My very first Tinfoil!

Greetings....

I've recently been made aware of this website and flash animation...it asks some very disturbing questions about the Pentagon incident on 9/11...and includes some new pictures that I've never seen before. What really got me to thinking was the photos from deep inside the Pentagon.

Go ahead, watch the video, you'll see them. I don't think a crashing plane is going to make a neat little hole like that, hmm? Also noted is the fact that there is no external scarring of the ground outside the Pentagon. When planes crash, they usually leave big, smoking craters in the ground. I recall some early eyewitness accounts that actually had the plane bouncing off the ground before hitting the E ring....so where's the marks?

You know me as your resident aviation nut. So, I paid a visit to one of my favorite websites, Air Disaster.com. I recalled that there was a reasonably similar crash involving a 747 impacting an apartment building. It was back in 1992 in The Netherlands. A fully-loaded El Al cargo jet lost two engines on takeoff, and lost control and impacted the building on the way to an emergency landing.


Here's one photo, showing the building in flames.

Here's another, fire out and the impact site showing plainly.

And here's one of the Pentagon. Note the complete lack of any ground impact scar and the still-standing light poles directly in the flight path.


Looks a little different than Amsterdam, doesn't it?

And those of you that might complain about the difference in aircraft size...here's the vital statistics on the Boeing 747-200 and the Boeing 757-200. Although the 747 is roughly 30% bigger than the 757, I'd expect the hole in the Pentagon to look a wee bit bigger than that.

Keep fighting for the truth. It's out there somewhere. And if it comes out before 2008...the present government will fall.

More calls for Resignation...Iran still in the crosshairs....Good Friday

Good Morning. SecDef Rumsfeld is such a fine example of the leadership in Washington. Small wonder that more generals are calling for his resignation. Can you impeach a member of the Cabinet?

Pressure is growing on US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, with more retired generals calling for him to resign over the Iraq war.

The White House has said it is happy with the way Mr Rumsfeld is handling his job and the situation in Iraq.

But the backing comes as the number of retired generals calling for him to be replaced has risen to six.

It is being described as a rebellion led by those who know Mr Rumsfeld's handling of the war from the inside.

The two most recent generals to voice their unease about Mr Rumsfeld's handling of the war are retired army Maj Gen John Riggs and retired Maj Gen Charles H Swannack Jr.

In a radio interview Maj Gen Riggs, a former division commander, said it was time for Mr Rumsfeld to go because he fostered an atmosphere of "arrogance" among the Pentagon's top civilian leadership.

"They only need the military advice when it satisfies their agenda. I think that's a mistake, and that's why I think he should resign," he told National Public Radio (NPR).

Maj Gen Swannack Jr, who led the 82nd Airborne Division in Iraq, went even further.

He questioned whether Mr Rumsfeld was the right person to lead the fight against terrorism.

"I really believe that we need a new secretary of defence because Secretary Rumsfeld carried way too much baggage with him," he told CNN.

"Specifically, I feel he has micromanaged the generals who are leading our forces."

Maj Gen Riggs, who has been critically outspoken on problems facing the US military before, served in the army for 39 years and became a three-star general.

He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his actions as a helicopter pilot during Vietnam, but retired with the loss of one of his stars after the army said he had misused contractors, according to the NPR website.

Maj Gen Swannack Jr commanded the 82nd Airborne Division in Iraq from 2003-4.

The fresh resignation calls add to those already made by four other retired generals directly involved in the Iraq war and its planning.

Retired Marine Gen Anthony Zinni told CNN Mr Rumsfeld should be held responsible for a series of mistakes, beginning with "throwing away 10 years worth of planning, plans that had taken into account what we would face in an occupation of Iraq".

Meanwhile, the saber-rattling in the Middle East continues on....Iran has been warned yet again by the fascists that they better fall in line...or else!

Ms Rice on Thursday raised publicly the possibility that Iran might face punitive sanctions at the UN Security Council if it did not change course.

