NewsOK: Only 20,000 more signatures needed for recreational marijuana petition, organizers say

High Times: New Yorkers may now replace opioid prescriptions with medical marijuana

ABC: Detaining immigrant kids is now a billion-dollar industry

Forbes: An Israeli startup raises $12.5 million to help governments spy on IoT

The American Conservative: Keeping cops’ hands out of your pocket

Activist Post: Jury nullifies Georgia marijuana law, finds man not guilty despite admitting to growing weed

Washington Times: Rand Paul undecided on Brett Kavanaugh, disagrees with Fourth Amendment ruling

FEE: Washing machine tariffs started the trade war. Result? Largest-ever three-month increase in washing machine prices

The Intercept: Trump finds a new weapon for his war on journalism: Leak indictments aimed at smearing reporters

Also The Intercept: With last charges against J20 protesters dropped, defendants seek accountability for prosecutors

CATO: Subsidies galore: corporate welfare for politically-connected businesses is bipartisan

USA Today: Microsoft raises alarm about facial recognition

Reason: Innocent until proven guilty, but only if you can pay

From Chapter 8, The Quest for Justice, from the second volume of Law, Legislation, and Liberty:

“Strictly speaking, only human conduct can be called just or unjust. If we apply the terms to a state of affairs, they have meaning only in so far as we hold someone responsible for bringing it about or allowing it to come about. A bare fact, or a state of affairs which nobody can change, may be good or bad, but not just or unjust. To apply the term ‘just’ to circumstances other than human actions or the rules governing them is a category mistake. Only if we mean to blame a personal creator does it make sense to describe it as unjust that somebody has been born with a physical defect, or been stricken with a disease, or has suffered the loss of a loved one. Nature can be neither just nor unjust. Though our inveterate habit of interpreting the physical world animistically or anthropomorphically often leads us to such a misuse of words, and makes us seek a responsible agent for all that concerns us, unless we believe that somebody could and should have arranged things differently, it is meaningless to describe a factual situation as just or unjust.

But if nothing that is not subject to human control can be just (or moral), the desire to make something capable of being just is not necessarily a valid argument for our making it subject to human control; because to do so may itself be unjust or immoral, at least when the actions of another human being are concerned.”

Reading Hayek is an acquired skill. His tendency to place his most important insights somewhere within 100-word sentences that require multiple readings and ponderings to fully digest his meaning can be exhausting to the first-time reader.

But one thing I’ve found when reading Hayek’s books for a second or third time, is that it’s not quite the same book.  What appears as needless redundancy reveals itself to be deeper insights into the phenomena of spontaneous order, it’s functioning, and the rules needed that create the environment for it to form. Once you’ve acclimated yourself to his surgically precise, yet lengthy, writing style, you realize he’s not repeating himself anywhere. There’s nothing extra here, Hayek has distilled his explanation of spontaneous order as far as possible without pouring the liquid out.  I also remain convinced that the most invincible, most convincing defense of liberty lies within the pages of Hayek’s trilogy.

NewsOK: Health board broke tradition in setting medical marijuana rules, author unknown

NewsOn6: Medical marijuana impairment while driving illegal in Oklahoma

Other health department’s slightly more tolerant than ours: Reason: New York’s health department recommends legalizing recreational marijuana

Techcrunch: ACLU calls for a moratorium on government use of facial recognition technologies

The Verge: Federal court rules that TSA agents can’t be sued for false arrest, abuse, or assault

The Intercept: Immigrant mothers are staging hunger strikes to demand calls with their separated children

Mises: You now can’t leave the U.S. unless the IRS lets you

The Free Thought Project: Cops bulldoze unarmed man to death because they suspected him of growing marijuana

Techdirt: Guy gets tossed in jail on contempt charges for refusing to unlock his phone for cops

GEORGE WILL: What might a socialist American government do?

