I have gained this by philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.
Aristotle, in Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Diogenes Laertius.
Author: Redactor
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George Meredith
Perfect simplicity is unconsciously audacious.
George Meredith, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859).
I have gained this by philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.
Aristotle, in Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Diogenes Laertius.
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Good Friday Agreement
On the hundredth day of 1998, the Northern Ireland peace talks ended with an historic agreement, dubbed the Belfast, or Good Friday Agreement. The accord was reached after nearly two years of talks and 30 years of conflict — 19 years ago today.
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Townhall: Government Burglars
The IRS doesn’t just seize money for reasons of taxation. The folks in that agency have another racket in their job description.
Click on over to Townhall for the story, then come back here for background.
- Treasury.gov: “Criminal Investigation Enforced Structuring Laws Primarily Against Legal Source Funds and Compromised the Rights of Some Individuals and Businesses” (press release and link to report)
- Washington Post: “The IRS took millions from innocent people because of how they managed their bank accounts, inspector general finds”
- Institute for Justice: “Seize First, Question Later”
- Thomson Reuters Tax & Accounting News: “IRS clarifies its position on civil forfeitures in uncharged structuring cases”
- Armstrong Economics: “Police Civil Asset Forfeitures Exceed All Burglaries in 2014”
- IG-DOJ: “Review of the Department’s Oversight of Cash Seizure and Forfeiture Activities”
- Washington Post: “Since 2007, the DEA has taken $3.2 billion in cash from people not charged with a crime”
- Washington Post: “In tough times, police start seizing a lot more stuff from people”
- Institute for Justice: “Policing for Profit”
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Independence Maintained, Gained
Despite being outnumbered 16 to one, forces of the Old Swiss Confederacy proved victorious over the Archduchy of Austria in the Battle of Näfels, April 9, 1388.
On this date in 1991, Georgia declared its independence from the Soviet Union.
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Dave Barry
What happens if a big asteroid hits Earth? Judging from realistic simulations involving a sledge hammer and a common laboratory frog, we can assume it will be pretty bad.
Of postmodernism and the mob campaign against western civilization’s central tenet, freedom of thought and speech — which rests upon a basic sense of the individual person’s worth.
“You’re one person away from a million people and two persons away from a billion people” — one of many provocative and important ideas contained in this symposium on free speech in Canada. If you live somewhere outside the provinces, the issues do not become less relevant.
The talks as such last only about thirty minutes, but the ideas keep piling on, into the q&a period.
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17th Amendment
On April 8, 1913, the 17th amendment to the Constitution, providing for the popular election of U.S. senators, was ratified.
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Camille Paglia
The English language was created by poets, a five-hundred year enterprise of emotion and metaphor, the richest dialogue in world literature. French rhetorical models are too narrow for the English tradition. Most pernicious of French imports is the notion that there is no person behind a text. Is there anything more affected, aggressive, and relentlessly concrete than a Parisian intellectual behind his/her turgid text? The Parisian is a provincial when he pretends to speak for the universe.
Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, p. 34.