etsy 2A

https://www.etsy.com/shop/2ndAmendmentJewelry

Hat tip to Aggie who found the etsy site for 2nd Amendment Jewelry. Thank you!

As you can see, Brenda and Glenda really do create their jewelry in Starkvegas, Mississippi!

Here's the necklace Daughter C got for me from their stand at the Arts Festival this weekend.

Five Teasers

1. Mr. Big Food's participation in the GOOD IDEAS forum on liberal gun ownership went well. As it was scheduled for 1:30 central time, and at the time we were making our way back to the Farm from the coast, Mr. Big Food chose an outdoor location from which to participate. 

Civil Rights

2. Daughter C, who had been minding the Farm during our absence, was hard at work during our absence. 

Real Big Food!

3. I have work to do.

Cataloging the 10 pounds of crappy old books I crammed in a 5 pound bag.

4. The garden continued to produce in my absence. Daughter C was otherwise engaged. So I harvested some beans this afternoon. As I type, Mr. Big Food is in the new & improved kitchen turning beans into a little side dish to go with our chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes. I think bacon is involved.

5. What a great Anniversary Fishing Trip we had! We're thinking about dragging the whole family down to the Gulf next fall.

Even those danged old dawgs.

Stay tuned!

Hang Out with Mr. Big Food Himself!

Mr. Big Food will be an invited participant on GOOD's Friday morning Google+ Hangout. 

Friday, July 26 @11:30 PST (that's 1:30 in Mississippi and 2:30 for you city mice back east).

He'll be talking about guns and the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. 

A refresher for those who have not yet committed the Bill of Rights to memory: 

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

~~

Now to the nitty gritty. I have a vague sense of what a Google+ Hangout is. Details to follow as soon as I know more. (I would welcome your help.)

That's Final!

About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern.

But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter.

If all men are created equal, that is final.

If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final.

If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final.

No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions.

If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

Calvin Coolidge, The Inspiration of the Declaration, July 5, 1926

From The Founders' Almanac: A Practical Guide to the Notable Events, Greatest Leaders & Most Eloquent Words of the American Founders (Matthew Spalding, ed., The Heritage Foundation, Washington, D.C., 2002).

Who ya gonna trust?

Ghost Busters! We should view that movie again this summer.

Startpage.com touts itself as the "world's most private search engine."

I doubt that there's any privacy any more on the World Wide Web. But I've started using Startpage.

Unacceptable

Via Instapundit.com:

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? The Government Wants A Backdoor Into Your Communications. “According to the New York Times, President Obama is ‘on the verge of backing’ a proposal by the FBI to introduce legislation dramatically expanding the reach of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA. CALEA forces telephone companies to provide backdoors to the government so that it can spy on users after obtaining court approval, and was expanded in 2006 to reach Internet technologies like VoIP. The new proposal reportedly allows the FBI to listen in on any conversation online, regardless of the technology used, by mandating engineers build “backdoors” into communications software.”

Let's review:

Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

And:

Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probably cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

And just for fun:

Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage other retained by the people.

II, III, V, VI, VII, VIII, and X here. 

Dear Staffer Who Crafted This Email

response to what must have been a flood of emails chastising Senator Wicker for voting to allow S.649-- the "deeply flawed legislation" titled "Safe Schools Act"-- to move forward,

[Page break b/c my first response is not for children's eyes.]

"... some things are worth fighting for... "

You can just imagine how the Chick-fl-A business is playing out in a state with a lot of churches. Via  Y'all Politics, here's Ron Williams', Libertarian candidate for US House District 4, take on the matter:

Let me make it clear, the CEO is being punished by government officials because he exercised his First Amendment right of free speech. The Constitution is very clear. When government restricts and punishes the people for exercising their First Amendment rights, then we are to default to the Second Amendment (right to keep and bear arms). These two mayors need to be introduced to the Second Amendment ASAP.

He later clarified:

I don't want anybody to go shoot anybody, but I want people to understand what a slippery slope we can be on and what the purpose of the Second Amendment is.

From the Sun Herald story:

Williams said his letter was meant to remind people that "some things are worth fighting for, if they cannot be remedied by any other measure."

FIRE! (Updated with minor edits)

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has awarded Mississippi State University the 'Green Light' rating for MSU's free speech policies. I'm pleased to report that That School Up North also has a FIRE green light. So here in Mississippi we have two, of only 15 colleges and universities in the United States of America, which protect-- and dare I say? promote-- free speech. 

Keep reading to see the full list. Most surprising-- to me... .* 

A Must Read: The Declaration of Independence

The Declaration of Independence used to be read aloud at public gathering every Fourth of July. Today, while all Americans have heard of it, all too few have read more than its second sentence.  Yet the Declaration shows the natural rights foundation of the American Revolution, and provides important information about what makes a constitution or government legitimate. It also raises the question of how these fundamental rights are reconciled with the idea of “the consent of the governed” for which the Declaration is also famous.

