A Second Hand Conjecture

New Deal policies signed into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years.

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doesn’t look like it’s going to pass the House floor.
Update: It failed.

The vote was 207-226 against the measure, with one member not voting, half an hour after voting began. Voting remains open even though the “official” time has expired for casting a ballot.
There was broad bipartisan opposition to the measure, with 95 Democrats and 133 [...]

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China space mission article hits Web before launch
A news story describing a successful launch of China’s long-awaited space mission and including detailed dialogue between astronauts launched on the Internet Thursday, hours before the rocket had even left the ground.
The country’s official news agency Xinhua posted the article on its Web site Thursday, and remained there [...]

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Hey guys. I’m still here and everything is fine. Had a small leak in my ceiling but otherwise no damage. Got power and water back Sunday, but there are still 1.5 million without, including my mother and sisters. Gas is scarce and as soon as a station gets a shipment in there’s lines down the [...]

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Scroll down for the updates.
Well Hurricane Ike is heading my way. The center is projected to hit west of Houston, but a Freeport landfall would be the worst case for Houston, as it would entail a huge storm surge and we’d get the dreaded northeast quadrant of the Hurricane. I’ll be heading up to north [...]

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Todd Zywicki, of the Volokh Conspiracy, takes a look at libertarianism in the McCain/Palin ticket and notes a distinct western vibe to the first all-western ticket in our history. He had an interesting observation that I think captures a lot of our hesitation about McCain.
The only caveat to this is that McCain’s westernism is tempered [...]

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Looks like the big Fred Thompson news is the formation of FredPac. I thought he already had a pac though, so I guess it’s more of a change in mission statement moving forward.

Dear Friend,

The challenges America faces may appear overwhelming. But you and I both know that if we adhere to the founding [...]

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I tuned in for a little bit and here are some thoughts.

ABC, NBC and CBS showed it in SD, while CNN had it in HD. Dunno why.
ABC was behind. They had Thompson speaking while the other networks had Lieberman.
Thompson had a great speech. Had some great sarcastic rebuttles to Obama’s tax policy. Still wish he [...]

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From the Onion.
(1995–2007) Trying to control the faith, sexuality, reproduction, drug use, and national allegiance of every single American.
(2007–) Aw, F–k it.
H/T: Reason

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Just got this email from the Fred Thompson PAC.
Friends,
At this crucial moment in our nation’s history, it is vital that we adhere to the fundamental conservative principles that have unified us for over two centuries. On Monday, September 1, Senator Fred Thompson will announce a major new effort to ensure that these conservative principles [...]

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CNN and Foxnews are reporting. Pretty surprising to me, but a pleasant surprise.
Discussion topic: I am hearing from Obama supporters that she’s a bad pick because she’s inexperienced. Is this an actual argument Obama wants to make? Does this preclude McCain from attacking Obama’s inexpience? Does the fact that Palin has over 100 times more [...]

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Michael F. Cannon at Cato blogs about a NYTimes article on the rife fraud found and covered up at Medicare. A confidential draft of a federal inspector general’s report claimed that the behavior they found at the Medicare Administration was rife with irregularities.
Medicare reported to Congress that, for the fiscal year of 2006, AdvanceMed’s investigations [...]

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McQ find some general backing up of John McCain’s Vietnam cross story. Not to be outdone by Andrew Sullivan and Daily Kos, Matt Welch at Reason thinks the cross story is the least important story McCain might have made up.
If any of these stories is a lie, I hope it’s the ol’ cross-in-the-dirt number. I [...]

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L.A. Police have started cracking down on hotdog carts selling grilled bacon wrapped hotdogs. Confiscating all equipment and trashing all food on site. As always, nanny knows best.

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It’s certainly not unheard of, so was the recent Iranian rocket test really a success? The ever sourced “senior U.S. official” says the rocket wasn’t successful.
“The Iranians did not successfully launch the rocket,” a senior U.S. defense official told CNN Monday.
The two-stage rocket could have been capable of launching a satellite into space, but the [...]

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A small Texas School district approved a plan to allow teachers to carry concealed handguns on school grounds last October and will see its first school year open later this month with that plan in effect. As far as I know, and as anyone in the article knows this is the first experiment of its [...]

