The Interocitor

Appeals Court Disses Microsoft Critics

The US Circuit Court for DC today enthusiastically approved the Microsoft settlement, 6-0, stating that it was not only in the public interest, but that the arguments against it were without merit.

In exuberant language, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia applauded provisions of the complex settlement that permit computer makers to hide Microsoft's built-in Web browser software so that consumers can more seamlessly use software from Microsoft's rivals.

"We say, Well done!'" the court wrote.

The appeals court said an alternate settlement proposal from Massachusetts to require Microsoft to remove parts of its software from the dominant Windows operating system could hurt consumers by leading to a confusing world with different versions of Windows.

The court also rebuffed a plan by Massachusetts to require Microsoft to reveal the secret blueprints for its Web browser, saying such a move might help the company's rivals but not help competition flourish.

The court did permit two anti-Microsoft trade organizations in Washington, the Computer and Communications Industry Association and the Software and Information Industry Association, to seek tougher sanctions against Microsoft.

But the appeals judges predicted their efforts would lead nowhere, saying the groups' arguments have "no merit," and noting that the lower courts have already considered and rejected many of those arguments.

Now the ball is in the European courts. One has to wonder if the Europeans will allow rulings of "international courts" to guide their own decisions.

Political fun in Canada

Canada had their Parliamentary election yesterday. The ruling Liberals had not been expected to maintain their absolute majority (and didn't), but had hoped to hold enough seats to have a majority with their expected coalition partners, the socialist New Democratic Party (think UK Old Labor).

Parliament has 308 seats. The Liberals won 135 seats and the NDP 19, for a total of 154 seats or exactly half. Problem is they need one more vote. The refounded Conservative Party won 100 seats (counting a Conservative who ran as an independent), and the Bloc Quebecois (BQ) won the other 54.

Now, the BQ and Libs are not that far apart on most policy -- except that they are the two competing parties in Quebec, so they can't easily join in coalition. The Conservatives stand alone on the right. Looks like the government will be very much day-to-day up there. Considering how much the Libs & NDP played bash-America over the last few years, it couldn't happen to nicer guys.

UPDATE: I note that the Libertarian Party of Canada came in dead last with 1,964 votes out of about 14 million cast. They trailed such parties as the Communist Party and the Marxist-Leninist Party. The Marijuana Party got nearly 20 times as many votes. Election totals here.

Bias? What Bias??

AP Headline: Court Denounces Bush on Terror Suspects

Reading that, you'd expect an opinion written by Justice Michael Moore. Luckily, neither he nor the AP reporter who wrote this story are on the Court.

Digital Brownshirts or Phantom Menace?

Preparing to battle Darth Gore

Gore's "Green Shirts"

Al Gore, with his talk yesterday of "brown shirts" seems, as usual, stuck in the metaphors of the past. The Nazi brown shirts to which he alludes ran the streets of Germany, breaking heads and trashing stores, in order to intimidate Hitler's oppostion. A far cry from those that fisk stupid socialist ex-VPs.

While I don't see any such head-breaking behavior on the Right, I do see it on the Left, particularly from Gore's core support groups on the environmentalist Left, such as these folks at the Seattle WTO riot.

Perhaps we should be calling Gore's environmental shock troops "Green Shirts".

My Problem with the Libertarian Party

Or, why many of us are still politically homeless:



Still looking for the big-tent party of freedom.

"Digital Brown Shirts" ???

Al Gore today:

In an hour-long address punctuated by polite laughter and applause, Gore also accused the Bush administration of working closely "with a network of 'rapid response' digital Brown Shirts who work to pressure reporters and their editors for 'undermining support for our troops."'

I think he means us. It's sad that the Inventor of the Internet suffers so from his own creation.

By the way, why does Gore favor undermining support for our troops?

UPDATE: Wizbang! has more

McCain-Feingold vs Free Speech

I don't much care for Michael Moore (OK, I despise Michael Moore), but his films are the epitome of the right to free speech. Only in America would such an attack on the Head of State be not only allowed, but encouraged, as part of the political dialogue required in a self-governing society. To deny his right to criticize the President, as repugnant as his message might be, would be the first step down the road to tyrrany.

