Let Them Eat Regulations

A thought about food freedom.  You want government out of the bedroom and boardroom?  How about out of the kitchen too?

Libertarians In Spaaaaaaaaaaaace

First they came for the piano teachers, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a piano teacher

OH, FOR PETE'S SAKE.  Doesn't this profoundly unserious government have anything better to do than harass piano teachers?

Quote of the Day: On the Shutdown Frenzy

Depressing thought:

The current crisis is only peripherally about health care exchanges and spending resolutions and vitriol spewed by the political and journalistic fraternities. The current crisis, at its heart, is about greed and the human lust for authority over other humans.

Quote of the Day: Government PR

Here's a thought: 

It is a great irony, and history will marvel at it, that the president most committed to expanding the centrality, power, prerogatives and controls of the federal government is also the president who, through lack of care, arrogance, and an absence of any sense of prudential political boundaries, has done the most in our time to damage trust in government.

Well, it's definitely change.  

The Department of Education Fails Voltaire 101

Geez, I hate the DOE.  How many times do I have to say it?  YOU DON'T GIVE UP YOUR FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS WHEN YOU STEP ONTO CAMPUS.  Campus speech codes are evil, and this latest version even more evil than before.  Let the lawsuits begin!  

Quote of the Day: A Doctor's Perspective

Oh, dear:

I am a general surgeon with more than three decades in private clinical practice. And I am fed up. Since the late 1970s, I have witnessed remarkable technological revolutions in medicine, from CT scans to robot-assisted surgery. But I have also watched as medicine slowly evolved into the domain of technicians, bookkeepers, and clerks.  

Government interventions over the past four decades have yielded a cascade of perverse incentives, bureaucratic diktats, and economic pressures that together are forcing doctors to sacrifice their independent professional medical judgment, and their integrity. The consequence is clear: Many doctors from my generation are exiting the field. Others are seeing their private practices threatened with bankruptcy, or are giving up their autonomy for the life of a shift-working hospital employee. Governments and hospital administrators hold all the power, while doctors—and worse still, patients—hold none.

You may recall this other doctor's lament.

"Secretary of Business" as Symptomatic

I've already mocked this, but Ricochet points out that the President's whole risible (and clueless) "Secretary of Business" suggestion is actually (and grimly) symptomatic of Obama's entire approach to business:

This is really how President Obama sees the private sector. It’s just one more interest group in need of care and feeding by Big Government. And since we already have a Commerce Department, let’s just rebrand that sucker and subject it to a little technocratic tinkering. Given this administration’s love of industrial policy — picking winners and losers — Obama might as call the position Secretary of Crony Capitalists.

Do recall, gentle readers, that crony capitalism is not the same thing as actual capitalism.

UPDATE: Well, that took no time at all.  Add this.

Teehee - a "Secretary of Business"!

OK, I didn't immediately heap scorn on this because I've been busyyyyyyy, and now I find that I don't have to, because the Wall Street Journal has done it for me.  You know, maybe this is related to that stupid (not to mention vulgar) Lena Dunham campaign video.  Why do I say this?  I give you, for your listening pleasure, New Zealand's hilarious Flight of the Conchords:

On "Belonging to the Government"

I DON'T THINK SO, PAL, EVEN IF THE DNC DOES.  The government works for us; we do not work for it, much less "belong" to it as if we were chattel.  I don't know about you, but I found that video from the DNC to be a repulsive, nauseating insult to the very idea of being a free, self-reliant citizen.  UPDATE:  This is related.

The Best Analogy for Encroaching Government?

Is it an amoeba?  I'd say it's more like The Blob, actually.

Internet Freedom and "Error 451"

"Error 451: the government has censored this content."

Quotes of the Day: Nanny Tyranny

From G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis.

The HHS Mandate, the Catholic Lawsuit, and "We're All Catholics Now"

Here are a few more thoughts about the massive slate of 12 lawsuits filed yesterday by 43 Catholic institutions including the University of Notre Dame. Blurbs:

Nerd News: University of Notre Dame Joins Catholic Lawsuit Against HHS Mandate

Here is some context.  Here is Notre Dame's legal complaint.  Here is a statement from the university president, Fr. John Jenkins:

Let me say very clearly what this lawsuit is not about:  it is not about preventing women from having access to contraception, nor even about preventing the Government from providing such services.  Many of our faculty, staff and students — both Catholic and non-Catholic — have made conscientious decisions to use contraceptives.  As we assert the right to follow our conscience, we respect their right to follow theirs.  And we believe that, if the Government wishes to provide such services, means are available that do not compel religious organizations to serve as its agents.  We do not seek to impose our religious beliefs on others; we simply ask that the Government not impose its values on the University when those values conflict with our religious teachings. We have engaged in conversations to find a resolution that respects the consciences of all and we will continue to do so. 

This filing is about the freedom of a religious organization to live its mission, and its significance goes well beyond any debate about contraceptives.  For if we concede that the Government can decide which religious organizations are sufficiently religious to be awarded the freedom to follow the principles that define their mission, then we have begun to walk down a path that ultimately leads to the undermining of those institutions.  For if one Presidential Administration can override our religious purpose and use religious organizations to advance policies that undercut our values, then surely another Administration will do the same for another very different set of policies, each time invoking some concept of popular will or the public good, with the result these religious organizations become mere tools for the exercise of government power, morally subservient to the state, and not free from its infringements.  If that happens, it will be the end of genuinely religious organizations in all but name.

Quote of the Day: A Law Prof Ponders the Megaupload Prosecution

The whole analysis is worth a look, but here's the notable quotable bit:

"The resulting prosecution is a depressing display of abuse of government authority."

The government overreaches.  Shocker!   In other news, water is wet, night is dark, fire is hot, and ice is cold.  Bonus quote: "The government has also been shockingly cavalier about the collateral consequences of its prosecution on the marketplace." 

Nerd News: 2 More Depressing Looks at Higher Ed

One and two.

The Imperial Presidency, Updated

*Sigh.*  I found this bit of the article interesting (my emphasis in bold)

William G. Howell, a University of Chicago political science professor and author of “Power Without Persuasion: The Politics of Direct Presidential Action,” said Mr. Obama’s use of executive power to advance domestic policies that could not pass Congress was not new historically. Still, he said, because of Mr. Obama’s past as a critic of executive unilateralism, his transformation is remarkable.

Heh.  YOU DON'T SAY!  

Let's Add $340 Billion to the Already Ludicrous Deficit

That's just great.

Quote of the Day: Alexis de Tocqueville on Big Nanny Tyranny

This thought about the ultimately tyrannical power of a massive nanny state is more applicable than ever.  It seeks to turn confident, self-reliant individual citizens into meek dependents.  Just Say No!

That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident and mild.  It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing.  For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?