Chil'in' Again - Forget Thanksgiving. Wednesday, Unqualified Offerings could no longer fight the urge to make chili again, incorporating ideas from some of the reader e-mails on the subject. (See here if you don't remember, and scroll up for more.) UO's goal was to use much less spice this time, allowing the ingredients to shine. So:
2# chuck, ground for chili (coarse grind)
2# red bell peppersNot all supermarket meat counters package this, but you can ask the butcher to "chili-grind" a piece of chuck for you
1 12oz. can beer
2 12oz. cans tomato paste
1/2tbsn kosher saltThe Grant Gould variation! On reflection, two cans of tomato paste was more than was necessary. Next time I'll stick to one.
1. Brown and drain meat in a stock pot with a 1/4 cup water. (Gas on high.) While meat is browning, start chopping onions and peppers.
2. Return meat to pot. Reduce heat to low-medium. Add entire can of beer.
3. This is key! Underneath the crowns of the red peppers, clinging to the pulp, are seeds. Scrape the seeds into the pot! (Then discard the tops or save for "garbage soup.")
4. Stir in the chopped vegetables.
5. Stir in the tomato paste.
6. Add the spices.
7. Simmer. How long you simmer is a tradeoff among two values:
I would, for instance, experiment with adding the onions early and the bell peppers late.a) The penetration of the spices.
b) The texture of the vegetables.
Results: Slightly modified Yum! As UO said above, in retrospect, one can of tomato paste would have been plenty. The chili still had plenty of kick to it, even with about a third as much spice as UO used earlier in the month. (A moderate amount of salt lays the tongue open to the other spices without overpowering them, and cayenne pepper will have its day. The beer surely plays its role here too, though you don't actually taste beer.)
Unqualified Offerings cannot stress enough how much you gain by using chili-grind beef over hamburger-grind. The only reason to make chili with hamburger rather than coarse-ground beef is if
Hamburger is all you have in the house, and
The roads are closed.
This was a lesson UO had forgotten. It will endeavor not to do so again.
Revolver is the name of an excellent essay on the Beatles and buying a handgun, on Seablogger. It's not every day you'll find the September 2001 massacres, beach bums and deer hunters in the same piece of writing.
Happy Thanksgiving to this site's US readers! Today is an excellent day to make a start on what Unqualified Offerings likes to call "garbage soup," a dish that UO guarantees is better than it sounds.
It's actually not a soup recipe as such, just a way of making sure you can always have stock if you need it. Get yourself a ziploc bag. Now you just put certain things in the ziploc bag that would otherwise go in the garbage disposal or the trash can: mushroom stem tips, the tops and bottoms of onions, the crowns of peppers - and bones. Seal the bag and stick it in the freezer. Next time maybe you're stringing beans; put the tips in the bag. Potato skins. Squash rinds. When you need some stock, simply dump the frozen contents of the bag into a pot and add water. Simmer as necessary. At the end of the process you have
stock
garbage that's really garbage now (discard or compost)
You can freeze whatever stock you don't need. In the meantime, start a new bag.
Disrecommended: corn cobs. But it's up to you.
(Yes, Unqualified Offerings got this idea from the Tightwad Gazette.)
Put Away Childish Things - Memo to the Backstreet Boys: If your youngest member is 22, you're not a boy band any more (Backstreet Boys sue label for $75M).
This has been your imitation The Minor Fall, The Major Lift post of the day.NEW YORK (AP) -- The Backstreet Boys have sued their record label for $75 million, saying the label has been courting their youngest star, snubbing the rest of them and delaying their chance to further cash in on their fame.
In Through the Revolving Door - Quotable Talking Dog on another topic:
[T]he President named "Ten Most Evil Men of Twentieth CenturyTM" member Henry Kissinger as head of the commission to study the events surrounding the September 11th terror attacks. I have nothing to add. Which is ALSO what we can expect from this commission.
