Women & Children’s cares for Ontario ‘miracle baby’

One-week-old Ava Isabella Stinson — all 2 pounds of her — has made quite a dramatic entrance into the world. First her birth. Last Thursday, her parents, Natalie Paquette and Richard Stinson, rushed to a Hamilton, Ont., hospital, where she was born 20 minutes later — more than three months before her due date. She weighed 2 pounds 4 ounces at birth. Then came another complication that doctors couldn’t treat — there was no room at the inn for Ava in the Hamilton area. Lack of any empty beds in a neonatal unit in Hamilton’s McMaster Children’s Hospital forced authorities to prepare to take Ava across the border to Women & Children’s Hospital in Buffalo.

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In Reason: Copyright Should Last Half A Century I mentioned libertarian writer Cathy Young's advocacy of a 50-year copyright term in discussing the looming book-banning of a Catcher in the Rye sequel based on copyright. Well, the judge has made her decision and banned the book. Yep. Here, in America, land of the free, home of the brave, we are literally banning books--and what's worse, this is due to a law that many libertarians support.

Congratulations, Ms. Young, and other pro-IP libertarians. Shame, shame.

Question: if being pro-war is not enough to revoke your libertarian credentials--how about book-banning?

Update: On Masnick's blog, someone recommended Eugene Volokh and Mark Lemley's "Freedom of Speech and Injunctions in Intellectual Property Cases" (which I have not yet read).

Pastor Jose Elias Moran was preparing for an early Wednesday prayer service yesterday (July 1) at the Iglesia Profetica Peniel in Webster, Texas when he was informed that a member of his congregation had been stopped by the police.

Out of concern for the church member, Pastor Moran went out to inquire what had happened, only to have the officer, Raymond Berryman, snarl at him to go back inside. According to witnesses, when Moran tried to explain, "I'm the pastor," Berryman grabbed at his shirt.

According to Berryman's official account, Moran pushed him and then fled into the church and returned with 40 other congregants. Moran, his family, and others present at the scene dispute this version, insisting that the pastor never touched the officer and went inside to enlist some church members to act as witnesses.

Berryman pursued Moran to the doors of the church and began kicking them. As soon as the doors opened, Berryman broke out the pepper spray and assaulted the congregants.

At the same time, a second officer who had arrived on the scene (tax-feeders, like other armed bullies, specialize in overkill) attacked Pastor Moran, a 42-year-old man with a heart condition, with a Taser and arrested him for "interfering" with a police officer.

The officers likewise threatened to arrest Moran's wife Maria after she came to his aid following the Taser assault. "My husband has a heart condition and with electrocution who knows what could have happened," Maria points out.

"They treated him as if he were a drug dealer or a murderer, but he is a pastor that tries to help the community," complained Moran's son Miguel, who witnessed the police assault. Although the police insist that Pastor Moran remains in their custody, he was taken to a local hospital for treatment and additional tests following the assault.

There's a (90-minute) video of Terence Kealey giving a recent talk about whether science is a public good. I do not believe that there are goods that the market can not provide, but Kealey's research in this area reveals that the argument of science as a public good is not supported by any evidence, on the terms of mainstream economics.

He makes his point early in the video, but the whole thing is worth watching. During the question period, topics such as higher education and patents come up. He gives a great accurate description of Copernicus' discovery, which is a story that is almost always simplified beyond recognition. And he has numerous other historical anecdotes about discoveries and who funded what.

H/T to Kelsey A.

Chris: A dictionary definition informs us that the word "patriotism" means not simply a love of one's country [and is "country" synonymous with "state"?], but to favor one's own country above all others. This leads to the moral dilemma - and conflicts - noted by many others: "our" patriots go off to fight and kill "their" patriots. If patriotism is a virtue, isn't the young man who kills and dies for the "enemy" equally virtuous and, if so, what does the vacuous Karl Rove offer to resolve that obvious dilemma?

My principal criticism of "patriotism," however, is directed to parents who inculcate their children in such self-destructive nonsense: why do so many mothers and fathers love the state more than they do their own children?

Hans Hoppe, Karen DeCoster, and others have made the point that an easy credit monetary regime not only distorts the economy, but it also has an effect upon personal time preference habits of individuals, enabling people to live (temporarily) beyond their means and to encourage high-end consumption that only leads to a bigger bust.

As the Wall Street Journal recently reported, apparently no one is immune, not even the Amish, who in some communities were living something akin to the high life before the bust hit:

"People wanted bigger weddings, newer carriages," Mr. Lehman says. "They were buying things they didn't need." Mr. Lehman spent several hundred dollars on a model-train and truck hobby, and about $4,000 on annual family vacations, he says. This year, there will be no vacation.

It became common practice for families to leave their carriages home and take taxis on shopping trips and to dinners out.

And there was more:

Read the rest of this entry »

Samuel Johnson called it the "last refuge of a scoundrel," but today Karl Rove gives it new heft (and takes it to a new low): now the scoundrels use other people's patriotism to vindicate and glorify -- themselves!

The three best-read articles yesterday were: Gerald Celente on Obamageddon; Matt Taibbi on responding to Goldman Sachs; and Justin Berger on Congress paying attention to to Ron Paul's audit the Fed bill.