Paul M. Jones

The last holdout on allowing the public possession of concealed guns, Illinois joined the rest of the nation Tuesday as lawmakers raced to beat a federal court deadline in adopting a carry law over Gov. Pat Quinn's objections.

Massive majorities in the House and Senate voted to override changes the Democratic governor made just a week ago in an amendatory veto.

Some lawmakers feared failure to pass something would mean virtually unregulated weapons in Chicago, which has endured severe gun violence in recent months -- including more than 70 shootings, at least 12 of them fatal, during the Independence Day weekend.

"This is a historic, significant day for law-abiding gun owners," said Rep. Brandon Phelps, a southern Illinois Democrat who, in 10 years in the House, has continued work on concealed carry begun by his uncle, ex-Rep. David Phelps, who began serving in the mid-1980s. "They finally get to exercise their Second Amendment rights."

via Illinois enacts nation's final concealed-gun law.

A woman who made a string of false rape allegations against five men in eight years was behind bars last night.

Leanne Black, 32, repeatedly cried rape with bogus sex assault reports to police after rowing or breaking up with her former partners.

In one case, Black claimed she had been drugged and raped. In another she told police a boyfriend kidnapped and molested her.

A court heard that her innocent partners would have faced up to five years in jail if they had been found guilty of such serious sexual allegations.

However, Black was herself jailed for two years, with a judge condemning her actions, telling her that genuine rape victims would be undermined by her lies.

Bringing a false charge of rape should carry the same penalty as if the accused had been convicted of rape. Via Leanne Black is finally jailed after FIVE false rape allegations against her ex-boyfriends in eight years | Mail Online.

I am not a legal scholar, so I need someone to explain it to me. In what sense do we live under the rule of law if the Congress can pass a bill, the president can sign it, and then the president can unilaterally announce that it is not going to be implemented as planned? Telling me that this kind of discretionary power is routinely exercised by the executive branch is not an answer. In what sense is legislation that permits such discretion the “rule of law”? Isn’t the essence of the rule of law that ordinary citizens can know what the rules are? Can be confident that the rules are not guidelines but, you know, The Law?

We live in a country where the law has not only become unintelligible, written in thousand-page chunks, but has morphed into a giant mass of silly putty that can be reshaped as our rulers find convenient.

via The Obamacare employer mandate delay is another symptom of our crumbling ‘rule of law’ | AEIdeas.

Consider the problem of polio, a disease that killed tens of thousands and ruined the lives of millions around the world in the 1930s through 1950s. One solution was to try to ease the suffering of polio victims, developing better iron lungs and systems of braces, wheelchairs, and prosthetics to make it possible that they could live some kind of life. This industry was enormous, and highly profitable.

The other solution was to develop a vaccine, the one that Dr. Jonas Salk finally perfected in 1952, and which showed itself to be effective within a decade. By the late 1960s, polio had been reduced sharply in the United States. Now, it is almost unknown here and in most of the rest of the world. Of course, the makers of braces, crutches, and iron lungs took a beating, because no one needed their products anymore. But the total costs to society were dramatically reduced, even accounting for the “loss” to the equipment manufacturers.

When it comes to waste management, we are at the stage of manufacturing braces and iron lungs.

via Recycling Is a Red Herring | Cato Unbound.

... when countries like Russia and Iran say the US is simply too untrustworthy to manage the Internet, no one will be able to argue.

We can't fight for Internet freedom around the world, then turn around and destroy it back home. Even if we don't see the contradiction, the rest of the world does.

via Schneier on Security: Blowback from the NSA Surveillance.

A bureaucracy is bad. A politicized bureaucracy is worse. A paramilitary politicized bureaucracy is nuts. And, in fact, evil. There is no reason in a civilized society why the Deputy Assistant Commissioner of Paperwork should have his own SEAL Team Six.

The police state is not "coming" -- it's *here*. Abolish the IRS and replace it with the Fair Tax. Via When Your W-2 Meets an AR-15 | National Review Online.

Repeat after me: Government is power. Government is not to be trusted. Ever. Even if you believe that some government is and will always be necessary, that ‘necessary’ piece of government should always be regarded as a prudent lion tamer regards the big carnivorous cats that are ‘necessary’ for him to make a living. To imagine that seemingly subdued purring lions can be trusted to be dealt with in any ways that do not include the use of strong cages, leashes, ceaseless and deep suspicion, and escape hatches is the height of romantic absurdity – wishful thinking of the most extreme and inexcusable sort. Government is by its very nature a dangerous, untrustworthy, dishonest, arrogant, slippery entity – characteristics that are by no means reduced anywhere near to insignificance by a wide franchise, regular elections, and sturdy ink-on-parchment documents called “constitutions.”

Unless you are a high-ranking government official, government - no government – is ever “Us.” It is always “Them.” And They are not to be trusted. Ever.

via Some Snowden Links.

The way things are supposed to work is that we're supposed to know virtually everything about what they do: that's why they're called public servants. They're supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that's why we're called private individuals.

This dynamic - the hallmark of a healthy and free society - has been radically reversed. Now, they know everything about what we do, and are constantly building systems to know more. Meanwhile, we know less and less about what they do, as they build walls of secrecy behind which they function. That's the imbalance that needs to come to an end. No democracy can be healthy and functional if the most consequential acts of those who wield political power are completely unknown to those to whom they are supposed to be accountable.

(Emphasis in original.) Via On whistleblowers and government threats of investigation | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.

With Facebook, Twitter, Apple, and various "cloud" services, the strength is in the efficiencies of scale. The weakness is that they are centralized; if government wishes to spy, they need only deal with a small number of large corporate entities to do so. If these services were distributed, efficiencies would drop, but the effort needed to spy would rise.

"I’m a born free American woman, wife, mother and citizen. And I’m telling my government that you’ve forgotten your place. It’s not your responsibility to look out for my well-being, and to monitor my speech. It’s not your right to assert an agenda. Your post, the post that you occupy, exists to preserve American liberty. You’ve sworn to perform that duty. And you have faltered."

Via Althouse. Go to the link for video; the quoted part begins at 2:45. This is not a Your Team vs My Team issue; this is a Government vs Citizens issue; or, if you like, a Tyranny vs Liberty issue.