Marshall McLuhan is most famous for popularizing the notion that "the medium is the message."  He did so in a somewhat lengthy and very complicated book called Understanding Media, first published in 1964. The theory notes that the content of media isn't so important as the medium itself. For example, even when content is similar, a person who gets his news from the internet is going to have an entirely different relationship with others and with the world in general, than a person who watches television for news.

In an effort to popularize his theories further, McLuhan released a book in 1967 called The Medium is the Massage (Note that it is "Massage" not "Message").  The book features a variety of unusual images and sparse text, but is designed to quickly communicate the central ideas in McLuhan's theories.  Consequently, it is full of McLuhan's more anti-status quo observations such as this one:

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Writes Steve from Orange County, CA:

The police-statization of America is terrible, especially in conservative areas such as this one, where the public is blindly pro-law-enforcement.I saw Will's great piece about the San Diego jury last week. On the same day, an off-duty cop shot a Marine and his brother in the Angel Stadium parking lot. Frankly, many of the shooting stories I read in the paper involve off-duty police and military, who seem to use violence as a first resort.

Unfortunately, juries here always side with the cops. We had a case where a cop stalked a stripper at a nightclub, followed her, pulled her over and got a sexual favor in exchange for not taking her to jail for some questionable charge. The jury agreed with the cop that these were consensual sex acts!

The police union chief always tells me that his guys put their lives on the line. In truth, we put our lives on the line being around his members, given that they can beat or kill us with no consequence.

The Supreme Court has declined to take an appeal of a case that held that Cablevision does not infringe copyright by providing a "remote DVR" service to its customers--the court reasoned that it is the customers, not Cablevision, who are making copies of programs, which they are permitted to do (if Cablevision were the one "making" the copies, it would be "more akin to video-on-demand, for which they negotiate licensing fees with cable providers"). The upshot is that consumers won't need to have a DVR box in their homes to record shows; they will be hosted on the servers of the cable or other provider. If only there were not a copyright statute in place in the first place, the courts would not have to engage in contorted reasoning to achieve just results.

"This is a law that goes back 100 years, maybe more." What "law" he refers to, well, we don't know because he doesn't know.

Listen to this conversation between some ignoramus from the Arkansas State Health Department who pretends he knows what he's talking about, and a gentleman who inquired about an Arkansas plan for mandatory vaccinations. Indeed, the caller was weak on his points, and could have/should dunked the state worker many times over, but he seemed not to have proper points in order.

I'm surprised this issue is gathering very little resistance from libertarians on the web. I hear little chatter on such a vital subject. The health complications from this vaccination, for people who suffer from cancer, autoimmune disorders, other diseases, etc., could be significant. Meanwhile, Time magazine is preparing people to trust their government.

As online shoppers know, sales tax is usually not collected by the online merchant when the buyer is in another state. This is because of Supreme Court decisions holdings that the Constitution's commerce clause prohibits "states from compelling out-of-state mail-order houses to collect use taxes on sales to in-state residents," because the foreign merchant has insufficient contacts with the state. The State of North Carolina was not too happy about this. It threatened to compel Amazon to start collecting sales tax for purchases made by NC residents on the grounds that Amazon has a sufficient presence in North Carolina by virtue of paying commissions to NC residents via its "Associates" affiliate program. In response, Amazon has shut down its affiliates program in North Carolina, as of last Friday. Good for Amazon!