She said that when the council reconvened on the issue at the end of the month there could not be a repeat of March's "presidential statement" in which Iran had been told to halt all sensitive atomic activities within 30 days.

Iran has so far refused to comply.

"There will have to be some consequence for that action and that defiance. We will look at a whole range of options available to the Security Council," Ms Rice said.

She said the council would have to look at a Chapter 7 resolution - which UN members are mandated to comply with.

It could possibly lead to sanctions and eventually even the use of force.

But the BBC's Justin Webb in Washington says council members Russia and China believe that talk of punishment and coercion is premature.

Beijing hopes its envoy will help defuse the situation.

BBC China correspondent Daniel Griffiths says Beijing would like to avoid sanctions and wants to take a higher profile over Iran to strengthen its credentials as a responsible, international player.

Ah well. It is Good Friday...let's take a step back and remember that Christ died on the cross for all our sins. Perhaps he'll forgive the people that did this.

At least 15 people have been injured by knife-wielding attackers at three churches in Egypt, police have said.

The attacks happened in three Coptic churches in the city of Alexandria.

The three incidents took place during Friday Mass and were simultaneous, police officials said, according to the Associated Press news agency.

There were no reports of any arrests. Hundreds of Christians gathered in protest outside the three churches, the agency reported.

The Coptic Christian community is believed to make up 10% of Egypt's population of about 70 million.

Enjoy your Easter and Passover, everyone!

A bit of baseball...Graduation in England...Iran gets the bomb?

Good Morning!

As you probably know, yesterday was opening day at Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium, and also RFK Stadium in Washington, with the new Senators. Vice President Blasty McBirdshot had the honor of throwing out the first pitch at RFK. There is video, check out the crowd's response! And in what can only be considered baseball's editorial response, Washington lost, 7-1. If you recall, when 'President' Bush threw out the first ball for the Red's home opener about a week ago...they got beat, too! (The Sox and the Yanks both won yesterday...the struggle continues.)



Moving on to other news, the eldest son of Prince Charles and Diana Spencer is graduating from Sandhurst Military Academy in England today. Prince Harry will graduate as a commissioned 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Army, probably commanding an armoured brigade. There is the potential that he could be sent to Iraq of Afghanistan to serve. Would that our own leaders might have seen service in uniform!! Our last president to have such a spectacular career may have been President Eisenhower...who graduated from West Point, and went on to greater fame in Europe about 60 years back.

The Queen will address the newly-commissioned officers and inspect both ranks of the senior division and the front rank of the junior division during the parade.

She will present the prestigious Sword of Honour to the best cadet and also hand out the Overseas Medal and the Queen's Medal.

He took part in final training in Cyprus

It will be the first time in 15 years that she has attended a Sovereign's Parade in the quadrangle of the college in Camberley, Surrey.

Harry has said he wants to serve on the front line.

In an interview to mark his 21st birthday, he insisted: "The last thing I said was there's no way I'm going to put myself through Sandhurst and then sit on my arse back home while my boys are out fighting for their country.

"That may sound very patriotic, but it's true."

The prince began training to be an officer in the Army last May.

Pictures released as he leaves Sandhurst were taken in Cyprus last month during battle training.

The prince has again been the subject of tabloid headlines in the last week.

The Daily Mirror and the Sun said the 21-year-old and his friends visited the Spearmint Rhino club near Slough to celebrate the end of his army training.

And lastly this morning....unlike Iraq, it turns out the Bush Administration may actually be correct about Iran having the bomb. There was a tidbit heard yesterday on the Stephanie Miller Show that President Hafsenjani of Iran is just as crazy-religious as "president" Bush, and is also a believer in the end times and Armageddon. Be afraid.....be very afraid.

Iran announced Tuesday that its nuclear engineers had advanced to a new phase in the enrichment of uranium, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and a series of the country's ruling clerics declared that the nation would now speed ahead, in defiance of a United Nations Security Council warning, to produce nuclear fuel on an industrial scale.

