Quick Roundup 104

New Blog Feed

The new RSS feed for this blog is "feeds.feedburner.com/gusvanhorn".

I'm tempted ...

... to include "that fount of things good and true" as a subtitle for my blog. That phrase comes from a post on the war over at Objectively Speaking.

John Cox Does Cover Art

I congratulate John Cox on winning commissions to do the cover art and monthly caricatures for the 2007 desk calendar of the American Compass Book Club as well as the cover art for the soon-to-be-released Caucus of Corruption by Matt Margolis and Mark Noonan.

Blogroll Changes

After sending word of Senator James Inhofe's global warming speech to Dollars and Crosses, I realized that I still hadn't added that blog to my sidebar. I have just rectified that omission.

Fans of Gavriel, the Israeli dad who pens AbbaGav will be pleased to learn that his blog is back on line. He will soon, however, be moving from his current abode at Blogspot to a new site. Some time after this occurs, I will quietly change the link in the sidebar.

Gambling Linked to War on Terrorism

Is it really any surprise that right in the middle of a war we are fighting against a religious foe -- whose overarching motivation is to tell us how to live our lives -- that we would see theocratic traitors in our midst do just that under the guise of fighting the war?

America's $6 billion (£3.2 billion) internet gambling industry is facing meltdown after the US Senate pushed through a Bill at the weekend outlawing the processing of bets by banks and credit companies.

...

Bill Frist, the Republican leader in the Senate, got the measure through by attaching it to an unrelated Bill that enhances port security.

... "Gambling is a serious addiction that undermines the family, dashes dreams and frays the fabric of society," Dr Frist said. "The bottom line is simple: internet gambling is illegal. Although we can't monitor every online gambler or regulate offshore gambling, we can police the financial institutions that disregard our laws." [bold added]

Yeah. And the Taliban hold that women who don't wear burqas in Afghanistan damage its moral "fabric".

Religious fanatics with morals police: If you won't beat 'em, join 'em, eh, Dr. Frist?

Are Dry Counties History?

And speaking of asinine religious beliefs codified into law, I found this Houston Chronicle piece on the gradual movement away from total alcohol bans in many Texas counties to be mildly interesting.

Sarah Strinden is tired of what she calls the "pain-in-the-neck" drive she must take as a consequence of Texas' patchwork of local liquor laws.

From her house it's a 10-mile jaunt to the metal-sided beer barns and package stores in either of two adjoining wet counties. ''We don't buy a lot and store it, so when we're planning a casual drink with friends it's a 40-minute trip," she said. ''It's just inconvenient."

Strinden and others in Angelina County will vote in November whether to allow beer and wine in their grocery and convenience stores as well as whether restaurants can serve beer, wine and mixed drinks.

This sounds encouraging -- until you read a little further.

Petitions and elections seeking other types of alcohol sales such as bars or liquor stores have failed to attract business backing and campaign money and more frequently have failed, state records show. In short, beer joints, topless bars and hard liquor by the bottle are a much tougher sell.

...

Some of the strongest opposition to changing liquor laws across the state has come from self-interested competitors, Hatch said. [bold added]

So we see that the opposition to the vestiges of prohibition in Texas is unfortunately not a principled stand for the right to freedom of trade, but a pragmatic desire to have "just a little" to drink. And the fact that some businesses are just fine with things as they are (something I've blogged about before) also shows that whatever changes are occurring are not due to some rediscovery of the importance of freedom by residents of the Lone Star State.

We unfortunately have, here in Texas, a mere taste for beer when we would be far better off with an unquenchable thirst for freedom.

Too bad.

Privatization in Montenegro?

This article on a massive sell-off of government assets in newly-independent Montenegro is either very good or very bad news.

Since 2001, close to 80 percent of Montenegro's state assets have been sold, mostly to foreigners. Two telecommunications companies, a shipyard, an aluminum factory, the only brewery, most of the hotels, capital markets, and the oil import and distribution industries are already in private hands.

The article goes on to imply that this sell-off is merely benefitting a relatively small number of government kleptocrats. That may be, or it could just be typical anti-capitalist bias coming from our press.

Ultimately, only time will tell whether this is is really a sign of good things to come for Montenegro. Check back in five or ten years and ask whether the various properties have been re-confiscated and whether the government is doing an adequate job of protecting the property rights of its new private property owners.

Giving Kiosks

Some Southern evangelical pastor has come up with a new way to collect money. Aside from the amusing moral contortions various churches will go through before installing them, I found the following line very amusing.

"It's truly like an ATM for Jesus," [Pastor Marty] Baker said.

Yes. It is "truly like" an "ATM for Jesus". The operative word is "like". It is, in fact, an ATM for your hypocritical ass, Pastor Baker.

-- CAV