OK, the second step. The first step was the execrable McCain-Feingold law which is now being used to ban all ads for Fahrenheit 911 after July 30, and possibly ban the film itself between then and the November election. It talks about politics, you see, and must be banned to protect the integrity of elections, such as the cliffhanger at the Republican National Convention. "Money is not speech!" says the Court.

Having decided that the right to bear arms is a collective right, we are on the edge of deciding that political speech is also a collective right. So long as "both sides" are given an even footing, other speakers may be barred. It is perhaps poetic justice that the first of many such travesties is visited upon this Democrat darling.

Irony is also a dish best served cold. Too bad it's on the menu, though.

Space Ship One Photos

Here's a portion of the crowd. The hanger behind them is what passes for a vehicle assembly building. Unlike NASA's, it doesn't move, but the doors do open and close.

The assembled vehicle rolling down to the takeoff point. The sun is directly across the runway. Sorry.

The vehicle on its takeoff roll.

Early in the climb. It took an hour to get to the separation point of 50,000 feet. Unfortunately, the separation point was too close to the sun from our vantage point to get a usable picture.

SpaceShipOne just before touchdown. Note one of the chase planes following it down. The other plane sheared off and landed later.

Viewing Space Ship One Launch

Back home after watching Scaled Composites' first attempt at the 100km milestone. I've been up since 2AM on 3 hours sleep, so please bear with any typos. Here's what it was like:

My wife and I set out Sunday afternoon, and got to our motel room in Tehachapi (20 miles northwest of Mojave on CA-58) about 5PM. We'd booked the room 3 weeks ago, and good thing. As we checked in, we found that the clerk had no idea why her motel was completely booked on a Sunday night (never mind the local paper's extensive Sunday coverage). Even after we told her, she didn't get it. Oh well. We ate, walked around a bit, read and got to bed about 10PM.

At 2AM the alarm went off and it all seemed like such a bad idea. But we got going (along with a surprising number of other guests) about 2:40. Now, there's two ways into the Airport, and we came in from the north, which allowed us a right turn in. There was no police traffic control, and the folks coming up from the south had no light or stop sign for their left turn. I was certainly willing to take my turn, but some clown was parked at the head of the other line and afraid to turn until all clear. Like that was going to happen. Oh well. Once into the airport the Civil Air Patrol had things well in hand and our entry money was taken and we parked inside of 10 minutes.

The viewing setup was done well -- the airport folks were well prepared. None of the usual volunteer confusion that you'd normally expect. Even the concessions and hucksters were well organized. There were even enough porta-potties.

As we walked to the viewing area, we noticed that everyone had the one thing we forgot -- chairs. So I hiked back to the car and dumped the contents of our Igloo coooler and dragged that over to our spot. Made a cozy chair for 2 and later proved to be better still -- you can't stand on a canvas chair.

So now it's about 4AM and we've got 2 1/2 hours to kill. So we all sat and talked. One guy next to me flew down from San Jose to Bakersfield by private plane (couldn't land at Mojave unless Scaled said OK). He had an aviation radio, so we got to hear much of the later flight conversation, although a lot of it was jargon or clipped. By the time the White Knight assembly came out, there were maybe 20,000 people there.

At which point the most amazing collection of video electronics appeared, all pointed at the aircraft. I hope that my photos (later) have more plane than back of head and raised camcorder. Or ground or sky. We were near the start end of the runway (VIPs were at the take-off end), but Rachael and I had a good view (especially after we discovered the extra feature of an Igloo cooler). Way cool as the plane-and-rocket assembly climbed slowly into the dawn light.

Now, more waiting as the plane circles the field climbing slowly to 50,000 feet. Took the expected hour. The sky was clear enough that one could see it all the way up with good eyes or binoculars (at 50, I used binoculars), but every now and then haze would obscure it, or everyone nearby would look away at the same time and we'd have to go find the white dot in the light blue sky again. Much fun.

