"Abortion Rights Without Apologies"

Nicely put.

More Like Petulant Children

Yes, as Atrios says, "Libertarians is Weird" but Libertarians are a really odd group of people predominantly made up of 16-year-old boys (well, white male college stoners) and petulant man-children, and it's the latter that really hold sway.  Pretty much any Libertarian story could be replaced with "mine, gimme, you can't make me, no..." without changing it significantly.  

There are aspects of Libertarianism that seem to apply pretty broadly (civil liberties, some level of property rights, marijuana legalization), but there's a lot of greedy, racist child that goes into the actual overall Libertarian movement--anti-tax, anti-regulation (often more specifically pro-pollution), anti anti-civil rights/voting rights act(s) (yes, really).  People like Cliven Bundy are not the exception among self proclaimed Libertarians, they are the median Libertarian.

Also, as a special note: most self-proclaimed libertarians are not, in fact libertarians.  A "real Libertarian" would be more strongly pro-choice than anti-tax, and it's odd how often supposed Libertarians are anti-choice.  

On Hunting Black Children

I'm pretty disgusted that I live in a country where a man with a gun can hunt and kill a black child armed with candy and suffer no consequences.  It's just horrifying.

Distinction WIth Difference

Chris Satullo was talking on NPR this morning about not seeing why people are "ok" with Google and Verizon, et. al. having access to our private info and using it/selling it to companies to advertise to us, but are upset about the government having access to the same info. 

Now, he often takes a position that I disagree with, but in this case demonstrates a lack of awareness that is astounding.  I could rant on this for a while but there are two key issues that make a huge fucking difference:

1. The info that the private companies have is incomplete.  Google and Apple and Microsoft and Amex and Verizon...all have bits of data, and, yes, there is some sharing/selling, but only the government can really get a complete picture of a person through this aggregation of data.  Google can't get a warrant to force AmEx to give them data on sales made offline that they couldn't get access to otherwise.  The government can, so a much more complete invasion of privacy is involved.

2. More importantly: Verizon can't arrest you, detain you, put you on trial, or assassinate you (if you happen to be in, say, Yemen)...at least not yet. 

There is more, and more nuance but those two differences between the government having access to your private data and an internet company having access are very important and should have been very apparent to Chris Satullo before he went off on his daily rant.