"Iran has joined the nuclear countries of the world," Ahmadinejad said during a large, carefully staged and nationally televised celebration in Mashhad, which included video presentations of each step of the nuclear process that he declared Iran had mastered. "The nuclear fuel cycle at the laboratory level has been completed, and uranium with the desired enrichment for nuclear power plants was achieved."

The White House, which has charged that Iran is secretly trying to develop fuel for nuclear weapons, at first reacted mildly to the announcement, saying Iran was "moving in the wrong direction." But later in the day it sounded a more ominous tone, with the National Security Council announcing that the United States would work with the United Nations Security Council "to deal with the significant threat posed by the regime's efforts to acquire nuclear weapons."

Outside experts said that while the country appears to have passed a milestone - one it has approached before with smaller-scale enrichment of uranium - the announcement may have had less to do with an engineering feat than with carefully timed political theater intended to convince the West that the program is unstoppable.

The declaration comes at a time of intense speculation in Washington that preliminary plans are advancing to take military action against Iran's nuclear sites if diplomacy fails, an idea Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld dismissed Tuesday as "fantasy land."

It's hump day....so let's make the most of it.

Blinding me with science...Immigration protests...Winning the Hearts and Minds

Good Morning!

We've got an interesting piece of science this morning....Saturn's moon Enceladus may be the best place in our solar system to look for extraterrestrial life. New information from the Cassini spacecraft has revealed the presence of water, methane, and nitrogen. All of these were primitive building blocks on early Earth. There's one problem though...it's frickin' cold on Saturn! Scientists are researching further to determine why Enceladus is so hot, and there is water vapor present on such a cold and distant world.

Saturn's tiny moon Enceladus may be the best place to look for life elsewhere in the Solar System.

That is the view of a senior scientist working on the Cassini spacecraft, which has been studying Saturn and its moons for nearly two years. Dr Bob Brown told a major conference in Vienna, Austria, Enceladus contains simple organic molecules, water and heat, the ingredients for life. He raised the possibility of future missions to probe inside the moon.

Other research presented at the European Geosciences Union (EGU) annual meeting suggests that Enceladus may have a core of molten rock reaching temperatures of 1,400K (above 1,100C).

In July 2005 Cassini completed a spectacularly close flyby of Enceladus, passing just 173km above its surface.
From this flyby came confirmation that the moon has an atmosphere, and strong evidence that the gases which make up the atmosphere are coming from cracks in the surface, nick-named "tiger stripes", near the south pole.

It appears that the gases are being forced through the surface, as they emerge in jets which shoot upwards for hundreds of kilometres before dispersing, eventually forming Saturn's E-ring. Most of the gas is water vapour, suggesting strongly that liquid water lies under the moon's icy surface.

From his base at the University of Arizona, Tucson, Bob Brown leads the scientific team for Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer (Vims) which analysed the chemical composition of Enceladus's atmosphere and mapped the distribution of various gases.

"We very clearly saw water; there's water everywhere on Enceladus, it's 99.9% water ice in general at the surface, and we've known that for years, so it wasn't a big surprise," he told the BBC News website.

"But when we started looking at our spectra we saw absorption bands from a compound that had to have carbon and hydrogen bonded together.

"And when we mapped the location, it was right in these 'tiger stripes' - right where the jets are coming out, and right where it's hot - and it's pretty hard to imagine it's getting there from anywhere but inside."

The organic molecules appear to be quite simple, he said, probably largely methane. The jets also contain nitrogen; and putting all this together means, said Dr Brown, that Enceladus contains all the ingredients necessary for the development of life, or of precursors to it.

"What you need to put microbes together of the kind that we're familiar with is carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen, and water to act as an intermediary for metabolism," he said.

"You've got a rock core that's hot as hell; you've got all the conditions that we think gave rise to the first self-replicating molecules and eventually to life on this planet.

