing. If we have the slightest feeling that they’re buying the gun for another person, federal law says we stop the sale.”

Ok, I really don’t see why this is the job of the gun shop owners.  They are conducting legitimate businesses.  If some idiot wants to make a gun purchase for someone that is not allowed to have a gun, then we need to be targeting those people, not the person selling the gun.  It is not their responsibility to determine what the person is going to do with the gun.  Are we going to hold them accountable if someone who “looks seedy” but has no criminal record kills someone?  This is just a stupid law.

The News Leader - www.newsleader.com - Staunton, Va.

A release from Goodlatte’s office said many viewers have been “innocent bystanders in a dispute between EchoStar (Dish Network’s parent company) and broadcasters.”Alise Kowalski, a spokeswoman for Goodlatte, said she could not predict the progress of the bill, particularly this close to the Congressional holiday recess.

The bill, HR 6384, is designed to streamline negotiations between EchoStar and ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox.

A federal court ruling in Florida halted Dish Network’s blanket offering of distant networks, citing widespread abuse of copyright laws.

Someone please explain to me why, why, why government feels the need to get involved with this?  This needs to be resolved in the courts between EchoStar and whatever network.  If they can’t resolve their issues, that’s not governments problem.  If they have enough customers complain about it, they will do something about it.  If they don’t guess what, tough luck.  If you really have to have local stations, set something up yourself, or move.  This is not other peoples problem, nor is it governments problem.  You are not entitled to TV access.

boortz.com: Nealz Nuze Today’s Nuze

It took the United States four years to bring Japan to the surrender table. Though there was dissention in the country during WWII, there was never a lack of resolve. There were questions as to whether or not intelligence failures had contributed to the Japanese success, but never any questions as to whether or not we should fight until victory was achieved. I’m not aware of anyone demanding that we negotiate with Japan and Germany to find a way out. Nobody was screaming for an “exit strategy” We didn’t have TV anchors doing their daily tally of civilian casualties. To the contrary, during WWII news sources were eager to report American successes. Not so today.Oh .. one more thing. Back then we knew that in the Pacific theatre we knew that it was a war against the Japanese. It wasn’t a “War on Sneak Attacks.”

Today we persist on calling our fight against Islamic fascism a “War on Terror.” It is not. Terror is a tactic. You don’t declare war on tactics. You declare war on the people who are using the tactics against you. This is not a war on terror. It is a war against Islamic fascism. How the hell do you fight a war when you aren’t even willing to define just who it is you are fighting? Are we that gobbled up with political correctness that we are afraid to identify our most deadly international enemy? They attack us on our own soil and we’re afraid to name them and speak of our intent to crush them? We only speak of the tactic they used?

Get with the program, my friends. Its a war on Islamic fascism, not a war on terror. Identify the enemy and just maybe we’ll have some chance of defeating him.

I try to keep international politics out of my blogging, otherwise blogging would be all that I do, but this seemed particularly relevant today.  Boortz is never one to sugar coat anything, and I think we need more of that, as long as what’s being said is the truth.

Democrats & Liberals:: Heckling Pelosi

Crowley tells us that Democrats with different points of view have been elected. So what? Regardless of what their specific views on specific issues are, they are all to the left of the Republicans still in power. This gives Pelosi a great tool for unification of the party. Some Democrats may digress occasionally from the party line, but it will be to their advantage to not do it often.

And here is one of the major problems with the 2 party system, members are expected to be loyal to their party over their loyalty to their constituents.  If there were, say, 10 parties, it would be easy for someone to stay loyal to something other than their party, as they could just find another party if their own started doing something stupid.

Taco Bell to Ditch Trans Fats

Nov. 16, 2006 — Taco Bell today announced that it will start using a new canola oil for frying that contains no trans fats.Trans fats have been linked to an increased risk of heart diseaseheart disease.

Taco Bell restaurants will start frying with canola oil containing zero grams of trans fats — instead of partially hydrogenated soybean oil — in all of its U.S. restaurants by April 2007.

In a news release, Taco Bell says it began the transition more than two years ago “with extensive consumer taste tests to preserve Taco Bell’s signature flavors.”

This is how the restaurant industry should be making the switch from trans-fat products.  Not like this:

The New York City Board of Health voted unanimously yesterday to move forward with plans to prohibit the city’s 20,000 restaurants from serving food that contains more than a minute amount of artificial trans fats, the chemically modified ingredients considered by doctors and nutritionists to increase the risk of heart disease.

The board, which is authorized to adopt the plan without the consent of any other agency, did not take that step yesterday, but it set in motion a period for written public comments, leading up a public hearing on Oct. 30 and a final vote in December.

Do we see the difference here?  And you can also bet that Taco Bell doing it voluntarily will cost everyone a lot less money, and it will be done faster.  If people don’t want to eat trans-fat produced foods, then the industry will shift away from that on its own, because it will have to.  If people don’t care, then the industry really doesn’t need to shift, and we don’t need the nanny state telling us what we can eat, any more than we need it to tell us where we can smoke.  Now, I’m not a smoker, but I can freely choose to go somewhere that doesn’t allow it, and freely choose not to go somewhere that does.  With these kinds of laws, those freedoms have been taken away.  With each passage of these kinds of laws, we move a little more toward a totalitarian government that, instead of telling us what we can’t do, instead now tells us what we are allowed to do.