As the appointed hour approached, White Knight/SpaceShipOne was crossing right-to-left under the sun. Right as it reached a point 10 degrees below the sun, our neighbor's aviation radio announced "go for separation." In the next minute SpaceShipOne went from 10 degrees below to about 40 degrees above the sun, neatly bisecting the disk from our angle with a strong contrail. After 75 seconds we heard that the engine had shut down, but it was still climbing. It was unclear what elevation it reached -- it seems that the engine cut off at 220,000 Ft, but it was going pretty fast by that point. Once the contrail ended, the ship was lost to sight.

Then began the game of trying to find it again. We could hear the pilot as he reported attitude and G load (at one point the pilot reported a momentary 8Gs), but no SpaceShipOne. The search was complicated by the larger (and much lower) White Knight and three chase planes, including the really neat StarShip dual pusher turboprop Rutan canard. Nothing but false claims for a while, then BOOM, and a little speck became visible, followed shortly by a vapor trail as it went through some haze. Then in and out of haze, and a bit jumpy, as it decended in a big big hurry.

There was an interesting dance as the chase planes attempted to synch their decent with the spaceplane's, crossing each other several times (hopefully at different altitudes). Then, all of a sudden, there's a rosette of planes surrounding SpaceShipOne at maybe 30,000 feet. They hold this for two orbits of the field, and then the rocket plane turns in for the landing, as the others overfly the field at several hundred feet. It lands right in front of us on the far runway (maybe 150 yards distant), moving pretty fast, and stops in a small cloud of smoke (caused by its drag brake) at the far end. The chase planes then land one at a time.

WOW!

UPDATES: Other comments linked at Blogoshperics

Lots of new flight details at A.E. Brain

Rutan Rules

Saw SpaceShipOne launch this morning. All I can say is WOW! It's about time private enterprise wrested space travel from the cold, dead fingers of NASA.

"Bush Irresponsible" says Madonna

Accorinding to Manchester United [UK]:

Madonna today compared US President George Bush to deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. The 45-year-old pop star said the two men were "alike" because they both behaved "in an irresponsible manner".

The just don't make irony like this every day.

Where were you when?

From a challenge at A Small Victory:

1. Where were you when you heard that Ronald Reagan died?

In front of the TV, which I had just turned on to catch a spot of CNN.

2. Where were you on September 11, 2001?

In a hotel room in Redmond, WA. I'd worked until 3AM that morning trying to finish a demo for one Bill Gates, and we weren't quite done. At 7AM my partner called me from his room and told me to turn on the TV and that the WTC wasn't there anymore. And we still had to go back to Microsoft and finish the hardware for the demo, which my partner demonstrated sucessfully to Gates that afternoon.

3. Where were you when you heard that Princess Diana died?

At a conference -- I saw it on a hotel bar TV during a break.

4. Do you remember where you were when you heard Kurt Cobain had died?

No.

5. Take one for The Gipper: What’s your favorite flavor of jelly bean?

Licorice

6. Where were you when Magic Johnson announced he was retiring from the NBA due to AIDS?

Los Angeles?

7. Where were you when Reagan was shot?

At home. I'd left work feeling ill and gone home to bed. I found out about 6 hours after everyone else.

8. Where were you when the Challenger exploded?

In my car in the driveway. I heard the radio reports as I was leaving for work.

9. Where were you when the 0J verdict was announced?

Watching the State of the Union. I don't know which was more disgusting.

Extra credit for old farts:
10.Where were you when JFK was shot?

Mr. Katnick's 4th grade class at Balboa Elementary. A teacher came in and whispered something, and our teacher wordlessley turned the classroom TV on to CBS. Radio report over the CBS "eye" graphic.

X-Prize Runner-up

With all eyes on Rutan and his scheduled Monday launch of SpaceShipOne, few seem to be paying any attention to the other players in the X-Prize "race." Rutan may have it locked up, but Armadillo Areospace isn't just going through the motions. Here's a really nice video of their latest field test. Note the landing. Sure, this approach is about as energy inefficient as one can get, but it is pretty cool, all the same.

(thanks to Transterrestial Musings).

If a Cross is Bad, What About a TEMPLE?

Wizbang notes the LA Daily News story about the possibility of further problems with religious affiliation by local government, following the ACLU victory changing the LA County seal. Does anyone else find it ironic that the Board of Supervisors took this action at their chambers at 500 W. Temple St.?

