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Interested in living in Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana or Wyoming without being a United States citizen, and pay no taxes?

Well, it appears that the Lakota tribe withdrew its treaties with the United States government last week. They have invited any US citizens to move in and join them as well.

I have no idea where this will go. I don’t think that the Government can be too happy about it though. Small disputes over gaming regulation are hard enough - this can have a deep impact on a range of issues. Of course, this may not be an official Tribal stance, as there aren’t many facts in the Agence France-Press article.
Seen on Indianz.com:

Lakota Freedom Delegation withdraws from US
Thursday, December 20, 2007

A group called Lakota Freedom Delegation is withdrawing from the treaties their ancestors signed with the U.S. and is setting up their own independent nation.

Four activists, including Russell Means, were in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday to announce their plans. They said the federal government has failed to abide by 33 treaties that promised land, health care, education and other services. “Our people want to live, not just survive or crawl and be mascots,” Phyllis Young said, Agence France-Press reported. Members of the new nation won’t pay taxes. The new nation’s territory covers western parts of North and South Dakota and Nebraska and eastern parts of Wyoming and Montana.

Get the Story:
Lakota group pushes for new nation (The Sioux Falls Argus Leader 12/20)
Descendants of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse break away from US (AP 12/20)
Lakota group declares sovereign nation status (The Rapid City Journal 12/20)

Relevant Links:
Lakota Freedom Delegation - http://www.lakotafreedom.com

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“I think it’s clear by now that the federal government needs to reclassify marijuana. People who need it should be able to get it – safely and easily,” says The Price Is Right and Power of 10 host Drew Carey in a new Reason.tv video examining medical marijuana and the war on drugs.

One of the most outrageous consequences of the war on drugs is the federal crackdown on medical marijuana, which is used by patients to help treat the effects of cancer, glaucoma, HIV-AIDS, chronic pain and nausea, and other severe symptoms associated with serious illnesses. Medical marijuana prescribed by a physician is legal in 12 states, yet federal agents are raiding state-approved dispensaries and preventing patients from having safe access to this drug.

In Episode 2 of Reason.tv’s Drew Carey Project, Drew takes a look at patients who need and use medical marijuana in California, and how the federal government is making their lives even worse.

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During Microsoft’s battle to make their new MS Office format an international standard, a large number of nations that had never been part of the voting body had mysteriously joined up just before the vote. Even more mysteriously, they all voted in Microsoft’s favor. This was seen as an obvious manipulation on Microsoft’s part, with likely payoffs and other hanky panky involved.

Since that vote (which Microsoft still lost, by the way) the ISO/IEC committee has ground to a halt because all of their votes require at least 50% participation from member bodies and none of those nations has bothered to come back since the vote on Microsoft’s format.

This certainly lends credence to the suspicions that it was all foul play on Microsoft (and those nation’s) part. A very, very sad state of affairs. I have long felt that Microsoft is an unethical, monomaniacal company, but this really takes the cake!

Link to the article

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Just another example of the bullying and strong arm tactics that Microsoft resorts to when they can’t get what they want based on merit. The sad part is that this isn’t even surprising anymore since they’ve pulled so many similar tricks in the past.

From Slashdot:

a_n_d_e_r_s writes “The vote on OOXML looked fairly secured. Most in the Working Group in Sweden was against the vote to approve OOXML. The day of the vote, though, more companies showed up at the door. Some 20 new companies — each one payed about $2500 to be allowed to vote — and vote they did … for Microsoft. Most of the new companies were partners from Microsoft who suddenly out of the blue joined the Working Group, payed membership fees and voted yes for approval. From the OS2World story: ‘The final result was 25 Yes, 6 No and 3 Abs and this would from the start be a done deal of saying No! Jonas Bosson who participated in today’s meeting on behalf on FFII said that he left the meeting in protest and so did also IBM’s Swedish local representative Johan Westman.’”

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This has gotten so out of hand that I’m getting very disgusted with the direction our Government leaders are going. Yes, I know that I am far from the first person to say this (especially in the last few years) but zOMG will we be required to “show our papers” just to freely move around the friggin country now!?

As a good Federal Employee am I going to be required to get one of these flawed IDs -putting all of my personal and private information into another massive Government database (well, lets be honest, another contracted database) with another chance to get leaked and my identity stolen- or else bring a passport to get into my work building!

Arrgh.. I wonder if they can use English-only speaking IT Managers in Sweden. Its clearly time to learn a new language.

From Slashdot:

rev_media writes to tell us that CNN has a few updates to the Real ID act currently facing legislators. The Real ID acts mandates all states to begin issuing federal IDs to all citizens by 2008. Costs could be as much at $14 billion, but only 40 million are currently allocated. Several states have passed legislation expressly forbidding participation in the program, while others seem to be all for it. The IDs will be required for access to all federal areas including flights, state parks and federal buildings. People in states refusing to comply will need to show passports even for domestic flights

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Part of the Fifth Amendment is “private property be[ing] taken for public use, without just compensation”, for those of you playing at home. And yeah, I had to look it up :o)

RalphTWaP writes:
“Tuesday, there wasn’t even a fuss. Wednesday, the world was a little different. By executive order, the Secretary of the Treasury may now seize the property of any person who undermines efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq. The Secretary may make his determination in secret and after the fact.”

There hasn’t been much media notice of this; the UK’s Guardian has an article explaining how the new authority will only be used to go after terrorists.

I am absolutely speechless on this one.. I think its truly time to purchase one of the Disappearing Bill of Rights coffee mugs. Unless that’s deemed unpatriotic and they take it away from me. I’m not a Bush-basher, but seeing how many of our hard-earned freedoms have gone down the toilet and how we really aren’t any safer than we were on 9/11; I gotta wonder just what the hell is going on and where we’re going to end up.

Found on Slashdot

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Max Blumethal went to the College Republican National Convention Tour and discovered that these well-groomed young men and women strongly support the war in Iraq. But when Blumenthal asked them why they weren’t fighting in Iraq, the students offered creative and entertaining excuses. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:51:3 on BoingBoing

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Frank Zappa appears on Crossfire in 1986 to defend the use of “words” in music.

The best part, in my opinion, is about 9 minutes in when Zappa states that he believes the United States is heading into becoming a fascist theocracy;

Zappa says “When you have a government that prefers a certain moral code derived from a certain religeon, and that moral code turns into legislation to suite one certain religeous point of view, and if that code happens to be very, very right wing, almost Atilla the Hun..”

Twenty one years later……… look around. I think I need to watch V for Vendetta again.

Seen on John C. Dvorak’s Blog found by Martin Higgins

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Did you know that Congress is not required to read the Bills that they pass into law? Doesn’t that seem strange?

• Could your lawyer say that he shouldn’t have to read the contracts you’re supposed to sign?
• Could your accountant say she doesn’t have to check the numbers on your bank statements or your tax returns?
• Aren’t lawyers and accountants subject to laws governing their conduct in such matters?
• And hasn’t Congress passed a law saying that every CEO needs to know and be responsible for the contents of every financial statement his or her company makes public?

Shouldn’t Congress have to live by the kind of rules and laws they impose on others? The answer is clearly yes.
If you agree that Congress should have to read the Bills before they pass them into law, please consider signing up for Downsize DC. They make it quick and painless to send an e-mail to your representatives in support of the Read The Bills Act (among other topics).

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