When I started practicing law in 1992 I had framed some nice prints of the Trumbull painting of the Signing of the Declaration of Independence; a facsimile of the Declaration itself; and the famous Rembrandt Peale portrait of Thomas Jefferson. In the years since I've become more and more disgusted and cynical about constitutional sentimentalism and have become much more critical of America’s baleful effect on world history and my rosy view of its founding. Contrary to Randian mythology, America was not some minarchist paradise at its founding (and even if it was, minarchism is just another form of statism; see my What It Means To Be an Anarcho-Capitalist): it was a flawed utopian experiment resulting from an illegal coup d'etat (see my The Institute for Justice on our Munificent Constitution). It was a society that condoned slavery, one of the worst evils ever, while establishing a constructivist new order based on a “rational, scientific” paper document and rejecting traditional, superior, unwritten, monarchist limits on state power, thus setting the world on the path of democracy and democratic tyranny, and all the evils of the 20th Century–WWI, WWII, the Holocaust, the Cold War, Communism, Naziism, Fascism, Great Depressions I and II–not to mention the illegal, immoral, murderous, centralizing War to Prevent Southern Independence (which some “libertarian” centralists for some reason support!) (see my When Did the Trouble Start?; Hoppe’s Murray N. Rothbard and the Ethics of Liberty; also my post Supreme Court: Innocence is No Defense; also Manuel Lora, Constitution Worship Undermines the Cause for Freedom).
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I received a postcard today from the Republican Party of Fort Bend County (I work in that county, outside Houston) with an invitation to the 2010 Lincoln-Reagan Dinner, with special guest speaker Laura Ingraham. I'm trying to think of something more nausea-inducing than the idea of attending this. Blech.

Bill: That slugs like Krugman can get away with such mindless proposals is a tribute to the school system and the media, which have combined to create minds incapable of empirical and analytical thought. Perhaps the federal "hate crime" legislation being hustled through Congress - and without media attention - would better suit Krugman's penchant for mind-control. One provision of the bill would criminalize speech uttered with "intent to . . . cause substantial emotional distress to a person. . . ." All Krugman would have to allege is that he is a "person" who suffers "substantial emotional distress" whenever the tens of thousands of scientists deny the human causation of global warming. (On the other hand, what about the rest of us who suffer such "emotional distress" whenever Krugman and his ilk speak?) One advocacy group for this measure would go so far as to apply it to those who support the Second Amendment! (Is the Constitution a piece of "hate literature?")

And how would we know whether anyone made statements with such "intent" to cause "distress?" CBS' "Sixty Minutes" had a segment on last night's show revealing work being done by neuro-scientists that will permit - "within 3 to 5 years," according to one - the reading of brains to identify the specific content of one's thinking. (Who would have an incentive to fund such research???)

And if none of this works out for Krugman and the rest of the mind-control crowd, they can always fall back on the ultimate police-state offense provided by the late Kurt Vonnegut: "suspicion of intent to conspire."

The Supreme Court has ruled 5-4 in favor of the white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., on the grounds that they "were unfairly denied promotions because of their race."

I predict hypocritical reaction from both left and right, split along the same lines as the majority and dissenting side in this case. The left will decry this, despite it being logically implied by their racialism. The right will support this, despite it flying in the face of their anti-judicial activism and pretend-federalism.

The libertarian centralists (see also Objectivists and Federalism; Bolick on Judicial Activism) will no doubt cheer this case ... even though it's a precarious 5-4, and the next likely Justice, Judge Sotomayor, voted the other way on this case.

Writes Emily Cadei in CQ Politics:

He may have faded from the national political scene a year ago, after his dark-horse presidential run came to naught, but Rep. Ron Paul ’s influence is still being felt in campaigns and policy debates across the country. Indeed, the latest legislative priority of the libertarian Texas Republican — auditing the Federal Reserve — has gained support in unlikely quarters.

Paul’s legislation, popularly known as the “Audit the Fed” bill, has drawn 244 cosponsors, ranging from Ohio’s John A. Boehner , the conservative Republican floor leader, to Michigan’s John Conyers Jr. , the liberal Democratic chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Some Democrats have even picked up on Paul’s rhetoric. “It’s time to yank the shroud off the Fed and shine some light on these events,” New York Democrat Edolphus Towns , chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said at a hearing last week about the shotgun marriage between Bank of America and Merrill Lynch last fall to stave off the latter’s collapse.

