Category: Politics

From Diana Hsieh:

Reproductive rights in Colorado are under attack by the religious right. Amendment 48 — the ballot measure that would define a fertilized egg as a person with full legal rights in the Colorado constitution — threatens not just legal abortion but also the birth control pill and in vitro fertilization.
The Coalition for Secular Government just published an issue paper on the threat posed by Amendment 48 by Ari Armstrong and myself (Diana Hsieh) entitled “Amendment 48 Is Anti-Life: Why It Matters That a Fertilized Egg Is Not a Person.” It’s available for download at:
http://www.SecularGovernment.us/docs/a48.pdf
It shows that Amendment 48 is deeply hostile to human life:
* Given existing criminal statues, Amendment 48 would subject women and their doctors to life in prison or the death penalty for abortions, even in cases of rape, incest, and fetal deformity.
* It would prevent doctors from properly treating non-viable ectopic pregnancy until the woman’s life and health was in serious danger, thereby causing needless deaths.
* It would force thousands of women each year to bear unwanted children, whatever the cost to their own lives and happiness.
* It would ban popular and effective forms of birth control, including the birth-control pill, thereby increasing unwanted pregnancies.
* It would outlaw the fertility treatments responsible for the birth of hundreds of Colorado babies to eager parents each year.
Amendment 48 would do all that based solely on the faith-based fiction that a fertilized egg is the moral equal of a born infant. Our paper shows that the biological facts support the opposite conclusion: that only the pregnant woman, and then the born infant, are persons with rights. It shows that Amendment 48 is deeply hostile to the requirements of a rational, responsible, and moral life.

From a new article in the business section of the LA Times about a school that “now ranks among the finest in Central America”:

Leftist ideology may be gaining ground in Latin America. But it will never set foot on the manicured lawns of Francisco Marroquin University.
For nearly 40 years, this private college has been a citadel of laissez-faire economics. Here, banners quoting “The Wealth of Nations” author Adam Smith — he of the powdered wig and invisible hand — flutter over the campus food court.
Every undergraduate, regardless of major, must study market economics and the philosophy of individual rights embraced by the U.S. founding fathers, including “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
A sculpture commemorating Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” is affixed to the school of business. Students celebrated the novel’s 50th anniversary last year with an essay contest. The $200 cash prize reinforced the book’s message that society should reward capitalist go-getters who create wealth and jobs, not punish them with taxes and regulations.
“The poor are not poor just because others are rich,” said Manuel Francisco Ayau Cordon, a feisty octogenarian businessman, staunch anti-communist and founder of the school. “It’s not a zero-sum game.”
Welcome to Guatemala’s Libertarian U. Ayau opened the college in 1972, fed up with what he viewed as the “socialist” instruction being imparted at San Carlos University of Guatemala, the nation’s largest institution of higher learning. He named the new school for a colonial-era priest who worked to liberate native Guatemalans from exploitation by Spanish overlords.

From later in the article:

Born into a middle-class family in Guatemala, [school founder] Ayau spent much of his youth in the United States, where his mother moved for a time after his father’s death. He attended Catholic high school in Belmont, Calif., then headed to the University of Toronto, where he studied chemical engineering.
He dropped out after reading Rand’s “Fountainhead.” The novel’s protagonist, Howard Roark, is expelled from architecture school after refusing to conform to its tired standards.
“I realized when I read Rand … that I was starting out my life all wrong,” Ayau said. He said he concluded that “I have to study something that I like, otherwise I’ll never be any good.”

See the full article for much more about this school and its fascinating founder.

Wow, Reason.tv is doing some excellent work, here.

I couldn’t take my eyes off it.
(h/t Instapundit)

Many Objectivists and free market advocates have mixed feelings about patent law and how it is used. If you’re one of them, don’t miss this letter to the lawyers representing Monster Cable. It is hilarious. (Hat tip Instapundit)
Here’s one interesting excerpt, just to save you a click:

I have seen Monster Cable take untenable IP positions in various different scenarios in the past, and am generally familiar with what seems to be Monster Cable’s modus operandi in these matters. I therefore think that it is important that, before closing, I make you aware of a few points.
After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1985, I spent nineteen years in litigation practice, with a focus upon federal litigation involving large damages and complex issues. My first seven years were spent primarily on the defense side, where I developed an intense frustration with insurance carriers who would settle meritless claims for nuisance value when the better long-term view would have been to fight against vexatious litigation as a matter of principle. In plaintiffs’ practice, likewise, I was always a strong advocate of standing upon principle and taking cases all the way to judgment, even when substantial offers of settlement were on the table. I am “uncompromising” in the most literal sense of the word. If Monster Cable proceeds with litigation against me I will pursue the same merits-driven approach; I do not compromise with bullies and I would rather spend fifty thousand dollars on defense than give you a dollar of unmerited settlement funds. As for signing a licensing agreement for intellectual property which I have not infringed: that will not happen, under any circumstances, whether it makes economic sense or not.

But read the whole thing.