The only hope we have is the Internet. We must strive to keep it free.

Many individuals spend a considerable portion of their lifetimes in terror of one imagined catastrophe or another. The classic is that your immortal soul will be consigned to eternal torment in the never-ending subterranean barbecue if you fail to follow the whacky edicts of one particular set of puckered dogwhistles or another. You may recall from the great movie Strange Days that a "dogwhistle" is a guy whose asshole is so tight that when he farts, only dogs can hear him.

Any politico who's afraid of his constituents being armed, should be. Leaders of the anti-gun movement (for the most part, politicians who enthusiastically advocate confiscatory taxation and government control of everything) realize that a populace is much easier to herd, loot and dispose of if it has been stripped of its weapons. The naked fraud and transparent fascism of victim disarmament must be eradicated through the repeal of all gun laws at every level of government.

We're most likely to lose our rights when we allow ourselves to be persuaded to deprive others of theirs.

You're people, in short, who must be stupid, insane, or evil to continue arguing in the face of indisputable facts and irrefutable logic that others must be forced into a state of helplessness and victimized by individual criminals or the state. Stupid, insane, or evil.

It's often been observed that the first casualty of war is the truth. But that's a lie, too, in its way. The reality is that, for most wars to begin, the truth has to have been sacrificed a long time in advance.

Incidentally, the next time some war-mongering wise-ass tries to tell you that one reason we're in the Middle East is to enhance the civil rights and social equality of women, remind them that we very enthusiastically destroyed the most secular country over there, where women could dress as they liked, have good jobs, be literate, and vote.