Morning links

The Intercept: Secret Text in Senate Bill Would Give FBI Warrantless Access to Email Records

Here’s a nice list of Hillary’s speaking fees from 2013 to 2015. Totaling a cool $21 million.

Nearly 1,000 health workers were killed in conflict zones in 2014 and 2015

The Mexican military’s high body count and the War on Drugs.  As said before, the Drug War corrupts character on both sides of the badge.

VA wrongly pronounces 4,201 veterans dead, stops sending benefits

Here’s a list of the nine biggest defense contractors

All-around crappy cab service follows Uber’s exit from Austin, TX

Kelley Vlahos wonders whether we’ll be seeing women draft-dodgers any time soon. If the Warfare State gets its wish and has a shootout with Russia, we just might.

Justin Raimondo explains why he didn’t vote for Trump, despite the “isolationism” that the Trump campaign awoke in the American public

Scott Sumner explains why almost all regulation harms the very people it was intended to help

Jim Bovard explains why US foreign aid incentivizes corruption within the foreign governments that receive it. That aid gives those recipients an independence from their citizens that they wouldn’t otherwise have.

FEE: 12 Articles Every Aspiring Economist Should Read

 

Morning links

Justin Raimondo exposes Hillary’s role in the transformation of Kosovo into terrorism-exporting thug state

Lucy Steigerwald wonders if Hillary voters care about the mass death and mass destruction that a President Hillary’s inevitable wars will bring.  Democrats seem to only care, or notice, Republican wars.

Along with war, Hillary is pretty bad on guns too.  Restrict them domestically, distribute them widely and in abundance throughout the Third World.

Legislation that would allow families of 9/11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia was neutered at the last moment

The mother of this Somali-American is very upset that her son was entrapped by the FBI.  There are no real terrorists, so the government has to create them.

So, the US Nuclear Force still uses floppy disks

The use of stun guns by police in practice amounts to little more than torture

Are cops able to perform a simple cost/benefit analysis of when it’s appropriate to engage in a high-speed chase?  It doesn’t appear to be the case.

There appears to be an inverse relationship between GPA and creativity

The disturbing death of Louis Slotin.  So nuclear scientists in the 40’s teased the plutonium core of a nuclear weapon with a beryllium shell, inducing a nuclear chain-reaction, pulling the shell just before critical mass.  Well, Slotin accidentally dropped the shell into the plutonium…

Are black holes actually dark matter?

DC elites can’t survive without hordes of moronic voters

 

Links

How the Pentagon ruins the lives of NSA whistleblowers.  Snowden learned the proper lessons from the fates of whistleblowers whose lives were destroyed even though they went through “the proper channels”.

There’s no such thing as perfect security at airports, despite being the perfect place for vulgar displays of security theater.

Reporters who believe the government are stupid, a Pentagon official told Morley Safer in 1965.

High cost of Blue Privilege: $100k settlement for cop/k9 beatdown of some guy dancing in a parking lot

Robert De Niro to produce documentary on vaccines

A convincing case for Drug War reparations

Jeff Tucker on Thomas Carlyle, the Founding Father of fascism

 

Morning links

Improved relations with Iran and Cuba are the only positive aspects of Obama’s presidency, says Ron Paul

How much safety did $4 trillion buy American taxpayers during the War on Terror?

The economic collapse, and resulting human toll, of Venezuela won’t affect the appeal of the system that caused that collapse.  Socialism is the total, top-down control of society.  What is so appealing about that system?

Robert Tracisnki exposes the seemingly innocuous sentiments that led to the starvation of Venezuela

New York state cops may soon be granted the power to subject drivers’ phones to an intrusive “textalyzer”, if they suspect the driver of texting while driving

Unsurprisingly, marijuana, one of the world’s safest drugs, drops in price following legalization.  It also becomes far safer, as it leaves the black market and enters the open market, where producers and consumers have recourse to courts of law.

Also, Germany will legalize medical marijuana next year

Of course Russia is mad that the U.S. sent tanks within miles of their border.  This is reckless provocation in the extreme.  How would we feel is Russia lined our border with tanks?

British-made cluster bombs are being used in Yemen, according to Amnesty International.  Cluster bombs, bombs that scatter many smaller bombs over a large area, kill innocents.  16 Yemen civilians have been killed in the last year by accidentally picking up these unexploded mini-bombs.

The arrival of the age of quantum computing

How does one feed a T-Rex?

 

 

 

Morning links

The lessons to learn from Colorado’s experience with legal marijuana

Police will lie if it helps them, which is why filming the police is so crucial

Cops and prison guards oppose marijuana legalization in California because they’re addicted to the torrent of taxpayer dollars used to fight the Drug War

License plate scanners, just one among many spy tools for the Surveillance State

Cops disguised surveillance van with Google Maps logos

Experts say Obama’s new overtime rule will be devastating for the economy

Chinese planes intercept US spy plane in South China Sea

 

Morning links

Families of 9/11 victims can now sue the Saudi government for its involvement in the attacks

New Snowden documents are coming.  The Intercept is planning a big release.

The US doesn’t need the Saudis.  Time to put an end to the Saudi’s taxpayer-funded gravy train.

Texas will build a gold depository

Ilya Somin gives us three reasons why we must remember the atrocities committed by Communist governments

Politicians should probably start checking what tabs they have open before sharing a screenshot from their computer.  Actually, they shouldn’t.  The fallout is too hilarious.

Should the answer to mind-numbingly long TSA lines be more TSA workers?  Toss the wretches out of airports, abolish the TSA, and let airports handle their own security.

Sweden rejects NATO membership.  One less international tripwire, one less country on the military dole.

So, the U.S. is going to send weapons into Libya.  Who’s going to get them?  There are no good guys to arm in that dumpster fire.

Mexico’s drug war cost the country over $100 billion worth of instability and violence

Felony charge dropped against woman after video surfaces of her being beaten by cops while 8 months pregnant.  ALWAYS film the police.

 

Noon links

Former St. Louis cop charged with murder.  $900,000 settlement over the 2011 shooting.  Trigger-happy cops are costing these cities a ton of money.

Psychedelic mushrooms alleviate severe depression in clinical trial.  Expect a pushback from Big Pharma as it threatens their toxic anti-depressant monopoly.

The War on Drugs: a trillion-dollar failure

CIA “accidentally” destroys its sole copy of Senate torture report

Mother stands up to SWAT team attempting to kidnap daughter for the purpose of doping her with Big Pharma’s anti-psychotics.  Sadly, the State did kidnap her child and force her to take the dangerous meds.

Socialism has utterly ruined Venezuela.  Socialism is really just the end result of cronyism; what happens when cronyism consumes its host.

Ron Paul on the NDAA: the military/industrial complex jackpot of 2017