The Israeli Beat - Your Talking Dog has interesting musings about the current Israeli election campaign. First he considers whether Labour candidate Avram Mitzna's platform constitutes "appeasement":
Obviously, Unqualified Offerings has to like Avram Mitzna, since he's running on UO's platform. So it looks like Mitzna can count on both this website and the Talking Dog. Now if he can just bring some actual Israeli voters into the tent he'll be cooking with gas.Guess what? Israeli settlers shouldn't be in Gaza – it’s not in ISRAEL'S national interest to have them there. Strategically, they present a problem (seemingly recognized only by Amram Mitzna!) but from a moral authority perspective, they are a disaster. The same is true (less true, but mostly true) for much of the West Bank. While a unilateral pullout may be perceived as a victory for terrorists, it is ALSO a victory for Israel: a recognition that the "Greater Israel" concept for anything much larger than the '67 borders will always present a problem. A free, democratic, JEWISH STATE just cannot have millions of Arabs who don't want to be under its control.
But I have ALSO said this: Israel invested BILLIONS in the settlements -- this investment can be traded against the troublesome "right of return" once and for all, because that's what friends do. If the Palestinians refuse to make such a deal, any pullout should include physical destruction of the settlements and scorched earth -- that's what you do for enemies.
TD's coverage continues here. It looks like his will be a good site to follow the campaign from.
Canard Lines - Contrary to what the folks at Giants and Dwarfs seem to argue, it is not necessarily antisemitic to speculate on what Israeli intelligence may have known in advance about the attacks on the World Trade Center. (One more time: Governments do creepy things sometimes; Intelligence agencies do creepy things sometimes; Israel has a government; Israel has intelligence agencies.)
"4,000 Jews didn't show up for work at the WTC on 9/11" = anti-semitic (implicates all Jews)
"1,200 Israelis didn't show up for work at the WTC on 9/11" = not necessarily antisemitic (implicates only Israeli citizens)
BUT, the latter claim, made here by David Graham Du Bois, is still stupid and wrong, and it's time to put it to rest. Not just by reflecting on how long 1,200 people can keep a secret, either. Giants and Dwarfs have troubled to compile names of actual Israeli victims of the World Trade Center attacks. This is a signal service. It's even worth memorizing them, so the next time someone says, "How come there were no Israelis killed in the World Trade Center, huh? Huh?" you can say, "What about Haggai Sheffi? Or Shai Levinhar? Or
Leon Lebor
Danny Lewin
Alona Abraham
None of which proves or disproves Israeli foreknowledge one way or the other. (Unqualified Offerings has addressed the question here, among other places. Cliffs Notes: The Israelis knew something and, according to several reports, issued non-specific warnings in the summer of 2001.) But "No Israelis Died on 9/11" is a canard and deserves to die.
A Fanboy's Notes: You Can't Make This Stuff Up Edition - Via Metastasis, this story of a costumed vigilante in New York City. Let Unqualified Offerings rephrase: this article about a costumed vigilante in New York City. From ABC News. There's an arch-villain too.
Unqualified Offerings further sayeth not.But while Terrifica has never addressed Fantastico directly, her alter-ego Sarah has. Sarah says she was seduced by Fantastico years ago.
However, Fantastico does not even remember Sarah and has no idea that she is Terrifica. He does remember Terrifica, though.
"While I don't know a Sarah, I do know Terrifica. She does exist, and we have crossed paths from time to time," he says.
"What? You mean he doesn't remember me?" Sarah asks, stunned. "You see, that's why Terrifica exists, that's why she's needed."
What is the Opposite of a Peace Process - Superb article by Jim of Objectionable Content on the so-called "No Fly zones" in northern and southern Iraq - what they are not (mandated by the UN), what they don't do (protect Iraqi civilians) and what they do do ("What's the opposite of a peace process?" Jim asks). Jim documents that the US and Britain have repeatedly declined opportunities to use airpower to defend actual Kurds and Shi'ites, all while flying an average of 34,000 sorties a year since 1991. (Yes, Democrats, all through the Clinton years, too.) As Jim writes:
Then the Defense Department pronounces itself shocked, shocked that the Iraqi government has issued a series of anti-US statements during this period.As hawks and doves debate the merits of a full-scale invasion of Iraq, it is easy to ignore the fact that we have been conducting a low-intensity war for more than a decade.