"So Enceladus in a very real sense becomes a stronger candidate for life than [Jupiter's moon] Europa, for instance."

Turning to more worldy issues....there are dozens, if not hundreds, of pro-immigrant rallies planned for around the country today. Boston is expecting to see a large on on the traditional protest grounds of the Boston Common. Last week, the protest was against immigration reform, and this week is to show support for awarding citizenship to those who are already here. Not to put too fine a point on it, but unless your bloodline includes indigenous, pre-Columbian peoples...We're ALL immigrant and our forebears had to face similar opposition and hardship when they first came here.

NEW YORK Demonstrators flying banners of immigration reform marched in cities across the nation on Sunday to demand citizenship and a share of the American dream for millions of illegal immigrants who have run a gantlet of closed borders, broken families, snake-eyed smugglers and economic exploitation.

Singing, chanting and waving placards and American flags, a sea of demonstrators - police estimates ran as high as 500,000 - marched in downtown Dallas in the largest of the protests. Some 20,000 rallied in San Diego, 7,000 in Miami, and 4,000 each in Birmingham, Alabama, and Boise, Idaho.

Thousands more gathered in Salem, Oregon, and other cities in peaceful, forceful displays of support for the cause of immigrants.

"It's a good feeling that we are finally standing up for ourselves," Robert Martinez said at the rally in Dallas.

"For years, we never say nothing," said Martinez, who crossed the Rio Grande illegally 22 years ago and eventually became an American citizen. "We just work hard, follow the rules and pay taxes. And they try to make these laws. It's time people knew how we felt."

While Sunday's rallies were an impressive extension of the growing immigrant protests that have spread across the country in recent weeks, organizers said they were only a tuneup for nationwide demonstrations on Monday, billed as a National Day of Action for Immigrant Justice. Events in more than 120 cities are expected to draw more than two million people.

On a gentle spring Sunday basted by golden sunshine and blue skies, crowds gathered in ebullient moods, spreading over downtown streets and parks in cities large and small. The demonstrators were mostly Hispanic, but they included people of Asian, European and African backgrounds.

Most wore white shirts to symbolize peace. Many carried American flags or the flags of Mexico and other countries of Central and South America and Asia. At the rally in Dallas, "God Bless America" and "This Land Is Your Land" blared on loudspeakers, as well as the music of Mexico, as marchers chanted "Sí, se puede" ("Yes, we can") and "USA all the way."

Lastly this morning....we're winning the war for the hearts and minds of the Middle East....NOT. The pace of so-called democracy is slowing, and in some countries has reversed entirely or simply does not exist at all. Glad to see everything is working according to the neocon's plans.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates Steps toward democracy in the Arab world, a crucial American goal that just months ago was cause for optimism - with elections held in Iraq, Egypt and the Palestinian areas - are slowing, blocked by delays in reform efforts, legal maneuvers and official changes of heart throughout the Middle East.

The political rise of Islamists, the chaos in Iraq along with the newfound Shiite power there with its implication for growing Iranian influence, and the sense among some rulers that they can wait out the end of the Bush administration have put the brakes on democratization, analysts and officials say.

"It feels like everything is going back to the bad old days, as if we never went through any changes at all," said Sulaiman al-Hattlan, editor in chief of Forbes Arabia and a prominent Saudi columnist and reformist. "Everyone is convinced now that there was no serious or genuine belief in change from the governments, it was just a reaction to pressure by the international media and the U.S."

In Egypt, the government of Hosni Mubarak, which allowed a contested presidential election last year, has delayed municipal elections for two years after the Muslim Brotherhood made big gains in parliamentary elections late last year, despite the government's violent efforts to stop the group's supporters.

In Jordan, where King Abdullah has made political reform and democratization a mandate, reformers believe their situation has been weakened with a national agenda for change that has been put on the back burner.

Plans for parliamentary elections in Qatar were postponed a third time, to 2007, in violation of the country's Constitution, activists say, while civil groups say that laws permitting the emergence of civil society organizations have stymied their development instead.