At The Volokh Conspiracy, Randy Barnett annotates the Declaration of Independence. His concise (e.g. doesn't take much time to at least skim through and come back to tomorrow when you have more time) article begins:

When reading the Declaration, it is worth keeping in mind two very important facts. The Declaration constituted high treason against the Crown and every person who signed it would be executed as traitors should they be caught by the British. Second, the Declaration was considered to be a legal document by which the revolutionaries justified their actions, and explained why they were not truly traitors. It represented, as it were, a literal indictment of the Crown and Parliament, in the very same way that criminals are now publicly indicted for their alleged crimes by grand juries representing “the People.”

But to justify a revolution, it was not thought to be enough that officials of the government of England, the Parliament, or even the sovereign himself had violated the rights of the people. No government is perfect; all governments violate rights. This was well known. So the Americans had to allege more than mere violations of rights. They had to allege nothing short of a criminal conspiracy to violate their rights systematically. Hence, the famous reference to “a long train of abuses and usurpations” and the list that follows. In some cases, these specific complaints account for provisions eventually included in the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

It ends: 

The assumption of natural rights expressed in the Declaration of Independence can be summed up by the following proposition:  “first comes rights, then comes government.”  According to this view: (1) the rights of individuals do not originate with any government, but preexist its formation;  (2) The protection of these rights is the first duty of government; and (3) Even after government is formed, these rights provide a standard by which its performance is measured and, in extreme cases, its systemic failure to protect rights — or its systematice violation of rights — can justify its alteration or abolition; (4) At least some of these rights are so fundamental that they are “inalienable,” meaning they are so intimately connected to one’s nature as a human being that they cannot be transferred to another even if one consents to do so.  This is powerful stuff.

[my emphases]

Off to gather up some crappy old books before company arrives because yes, it is our tradition to read the Declaration of Independence with our friends and fellow citizens on Independence Day.
 
h/t Instapundit

I want to believe that the sky is free.

When we first began looking for a piece of property of respectable size, we shopped around in eastern Kentucky. It was then and there I learned that ownership of surface property does not necessarily entail ownership of the minerals beneath the surface, or the timber above.

You may not have the "rights" to the minerals and timber on your land.

In a common sense world, that don't make no sense. But there it is. Someone sold off his right to his minerals and look what it got you.

I want to believe that if we struck crude here on the Farm, we'd be rich! [Spoiler: The link is the Wikipedia entry on The Beverly Hillbillies.]

Decoration Day

Red, white & blue

Rhode Island made Memorial Day-- not Decoration Day which was originally honored soldiers killed in the Civil War and was observed only in the northern states-- a legal holiday in 1874. By 1910 all states and territories had done likewise except Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas. [According to my crappy old Encyclopedia Britannica (1962) whose entry for "Memorial Day" refers me to the entry on Decoration Day.]

Freedom

EASTERN EUROPEANS FIGHT FOR INTERNET FREEDOM:

A grassroots protest movement erupted last month in Poland and spread quickly across the former Eastern Bloc and beyond. The growing opposition against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, has raised questions about the fate of the treaty, which is important to the governments of the United States and other industrialized economies.

There have been street protests across Eastern Europe, attacks on government websites in the Czech Republic and Poland, even a heartfelt apology from a Slovenian ambassador who signed it and then decried her act as “civic carelessness.”

In a region where people remember being spied upon and controlled by oppressive communist regimes, the treaty has provoked fears of a new surveillance regime.

They’re right to be angry, and Americans are wrong to be complacent.

Posted at 1:25 pm by Glenn Reynolds   

[my emphasis]

 

Links didn't transfer. Here's the permalink at Instapundit.

Funny that I'm seeing this just now, given the brief exchange Mr. Big Food and I had about Ceaușescu just an hour or so ago. 

End times

The power went out for a split second earlier and now the satellite is acting out. Some logo is pinging around the screen and we don't seem to be getting anywhere.

This is not what I was promised.

I AM THE 99%!!!!!

Yeah, right. Go back to bed.

Chew on this

"Is Your Choice Of Food A Fundamental Right?" at Food Renegade.

I love the photo at the article site. This is the first thing I've stumbled upon from the Food Renegade site and it looks interesting. I'm a little put off by the repeated use of the word, "sustainable," though. But I'll keep my brain open.

hat tip: Instapundit

My take on the question? "Rights" talk is metaphysical talk. I don't do metaphysics. So I get around the whole issue of rights by just saying to folks who assert that I do or do not have a "right" to do X:  

I don't want to be told what to do/eat/say/think/feel. etc. Get out of my garden and kitchen, and stay away from my bookshleves. And while you're at it, get out of my life.

(Don't think I'm an anarchist, though. There are rules.)

Rule aught.

There's a BIG difference between telling what to ..., and discussing the merits of doing  ... . The difference is choice. That's what the linked article is about.