North Coast Online

Just This Once

Montgomery County in Maryland recently passed one of those now-stylish bans on trans-fats and Russell Roberts isn't thrilled.

The principle is tricky. It's not the right to eat trans-fats. The principle is that I don't want powerful people to decide what I do with my body or my life. Those are my responsibility. They are my responsibility because that's what adulthood is. Adulthood is being responsible for the risks you take, reaping the rewards and enduring the costs.

I agree with him, by the way, but doesn't the argument remind you of another issue?  Isn't "government control of our bodies" the same line that the pro-abortion rights people have used for decades now to push their case?  I don't agree with them, abortion does kill a human being, so someone else's life is in play, too.

But if we assume that they're really worried over the control of their own bodies, then wouldn't it be logical that they'd also be fighting against seat belt laws, anti-smoking laws and trans-fat banning laws?   Oddly enough, they're not.  In fact, they don't seem the least bit worried over these latest attempts by politicians to dictate our body-control.

Makes me wonder about their sincerity and causes me to think that, in the end, they just want to get rid of that thing.  Any argument, it appears, however libertarian, will do.  Just this once.

No Privacy

I wish the Buffalo News had just left this guy alone.  Even though they didn't divulge where he's living, evidently quite a few people know and it's bound to get out now.

NIMFY

You see, we bought this lovely old house in East Aurora fronting a beautiful park, Hamlin Park.  We thought of it as our own private forest -- we never dreamed people would do things there.

More On Moore

The London Times reviews Sicko.

He talks to an unstressed doctor who has a four bedroom house in Greenwich and a £100,000 salary from the NHS. He films empty waiting rooms and happy, care-free health workers. He even talks to Tony Benn about how this wonderful marvel came into existence in 1948. What he hasn’t done is lie in a corridor all night at the Royal Free watching his severed toe disintegrate in a plastic cup of melted ice. I have. I’ve spent more hours than I care to remember in NHS hospitals vainly waiting for stitches or praying for the arrival of a midwife.

OK, one Brit's dissatisfaction with nationalized health care, but he's able to put it in perspective.

It’s when he flies a group of 9/11 heroes over to Cuba for free medical treatment they can’t afford back home that the film leaves the rails. Moore can’t resist over-egging the ironies, or revelling in the absurd. He uses a megaphone outside the Guantanamo Bay hostage camp to beg the use of the free medical facilities supposedly offered to Al Queda prisoners. It’s a provocative piece of lunacy. But there’s a strong whiff of sanctimony about Moore’s mighty indignation. It draws the sting from his satire.

American college students will probably love it.  After all, they've never been taught satire.

Welcome, Y'all!

Don Boudreaux presents his very-libertarian case for unfettered immigration here and there. 

Now, I would support open immigration, myself, as long as the newly-arrived were duly registered and were vetted for past criminal behavior.  And if they agreed that they would not be eligible for any state-provided benefits unless and until they became citizens.  I suspect it's the lack of that latter condition that's driving much of the conservative antipathy towards the proposed amnesty bill under consideration in the Senate.

We've created enough of a welfare state here, that overloading it with potentially tens of millions more might just crush it.

Can You Say That On The Internet?

Keith Burgess-Jackson speculates on what might ultimately determine Andrew Sullivan's choice for President.

Careful What You Wish For

Does offering to buy slaves their freedom really provide the strongest incentives to combat African slavery?

Enough's Enough

Jane Galt's dog died.  She was upset, blogged about it and was told to get over it.  She's pissed.

Abundance

Virginia Postrel discusses abundance -- and how you can picture it.

Ex-Gov. McGreevey

The jokes just keep writing themselves.