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Ryan Ellis, the Tax Policy Director at Americans for Tax Reform, presents 3 principles of conservative health care.
Principle 1: Conservative health care reform should neither raise taxes nor increase the size of government. You’d think this would be a no-brainer, but trust me that it isn’t.
Principle 2: Health insurance should have nothing to do [...]

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Arkansas Blog has the updates on this horrible tragedy.
Arkansas State Democratic Party Chair Bill Gwatney was shot and critically wounded at State Democratic Party Headquarters on Capitol Avenue about 11:50 a.m. today, witnesses at the scene said. Police were not releasing the victim’s identity, but it was supplied by several people on the scene.
A suspected [...]

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Now that Lance is back with a vengeance I’m almost motivated to not be such a deadbeat. So here’s a neat little story I found. It’s apparently been a long tough few months of 3-4 day work weeks for Congress so they’re taking their August vacation. This is convenient for Pelosi and the Dems because [...]

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Libertarian Party candidate Bob Barr is doing very well in the latest Zogby poll Eric Dondero at Libertarian Republican informs us. The poll has Barr at 6% in Texas and Florida and a pretty impressive 10% in New Hampshire.
State: Texas
Summary:
McCain - 42%
Obama - 39%
Barr - 6%
Nader -2%
Someone else - 4%
Undecided - 7%
Over 3,200 were surveyed [...]

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for each party? Well surprisingly enough, the ideal candidates for Obama and McCain are… Colin Powell. This is the result of a survey which was powered by an Affinnova algorithm it calls “evolutionary optimization”.
Powell seems to occupy a special place in bipartisan politics. Respected by the right for his service and involvement in the Iraqi [...]

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Damon Root at Reason takes a look at what’s happened in the three years since Kelo v. City of New London. By now, even non-cynical people can’t be surprised.
So what’s the status of the “comprehensive” and “revitalized” development site today? Here’s the Institute for Justice, the libertarian public interest firm that litigated the case:
Like so [...]

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It seems a chiropractor in Canada was manipulating a patient’s neck and paralyzed her. Luckily she isn’t dead from a stroke.
Sandy had been going to Stiles regularly for more than seven years, receiving adjustments to her back and neck that she believed helped maintained her health. Minutes after a routine chiropractic visit that included a [...]

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David Weigel at Reason gives all of us another reason to say, “No”. David looks at the reports coming out in the past few days about the alleged tape of Michelle Obama going off on a racist rant and finds lots of conflicts. Among which:
Johnson, on June 2:
It features Michelle Obama and Louis Farrakhan. They [...]

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Libertarian Party candidate Bob Barr appeared on the Colbert Report last night. Check out the video after the jump. Some commentary from the American Spectator here.

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This has to be seen by all judicial and college football fans. I’m not sure what the original complaint was, but the opinion is great. Pay special attention to the footnotes to learn that it is the official opinion of the U.S. Judicial system that the “Game of the Century” for this century is the [...]

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Reading through our spam comment queue is like listening to Feel Good Hit of the Summer.

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This post + this post = This.

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From Congress and the unintended consequences of their actions. Bruce over at QandO has a post discussing an excellent piece by Walter Williams.
Most of the great problems we face are caused by politicians creating solutions to problems they created in the first place. Politicians and much of the public lose sight of the unavoidable fact [...]

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If any of you were wondering how BBQ is done down in Texas, check out this Brisket Pictorial that will no doubt leave you craving some good Q. Here’s what we start with,

He messes up the cabbage a little, but it still came out alright. Finished product after the jump.

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Ralph Hardy, a 13 year old from Newark, Texas confessed to ordering an extra credit card from his father’s existing credit card company, and took his friends on a $30,000 spending spree, culminating in playing “Halo” on an Xbox with a couple of hookers in a Texas motel.
One of the best parts of this story,? [...]

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Some political chaos going on in the Nevada Republican Convention. Ron Paul supporters amassed at the convention in hopes of taking it over and electing their own people as delegates.
Outmaneuvered by raucous Ron Paul supporters, Nevada Republican Party leaders abruptly shut down their state convention and now must resume the event to complete a list [...]

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Reading Instapundit I came across this story from BBC about a man who’s used a special powder of pig bladder cells to regrow the tip of his finger that he’d chopped off. I share the professor’s futurist view and optimism, but I’m not so sure that it’s warranted in this case.
You see, it’s not that [...]

