Private Policing I Find Disturbing

Some residents of New Brighton, Christchurch are sick of the police failing to control crime and have taken to patrolling the streets. I would be all for that were these guys not a bunch of white supremacists. A “white pride” group, Right Wing Resistance (RWR), claims to be patrolling New Brighton streets that “the police and the [...]

Louis CK on Helen Lovejoyism

Steven Horwitz points to an example of Helen Lovejoyism at Liberty & Power: You’ve all seen them. Those ubiquitous TV ads where a simple little pill transforms a man suffering from erectile dysfunction, or ED, into a virile tiger who puts a smile on the face of his now beaming wife. Well, Representative Jim Moran [...]

Act has Jumped the Shark

In case there was previously any doubt, the ACT Party – New Zealand’s supposedly classical liberal party – is now thoroughly socially conservative. Three of the party’s five MPs have voted in favour of a bill which passed by the New Zealand Parliament yesterday to ban the wearing of ‘gang insignia’ in a specific region [...]

Same-sex Marriage and the Neutral State

Jason Kuznicki has another excellent post on same-sex marriage at Positive Liberty: Maggie Gallagher gets more dishonest and incoherent as her views on same-sex marriage lose support. Here’s the latest example: Same-sex marriage is quite different from bans on interracial marriage in one powerful respect: It asks religious Americans to surrender a core belief — not [...]

Massachusetts Considers Ban on Granny Porn

Eugene Volokh has the sad, bigoted news: Yup, the law (in Massachusetts) would make it a very serious crime — tantamount to child pornography — to make, and distribute “with lascivious intent,” “any visual material that contains a representation or reproduction of any posture or exhibition in a state of nudity” involving anyone age 60 [...]

Smoking Regulation is Aesthetic

Can outright smoking prohibition be far away when people support laws like this? Lighted cigarettes meant lightened purses and wallets for smokers who were caught puffing in public last week, as the city began enforcement of a smoking ban that technically went into effect last summer. The law, passed by the City Council last May, mandates [...]

More ‘Efficient’ Methods

An example of Skrabanek’s point that when providing information fails to convince, health  promotionists use moral pressure and manipulation: The people in the ads are actors and musicians popular with the kids. Smokers in New Zealand are being forced to pay for advertising aimed at making smoking socially unacceptable.

I’m not quite sure I understand this analogy…

 He said sending smokers to work with indigenous people was like allowing convicted pedophiles to work with children. More here, via The Rest of the Story.