• Recreational cannabis soon to see widespread legalization? Let’s hope Time magazine isn’t as wrong on this as it often is on so many other things.
• “We the People” is rapidly losing its appeal around the world. No surprise. (Tip o’ hat to MtK.)
• Can’t you just picture Obama in a Joe Arpaio jail? Chortle. (And thanks, JS.)
• Poetic justice.
• Obama vs the Catholic church. And vice versa.
• If you had any doubt that copyright overreach had sunk to absurd lows, you can become a true believer now.
• Another state legislature takes on the NDAA. (How much would you like to bet that these guys wouldn’t have done it had the NDAA been signed by their president?)
• Shouting lampposts and shouting cameras. Only in the world’s foremost nanny state …
• “How Once Great Empires End.” Aside from the fact that “great empire” is an oxymoron, Charles Hugh Smith says this very well.
• But once again, enough of the bad news. Here’s your Awwwwww moment for the day — and this time it doesn’t involve dogs! Seems a couple of months ago, the Toronto, Ontario, zoo found itself with a newborn polar bear that couldn’t be kept with its mother. So it’s being hand-raised by humans. Just watch that baby eat! And he’s even cuter when he tries to crawl.

(As so often lately, another tip o’ hat to MJR.)

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The End of the American Dream recently took apart two of the FBI’s infamous “look for a terrorist under every bed” brochures. You know, the ones that tell members of different professions whom they should report to the fedgov. In this case, one is a literal “look under the bed,” since the brochure in question addresses all us EEEEEvil terrorists who might be checking into hotels and motels.

But as frequent-contributor MJR discovered, all manner of professions get their own terrorist-hunting help from the fibbies. (The differences and similarities between the flyers are fascinating.)

Among other things, tattoo artists — yes tattoo artists! — are advised to suspect (in what has become the FBI’s standard tortured style of English) “People or Groups Who Make repeated returns with multiple individuals requesting identical tattoos.”

Hey, in that case I know nine Dreaded Terrorists who need to be slammed into Gitmo right away! And I’m sure they’re terrorists because in addition to requesting identical tattoos, they’ve also all used multiple aliases (another Sure Sign). At the time they got their suspicious tats, they were going by the aliases Frodo, Samwise, Galdalf, Legolas, Merry, Pippin, Boromir, Gimli, and — the multiple-aliasing obvious EEEEEvil mastermind, Aragorn, aka Strider, aka The Dunedan, aka Longshanks, Wingfoot, Telcontar, Elfstone, and Thorongil.

The Fatherland (Achtung!) is clearly in danger as long as they — and we! — remain on the loose.

And don’t imagine I’m joking. The Fellowship of the Ring really were terrorists, at least from Sauron’s point of view. They wanted to overthrow the government of Mordor, didn’t they? And they hoped to achieve it via a highly destructive sneak attack into the heartland of that realm.

And we. Well, the evidence against us has been overwhelming for some time.

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The recent, much touted not-actually-so-good news on jobs, gets an appropriate answer from Abbott and Costello.

(H/T M.)

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• If you’re going to the big game today I’m sure this’ll make you feel wonderful, no matter who wins or loses: hot dog vendors with the skills and proclivities of the TSA.
• Of course, if you turn out to be one of the “suspicious” attendees, you won’t feel good at all if they use one of these on you. (And here’s a video.)
• But it could be worse, you know.
• All of which got me to wondering how the fedgov would handle somebody like Lawnchair Larry today.
• Or for that matter, any of us.
• So if you’re going to do something “illegal,” best to do it by proxy. Or Lego. :-)

I fear that in the last couple of days of not posting (deadlining, sorry), I may have lost track of all the hat tips due for links. So hoping I’m not leaving anybody out, thank you’s to P, F, H, and M.)

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• Good for people who’ve suffered brain injuries that affect speech. Bad in the long run for privacy.
• National Geographic is usually pretty good. But it appears their new series, which starts next week, sets out only to portray us all as loons. So much for progress. (Tip o’ hat to H.)
• Here’s a perfect example of the long arm of the U.S. government.
• Might not agree with this guy 100%. But bless his noble heart. (Nice backgrounder on him, too.) I’ll soon be reading his book.
• And here’s another doctor with courage — though it may be too little, too late for millions of children: “Ritalin Gone Wrong.”
• Thugette. Every time I see stuff like this, I recall how, just five or six years ago, we were constantly assured that Tasers would be solely used in encounters that would otherwise call for deadly force. The term “compliance tool” was never uttered. Now it appears they’re merely “educational devices.”
• Of course the lie about inflation is even bigger than this says.
  