Surely the street should be renamed, and if that can't be done, the supervisors should relocate. Anything else is an unconscionable endorsement of temples!

Solar Photovoltaics in California

Clayton Cramer is unimpressed by the economics of solar photovoltaics, and expresses displeasure with CA State Senator Kevin Murray's proposal to force CA builders to provide solar systems in new housing. I can't disagree about the legislation -- force sucks. But I can disagree with Clayton regarding the economics.

I recently helped a friend work out the economics of adding a solar photovoltaic system to the roof of his detached garage in Santa Monica, CA. The system was installed in April and is now turning out power. The numbers are much as expected and indcate a payback term of 10-15 years depending on future interest and utility rates (less if you factor in an amount for personal satisfaction).

The numbers go like this:

• Raw cost of project: $28,000
• Edison rebate: $12,000
• Tax benefit: $3,000
• Net cost: $13,000



• Solar panel area: 23 panels for approximately 23 square meters
• Energy produced daily (May average): 21KWH
• Daily energy consumption (May average): 20KWH
• Electricity cost: $0.14/KWH - $0.20/KWH depending on tier.

Since the energy is produced during daylight hours, which are peak demand periods due to business needs, but the home consumption is mostly in the low-demand evening periods, Edison happily pays a rebate of nearly half the construction cost for this peak-power production facility. During the day, there is a net power outflow to the grid, and at night the net flow reverses, with the difference settled by check each month, depending on the meter reading. There are no batteries involved.

Now, let's assume that the May average is high for an annual average, and just take 18KWH as a true daily average. Even though energy costs will likely rise faster than any possible return on the invested capital, we'll ignore both factors, and treat the payback as a straight-line function. We'll also assume that the average cost of power is the first-tier $0.14/KWH.

18KWH/day * 365 days/year * $0.14/KWH = $920/year saved in energy bills. This gives a straight-line constant cost repayment period of 14 years. If energy costs rise faster than the lost interest on the money (d'oh!) the repayment term will be faster. This installation is guaranteed for 30 years.

While this may be expensive, it is not insane economics. At least not in the sunny Southwest. Any future additions I make to my own house will have solar as a feature. I'd be nuts not to.

National Security ID Card?

TIME reports on a new Homeland Security initiative to issue special ID cards to pre-screened and bio-indentified travelers to "speed" them through airport checkpoints. While this seems a good idea at first glance, one must remember that driver's licenses were once just for licensing drivers.

Cards such as these could well become widely required. In a country that is becoming more security conscious, the uses of these cards could become ubiquitous. Entry to government buildings and public venues of all kinds is an obvious next step. Employers, credit bureaus and financial institutions might start favoring such card holders. Eventually, it could evolve into a National ID Card that rates people as to trustworthiness and invades privacy on a routine basis.

"Sorry, sir, but you only have a B-3 clearance, and you need an A-5 or better to have an account at this bank."

Not saying that this is necessarily the wrong thing to do, but it does seem to require a bit more thought and understanding than is currently in evidence.

*Sigh*

SondraK over at Dean' World points out what happens when a third party is more interested in quantity of candidates and not quality. And, no it's not Natural Law.

$20 = A "Gipper"?

Proposals are being made to put Reagan's portrait on US currency or coin. There are some objections, not only from the Left, but from those who feel it rather premature.

Considering my distaste for Andrew Jackson, who was the political father of the Native American genocide, I'd suggest Reagan should be on the $20, displacing Jackson. But I'd go a step further. There is an American whose contributions changed America at least as much as Reagan, and whose portrait on currency would have far greater impact than Reagan's -- Dr. Martin Luther King.

So I'd make the humble proposal to add King to the $50 (replacing Grant, who was a Presidential failure anyway), and Reagan on the $20, or maybe the other way around.

Ronald Reagan, a Personal Note of Thanks

Ronald Reagan's passing was expected, if not unduly delayed. Yet it seems such a shock all the same. It seems as though the curtain has finally rung down on an era, separating the 20th Century from the 21st.