Paul’s efforts have only gained in political significance since the Obama administration unveiled its proposal to give the Fed new powers over the financial regulatory system.

Peter Schiff is polling in Connecticut for a possible run against the criminal Dodd, reports CQ Politics:

"Peter is a non-traditional candidate," said Andrew Schiff of his brother, an outspoken libertarian who has gained attention for correctly predicting the collapse of the mortgage industry despite mockery from other industry analysis. "We're attracting a lot of very fervent believers.The question is whether or not this will all resonate with the voters of Connecticut."

If anyone complained about the weather, the late libertarian giant Leonard Read would admonish him: "God takes care of the weather. Imagine if the government were running it!" Now, of course, we have the feds trying to run it, with their thieving climate bill only the beginning. There is also continued Pentagon "weather-modification" researach for the usual murderous purposes. Since the core ambition of the state is to displace God while enriching its Faustian associates through redistribution, none of this can be a surprise.

The CDC is eyeing your flesh.

A potential fall swine flu immunization campaign may involve an unprecedented 600 million doses of vaccine, though officials said Friday they haven’t figured out how to administer so many doses or accurately track side effects if a seasonal vaccine is given simultaneously.

And here we have our answer.

“This new infectious disease is not going away,” said Schuchat, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

An article in the Los Angeles Times asks,

Should they reconfigure the seasonal flu vaccine that's already under development for the fall? Or should they order up a second vaccine tailored to the new virus and trust people to take both shots?

Do you think the corporate state strategists are busy at work sorting out who is going to make how much dough in the complex orbit of Big Pharma and militarized health care? All players have to be appeased and enriched, including the politicians. The media likes to report that vaccines "don't really make a profit," thereby planting the seed that vaccinations are mere acts of kindness as opposed to profitable endeavors that demand scores of lobbyists and bountiful political donations to keep the profits intact.

Then why is there a race to produce vaccines, and why the need for a patent?

I am reminded of this great book by Hedrick Smith, The Power Game: How Washington Works. This book was recommended to me by my favorite leftist Professor of political science the moment it was released. It's a bit dated, but it's worthwhile nonetheless.

The three best-read articles this weekend were: Matt Collins on Ron Paul's storming of the Fed; Peter Schiff on Obama's double whammy on the economy; and Alison Johnson on deflating your belly.

PLEASE FORWARD THE FOLLOWING TO PAUL KRUGMAN:

Global Warming Petition Project: 31,478 American scientists have signed this petition, including 9,029 with PhDs.

Update (Bill Faust brought this to my attention):

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:

"AR4 is the most comprehensive synthesis of climate change science to date. Experts from more than 130 countries contributed to this assessment, which represents six years of work. More than 450 lead authors have received input from more than 800 contributing authors, and an additional 2,500 experts reviewed the draft documents."

So here's the score folks:
Traitorous/Lunatic Fringe/Skeptical Climate Change Experts: 31,478
Rational/Reputable/Irrefutable Climate Change Experts: 3,750

PLEASE FORWARD THE ABOVE TO AL GORE TOO.

Paul Krugman, never one to hold back on comments, now has declared that anyone who does not believe as he does on global warming is guilty of "treason against the planet."  Lest a reader think I am exaggerating, here is what he wrote:

And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet.

To fully appreciate the irresponsibility and immorality of climate-change denial, you need to know about the grim turn taken by the latest climate research.

But, there is so much more to his apocalyptic attacks on anyone who might think differently:

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Andrew Napolitano likes to refer to the cellphone camera as the new "gun," meaning it is a weapon to fight the state by capturing its corruption on video. Here's a story from New York City in which a 17-year old suspect used his MP3 player to surreptitiously record the NYC detective questioning him—only to have the detective later claim he never questioned the suspect before his relatives arrived. The detective is now being charged with perjury.

[Thanks to David Sack for sending me this.]