Thomas Jefferson on intellectual property

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Read more

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Faulty Logic

Making it illegal to make or sell meth and cocaine hasn’t stopped them from being made and sold. Making prostitution illegal hasn’t eliminated prostitution. Banning child pornography hasn’t stopped kids from being sexually abused. Making it against the law to run red lights hasn’t stopped people from ignoring them. Making driving under the influence a crime hasn’t stopped people from being killed by drunk drivers.  So we should just repeal all these laws since the things they outlaw haven’t stopped people from doing them. That’s the logic people who oppose gun control laws are using. Read more

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Budgets

The Republicans keep harping on the fact that Congress hasn’t passed a budget in three years. Does it matter? What is a budget anyway? Read more

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Being innocent

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=419893721417661&set=a.378515252222175.85285.378258698914497&type=1&ref=nf Being “innocent” is not sufficient to qualify one to own a gun … or it shouldn’t be. Read more

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Why Bother?

What we need now is a ban on the sale and possession of weapons that are only good for mass murder. You don’t need a 50 caliber machine gun or a rifle that can fire 100 bullets a minute to hunt ducks or deer. If you do, you should give up hunting. Read more

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Optimism

Perhaps the future is not as bleak as it appears.  I started thinking about what happened in this election year and remembering some things that may have been glimpses of reality that went unnoticed. Back during the Republican primaries there was a field of candidates that was so far to the extreme right in their ideas that, truthfully, they were just not taken seriously by most Americans.  Literally, most people laughed at them, Read more

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Jefferson on Religion

Jefferson had no use for religious leaders and many times in his letters made it clear religion should be a private affair and and be kept out of politics and that the only way to know a person’s true religious beliefs was by how they lived, not by what they said. Read more

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Jefferson on Change

Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, July 12, 1816 Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the arc of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to it, and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present, but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in government is worth a century of book-reading; Read more

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