In Yemen, the government has cracked down on the media ahead of presidential elections later this year, jailing journalists who are considered overcritical of the regime.

In Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah has refused calls that the country's consultative council be elected, while the arrest of Muhsin al-Awaji, a government critic, last month raised questions about how far the country's newfound openness would go. And in Syria, promises for reforms have been followed by a harsh crackdown on the opposition.

U.S. officials do not deny that there have been setbacks in the promotion of democracy in the Middle East, but they say that recent negative trends do not discredit their approach.

"Democratic development isn't always linear," said a senior State Department official, insisting on anonymity in commenting for this article. "It's a process that takes time, is evolutionary and requires strong consistent support, which is what our policy is all about."

Arab nation-states in the Middle East are largely led by monarchies and authoritarian regimes, many of which have been unable to keep up with explosive population growth and development needs.

So, there you have it. Would that our children and grandchildren might still be interested in science and have the resources and will to pursue the first story to its conclusion...instead of letting the second and third stories devolve into global conflict and catastrophe.

Keep smiling, some days it's all you can do.

AAP "Event"...Jill Carroll home...World bank in Baghdad

Good Morning. Well, it looks like Air America Place is still down. Apparantly, the Domain Name Server that is run by our hosting company suffered some kind of major failure over the weekend. I don't pretend to understand these things, but the way it was explained to me, this is like the "internet phone book". You type in the name, and the server will 'match it up' to a specific numeric IP address and connect you up. Since the server isn't working, anyone attempting to access the site by name is out of luck. You can, however, still connect numerically. This is a bit fragile, so some of the links don't work, and there have been some login issues. But we are still there. If you can't get in that way, do drop by Air Rational Guard. We've had problems with AAP in the past, and Admiral Rican has graciously offered his own site as a backup for us.


Moving on to other news, in the very small "Good News from Iraq" department...kindapped Christian Science Monitor reporter Jill Carroll arrived home in Boston yesterday, safe and hopefully sound...

Nearly three months after she was abducted at gunpoint from a Baghdad street, journalist Jill Carroll had a joyous reunion with her family in Boston yesterday, beginning what is likely to be a long recovery from her ordeal and an adjustment to her newfound celebrity.

Passengers on the Lufthansa 747 jumbo jet that brought Carroll back to the United States shortly after noon said she was alternately laughing and marveling at the world outside her window after spending 82 days as a hostage in rooms where she could not see outside. She was also surprised to see her own face on the cover of a newspaper that the flight attendant handed her.

''I finally feel like I am alive again," Carroll told reporters from her newspaper, The Christian Science Monitor, who accompanied her on the crowded flight to Logan International Airport. ''To be able to step outside anytime, to feel the sun directly on your face, to see the whole sky. These are luxuries that we just don't appreciate every day."

Minutes after arriving, the 28-year-old was whisked away in a police-escorted limousine from the tarmac to an undisclosed location to meet her father, mother, and twin sister. Before Carroll's abrupt release Thursday, they had received little news about her well-being since the kidnappers' threat to kill Carroll by Feb. 26 had passed.

Carroll has said little about her plans, aside from requesting ''quiet time" with her family.

Other journalists have written books about their experiences in Iraq, including two by reporters who either were kidnapped or nearly kidnapped. However, Micah Garen, a documentary filmmaker who wrote a book about his 10 days as a hostage in Iraq in 2004, said Carroll probably has more immediate concerns right now.

''There is just nothing like that reunion with your family," said Garen, whose loved ones -- like Carroll's -- waged an extensive campaign to win his freedom. ''We immediately left the next day and went to a quiet place in Rhode Island by the water for a week. . . . You really want to be isolated from the media craziness and spend time with your family and get back to normal."

Garen cautioned that ''normal" may return only gradually as Carroll reflects on what she has been through and how it has changed her life. Carroll's friend and translator, Allan Enwiya, was killed in the abduction, while Carroll has said she lived in isolation throughout her captivity, often under threat of harm. On a practical level, Garen said, she will not be able to work anytime soon in Iraq, both because of the danger and that she would be so widely recognized.

