Good back and forth happening between Walter on Samizdata and AintNoBadDude’s Brian Linse, over the so-called gun show loophole. Walter talks of private transactions and personal liberty; Brian responds with anecdotes about deliberate circumventions of the law; and he raises questions about the morality of Walter’s selling his own sister for $50. [update: Perry of LS responds]

Good back and forth happening between Walter on Samizdata and AintNoBadDude’s Brian Linse, over the so-called gun show loophole. Walter talks of private transactions and personal liberty; Brian responds with anecdotes about deliberate circumventions of the law; and he raises questions about the morality of Walter’s selling his own sister for $50. [update: Perry of LS responds]

The Cornell Review notes it is now Ithaca City School District (ICSD) policy to school local youngsters in a ‘politically correct orthodoxy whose sole commandment is Thou Shalt Not Offend.’ The Ithaca City School District has recently mandated that elementary school students in the first and second grades receive an actual grade on how well they “respect others of varying cultures, genders, experiences, and abilities.” Now, six-year-old Johnny can get

“It’s a racist war!” The University of Washington student Senate insists: ‘Our purpose for existing is to make things more equal and get rid of institutional racism

“It’s a racist war!” The University of Washington student Senate insists: ‘Our purpose for existing is to make things more equal and get rid of institutional racism

Calling them, “an abomination to God,” a New Mexico church leader is planning to burn a bunch ‘o’ Harry Potter books, according to this Reuters’ story: Pastor Jack Brock said he would have a ‘holy bonfire’ on Sunday at the Christ Community Church in Alamogordo in southern New Mexico to torch books about the fictional teen-age wizard who is wildly popular with young people. ‘These books encourage our youth to

Jacob Sullum

Farrukh Dhondy has written an excellent piece for the WSJ Opinion Journal, looking at how certain progressivist misdiagnoses of Islamic fundamentalism have actually exacerbated the terrorist threat to liberal nations like the U.S. and Britain. What

The University of Wisconsin is not so safe as it initially claimed to be, The New York Times reports: The revised figures being submitted to the Department of Education will show 19 sexual assaults on the Madison campus in 2000, 9 in residence halls. The university previously reported only two assaults, none of them in the dormitories [

From Japan Today: U.S. special forces are cutting off the fingers of dead al-Qaida fighters in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan to clarify through DNA analysis whether accused terrorist Osama bin Laden died in the battle of Tora Bora, The Sunday Times reported. In a dispatch from Tora Bora, the newspaper reported that the fingers will be turned over to the FBI for DNA analysis to clarify whether bin Laden