Fox OKC: Lawsuits filed against State of Oklahoma over medical marijuana rules

KOCO: Oklahoma House, Senate announce bi-partisan group for medical marijuana implementation

Well that was quick: Tulsa World: Recreational marijuana petition nears signature goal to get constitutional question on November ballot

ACLU: The Trump administration is hiding a crucial report on NSA spying practices

Huffington Post: Brett Kavanaugh’s pro-surveillance record could haunt him in SCOTUS fight

WIRED: How the U.S. government secretly sold ‘spy phones’ to suspects

The Guardian: ‘Data is a fingerprint’: Why you aren’t as anonymous as you think online

Military: Senators: Where’s the military family suicide data?

PETER VAN BUREN: Why I stand with Julian Assange

FEE: China only makes $8.46 from an iPhone–and that’s why this trade war is futile

From his too-little-read Law, Legislation, and Liberty:

“The preservation of a free system is so difficult precisely because it requires a constant rejection of measures which appear to be required to secure particular results, on no stronger grounds than that they conflict with a general rule, and frequently without our knowing what will be the costs of not observing the rule in the particular instance. A successful defence of freedom must therefore be dogmatic and make no concessions to expediency, even where it is not possible to show that, besides the known beneficial effects, some particular harmful result would also follow from its infringement. Freedom will prevail only if it is accepted as a general principle whose application to particular instances requires no justification. It is thus a misunderstanding to blame classical liberalism for having been too doctrinaire. Its defect was not that it adhered too stubbornly to principles, but rather that it lacked principles sufficiently definite to provide clear guidance, and that it often appeared simply to accept the traditional functions of government and to oppose all new ones. Consistency is possible only if definite principles are accepted. But the concept of liberty with which the liberals of the nineteenth century operated was in many respects so vague that it did not provide clear guidance.”

KOCO: Gov. Fallin signs medical marijuana rules, including ban on smokable forms at dispensaries

KFOR: DEA: Pharmacists dispensing marijuana would be in violation of federal law

NewsOn6: Oklahoma medical marijuana groups vow legal action over last-minute regulation changes

Forbes: Medical marijuana reduces opioid prescriptions, another study finds

Slate: The Surveillance State’s eyes at the U.S. border

The Outline: Silicon Valley is funding the future of warfare

Common Dreams: Legal scholars warn ICE agents that ‘just following orders’ won’t save them

The American Conservative: Killing Yemen with hunger

Daily Beast: Hacker selling Pentagon’s killer drone manual on the dark web for cheap

Gizmodo: Walmart patents audio surveillance tool to monitor employees

Techdirt: Federal court says taking people’s licenses away for failure to pay court fees is unconstitutional

Reason: A cop attacked and threatened a man who did nothing wrong, then made his life hell for complaining about it

Consortium News: Israel bulldozes Al Ahmar and buries the two-state solution

Seattle Times: Inside China’s dystopian future: AI, shame, and lots of cameras

DAVID STOCKMAN: Time for a mercy killing at NATO

FEE: 7 things you might not know about Hayek’s ‘The Road to Serfdom”. Ed: Hayek’s work has always had a ‘through the looking glass’ air about it, especially his later work into spontaneous order.  Shackle’s work as well, with his strange and wonderful terminology such as ‘unknowledge’ and kaleidics. But for Hayek, the Road to Serfdom is the book to begin with.

PLOSblog: Ayahuasca: Ritual psychedelic turns modern-day anti-depressant

Rolling Stone: Behold the DEA’s massive list of marijuana nicknames

ASCH: Is aging a disease?