When you examine the record, it becomes clear that the no-fly zones have variously been intended to
o fulfill the "do something!" imperative after Bush I incited post-Gulf War rebellions in the North and South of Iraq that he then allowed Saddam to crush;
o humiliate Iraq by violating its sovereignty on a constant and casual basis, diminishing Saddam's standing with his own military and provoking a coup;
o attrit Iraq's defenses along possible future invasion routes (Bomb radar installations? Yes. Bomb ground units suppressing the locals? No.);
o provoke Iraq into responding either by attacking the airplanes themselves or something else, so its actions can be claimed as a casus belli when the time is ripe.
Your tax dollars at work, loyal reader. Just as a reminder, it would be "anti-American" to imagine that 34,000 sorties a year over an Arab country for more than a decade contributed to anti-American attitudes in the region. After all, it wouldn't bother you if, say, the Chinese bombed western Canada for ten years.
Jim concludes
Though the policy-makers themselves, of course, are not.Perle's comments [about inspections] simply reinforce what the no-fly zones have illustrated for years: the steps we are taking are meant not to avoid war but to make it inevitable.
We are victims of self-fulfilling policy.
Department of Amplifications - Eve Tushnet says that Unqualified Offerings simply hasn't found a loud house concert yet - they exist regardless. It also occurred to me that while, in my original piece, I noted that the listener/reader/viewer could grow bitter at the realization that there is more work of merit out there than he or she could possibly encounter, I completely repressed the complementary frustration - that of the artist. Knowing that the world is full of poets or songwriters or sculptors who deserve attention just as much as you do sucks big time. The most popular psychological defense is denial. Then the problem becomes, from your perspective, that your work is rare and precious and has not been given its due because of flaws in the system.
The market is the popular villain here, but it needn't be. When I was actively writing and publishing poems, one of the reasons I was all for eliminating public funding for poetry was that I thought the money made it too easy for people. Also that it contributed to the country's main poetry problem, which is an acute oversupply.
Artists tend to be liberals and to abhor "supply side economics." Unless they're the suppliers! Public arts policy is premised entirely upon subventions to producers. Turns out that if you build it, very very few will come. That was my villain, anyway.
(What would you do, smart guy? Return us to the era of patronage. The occasional rich person with taste, however idiosyncratic, is worth a dozen featherbedding grants committees. John Quinn, si! NEA no!)
Blogstipation - Brother Gene slacked off a bit and now says that he's having trouble getting back into that blogging swing. Go to his site, post amusing comments, send him nice e-mails and perk him back up.
Kurds Away - Interesting story in the London Times about the situation of Syria's Kurds. No, Unqualified Offerings didn't know either:
Things may actually be changing for the better, and hawks will enjoy the reason given by the Times:Mr Omar is one of about 25,000 Kurds in Syria classified as maktoumeen — “unregistered”. His house and clothes shop are held in other people’s names because he cannot own property. He cannot travel abroad, his marriage is illegal under Syrian law and officially his four children do not exist.
Another 225,000 of Syria’s 1.7 million Kurds are categorised as “foreigners”, holding only a red identity card for domestic travel.
The apparent approach that Bashar al-Assad has hit on? Don't look now but it's - appeasement:But the prospect of war in neighbouring Iraq appears to have spurred the Syrian authorities to reassess their 40-year suppression of the Kurds’ identity. Damascus fears that any automony granted to northern Iraq’s Kurds after the removal of President Saddam Hussein could prompt their Syrian brethren to agitate for self-rule in their adjacent homeland of northeast Syria.
The unregistered and "foreign" Kurds say that autonomy is not their concern. Citizenship is, as seen by this admittedly strange-sounding statement by Ahmad Barakat, of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Progressive Party:Syria’s youthful President al-Assad recently paid a rare visit to Hasake, the principal town in the area, in an apparent attempt to appease the disenfranchised Kurds.