''Suddenly, overnight, the job that you really love -- reporting overseas -- is taken away from you and you don't know why," he said yesterday. ''People think that all these great things will come out of this but, in reality, you're taking many steps back." Continued...

Finally this morning...how'd you like to do some banking in Baghdad? The World Bank apparently would. The thinking is that because they're funding most of the Iraq reconstruction, having a bank and personnel on the ground would only make things easier. But wait, there's more! Guess who's in charge of the World Bank these days? That's right, Paul Wolfowitz, at one time the number two man in the Pentagon, who planned this entire war. Well, isn't that conveeeeeeeenient? Wonder how much of that "reconstruction money" is reconstructing his bank account?

WASHINGTON -- The World Bank's president, Paul Wolfowitz, is considering expanding bank operations in Iraq, which would put his agency at the center of rebuilding from a war he helped plan as the Pentagon's former number two official.

Senior bank officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because no final decision had been made, said key donor countries including Britain, Japan, Germany, and Denmark are pressuring Wolfowitz to establish a Baghdad office.

The development agency has not had an Iraq office since an Aug. 19, 2003, bombing at UN headquarters in Iraq killed a bank employee. A consultant, with a staff of seven Iraqis, is paid by the World Bank to look after its affairs in Iraq.

No World Bank staff would be forced to accept an Iraq assignment, the officials said.

In recent weeks, Wolfowitz sent a fact-finding mission to Iraq, and he was examining security matters and several reconstruction-related issues, officials said.

The possibility of a new World Bank office revives attention to Wolfowitz's role as an architect of the Iraq war. Many critics have accused the Bush administration and the Pentagon in particular of failing to plan for a post-invasion Iraq, as violence rages three years after Saddam Hussein's ouster.

Michael O'Hanlon, a reconstruction specialist at Washington's Brookings Institution, said Wolfowitz's history with Iraq ''complicates everything." ''He is a very smart man," O'Hanlon said, ''but he is also obviously very controversial in his basic support of the Iraq invasion."

Wolfowitz's predecessor as World Bank president, James Wolfensohn, resisted pressure from US lawmakers to return bank reconstruction specialists to Iraq after the 2003 bombing. Continued...

So, there's a mixed Monday for you. We hope to have the issues with Air America Place resolved sometime today, but since we're dependent on our hosting company to fix this, we're not so sure.

Libertarian Saturday

Good Morning! Air America Place seems to be down this morning. Curious that this would come on April Fool's Day...and also the second anniversary of Air America beginning broadcasting...just what are the Feds up to today, hmm? :foilhat:

We'll keep it on the shorter side today. Let's begin by peering in on the fine state of Texas to see how they're cracking down on crime these days. Sounds like a little Bush-Style pre-emption, no?

Surprise: Police find drunk people in bars -- and arrest them

Here's something to keep in mind next time you visit a bar, club, or
restaurant: Police in several states have launched crackdowns on drunk
driving and public intoxication -- and are now arresting drunk people who
aren't driving and who aren't in public.

In at least two states -- Texas and Virginia -- police have started
going into bars to arrest people who fail sobriety tests.

Police say the action is necessary to prevent drunk driving. They also
say they don't have to wait until people leave a bar to arrest them for public
intoxication, since the legal definition of "public space" includes the
inside of drinking establishments.

The move has sparked outrage from civil libertarians, who say police
are grossly exceeding their authority, and are arresting people who pose no
danger to anyone.

This issue was first publicized in January, when WorldNetDaily.com
reported that police in Virginia were going into bars and taverns and literally
"pulling people off barstools." The police, dressed in "SWAT-like attire," would
give people sobriety tests and arrest them for public drunkenness if they
failed the test.