Botanophobia, the fear of plants, is apparently widespread among Oklahoma’s political and bureaucratic elite, as evinced from the first stirrings of pro-medical marijuana activism in this state. And, despite the easy win for State Question 788, proof of the clear favor that normal Oklahomans have for legal medical marijuana, the medical/political/bureaucratic Establishment is proving particularly hard to dislodge, much like a barnacle on the underside of a boat. One such cluster of barnacles resides within the state’s Department of Health, a cluster that is apparently committed to damaging the spirit of 788 as much as possible, with it’s weapon of choice being 75 pages of ridiculous regulations that will, in practice, have no other effect than shielding their cronies from the devastating competition that this plant will undoubtedly bring. Indeed, easy access to medical marijuana will be an extinction-level event for much of the pharmaceutical establishment, as their expensive, patent poisons, churned out by the billions in various pill mills, will be tossed in the garbage and replaced with a plant that patients can grow themselves.   The absurdity of the regulations speak for themselves: Dispensaries must have a pharmacist on site, plants must be grown only behind a 6 foot fence, locked, shielded from the eyes of both the public and God too, apparently, as dispensaries also must remain closed on Sunday. Of course Oklahoma would require that last one. Also, no smoke-able marijuana shall be allowed. Given all these commandments, it’s a virtual certainty that a lawsuit will immediately be brought forth, as the ACLU of Oklahoma’s Ryan Kiesel predicts.

They will have the effect similar to that of a circus dog, scared out of its wits, attempting to jump through an endless series of flaming rings without igniting.

The true purpose of such restrictive regulations is to discourage a prospective medical marijuana patient to the point that they give up on obtaining the plant and revert to the same old insanity-inducing pharmaceuticals that we see advertised throughout the day on television, the ones that are presently leaving a wide trail of dead and insane US citizens in their wake.

You can’t patent a plant, and how can you make money on a medicine that the patient can grow at home?  Those are the only questions that matter to those in power. Not our health, not our future, not our liberty.

Another prediction, one made by pretty much everyone with eyes, is that this will ignite a huge push for legalizing recreational marijuana in this state. Something that should probably happen now, once and for all. While from this vantage point it appears more of an “Aqaba, from the land” scenario, Lawrence did cross the Nefud, and did take Aqaba. It is possible. Barnacles can be struck off a boat, and the Political Class can be dislodged from our liberty. All it takes is a will, belief, and the way will appear.

Raw Story: Oklahoma health department puts 75 pages of regulations on medical marijuana that voters didn’t approve

KFOR: ACLU of Oklahoma threatens lawsuit over newly-adopted marijuana rules

KXII: Medical marijuana law to affect gun owners in Oklahoma

The Verge: California malls have been feeding license plate data to a national network linked with ICE

VICE: Surveillance and the City: Know when you’re being watched

TechCrunch: Court victory legalizes 3D-printable gun blueprints

Reason: Trump pardons Oregon ranchers convicted in brush fire case

National Interest: The US mission in Afghanistan is not making us safer. It’s time to bring it to an end.

Mises: The Supreme Court is much too powerful

Techdirt: Fake news is a meaningless term, and our obsession with it continues to harm actual news

The Week: Trump’s corporate servility

Moore’s Law is back: Ars Technica: The AI revolution has sparked a new chips arms race

From Chapter 3 of his important, and vastly underread, The Constitution of Liberty, and what I consider the greatest concise defense of liberty:

“Man learns by the disappointment of expectations. Needless to say, we ought not to increase the unpredictability of events by foolish human institutions. So far as possible, our aim should be to improve human institutions so as to increase the chances of correct foresight. Above all, however, we should provide the maximum of opportunity for unknown individuals to learn of facts that we ourselves are yet unaware of and to make use of this knowledge in their actions.

It is through the mutually adjusted efforts of many people that more knowledge is utilized than any one individual possesses or than it is possible to synthesize intellectually; and it is through such utilization of dispersed knowledge that achievements are made possible greater than any single mind can foresee. It is because freedom means the renunciation of direct control of individual efforts that a free society can make use of so much more knowledge than the mind of the wisest ruler could comprehend.