“The message from the President is: ‘Yes, we will look into your problems, but don’t use this as a card to press for more,’ ” a Damascus-based analyst said.
Our freedom as Syrian nationals. It really is a big world.But in Syria, we just want our culture and freedom as Syrian nationals.
Here's another sentence you don't see every day:
How about restoring our familiar picture of the world a bit, okay Mr. Times Man?Some restrictions were eased in 1970 when Hafez al-Assad, the former Syrian President, assumed power.
Thank you. Sounds like Syria's Kurds are closer to the true experience of Syrian citizenship than they may yet be aware.But despite the pastoral scene, residents say that the security presence remains powerful in Qamishly, as well as in other Kurdish-populated towns and villages. “We’re afraid to speak to people, afraid to speak in the streets. We’re always worried that someone is listening to us,” Mr Omar said.
Meanwhile in Iraq, as my Stand Down colleague Harold Moss notes
Gee, do ya think? Pull quote is from this New York Times story. The Kurdish region of Iraq also has some lovely oil facilitiess that, under this plan, Turkish troops would be on top of.Turkish officials are preparing to send troops up to 60 miles into northern Iraq on what they say is a mission to prevent an influx of refugees in the event that a war there sets off a mass movement toward Turkey's borders.
The plan, which is being circulated among top government officials, is giving rise to fears that it could be used as a cover for the Turkish military to snuff out any attempt by Iraqi Kurds to set up their own state if President Saddam Hussein falls from power.
Harold Moss appears to be one of Stand Down's liberal contributors. Thus he writes
This is not giving the President who came between the Bushes his due; for the truth is the Kurds were never more than a talking point for Bill Clinton either. Let's set the Wayback Machine for 1996. Our guide will be the US Committee for RefugeesTruth be told, the oppression of the Kurds has never been anything but a talking point for this or the last Bush, and the Kurds themselves only a tool of convenience to be dropped without a second thought.
This was under the "safety umbrella" of the northen US no-fly zone. It's not as if Bill Clinton was squeamish about lobbing ordnance at foreigners either. By 1999, the US and Britain were bombing Iraq 100 days a year. He just didn't waste any ammo protecting the Kurds.Responding to the KDP invitation, Saddam Hussein's tanks surrounded the city of Erbil, the erstwhile "capital" of Kurdistan. His agents moved in, searching house to house, executing scores of political opponents on the spot, and taking hundreds back to Baghdad, presumably for the same fate, only more brutal and drawn out. President Clinton responded immediately by evacuating the last of the U.S. citizens administering Operation Provide Comfort in the north, bringing to an end the U.S. presence on the ground either for assistance or security. He then sent two salvos of cruise missiles to southern Iraq, a decidedly mixed message about his willingness to protect the Kurds of the north.
In 1998, two years after the US and Britain stood aside while Saddam's troops slaughtered the Kurds of Erbil, the New York Times reported that
Everyone knows the New York Times doesn't publish cartoons, so an illustration of Lucy with the football did not accompany the article.The Administration also is accelerating efforts to help unite feuding Kurdish and other groups into a cohesive opposition.
Morning Murder Minute - Sad and at times infuriating story in the Tacoma News-Tribune about the aftermath of the Keenya Cook murder in Tacoma, Washington in February. Cook is suspected of being the first victim of John Muhammad and/or Lee Malvo, who later went on to bigger and worse things. The evidence connecting them to the murder is just good enough to be convincing outside of court and vague enough to be a likely loser in court. The Associated Press reports that Tacoma prosecutors may never file charges in the case:
Meanwhile the Antigua Sun says local police have detained a Jamaican woman they believe to have obtained a fraudulent passport from John Muhammad's immigration ring.Even if they believed they could prove the two sniper suspects killed a woman in Tacoma, prosecutors here might not file charges, a newspaper reported.
...
"Essentially, we're at the end of a line of half a dozen states who want a piece of them," Gerald Costello, chief criminal deputy in the Pierce County prosecutor's office, told The Seattle Times.
Laura Parker of USA Today writes that "crime analysts say the enduring lesson from the 23-day hunt for the suspects could be law enforcement's continuing difficulties in using technology to quickly solve complex cases involving multiple agencies in different states."
If you're counting on the reward money, you may need to redo your personal finances:
So says the Associated Press.And as the scope of the attacks grows to earlier shootings in other states, the task gets tougher for authorities deciding which tips were the big breaks and who deserves a payout.
"It's going to be very complex," said county spokeswoman Donna Bigler. "There were a number of tips from all across the country that came at different points during the investigation."
Experts say handing out large rewards like the sniper cash is often a difficult and time consuming task, because authorities usually can't pay until after cases make their way through the courts.
On the Why Am I Not Surprised front, nothing has come of "possible connections" between Muhammad and Malvo and Jamaat al-Fuqra. Somehow that Richard Reid angle still hasn't panned out either. For those keeping score at home, the third-hand report of a single county sheriff uninvolved with the sniper case is the only "evidence" linking Muhammad and al-Fuqra, still.
Beverly Taylor, widow of Tucson golf course victim Jerry Taylor, has announced a $13,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and indictment of her husband's killer. She believes Muhammad and Malvo killed her husband. There is good reason to think so. Muhammad and Malvo were in Arizona at the time visiting one of Muhammad's relatives. It fits their MO. Unfortunately, we don't have a gun. Muhammad and Malvo appear not to have stolen the famous Bushmaster until months after Taylor's murder. So if it was them, they used another weapon, and who knows where it might be.
The Old Order Changeth - Since its inception, this site has promised to cover "War, Peace, Freedom, Fish, More."
It has sucked at the fish part.
Unqualified Offerings has just been terrible as a fishing blog. (Partly this is because Unqualified Offerings is not much of a fisherman.) So what to do? The manly response would be for UO to rededicate itself to its self-chosen angling mission, preparing now to more fully chronicle the wonderful world of freshwater gamefishing come spring.
But that would be work.
So instead, Unqualified Offerings has changed its descriptor. It is now officially your website for War, Peace, Freedom, Food and More. Fishing is, for the time being, to be found among the "more." Unqualified Offerings reminds its readers that food has no beans in it.
Lyrics of the Day
Brian Gundersdorf, "Albany" (We're About Nine)Are you a convicted felon?
No.
Do you plan to be?
No.
What is the gun for?
To get me to Canada...
Profusion - Last night Mrs. Offering forced this website to discover something of which it was hitherto completely ignorant: the "house concert" scene. A house concert is just what it sounds like - a concert in someone's house. This one was in the basement of a much nicer place than La Familia Offering lives in, someone's McLean colonial. Baskets upstairs and downstairs for the money (requested donation: $13 per person). Two acts, professional musicians, performing unmiked for about 30 people. (UO's fellow libertarians are running the take figures in their head right now. Don't forget to add the CD sales.)
The "opening act" was We're About Nine, a trio self-classified as "College/Indie/Lo-Fi, Rock, Folk" according to their website. The headliner, if the term is appropriate, was Eric Schwartz, a solo singer/songwriter with a proclivity for the (hilariously) scatalogical and satirical. (Try "Who Da Bitch Now," but before you do, know that Eric said he played it for Pete Seeger at a folk festival and Seeger supposedly said, "I wouldn't sing it.")
And it was good. Brian Gundersdorf, who writes all the songs for We're About Nine, has keen senses of both psychology and lyrical economy. Schwartz's songs were dynamic and striking. I don't mean, in either case, that they were promising. I'm not saying they "show potential." I'm saying that if you like Americana - what the Grammies prefer to call "Contemporary Folk" ("Country radio won't play it because some soccer mom might wreck the minivan") - you would like these songs.
It brought home a bittersweet truth: there is more merit in the world than any one of us are going to discover before we die. I now know about "Albany," but what haven't I heard? Who was in who else's basement last night performing songs I'd have admired?
House concerts presumably have real limitations. They're not going to work for thrash bands or electronica groups in most cases. Most neighbors would balk if you staged the Clash reunion in your rec room. They seem to tend toward small acoustic ensembles, duos and soloists, playing folk, country, jazz or chamber music. But add it to the rave scene and to the short-lived clubs that still, one hopes, spring up in condemned buildings (BBQ Iguana was a legendary DC venue) and DIY lives. Heck, forget the performers. I didn't know about house concerts themselves until last week. There are entire media out there to be discovered.
It's like weblogs. I almost missed Bin Gregory's item about John Walker Lindh I linked to over the weekend, but it was as good as anything anyone had to say on that sorry subject - I daresay I've found nothing better. But most people don't know it exists. There are comics I'd enjoy that I'll never come across, even if I read nothing but comics for the rest of my life. More poems that I'd like than I can read, more poets than I can know.
Whatever our culture is, it's not a wasteland. Even the crap is just the manure in which the good stuff grows. (Eric Schwartz did a hilarious number that grew out of Mademoiselle magazine and Whitney Houston, a soulful piano ballad called "I'm Shaving Off My Muff - For You.") But you'll never, ever pick all the blossoms, or even find them.
That could make one bitter.
(For more on House Concerts, see, well, houseconcerts.com, which has a venue finder. Moore Music is an active series local to the DC area. Unqualified Offerings hasn't been there yet, but they too will be hosting We're About Nine, on December 9th. The Moore's have an informative "About" page. It led me to the New York Times article from 1999.)
You're Not from Texas in most cases, but Michael Croft is, and he weighs in on the question of chili and beans on Ones and Zeros. Lengthy, interesting, "Texas Pride" kind of post by a liberal Texan. Excerpt:
His item includes the lyrics to "If You Know Beans About Chili You Know That Chili Has No Beans," and an analogy involving the number of legs on a dog. No recipes, though.My wife tells a story about her father’s dining experience in London which I think is relevant to this question. Lonely for the taste of home while in England, he decided to dine at an eatery advertising ‘Tex-Mex food’. He started by ordering nachos, which should have been perfectly safe. They quartered a tortilla, covered it with mozarella cheese, and added black olives to the top.
Ginger’s father’s comment: “That’s not a nacho, that’s a god-damned pizza.”
Bradley Ralko of the Agitator e-mails to disagree, and, as one should expect in these circumstances, to brag on his own cooking:
Unqualified Offerings affirms much of the Cincinnati tradition, though even there, it believes, beans are properly an optional accompaniment, not a historical requirement.I've been told many times over by "serious" Texas chili aficionados that my sweet-with-a-spicy-kick Cincinnati-style chili (to be eaten with peanut butter sandwiches, cut diagonally, and dunked therein), is so blasphemous that it shouldn't even be called chili. It has three varieties of bean, and is loaded with sweeteners (honey, ginger, cinnamon). Still, they almost inevitably have another bowl.
And I'm 7-1 in international competition.
My lone defeat came at the Cato Institute chili cookoff/happy hour last spring.
The embarrassing part was that I came in second to....a British guy. Who had never made chili before. And who got his recipe off the Internet.
One reader writes that he is "actually finding the posts on "real chili" both tedious and offensive" and that "if it's a joke, it's already gone on way too long." Unqualified Offerings heard that longevity was the soul of wit, though admittedly its hearing is not what it once was. The real issue is:
Unqualified Offerings just hates beans. Hates them. And while our reader finds obviously joshing avowals on the part of Texans that beans have no place in "real chili" to be "parochial," UO finds the unexamined assumption on the part of the rest of the country that chili must have beans in it to be personally oppressive - just cook the beans on the side, people. Your guests can stir them in to their dish if they wish at serving time.
Reader Robert Langham writes:
VTU = Venison Thermal Unit.I make mine with venison, ground or cubed, expressly and personally shot for that purpose. I use one VTU* per serving, beer, various non-legumes, cut back on the salt and end up with a scrumptious and grounding repast.
