albpilot
Ace of Aces
Red Baron Fight XVIII Champ
I'm not frightened of terrorism, so please don't go and create a police state on my account...
Posts: 1,181
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Post by albpilot on Mar 5, 2007 13:47:49 GMT -5
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albpilot
Ace of Aces
Red Baron Fight XVIII Champ
I'm not frightened of terrorism, so please don't go and create a police state on my account...
Posts: 1,181
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Post by albpilot on Mar 14, 2007 16:35:58 GMT -5
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albpilot
Ace of Aces
Red Baron Fight XVIII Champ
I'm not frightened of terrorism, so please don't go and create a police state on my account...
Posts: 1,181
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Post by albpilot on Mar 22, 2007 8:06:39 GMT -5
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albpilot
Ace of Aces
Red Baron Fight XVIII Champ
I'm not frightened of terrorism, so please don't go and create a police state on my account...
Posts: 1,181
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Post by albpilot on Apr 9, 2007 9:16:02 GMT -5
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Post by Stephen on Apr 9, 2007 10:48:28 GMT -5
The Browns are great people and heroes of our times, no doubt.
This case exposes the court system, and in particular Judge Steven McAuliffe and the IRS courts for the fraud and joke that they are.
Unfortunately its only a matter of time before McAuliffe and his federal storm troopers go in and kill Ed Brown. Flash bang grenades, MP-5's, SWAT teams blasting the door open and Ed Brown laying in a pool of blood after they kill him in "self defense." IOW, a typical SWAT job. I hope it doesn't end that way but then we all saw what happened at Waco.
Would be nice to see one decent cop refuse to follow orders on a mission like that.
I know, I know... but I can dream, can't I?
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albpilot
Ace of Aces
Red Baron Fight XVIII Champ
I'm not frightened of terrorism, so please don't go and create a police state on my account...
Posts: 1,181
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Post by albpilot on May 16, 2007 10:15:47 GMT -5
I watched some of this last night, and the whole program is available online. I highly recommend it: www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/homefront/?campaign=pbshomefeatures_2_frontlinebrspyingonthehomefront_2007-05-16Frontline "Spying on the Home Front". One of the most telling things I heard was the former head of the FBI counterterrorist efforts saying "when you look at it there is a continuum between being safe and being free....how much freedom do you want to give up to be safe?" I think the answer to that should be NONE for everyone. If we give up even one of the freedoms the founding fathers imagined for us when this country started, aren't we in fact letting the terrorists win by making us change our way of life? Very excellent show.
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Post by Stephen on May 16, 2007 18:26:14 GMT -5
Actually this safety-versus-freedom question was answered quite emphatically some 200 years ago.
When Patrick Henry was faced with the exact same question, he chose freedom over the delusion of government-supplied safety. He said "Give me liberty or give me death."
Henry's situation was a bit different in that he faced a genuine threat that was many times greater than the pathetic, "terrorist" panic cries we hear today, but the principle is still the same. Its a disgrace to our generation that we allow such a minute, remote, fabricated "threat" to scare us into reconsidering Henry's advice.
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albpilot
Ace of Aces
Red Baron Fight XVIII Champ
I'm not frightened of terrorism, so please don't go and create a police state on my account...
Posts: 1,181
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Post by albpilot on Jun 11, 2007 13:25:42 GMT -5
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Post by Stephen on Jun 12, 2007 11:17:30 GMT -5
That's a might big ruling... the Bush (in)Justice Dept. is sure to challenge it to the SCOTUS, where Bush's newly named cronies may strike it down.
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albpilot
Ace of Aces
Red Baron Fight XVIII Champ
I'm not frightened of terrorism, so please don't go and create a police state on my account...
Posts: 1,181
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Post by albpilot on Jun 14, 2007 16:42:08 GMT -5
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Post by Stephen on Jun 14, 2007 20:48:42 GMT -5
At least he's genuine, which is more than any other candidate from either party can say.
