Video: Cato’s Dan Mitchell on Capital Gains Taxes

Posted on May 3, 2010 by steve

Video from the CATO Institute explaining why the capital gains tax is bad:

Video shamelessly lifted from The Daily Capitalist

The Long Shadow Of The Progressives: Woodrow Wilson and Peace Without Victory

Posted on May 2, 2010 by steve

This speech and the Eugene Debs incident are helpful in understanding the current Democrat party. It is part of their DNA.

Woodrow Wilson, Peace Without Victory Speech:

They imply, first of all, that it must be a peace without victory. It is not pleasant to say this. I beg that I may be permitted to put my own interpretation upon it and that it may be understood that no other interpretation was in my thought. I am seeking only to face realities and to face them without soft concealments. Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor’s terms imposed upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon which terms of peace would rest, not permanently but only as upon quicksand. Only a peace between equals can last. Only a peace the very principle of which is equality and a common participation in a common benefit. The right state of mind, the right feeling between nations, is as necessary for a lasting peace as is the just settlement of vexed questions of territory or of racial and national allegiance.

The equality of nations upon which peace must be founded if it is to last must be an equality of rights; the guarantees exchanged must neither recognize nor imply a difference between big nations and small, between those that are powerful and those that are weak. Right must be based upon the common strength, not upon the individual strength, of the nations upon whose concert peace will depend. Equality of territory or of resources there of course cannot be; nor any other sort of equality not gained in the ordinary peaceful and legitimate development of the peoples themselves. But no one asks or expects anything more than an equality of rights. Mankind is looking now for freedom of life, not for equipoises of power.

Apparently,Wilson’s views on peace did not apply to political opponents. Remember Eugene Debs?

Once the United States entered the war, Debs was arrested for violating the Espionage Act after making what the district attorney of Canton, Ohio called an anti-war speech in 1918. Debs in fact only mentioned the war once, but under this repressive new law, was sentenced to ten years in a federal penitentiary. Nominated for a fifth time as the Socialist Party’s presidential candidate in 1920, Debs campaigned from his jail cell and garnered over a million votes. Despite repeated pleas from Debs’ supporters, President Wilson refused to release Debs from prison.

Drone Pilots Could Be Tried for “War Crimes”

Posted on May 2, 2010 by steve

Why are terrorists never brought up on ‘war crimes’…

Loyola Law School professor David Glazier, a former Navy surface warfare officer, said the pilots operating the drones from afar could – in theory – be hauled into court in the countries where the attacks occur. That’s because the CIA’s drone pilots aren’t combatants in a legal sense. “It is my opinion, as well as that of most other law-of-war scholars I know, that those who participate in hostilities without the combatant’s privilege do not violate the law of war by doing so, they simply gain no immunity from domestic laws,” he said.

“Under this view CIA drone pilots are liable to prosecution under the law of any jurisdiction where attacks occur for any injuries, deaths or property damage they cause,” Glazier continued. “But under the legal theories adopted by our government in prosecuting Guantánamo detainees, these CIA officers as well as any higher-level government officials who have authorized or directed their attacks are committing war crimes.”

The drones themselves are a lawful tool of war; “In fact, the ability of the drones to engage in a higher level of precision and to discriminate more carefully between military and civilian targets than has existed in the past actually suggests that they’re preferable to many older weapons,” Glazier added. But employing CIA personnel to carry out those armed attacks, he concluded, “clearly fall outside the scope of permissible conduct and ought to be reconsidered, particularly as the United States seeks to prosecute members of its adversaries for generally similar conduct.”

Drone attacks haven’t just become the primary weapon in the American bid to wipe out Al Qaeda and affiliated terrorist networks. “Very frankly, it’s the only game in town in terms of confronting or trying to disrupt the al Qaeda leadership,” CIA director Leon Panetta said.

Drone Pilots Could Be Tried for “War Crimes,” Law Prof Says – Law – Gizmodo.

Video: Second A-Team Trailer

Posted on May 2, 2010 by steve

Movie hits the theater June 11th, 2010

Video: President Of European Central Bank Calling For Global Governance

Posted on May 1, 2010 by steve

I want you distinctly to understand that there is no thought of criticism in my mind. I am expounding to you a state of international law. Now, read articles ten and eleven. You will see that international law is revolutionized by putting morals into it.

One of President Woodrow Wilson’s Final Addresses in Support of the League of Nations, 25 September 1919, Pueblo, CO.

These guys are still pushing for a ‘Global Governance.’ Via Forbes:

The President of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, told Forbes that global governance is extremely necessary if we want to prevent another financial crisis. In his prepared printed and spoken remarks to the Council on Foreign Relations, Trichet emphasized that politicians, economists, and financiers must work across the Atlantic and collaborate on methods to create an international set of standards.

Now in his own words: