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Monday, July 24, 2006

 

Getting Old

In less than a month, I go to law school.

It’s dawning on me: I’m getting old. Maybe it’s law school, maybe it’s seeing Full House on Nick at Nite (“classic” TV), maybe it’s that Final Fantasy IV (II to me) is 15, but I am coming to the realization that I’m getting old. It seems like only yesterday I was at Oak Hill Academy, in my blue V-neck sweater, hurriedly finishing up my homework in homeroom, sitting through class, waiting for the final bell, then for Mom to pick me up and take me home, where I would play Super NES and go on AOL. I had no future but the weekend. I mean, I was aware, on an intellectual level, that I would grow up, but overall, it seemed that childhood would last forever.

To any kids reading this, I am going to give you some advice. I’m probably talking to the wall (Lord knows I wouldn’t have taken this advice, if I had read it back then), but here goes: Cherish your youth. Enjoy it while you can. Don’t try to hurry it along-it will hurry enough on its own. I guarantee you, whatever problems you have now, when you become 22, and struggle with financial aid, and loans, and bureaucracies, and moving out of you home, and have adult life looming large on the horizon, you will wish that you had only to daily slings and arrows of middle school to deal with.


Thursday, July 20, 2006

 

Doctors != God

So they arrested the doctor and nurses who operated the Katrina T-4 Program. I’m glad.

I support the right to die. However, I support it because I believe in individual autonomy. If, say, a terminal cancer patient wants to end his suffering, that is no business of the government. However, this is not what happened here. This is a case of doctors deciding that some patients' lives were just too inconvenient, and so took those lives with out the patients’ consent. The unauthorized taking of an innocent human being’s life is murder. I want every nanosecond of life I can get. If I were in the patients’ position, I would rather learn to swim while connected to an IV stand, and have a .01% chance of living, then be murdered by someone in whom I (mis)placed my trust, and have a 0% chance of living-and if I change my mind about this, I want the final decision to be mine, not the doctor’s!


Wednesday, July 12, 2006

 

No Expansion of Secret Courts

Arlen Specter has introduced a bill that will transfer all legal disputes concerning the legality of electronic surveillance programs, such as ATT’s cooperation with the NSA, to the secret FISA court, with closed proceedings. How is the public supposed to have an informed opinion about the government (say) looking at who we’re calling without even being allowed to know about these programs, or being informed about the court battles? Even the final opinion of the FISA court could be censored! If Bush thinks he needs to know who I’m calling, who I’m sending money to, where I go in the Internet, then let him publicly tell me, and everyone who will be spied upon, why this is so, and why this doesn’t violate the 4th Amendment (hint: “I’m the president and I said so” is not an answer).


Wednesday, July 05, 2006

 

Balancing NJ’s Budget

My home state of New Jersey has shut down due to a budget crisis. I could balance the budget overnight with one act: abolishing all consensual crimes. How much money do we spend incarcerating drug offenders? How much money is spent catching prostitutes and their johns? Does New Jersey have any state obscenity laws we spend money enforcing? I’ll bet that if consensual crimes were done away with, with virtue being its own reward and vice being its own punishment (as is, if you choose to shoot your veins up with heroin, don’t expect me to pay taxes for your hospital bill), the budget would not only be balanced, there would be a surplus.

Just a thought.


Tuesday, July 04, 2006

 

Happy Fourth of July

Happy Independence Day, everyone!

I think that all of my fellow Americans reading this should take a few moments between the BBQ and the fireworks and read up a bit on our country’s heritage. Yes, we have our problems (wars of aggression, welfare statism, nanny statism, for starters), but we come closer to the ideal of the classical liberal state than any other nation.


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