Besides, America apparently didn't find Ron Paul that goofy... he mopped the floor with the opposition in both debates, winning by huge margins.
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albpilot
Ace of Aces
Red Baron Fight XVIII Champ
I'm not frightened of terrorism, so please don't go and create a police state on my account...
Posts: 1,181
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Post by albpilot on Jun 27, 2007 16:07:56 GMT -5
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albpilot
Ace of Aces
Red Baron Fight XVIII Champ
I'm not frightened of terrorism, so please don't go and create a police state on my account...
Posts: 1,181
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Post by albpilot on Jul 16, 2007 15:47:10 GMT -5
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albpilot
Ace of Aces
Red Baron Fight XVIII Champ
I'm not frightened of terrorism, so please don't go and create a police state on my account...
Posts: 1,181
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Post by albpilot on Jul 19, 2007 8:28:32 GMT -5
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albpilot
Ace of Aces
Red Baron Fight XVIII Champ
I'm not frightened of terrorism, so please don't go and create a police state on my account...
Posts: 1,181
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Post by albpilot on Jul 27, 2007 9:16:29 GMT -5
Found this on a Yahoo message board (it's actually a reprint from another source) and it reminded me how much I like and was influenced by the person mentioned in the article-probably my favorite author ever.
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Robert A. Heinlein's Legacy
As they say on the moon, "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch!"
BY TAYLOR DINERMAN
As Arthur C. Clarke put it: "Almost every good scientist I know has read science fiction." And the greatest writer who produced them was Robert Anson Heinlein, born in Butler, Mo., 100 years ago this month.
The list of technologies, concepts and events that he anticipated in his fiction is long and varied. In his 1951 juvenile novel, "Between Planets," he described cellphones. In 1940, even before the Manhattan Project had begun, he chronicled, in the short story "Blowups Happen," the destruction of a graphite-regulated nuclear reactor similar to the one at Chernobyl.
Heinlein brought to his work a unique combination of technical savvy--based largely on the engineering training he'd received at the U.S. Naval Academy and a broad knowledge of history and foreign languages. He wrote that "the three-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages and mathematics . . . if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots."
In 1958, in response to what he saw as a liberal effort to weaken America's military, he set wrote "Starship Troopers." This In it he imagines a future society in which the right to vote must be earned by volunteering for service, including service in the military.
Heinlein's political beliefs were moving more and more toward the libertarian side of the spectrum. He supported Barry Goldwater in 1964, and in 1966 he published what many considered his greatest book, "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress," the tale of how penal colonists and their descendants on the Moon successfully revolt against their Earthly masters. The core of this book, which keeps it near the top of the libertarians' reading lists, is the speech by an old professor, Bernardo de la Paz, to the rebels' constitutional convention: ". . . like fire and fusion, government is a dangerous servant and a terrible master. You now have your freedom--if you can keep it. But do remember that you can lose this freedom more quickly to yourselves than to any other tyrant."
The professor explains: "The power to tax, once conceded, has no limits; it contains until it destroys. I was not joking when I told them to dig into their own pouches. It may not be possible to do away with government--sometimes I think that it is an inescapable disease of human beings. But it may be possible to keep it small and starved and inoffensive--and can you think of a better way than by requiring the governors themselves to pay the costs of their antisocial hobby." As they say on the Moon, "TANSTAAFL!": "There Ain't No Such Thing as a Free Lunch!" [/color]Robert A. Heinlein, who died in 1988, lived a life inspired by two great loves. One was America and its promise of freedom. As one of his characters put it: "Your country has a system free enough to let heroes work at their trade. It should last a long time--unless its looseness is destroyed from the inside."
But nothing in his legacy will be more important than the spirit of liberty he championed and his belief that "this hairless embryo with the aching oversized brain case and the opposable thumb, this animal barely up from the apes will endure. Will endure and spread out to the stars and beyond, carrying with him his honesty and his insatiable curiosity, his unlimited courage and his noble essential decency."
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