Quotulatiousness

June 12, 2015

Reason becomes a DOJ target because commenters disrespected a judge

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Every now and again, it’s easy to believe that we’ve somehow slipped down a hole in time to a less free, more authoritarian time. This is the kind of thing you could easily imagine happening in Fascist Italy or Franco’s Spain rather than in the United States in 2015:

The United States Department of Justice is using federal grand jury subpoenas to identify anonymous commenters engaged in typical internet bluster and hyperbole in connection with the Silk Road prosecution. DOJ is targeting Reason.com, a leading libertarian website whose clever writing is eclipsed only by the blowhard stupidity of its commenting peanut gallery.

Why is the government using its vast power to identify these obnoxious asshats, and not the other tens of thousands who plague the internet?

Because these twerps mouthed off about a judge.

Last week, a source provided me with a federal grand jury subpoena. The subpoena, issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, is directed to Reason.com in Washington, D.C.. The subpoena commands Reason to provide the grand jury “any and all identifying information” Reason has about participants in what the subpoena calls a “chat.”

[…]

Regrettably, The Government Can Probably Abuse the Grand Jury Subpoena Power This Way

The grand jury’s investigative power — exercised nominally on its behalf by the U.S. Attorney’s office — is nearly unchecked. It’s not like a stop-and-frisk or search; the government doesn’t need reasonable suspicion or probable case to use grand jury subpoenas to seek information. In general, one can only challenge grand jury subpoenas when they are irrationally burdensome (like demanding that Apple produce every document about iPhones in its possession) or for an improper purpose (like using the grand jury to improve trial evidence after an indictment has already been returned) or, very rarely, when privacy or constitutional issues are in play.

Reason.com — or the anonymous commenters — could file an action in federal court seeking to quash this subpoena. We know how that would likely come out, because someone recently did it. During the 2012 election cycle a juvenile but prolific Twitter personality named “Mr. X” tweeted “I want to fuck Michelle Bachman in the ass with a Vietnam era machete.” The government subpoenaed Twitter for Mr. X’s identifying information; Mr. X filed a motion to quash the subpoena. The United States District Court for the District of Columbia rejected the motion.

The psychic powers of the Python crew…

Filed under: History, Humour, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

… all those years ago, they still managed to foresee the kind of political arguments we’d be having in the twenty-first century:

H/T to American Digest, among others who pointed out the prophetic powers of the Pythons.

The long-lasting impact of the “Little House” books

Filed under: Books, History, Liberty, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Jason Kuznicki on the deep emotional grasp Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House” books are still having today:

“Not ‘Harry Potter’!” says Alice, age five. “I want ‘Little House’!”

It’s the age of negotiated bedtime reading. My husband and I oblige, and tonight we read from Little House in the Big Woods, the first installment of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s fictionalized autobiography. We take turns reading: Alice reads, then I do, then Scott does. Then Alice reads again. It’s never enough.

What draws her in? A lot of things. The characters are mostly female, young, and strong. Laura herself begins “Little House” at four, an age that wins our daughter’s ready empathy. Not unlike the first volume of “Harry Potter,” Little House in the Big Woods introduces an unknown world; done properly, that’s always exciting. As generations already know, the story is clean and earnest, without affectation or smarm. And it’s told in words that Alice can read all on her own — a great confidence builder.

It’s sometimes hard to fathom, though, just how different Laura’s life was from our own: churning butter, salting meat, boiling down maple syrup… Megan McArdle discussed all this in a recent piece for Bloomberg. The “Little House” books open up a lost world for today’s kids — and for today’s adults:

    [A]s an adult… what really strikes you is how incredibly poor these people were. The Ingalls family were in many ways bourgeoisie: educated by the standards of the day, active in community leadership, landowners. And they had nothing.

We’re not just talking a different skill set, then. The skills came of necessity, and of hardships almost wholly unknown today: “Little House” contains the actual sentence, “They had never seen a machine before” — because, well, they hadn’t.

Rex Warneford Destroys A Zeppelin – Austria Digs Into the Mountains I THE GREAT WAR – Week 46

Filed under: Britain, Europe, History, Italy, Military, Russia, WW1 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Published on 11 Jun 2015

Reginald Warneford is important to Britain’s war effort. Not just because he shot down a German zeppelin, but because he is made a hero in times when heroes are needed. He receives a Victoria Cross soon after his victory because the commanders know about the average life span of pilots in World War 1. Meanwhile, the Austro-Hungarian army digs into the alpine rocks to fend of the Italian Attackers and Gallipoli continues to be a butchery without any progress.

QotD: Gresham’s Law

Filed under: Economics, Quotations — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Gresham’s Law states that bad money drives out good money. This can happen in both inflationary and deflationary monetary environments. Basically, it must means that people will spend their “bad” currency first to get the maximal value out of it, and save the “good” money for the future because it will not depreciate as fast. That’s why you see socialist government inveighing against “hoarders”, “wreckers”, and “speculators” — the good money is biding its time and flushing out the bad money first.

For example, consider the US fifty-dollar gold coin. These coins are collected for their numismatic value and not their currency value. In fact, these coins are useless as actual currency. Why? The value of the gold and silver in the coins far outstrips the face value of the coin. Gresham’s Law would drive the coins out of circulation — either they would be melted down for bullion, hoarded, or traded as barter (not currency!) for objects of similar value.

Monty, “Inflation, Deflation, and Monetary Policy”, Ace of Spades HQ, 2014-07-11.

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