By Nathan Barton
Monday is “Bill of Rights Day” and I think it is appropriate to use the opportunity to remember the late and great document which once helped us keep some hard-won liberties.
Therefore, I’d like to suggest that you wear black armbands, or a black ribbon, in memory of the United States Bill of Rights, which once meant so much and was such an important part of that other dead document, the United States Constitution.
I realize that there are many more Bills of Rights (or “Right”) in this world, including at least Fifty, one each for the Fifty States, and of course, the first known Bill of Rights, that of the English and later the English and Scots and Welsh and Irish peoples, dating to 1688. (It, too, died long ago.) Sadly, the Fifty States’ Bills of Right are as dead in this post-republic era of the Pax Americana and American Empire as the one, of ten articles, which amended that poor document, the Constitution of 1787. Continue reading
The Price of Liberty 
Libertarian Commentary on the News, #14-50F: Stormy weather, natural and political
By Nathan Barton
Good morning. Hope you have a great weekend. Stormy weather swept the Pacific Coast for the past several days, possibly ending the “worst drought in 1200 years.” Of course, the Californians are never happy: now they are complaining about the 70-mile-ah-hour winds and more mudslides and the fact that the school children of San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley are running loose for an unplanned three-day weekend. (Got news, guys, those “schoolchildren” in Berkeley have been running wild for the last several weeks protesting police violence against blacks.) By Monday, it will be the parents screaming, “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” Anyway, the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains (our stomping grounds) will get a new taste of winter weather this weekend as remnants of that storm pass through and mess up airflow. Continue reading →