Year: 2014

  • Why Helix Kinda Sucks

    (Spoiler Alert for potentially all 8 Helix episodes to date.) I loved the Andromeda Strain, both the book and the movie, and so I’m always willing to give a good plague story a try, which is why I really wanted to like Helix, the new series on SyFy, about a CDC team sent to investigate… Read more

  • Paying For Prosecutions in Virginia?

    Over at Crimlaw, Virginia prosecutor Ken Lammers writes about the state’s law allowing private prosecutions. It’s a fascinating concept, and Ken goes into a bit of detail, but it comes down to this: So, basically, if doubly approved by the judge and the public prosecutor, the hired gun prosecutor can take part in the case… Read more

  • Liberty Is Not Suicide

    Over at Defending Dandelions, “nidefatt” isn’t happy with libertarians like myself and Scott Greenfield. (I don’t think Scott’s ever identified himself as a libertarian, but he sometimes sounds like one.) In an earlier post, he commented on Scott’s constitution-is-not-a-suicide-pact post, and more recently he responded to my own response to Scott’s post: […] The ideas… Read more

  • Law Enforcement

    Now here’s a Facebook meme that makes sense. It’s from Filming Cops, but the true adversary here is not the police officer: howlawsareenforced This isn’t some paranoid, whack-job, cop hating-nonsense. It’s an accurate description of how all criminal laws are enforced. Even a minor violation such as loitering can have a penalty of several hundred… Read more

  • The Constitution Is Not a Suicide Pact

    “The Constitution is not a suicide pact.” The first time I heard that phrase, I thought it was a pretty good line, and I agreed with it. In a sense, I still do. That’s because the first time I heard it I interpreted it backwards from how most people do when they invoke it. I… Read more