Winning Hearts & Minds

NASA knew Columbia crew would die but chose not to tell them

"A NASA flight director has revealed that personnel on the ground knew in 2003 that the Space Shuttle Columbia would not survive re-entry, but chose not to inform the vessel’s crew. According to an ABC News report from Thursday, when faced with the choice of letting the astronauts die trying to come home or leaving them to orbit until their air ran out, high-ranking NASA officials chose to let the Columbia crew die in ignorance of what was to befall them." Continue reading →

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Obama’s Drug War: After Medical Marijuana Mess, Feds Face Big Decision On Pot

"The Department of Justice has cracked down hard on medical marijuana, raiding hundreds of dispensaries, while the IRS and other federal law enforcement officials have gone after banks and landlords who do business with them. Fours years after promising not to make medical marijuana a priority, the government continues to target it aggressively. U.S. attorneys in the states helped beat back local efforts to regulate the medical marijuana industry, going so far as to threaten elected officials with jail. The willingness of top prosecutors to use their power in brazenly political ways is, in many ways, the untold story of Obama's first-term approach to drug policy." Continue reading →

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China’s Smaller Cities Are Home to Growing Middle Class

"51 per cent of China's population, or 691 million people, are currently living in urban areas. Research suggests that by 2020, some 824 million people will be living in cities, an increase of 188 million. That's one and a half million new urban residents every month for the rest of this decade. By 2030, according to our analysis, there will be around 270 million more new urban residents in China. By our calculations, a company had to be in 60 cities to reach 80 percent of the country's middle class in 2005. Today, they have to be in 340 of them. And by 2020, they will need to be in 550 urban locations to reach that same percentage of the middle class population." Continue reading →

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Antigua set to bypass US copyright law with WTO green-lit media, software sales website

"In a surprisingly legal move, the government of Antigua is planning to open a website selling media and software without paying any fees to American copyright holders. It comes after the US closed its market to Antiguan gambling companies. The small Caribbean nation once thrived on its gambling industry, which at one point employed 5 per cent of its people, TorrentFreak reports. When the US blocked the island's gambling companies from accessing American players, it pulled the rug out from under the whole industry. Antigua is now set to begin selling music, movies and software without having to pay a cent to the American firms holding copyrights on the wares." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingAntigua set to bypass US copyright law with WTO green-lit media, software sales website

Pinhead Bureaucrats Threaten Family with Prison for Rescuing a Baby Deer

"When Connersville police officer Jeff Counceller first encountered the baby deer, she was curled up in the corner of a front porch. It was clear the fawn was injured. So the Councellers took in the deer, which they named Dani, cleaned and dressed its wounds and nursed it back to health. Trouble is, what the Councellers did is against the law. Now, more than two years after rescuing the deer, more than six months after conservation officers began an investigation, the Indiana Department of Natural Resources wants them prosecuted. …DNR officials began an investigation that entailed half a dozen visits to their home and numerous calls to local authorities." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingPinhead Bureaucrats Threaten Family with Prison for Rescuing a Baby Deer

Morningland Dairy raided; another family business destroyed

"Morningland Dairy, a family business that has been in operation for over 30 years without a single complaint or report of any illness has ceased. The over two year battle they’ve had with the Missouri Milk Board ended with a raid and confiscation of over 250 thousand dollars of inventory seized by the state. As a result of the legal stipulations put on Morningland Dairy which are impossible to comply with they will no longer be able to produce their product." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingMorningland Dairy raided; another family business destroyed

Gun Ownership: American Exceptionalism

"The ownership of weapons in the United States by private citizens is not matched anywhere else in the world. Switzerland is close. The training is far better. The commitment of national defense by an armed electorate in Switzerland is like nothing else in the modern world. Being part of a citizen army is a matter of national pride. This is not the American tradition. The American tradition is far more a matter of individual autonomy, individual ownership of weapons, and not a matter of national pride. Gun ownership in America is not a matter of a defense of the nation or a commitment to a military tradition. It is quite the opposite." Continue reading →

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The perils of overseas tax disclosure: An immigrant’s story

"When Andrew Winfield applied to become a U.S. citizen in 2011, he realized he owed taxes on accounts he had left behind in his native England. So he paid what he believed he owed — $2,800 in back taxes, plus the estimated interest and penalties - and entered the IRS's overseas disclosure program. But when the IRS assessed its penalty in November, Winfield was stunned to learn that it would be $28,000 — 10 times the amount of tax he owed from 2003 to 2010. Because the penalty is based on balances when the exchange rate favored the British pound, paying that amount would mean giving up virtually everything he now has in the accounts." Continue reading →

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State Department abandons effort to close down Guantanamo Bay

"The State Department has shut down the office of its special envoy for the closure of Guantanamo Bay, a US official said Monday, in a sign of the fading hopes of shuttering the jail. Daniel Fried, the special envoy in charge of the dossier, will now move to coordinate the State Department’s sanctions policy, including for Iran and Syria. Of the 779 inmates who passed through Guantanamo only nine were ever convicted or brought to trial, and of the 166 who remain, 55 are considered safe to be released by the US military, but have nowhere to go." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingState Department abandons effort to close down Guantanamo Bay