The Lonely Goatherd Blog And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats - Matthew 25:32
Up to the minute notes on the current state of free thinking and free living: Kentucky moonshine - original analysis and reporting from MoreThings, and all round pop culture museum of sight and sound - photo galleries, mp3 and video downloads.
Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
Live free or die!
----
I wouldn't want to ask people to just give me money cause they like my website, but do please take a quick look at Barger's Boutique. You might find yourself a little something-something for 2 or 3 bucks that you just can't resist! Any of the round images you find around MoreThings will get you to an Amazon page to buy my stuff and help ol' Al keep the lights on.
Links
To explicitly state the obvious, these external links go to interesting and provocative websites, but they speak for themselves. I don't necessarily agree with anything they say - especially that no-goodnik Richard Marcus.
*************
All original content on MoreThings.com copyright 2008 Albert Barger or the respective authors
March 01, 2003
Justice Department needs their budget cut Even though I'm a lifelong big-L Libertarian, I've tried to be sympathetic to the Bush administration and Ashcroft's Justice Department. I'm not real thrilled about everything they do, but they have a tough and critical job to do in tracking down terrorists and preventing further and even worse attacks than 9/11. Idiots who carry on about Ashcroft being a "fascist" or a "nazi" get nothing but the back of my hand.
However, even trying to be sympathetic I must come to the conclusion that the Justice Department simply has TOO MUCH money and manpower, and badly needs to have their budget cut. I reach this conclusion on the basis of THIS STORY and THIS STORY.
This ISOnews story particularly un-thrills me. It strikes me especially wrong to see the feds seize control of a website and turn it into a government propoganda site. They justified this on the basis that the owner trafficked in a few hundred computer chips the government declared illegal on the basis that they could be used to play bootlegged video games. Bogus, bogus, bogus. This site featured speech that the feds (or more particularly the corporations that fund the campaigns of the sponsoring congressmen) didn't like, so they found an excuse to squish it.
"The illegal drug paraphernalia industry has invaded the homes of families across the country without the knowledge of their families," Ashcroft said. What a load of crap. A website doesn't invade your home. You can go look up a site that sells water pipes. That does not constitute any form of "invasion." Even worse: "People selling drug paraphernalia are in essence no different than drug dealers," said John Brown, acting DEA chief. "They are as much a part of drug trafficking as silencers are a part of criminal homicide." Yup, selling pipes is the same thing as being a mob hitman. Can't argue against that.
These stories show pretty bad behavior from the Justice Department in their own right. They are even much worse, however, in light of the problem of terrorism. Mother humping Al Qaeda operatives are apparently absolutely planning an attack on Pearl Harbor -besides their other ongoing efforts- yet John Ashcroft thinks these websites are just (much less worthwhile) uses of limited federal manpower.
How many millions of dollars and thousands of man hours went into these efforts? Obviously they've got more than sufficient resources for everything related to the war on terror. If they've got money to waste on this kind of nonsense, then they have too much money, and they need their budget cut.