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I turn the blog over this morning to two commentors at Earthineer:

Oilman2, who says that small farmers (and by extension many more of us) should opt out.

And Earthineer founder Dan Adams who answers that we should opt in.

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• The newspaper that said, “Up yours” to the Internet.
• A bit of good news from the Supremes — though (typically) it may not mean much in practice.
• This Saturday is Data Privacy Day. Though since it was declared such by Congress, it may not mean much in practice, either.
• Good one, MamaLiberty. Did those guys in the SUV really have curly earpieces, too? LOL.
• Two lessons from the Megaupload seizure. Big lessons. May God (if any) keep and preserve Glenn Greenwald.
• Simon Black echoes the sentiments.
• “Another reason to homeschool,” sez D, who sent this link. What kind of screwed-up society deliberately hides kids’ records from parents while giving access to darned near everybody else?
• “Don’t be evil.” It’s not just an empty slogan any more. It’s a bookmarklet to bypass Google shenanigans.
• In the land of the free (but certainly not the home of the brave).

Source. And just think — we’ve gotten so much freer since Russmo created this oldie-but-goodie!

(Thanks to the feeder of needy Panda bears.)

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The crisis takes a much longer time coming than you think, and then it happens much faster than you would have thought …. It took forever and then it took a night.”

– Dr. Rudiger Dornbusch

The people who make wars, the people who reduce their fellows to slavery, the people who kill and torture and tell lies in the name of their sacred causes, the really evil people in a word – these are never the publicans and the sinners. No, they’re the virtuous, respectable men, who have the finest feelings, the best brains, the noblest ideals.

– Aldous Huxley

My new-old house has a pleasant sun porch. Makes more sense hereabouts to call it a rain porch.

It’s not heated or insulated, but it’s small enough that five minutes with a portable heater makes it cozy. So the dogs and I sit out there a lot. Though the porch has big windows that face the street, I can relax in a bentwood rocker, sip coffee or wine, and gaze out onto the nearby hills in privacy. The house across the street, like many in the neighborhood, is a repo that’s been sitting empty for months. Nobody sees me as I gaze over its roof and watch the sun set or the storms roll in.

I love the way rain runs down the glass, rendering this rather unpretty neighborhood soft and impressionistic. The reflections of taillights on the rainslick pavement are like Christmas.

Tonight, with the aid of a glass of white Zinfandel, it looked so beautiful I could almost cry.

But tonight, too, I reflected on how unsafe it now feels to be in what I once thought of as my own country. Door-kicking cops. Unchecked surveillance. TSA VIPRs roaming the highways. Authorized assassinations. Infinite detentions. Plans to revoke U.S. citizenship without due process. Perpetual wars. Asset forfeiture and coerced plea bargains in place of justice. A government that considers every individual to be a criminal while considering itself to be above all law. So many things on the verge of chaos and collapse.

When I was a kid during the cold war, I had this image of the Soviet Union as a place that was always gloomy — perpetually leaden skies, perpetually leaden people, gray and brown garb, no joy. Even as a young adult I had a hard time wrapping my brain around the idea that even in darkest Siberia they had sunny days. Or that Russians loved their country. Or wore bright colors. Or that they sometimes sang and laughed and danced and joked.

Even now, I have to make a conscious mental adjustment to picture unfree places having sunshine or joy. Or residents who burn with love for them. It’s hard to consider that unfree, threatening places have the same small joys and great beauties as freer ones, when you create a little haven from the politics. Beauties like rain softly blurring the view through big windows. Or lights glowing on the pavement like Christmas. Joys like eating cherries and chocolate and sipping wine in the company of sleeping dogs.

Of course, I’ve just conflated two different kinds of mental adjustment.

I knew the USSR was unfree; in my childish mind I just couldn’t picture it beautiful. I know this spot is beautiful; in my all-too-adult perception I’m just having a hard time reconciling its peaceful beauty to how unfree and dangerous the country that contains it has become.

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