I first saw Reagan when I was 15, when Governor Reagan came to my high school in 1969, in what would be called a "town hall" meeting today -- a speech followed by carefully selected questions. At the time, he seemed out of touch with the times -- an unreconstructed conservative at a time of rampant change. I came to understand, much later, that what he showed was conviction and principle -- he was not willing to bend in the wind when everyone else was buying weathervanes.

There are some that deride Reagan for his stubbornness, or his supposed lack of brains, but what I've come to value most highly in a politician is integrity, and he had that in spades. Most rare of late -- consider Nixon or Clinton. Brilliance is overrated.

I was too young to vote for him either time he ran for Governor, and considering my youth and the times probably wouldn't have -- but I voted for him 5 times for President (3 primaries and 2 general elections), and I have never regretted those votes. Why? Because he's the only person I ever voted for who was up front about what he was going to do, and then went and did it.

Reagan ran in 1980 on 3 issues: end the worldwide economic chaos that had inflation pushing 20% in the US, with negative growth; oppose the Soviet Union's growing hegemony around the world; and stand firm for capitalism and individualism in a world that was increasingly collectivist and unfree. Many politicians run for office professing grand schemes and abandon them once they get into power. Not Reagan. He not only proscecuted his goals with fervor, but he succeeded beyond all belief.

In his First Inaugural Address, Reagan laid out his economic program -- the one his critics later derided as "Reaganomics":

The business of our nation goes forward. These United States are confronted with an economic affliction of great proportions. We suffer from the longest and one of the worst sustained inflations in our national history. It distorts our economic decisions, penalizes thrift, and crushes the struggling young and the fixed-income elderly alike. It threatens to shatter the lives of millions of our people....

Idle industries have cast workers into unemployment, causing human misery and personal indignity. Those who do work are denied a fair return for their labor by a tax system which penalizes successful achievement and keeps us from maintaining full productivity...

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem.

From time to time, we have been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. But if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price...

It is no coincidence that our present troubles parallel and are proportionate to the intervention and intrusion in our lives that result from unnecessary and excessive growth of government. It is time for us to realize that we are too great a nation to limit ourselves to small dreams. We are not, as some would have us believe, doomed to an inevitable decline. I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing. So, with all the creative energy at our command, let us begin an era of national renewal. Let us renew our determination, our courage, and our strength. And let us renew our faith and our hope.

What followed was 20 years of nearly uninterrupted boom. The economic "free" world before Reagan was one of 70% income taxes, bureaucratic micromanagers, and high tariffs choking global trade. The world today is unrecognizably changed. If Reaganomics was folly, bring on more folly.

In his 1983 speech to the National Association of Evangelicals, Reagan made clear that, for him, Lincoln's "twilight struggle" for human freedom was by no means complete:

Yes, let us pray for the salvation of all of those who live in that totalitarian darkness - pray they will discover the joy of knowing God. But until they do, let us be aware that while they preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world.

It was C.S. Lewis who, in his unforgettable Screwtape Letters, wrote: "The greatest evil is not done now in those sordid ’dens of rime’ that Dickens loved to paint. It is not even done in concentration camps and labor camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do no need to raise their voice."

Well, because these "quiet men" do not "raise their voices," because they sometimes speak in soothing tones of brotherhood and peace, because, like other dictators before them, they’re always making "their final territorial demand," some would have us accept them as their word and accommodate ourselves to their aggressive impulses. But if history teaches anything, it teaches that simpleminded appeasement or wishful thinking about our adversaries is folly. It means the betrayal of our past, the squandering of our freedom.

So, I urge you to speak our against those who would place the United States in a position of military and moral inferiority. You know, I’ve always believed that old Screwtape reserved his best efforts for those of you in the church. So, in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride - the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.

