THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE
Number 270, May 9, 2004
Hi Mom!

EDITORIAL MATTERS:

Man, this self-employment thing sucks! When I had a "job" if I wasn't feeling so good, I'd stay home and read a book. Now that I'm my own boss, if there's work to be done and I'm not feeling so good, I do the damned work anyway. Bah! Humbug!

And that introduces this, the 270th issue of TLE.

Ken Holder
Your Mr. Ed

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Letters to the Editor
Letters from L. Neil Smith, Manuel Miles, Joel Simon with a reply from Lady Liberty, e.j.totty, Mike Lorrey, James J Odle, and John MacMullin:
• FULL STORY

Torturing the Truth
by L. Neil Smith
There is a common chemical test in which a small portion of the stuff being tested is heated to incandescence and the resulting light put through a prism device that spreads it out for examination. Dark "absorption lines" in the spectrum indicate what elements the stuff contains. War is like that, especially idiotic, unjust, and illegal wars like the one the United States government has chosen to fight now in Iraq, Afghanistan, and enough other places around the world to boggle what few remaining minds on the planet haven't been boggled already. War heats the populace, leaders and followers alike, to a kind of incandescence, until it becomes fairly easy to see what they're made of. In the present case, the experimental results are pretty damned discouraging.
• FULL STORY

Damned if You Do, Dead if You Don't
by Lady Liberty
Last week, an Illinois state legislator almost single-handedly put the brakes on legislation that would have allowed Illinois residents to defend themselves with a firearm without fear of punishment, even if that firearm were prohibited by local ordinance. Never mind that any law that disallows self-defense in the first place is both unconstitutional and immoral. At least there was some effort to right an obvious wrong in Illinois. But this legislator, claiming he feared the ubiquitous "loophole," has demanded more study before the matter can be considered.
• FULL STORY

Junk Cotton Farm Subsidies
by Todd Andrew Barnett
The unsurprising yet ludicrous reaction to the World Trade Organization's ruling on U.S. cotton farm subsidies from the busybodies on the steps of Capital Hill clearly typifies the mindset of the U.S. government. When it comes to logic and sound reasoning, the federal beast proves that it possesses neither one of the two attributes nor both.
• FULL STORY

The Kaptain's Log
Seen Enough Yet?
by Kapt Kanada, a.k.a. Manuel Miles
Despite the assurances of pathological liars like GW Bush & Co, the war crimes taking place every day in Iraq are exactly what "America" is all about. One supposedly antiwar columnist recently opined that the crimes committed by the NWO empire in Iraq were such a sea change from "...our post WWII reputation for nobleness and heroism" that said imaginary reputation was suffering damage.I don't know whether he is being disingenuous or he's just plain thick as a brick. I do know that the USA has been committing wars of aggression and the attendant war crimes since almost the day it was founded. Mind you, I read history.
• FULL STORY

"Wasting" your vote?
by Ron Beatty
This year, as in every election year, we hear numerous voices raised in a deafening clamor for change. This year, as in every election year, we hear the voices of the leaders of various special interest groups droning about "wasting" our votes by voting for those who espouse and champion the change desired. They tell us that the only way to accomplish anything is to vote for the person the special interest group supports. It doesn't matter that the person they are supporting may be a coward, a fool, a demagogue, or a traitor (or all of the above), as proved by his public acts.
• FULL STORY

Gun-proofing children
by Wendy McElroy
On May 9th -- Mother's Day -- the "anti-gun" Million Mom March will gather on the West Lawn in D.C. in protest. Meanwhile the pro-gun Second Amendment Freedoms for Everyone (SAFER) will rally nearby. Both organizations claim to speak against violence and for children's safety. Yet each espouses diametrically-opposed positions on gun legislation. Who really speaks for children?
• FULL STORY

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