Then, on March 15, NBC Channel 5 TV in Dallas/Ft. Worth reported that Texas
Alcoholic Beverage Commission agents and Irving police had launched a similar
crackdown.

Police targeted 36 establishments and sent undercover police officers
to look for people who appeared to be drunk. After administering sobriety tests
in the bars and clubs, they charged 30 people with public intoxication.

In both Texas and Virginia, police said the campaign would reduce drunk
driving. But police apparently made no effort to check which patrons
had walked to the bar, or rode with friends, or planned to take a cab. In Texas,
police even arrested people in a hotel bar who were registered hotel guests
and had no plans to drive anywhere.

One Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission agent said police were
justified in arresting people because "going to a bar is not an opportunity to
go get drunk." Another spokesperson said drinking can make people do stupid
things like "jump off of balconies trying to reach a swimming pool and miss."
The spokesperson did not give details about how prevalent the missed-swimming
pool problem is in Texas.

After people complained, Texas legislators said they would review the
program to "check for abuses" and to measure its effectiveness.

Well, here's one reason to oppose this campaign against social
drinkers: While police are harassing tipsy people in bars, real criminals are
walking the streets -- free to kill, rob, and rape again.

Source: Cops go to bars to arrest drunks

Meanwhile, Dr. Ruwart has an interesting quetsion today, about limiting police powers in a
Libertarian Society. This one seems at bit 'unusual', to say the least. Can't say I agree with it, but here it is, nevertheless.

QUESTION: If the police force actually attracts people who like
violence, have inferiority complexes, and/or crave power, as some people
suggest, does that alter the libertarian position on having private police
agencies rather than government police forces? How do we guard against those
bad apples who are attracted to a job which allows them to use force against
and power over others?

MY SHORT ANSWER: If we assume that predators are attracted to law
enforcement, private policing becomes even more desirable. Public police enjoy
a great deal of sovereign immunity. Like many government employees, the extent
to which they can be held liable to their victims is limited. Even when their
victims win settlements, taxpayers -- rather than the offending officers --
often pay them. A bad apple can often get away with a great deal more abusive
behavior as a public police officer than as a civilian.

Private police, on the other hand, enjoy no such immunities.
Profit-making companies would act quickly to remove an abusive individual from
the payroll to prevent loss of business. The offending officer would be held
personally liable for acts of aggression and, in a libertarian society, expected
to make restitution to the victim.

Private police profit most if they can prevent crime, rather than chase
criminals. Consequently, they show citizens how to make their homes
more secure, monitor houses when the residents go out of town, and make
their presence visible to discourage criminals. Their focus is on protecting,
not apprehending (although they will take a suspect into custody when
appropriate). In other words, private police primarily "serve and protect,"
rather than "enforce the law" as public police do. That's a very different
mindset!

And lastly this morning...in our new "Why Aren't you a Libertarian?" section, we'll take a brief look at the official party Platform on Crime. First, check out the Talking Points. Then take a look at the platform itself:

Crime

The Issue: The continuing high level of violent crime -- and the government's demonstrated inability to deal with it -- threatens the lives, happiness and belongings of Americans. At the same time, governmental violations of rights undermine people's sense of justice with regard to crime. Victimless crime laws themselves violate individual rights and also breed genuine crime.

The Principle: The only justified function of government is the protection of the lives, rights and property of its citizens.

Solutions: The appropriate way to suppress crime is through consistent and impartial enforcement of laws that protect individual rights. We applaud the trend toward private protection services and voluntary community crime control groups.

Transitional Action: We call for an end to "hate crime" laws that punish people for their thoughts and speech, distract us from real crimes, and foster resentment by giving some individuals special status under the law. Laws pertaining to "victimless crimes" should be repealed. We support institutional changes, consistent with full respect for the rights of the accused, which would permit victims to direct the prosecution in criminal cases.

So, here's to hoping that Air America Place is back up and running soon. In the meantime, come and hang out here! Coffee's on, donuts are fresh, and we're waiting...