Monthly Archives: August 2013

Immigration Reform — The Time for Free Trade

"During the 19th century, tariffs and other barriers restricted international trade in goods and services. However, for the most part, labor was free to enter or leave the United States. Following World War I, the federal government enacted a series of laws restricting immigration. The interwar years also witnessed significant restrictions on trade in goods and services. Market forces are necessary to coordinate the international labor market as well. Increasing the number of H-1B visa's or temporary work permits is a small step in the right direction but governments can no better plan the international labor market than the Soviets could plan their markets." Continue reading →

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Think Government Is Intrusive Now? Wait Until E-Verify Kicks In

"If this part of the bill passes, all employers will be forced to use the government-run, Web-based system that checks potential employees' immigration status. That means, every American will have to obtain the federal government's prior approval in order to earn a living. E-Verify might seem harmless now, but missions always creep and bureaucracies expand. Surely we should link E-Verify to the criminal records of pedophiles? And why not all criminal records? We don't want alcoholic airline pilots, disbarred doctors, fraudster bankers and so on. E-Verify will be attractive as a way to enforce hundreds of other employment laws and regulations." Continue reading →

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How to escape from a car underwater

"On Friday night, Morgan Lake lived through many drivers’ nightmare: She found herself plummeting about 27 feet off the edge of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge into the water below. And the 22-year-old student managed a feat that pilots and military personnel take hours of specialized training to perfect: She escaped from her sinking car, swam to safety and survived. Ken Burton, president of Panama City, Fla.-based Stark Survival, has guided helicopter operators worldwide through his $2,295 underwater-egress class. For those who might find themselves underwater in their cars, Burton offered this advice." Continue reading →

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How to Survive a Plane Crash: 10 Tips That Could Save Your Life

"In a report analyzing airline accidents from 1983 to 2000, the National Transportation Safety Board found that the survival rate of crashes was 95.7%. But it’s important to take note of another interesting tidbit that the FAA and NTSB found in their research on plane crashes: 40% of fatalities that did occur happened in crashes that were survivable. Close to half of all airplane crash fatalities might have been prevented had passengers taken proper action. In today’s post we’re going to offer research-backed advice from Ben Sherwood’s The Survivor’s Club on what you can do to make it out of a plane crash alive." Continue reading →

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Former LA County GOP chief arrested for sexting after mocking Weiner’s candidacy

"The former executive director of the Republican Party of Los Angeles County was arrested last Friday for allegedly sexting with a 16-year-old girl. The girl told officers that Scott Hounsell, 30, had engaged in sexually explicit chats with her via a social media website. Police did not say what social media website was used. Hounsell was arrested by the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. He was released on $40,000 bail Friday afternoon. Firedoglake noted that Hounsell had mocked New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner on his personal Twitter account." Continue reading →

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Creepy: The State of California Pokes My Cell Phone

"Some cellphones received only a text message, others buzzed and beeped. Some people got more than one alert. It’s the Wireless Emergency Alert program, a cellphone version of the Emergency Alert System on your television. Cellphone owners receive messages automatically, based on their proximity to the emergency, not based on their phone number. 'If you’re from Texas and that’s where your phone number is based and you’re traveling in California at the time of the Amber Alert, you’ll receive the text message about the Amber Alert in California on your Texas-based phone,' said CHP spokeswoman Fran Clader." Continue reading →

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The Best Mob Story Ever

"The best mob story ever told does not involve Al Capone or Bugsy Segal or John Gotti. It involves a mobster few American have ever heard of, Greg Scarpa by name, and his not quite as lethal son, Greg Scarpa Jr., 'Junior' going forward. One reason few people ever heard of Scarpa is that until his arrest in September 1992, he worked as a 'Top Echelon Confidential Informant' under the protection of the FBI for the most of the thirty years prior. During that time, Scarpa murdered at least fifty people. Understandably, this is not a story not that the FBI wants told, but author Peter Lance has told it anyhow in his stunningly comprehensive new book, Deal With The Devil." Continue reading →

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Monday Morning Skeptic: Questioning Authority in the Sprawling Boston Bombing Case

"Mistakes were made. Lots of them—and on more than a few significant aspects of the story. But do such details really matter? If you believe in the infallibility of the FBI, probably not. But the Boston Marathon bombing investigation has bloomed into a complex filigree of related inquiries—from the unsolved triple murder in 2011 in drowsy Waltham, Mass., to the rare 'shelter-in-place' order and live-TV posse search for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on April 19, to the puzzling FBI-agent shooting death in Florida of an unarmed friend of the Tsarnaevs who might have been able to answer crucial questions–had he lived." Continue reading →

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Feds Visited Michael Hastings’ House Day Before His Death: Close Friend

"Rolling Stone journalist Michael Hastings, who was killed in a suspicious car crash after complaining that he was being harassed by the FBI, had his home visited by agents from an unnamed federal agency the day before his death, a close friend of Hastings told Infowars. The fact that feds visited the home of the controversial journalist almost immediately prior to his untimely death is yet another facet to a story which has thrown up numerous questions about the circumstances surrounding the car crash that killed Hastings in the Hancock Park neighborhood of Los Angeles on June 18." Continue reading →

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Just, You Know, Mexico: A Sort Of Photo Essay

"People seeming to have an interest in Mexico and the desperate, blood-soaked lives we live here, Average beach, Micnoacàn, at sundown. Fred, dissolute as a matter of principle, supervises waves with a cold Tecate. To get here, you drive north from Ajijic to Guadalajara, turn left until you hit the Pacific coast at Manzanillo, turn left again, and find hundreds, perhaps thousands or millions, of miles of deserted beaches. We stay in a little town with one hotel of four rooms, one of them a suite, of about two stars, with chickens cackling in the yard and no gringos, cackling or otherwise." Continue reading →

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