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Following up on Jon’s post a few weeks ago on the group dancing at the Jefferson memorial, we have some more information. A group of friends and other people at the incident have set up a web page. Free the Jefferson 1. The girl was arrested at the incident for “interfering with an agency function,” [...]

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I’m sure by now most of you have heard of Tony Zirkle, the Indiana lawyer running for Congress (as a third candidate) who attended a Nazi party in Chicago. However, I found his campaign site and joy of joys, it turns out he has a message board! You’ll absolutely love his excuse for going the [...]

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German “Gary” Talis of the 9/11 “Truth” organization “We Are Change” beat up a wheel chair bound girl with cerebral palsy yesterday. His compatriots also got into an argument with Secret Service after trying to verbally assault Laura and Jenna Bush at an event for their children’s book “Read All About It.”.
The assailant and his [...]

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No, not that. We’re talking Weed Beer. I’m talking about a beer made in the city of Weed, California. A local brewer there has named his beer after the small town. The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms however, wasn’t too pleased with their slogan on their bottle cap, “Try Legal Weed”.
Bureau spokesman Art Resnick [...]

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9/11 Conspiracy Theories ‘Ridiculous’ al Qaeda says - The Onion April 2nd
Al-Qaeda accuses Iran of 9/11 lie - BBC April 22nd

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Riad Hamad was found with in the lake with duct tape on his face and his hands and feet tied.
Hamad ran the Palestine Children’s Welfare Fund (PCWF). He sued a number of people and entities like David Horowitz, NGO Monitor and others, for defamation, lost big and had to pay court costs. The case was [...]

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Many of you may have seen the Absolut Vodka ad that ran in a Mexican magazine recently in links around the blogosphere. Now the mocking has begun as well. I submit this more historically accurate version of their ad.

While California, Arizona, New Mexico and the rest of the green land may have been [...]

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Pirates Take French Cruise Ship and Gobal Temperatures to ‘Decrease’
It seems we have more correlation between pirates and global warming now. It may be time to update this graph with a downward and backward turn.

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Man they had some great skits on that show. I miss it.

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So Dallas Mavericks owner close the locker room to bloggers earlier this month. He says it was because they didn’t have enough time for everyone though some think it was because he didn’t like what The Dallas Morning News’ Tim MacMahon wrote about coach Avery Johnson. This, however, is against NBA policy so they ordered [...]

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This was sent to me by a guy I know. He’s still a little creeped out and doesn’t want to revel any personal info. I’ll quote what he sent me here. (emphasis and censoring mine)
As some of you may know, I am a law student. Recently, I had applied to an interview for a temporary [...]

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If this blog is about one thing, it’s fisking Glenn Greenwald, and a libertarian examination of the world. Two things, if this blog is about two things, it’s fisking Glenn Greenwald, and a libertarian examination of the world, and a healthy open place to debate issues of the day. Three things, if this blog [...]

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The Cuban government has lifted the ban on computers, dvd players, television sets, which were already on sale, electric pressure cookers and rice cookers, electric bicycles, car alarms and microwave ovens. It seems the move was allowed because of improving electricity generation. Surprising that the power structure could be so poor and weak that it [...]

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McQ alerts us to this developing story in South America.
Colombia, apparently, struck at a narco-terrorist camp inside Ecuador after tracking FARC spokesman Paul Reyes and other leaders there. Reyes and 16 other terrorists were killed.
Chavez reacted by sending troops to the Venezuela/Colombia border:
Now you might ask why Chavez would involve himself in this conflict that [...]

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Here’s a neat little test shinobi showed me in the QandO chat today. It’s supposed to try to measure your subconscious preferences and compare them to your stated preferences. I can see how this would be an interesting thing to study with the reports of exit polls, other polls and caucuses showing more support [...]

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In the interest of sparking another weekend long 30 reply post, I present this Washington Post article by freelance writer Ann Marlowe who was embedded with the US forces twice in 2007.
To spoil the surprise,
The first is that Hamid Karzai is a good president who looks after American interests. The second is that the situation [...]

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Well, kinda. After the whole row over the Archbishop of Canterbury’s declaration that Sharia Law in Britain is “unavoidable“, Eugene Volokh notes that it has been allowed in some US court, in a way. It seems some parties entered into a contract that provided for arbitration based off of rules of sharia law, and the [...]

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