From this foundation of the argument for liberty it follows that we shall not achieve its ends if we confine liberty to the particular instances where we know it will do good. Freedom granted only when it is known beforehand that its effects will be beneficial is not freedom. If we knew how freedom would be used, the case for it would largely disappear. We shall never get the benefits of freedom, never obtain those unforeseeable new developments for which it provides the opportunity, if it is not also granted where the uses made of it by some do not seem desirable. It is therefore no argument against individual freedom that it is frequently abused. Freedom necessarily means that many things will be done which we do not like. Our faith in freedom does not rest on the foreseeable results in particular circumstances but on the belief that it will, on balance, release more forces for the good than for the bad. 

It also follows that the importance of our being free to do a particular thing has nothing to do with the question of whether we or the majority are ever likely to make use of that particular possibility. To grant no more freedom than all can exercise would be to misconceive its function completely. The freedom that will be used by only one man in a million may be more important to society and more beneficial to the majority than any freedom that we all use.

It might even be said that the less likely the opportunity to make use of freedom to do a particular thing, the more precious it will be for society as a whole. The less likely the opportunity, the more serious will it be to miss it when it arises, for the experience that it offers will be nearly unique. It is also probably true that the majority are not directly interested in most of the important things that any one person should be free to do. It is because we do not know how individuals will use their freedom that it is so important. If it were otherwise, the results of freedom could also be achieved by the majority’s deciding what should bedone by the individuals. But majority action is, of necessity, confined to the already tried and ascertained, to issues on which agreement has already been reached in that process of discussion that must be preceded by different experiences and actions on the part of different individuals.

The benefits I derive from freedom are thus largely the result of the uses of freedom by others, and mostly of those uses of freedom that I could never avail myself of. It is therefore not necessarily freedom that I can exercise myself that is most important for me. It is certainly more important that anything can be tried by somebody than that all can do the same things. It is not because we like to be able to do particular things, not because we regard any particular freedom as essential to our happiness, that we have a claim to freedom. The instinct that makes us revolt against any physical restraint, though a helpful ally, is not always a safe guide for justifying or delimiting freedom. What is important is not what freedom I personally would like to exercise but what freedom some person may need in order to do things beneficial to society. This freedom we can assure to the unknown person only by giving it to all.

The benefits of freedom are therefore not confined to the free—or, at least, a man does not benefit mainly from those aspects of freedom which he himself takes advantage of. There can be no doubt that in history unfree majorities have benefited from the existence of free minorities and that today unfree societies benefit from what they obtain and learn from free societies. Of course the benefits we derive from the freedom of others become greater as the number of those who can exercise freedom increases. The argument for the freedom of some therefore applies to the freedom of all. But it is still better for all that some should be free than none and also that many enjoy full freedom than that all have a restricted freedom. The significant point is that the importance of freedom to do a particular thing has nothing to do with the number of people who want to do it: it might almost be in inverse proportion. One consequence of this is that a society may be hamstrung by controls, although the great majority may not be aware that their freedom has been significantly curtailed. If we proceeded on the assumption that only the exercises of freedom that the majority will practice are important, we would be certain to create a stagnant society with all the characteristics of unfreedom.”

KOSU: Health leaders push Oklahoma to adopt more restrictive marijuana rules

News 9: Oklahoma recreational marijuana petition growing closer to goal

New York Times: Facebook’s push for facial recognition prompts privacy alarms

Washington Examiner: Brett Kavanaugh’s defense of NSA phone surveillance looms as confirmation question

Vanity Fair: China’s terrifying Surveillance State looks a lot like America’s future

Techdirt: Yes, privacy is important, but California’s new privacy bill is an unmitigated disaster in the making

Activist Post: Smart technology that tracks people through walls raises privacy concerns

UnDark: Forget killer robots, autonomous weapons are already online

Zero Hedge: Boston Dynamics upgrades ‘terrifying’ robots with creepy features

Haaretz: Rights groups demand Israel stop arming neo-Nazis in Ukraine

LUCY STEIGERWALD: The case for abolishing ICE

High Times: Welcome to Amsterdam, birthplace of the Cannabis Cup

Horizon: Plasma accelerators could overcome size limits of Large Hadron Collider