Reader Leslie Hale writes
"...can't afford to be Libertarians." And Unqualified Offerings about to lose its job. Sheesh.I have lived for many years each in N. and S. New Mexico, and on the Texas/Mexico border. In my opinion:
Texas Chili without beans can be wonderful.
Mexican Chile con Carne with beans (preferably frijoles) can be wonderful.
Southern NM Green (preferably Hatch) Chile Stew with pork (and frequently a few spuds) can be wonderful.
Northern NM Chile con Carne, usually with red chile and w/wo beans, can be wonderful.
Without beans it is better for the Atkins diet, and with beans or potatoes for poor people who can't afford to be Libertarians.
By George, I Think He Gets It - Responding to John J. Miller's notorious New York Times whine about libertarians voting, you know, Libertarian, rather than Republican, Randy E. Barnett has useful advice for the Republican Party at NRO (imagine!):
Subsequent paragraphs itemize a bill of particulars:While I am not a libertarian who advises others to vote Libertarian, many of my libertarian friends and relatives feel otherwise. They view the Republican party as cavalier about individual liberty, supporting big government when it serves their purposes as much as Democrats do when it serves theirs. What conservative Republicans often fail to realize is that libertarians are an important constituency that should not be ignored or taken for granted lest their votes be driven to the Libertarian party or even to the Democrats. Telling libertarians they should vote Republican despite their serious reservations about Republican policies is futile. These concerns need to be addressed rather than ignored.
Most libertarians I know despised Bill Clinton as much as most conservatives. God knows I did. But we didn't despise him for all the same reasons that conservatives did. A big reason we hated Clinton was that he was terrible on civil liberties. Come Republicans who are terrible on civil liberties, we'll hate them too. Viz. too much of the current administration.o Oppose intrusions into privacy as vociferously as you would if it had been proposed by the Clinton administration.
Republicans can be as lame as Democrats on the First Amendment, worse on the Fourth and Fifth, and even, despite liberal portraits of the Repubs as "in thrall to the gun lobby," tend to cave on the Second, too. It needn't be that way.o Oppose intrusions upon the Bill of Rights more consistently in Congress.
Yes. I've written before that while Thomas is far from ideal on liberty issues, he's the best we've got. (Better than Scalia, who has one foot solidly in the Rhenquist-authoritarian camp.)o Nominate more libertarian-conservative judges like Clarence Thomas to the courts who care about protecting individual liberty, not just traditionalist-conservative judges like Robert Bork who care most about the "liberty" of the majority to enshrine its preferences into law. (His words not mine.)
Barnett notes that Republicans have declined many chances to cut corporate welfare and enacted a Farm Bill (pushed by President Bush) that makes a mockery of the Repubs' fitful free market rhetoric.o Care more about the free market.
Barnett notes that Republicans are at best fair-weather federalists. Democrats are right to argue that Republicans only talk federalism when they want to oppose a particular Democratic program. Why do Republicans want to make Democrats right?o Care about federalism in the Congress.
o Stop making snide gratuitous remarks about libertarians.
They could start in, why, National Review Online!
Barnett knows it's unrealistic to call for the Republicans to explicitly legalize everything. But he argues that they should push the question down to the state and local level. He also argues that, at the very least, support of prohibition should not be a Republican litmus test: if anti-drug war opinions make bright and promising politicians like New Mexico's Gary Johnson "radioactive," libertarians are left with no Republican politicians they can invest their hopes in.o Back off [drug] Prohibition.
Baldly, the Repubs have little chance of winning the allegiance of Unqualified Offerings specifically in the near future. Drug prohibition and the war are bottom line issues for me. I won't join any party committed to continuing this wasteful and evil drug war, and I believe that as long as the country maintains a robust intervenism abroad, that a lot of the things on Barnett's list will be impossible for the government to do.
But a lot of other libertarians could be swayed if the Republican Party took Barnett's advice.
(Barnett link via On the Third Hand...)