While many took Reagan's firm stand against Soviet tyranny to be the deluded ramblings of a madman who would plunge the world into catastrophic war, rather than accept the obvious "Realpolitik" of coexistance with the Stalinists, that was not his plan. He intended to shame and embarrass them, to break them economically, to allow their system to be destroyed, not by missles, but by its inherant flaws. And the flaws he chose to strike were all present in Berlin:

Behind me stands a wall that encircles the free sectors of this city, part of a vast system of barriers that divides the entire continent of Europe. From the Baltic, south, those barriers cut across Germany in a gash of barbed wire, concrete, dog runs, and guard towers. Farther south, there may be no visible, no obvious wall. But there remain armed guards and checkpoints all the same -- still a restriction on the right to travel, still an instrument to impose upon ordinary men and women the will of a totalitarian state. Yet it is here in Berlin where the wall emerges most clearly -- here, cutting across your city, where the news photo and the television screen have imprinted this brutal division of a continent upon the mind of the world. Standing before the Brandenburg Gate, every man is a German, separated from his fellow men. Every man is a Berliner, forced to look upon a scar.

In the 1950’s, Khrushchev predicted: "We will bury you." But in the West today, we see a free world that has achieved a level of prosperity and well-being unprecedented in all human history. In the Communist world, we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards of health, even want of the most basic kind -- too little food. Even today, the Soviet Union still cannot feed itself. After these four decades, then, there stands before the entire world one great and inescapable conclusion: Freedom leads to prosperity. Freedom replaces the ancient hatreds among the nations with comity and peace. Freedom is the victor.

And now the Soviets themselves may, in a limited way, be coming to understand the importance of freedom. We hear much from Moscow about a new policy of reform and openness. Some political prisoners have been released. Certain foreign news broadcasts are no longer being jammed. Some economic enterprises have been permitted to operate with greater freedom from state control. Are these the beginnings of profound changes in the Soviet state? Or are they token gestures, intended to raise false hopes in the West, or to strengthen the Soviet system without changing it? We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace.

There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

I am a child of the Cold War. I remember, when I was 8, my parents taking my brother and me on a sudden trip to Mexico in October 1962. I remember the Soviet-American proxy wars in Viet-Nam and Afghanistan, and crises beyond number. Like most of my generation, I expected that someday, without warning, the world would end. I remember Berlin, and the Wall, which I walked the length of in 1989, not knowing that 3 months later it would be gone. Soon thereafter the Evil Empire itself was on "the ash heap of history", just as Reagan had said.

I remember Ronald Reagan, and give thanks.

---

Update: For a survey of blogoshere comment, see BoiFromTroy. More here

Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)

THE MAN WHO WON THE WAR

Libertarian Party and Reality

Having run for the State Assembly as a Libertarian (CA 47th, 1994), I'm fairly much in agreement with Libertarian ideals. But in the last decade, I've seen the LP move further and further towards impossibly "pure" positions -- to the point where I've stopped financial support and probably won't renew my membership. The party's oppostion to the War on purely philosophical grounds was the last straw. Would that there was a practical party based on economic and personal liberty, but no.

XRLQ points out some of the sillyness of the positions the new LP Presidential candidate has taken (e.g. asserting that cheap drugs will keep them out of the hands of children), and others have said similar here and here.

Some suggestions to the LP: Concentrate on those things that are nearer the margin.

• Drugs: Coming out for lower sin taxes and the elimination of bluenose laws and nanny-state torts regarding tobacco is far more likely to resonate with people than legalizing heroin. Since 25% of the electorate smokes, and both major parties ignore them, this seems a pretty obvious issue. Until the creeping Tobacco Prohibition is stopped, there is no hope for any of the drug agenda.



• Income tax: Rather than call for immediate abolition, call for elimination of the AMT, investment taxes and the death tax.



• Regulation: Rather than call for the voiding of the Federal Register, pick something really stupid that affects everyone and harp on it. Like telephone taxes that double my bill and the byzantine regulation of inter-company connections and payments that seems to be consuming the Federal courts.



• Personal freedom: Rather than argue for utopian "personal sovereignty", support gay marriage and the destruction of the public school monopoly.



• Privacy: Rather than calling for the elimination of federal police powers, aim at specific parts of the Patriot Act that are either stupid (library record searches) or invasive (roving wiretaps, "Know Your Customer" bank recordkeeping).



• The War: Remember that 9/11 happened and that the World is FAR, FAR from a Libertarian ideal. The first duty of a government (and yes we need one) is to protect its citizens. Accept that.

God knows there's more. But please can't we have an alternative to left-wing control-freak vs right-wing control-freak without having to pretend we're in Oz?