Category: Other

I haven’t blogged about this much but here’s an update on the  liberty summer seminar and the Jaworski’s .


From Tim Mak


Every year, Peter Jaworski and the non-profit Institute for Liberal Studies organize a gathering, the Liberty Summer Seminar, to celebrate individual liberties. Attendees from across North America have flocked to the Jaworski family’s home in Orono, Ontario over the last ten years to hear live music, meet with old friends and listen to libertarian-themed lectures.


But after nine years without conflict, a complaint is now threatening the event, and Jaworski’s parents face a fine of up to $50,000.


Before the event this year, health department officers contacted the Jaworskis and told them that their kitchen and cleaning facilities were not up to code. The event had to be catered. At great expense, they catered this year’s seminar.


Two weeks after this year’s event, the Jaworskis were charged anyhow – with running a commercial conference center on land zoned agricultural. This despite the event being organized by a non-profit, and, well, basically resembling a large BBQ.


It has since been revealed that the complaint which launched this entire mess was made by a woman who lived a 24 minute drive away from the seminar – which rules out the traditional disputes over noise and traffic. Peter Jaworski tells FrumForum that his actual neighbors haven’t complained about either.


Instead, the complainant hosts weddings and wedding receptions – a field of business that the Jaworski family had recently announced they were going to enter. Jaworski tells FrumForum that the likely motive behind the complaint was that the businesswoman was trying to place barriers to competition.


The irony of the whole situation is not lost on the younger Jaworski. Not only is a celebration of freedom being nixed by overbearing bylaws, but Jaworski tells FrumForum that his family fled Communist Poland in 1984 to escape a government which refused to – among other things – guarantee the right to assemble peacefully.

The NPR host shown in this clip has gotten  Newspea kdown to a science.

From Newsbusters


“I was at – forgive the expression – a Christmas party,” NPR reporter Nina Totenberg interjected on Inside Washington in the weekend’s oddest cautionary separation from a common description for a common event, seemingly embarrassed to invoke any religious terminology for Christmas. She didn’t say what she’d prefer for parties this time of the year to be named. “Winter solstice party”? Just plain old “holiday party”? Or a “seasonal gathering”?


Totenberg’s bashfulness came as she explained how the failure of Congress to pass an annual budget has left federal workers in limbo:

Every year the find people at Webster’s dictionary sort through the most searched words of the year in 2010 the winner was Austerity . With the debt flu sweeping Europe and economic uncertainty  still on the minds of many worried people around the world this word seems more than appropriate.

From  Associated Press

As Greece faced a debt crisis, the government passed a series of strict austerity measures, including taxes hikes and cutting public sector pay.
The move sparked angry protests, strikes and riots across the country as unemployment skyrocketed and the crisis spread to other European nations. The move also incited a rush to online dictionaries from those searching for a definition.

Austerity, the 14th century noun defined as “the quality or state of being austere” and “enforced or extreme economy,” set off enough searches that Merriam-Webster named it as its Word of the Year for 2010, the dictionary’s editors announced Monday.
John Morse, president and publisher of the Springfield, Mass.-based dictionary, said “austerity” saw more than 250,000 searches on the dictionary’s free online tool and came with more coverage of the debt crisis.

No more sweating to the oldies for Santa down at  the YMCA.


From Fox  news online


Forget about bringing a list or checking it twice — Frosty doesn’t take gift requests, and doesn’t care if you’re naughty or nice.
YMCA officials, who say they are in the midst of “rebranding” the Young Men’s Christian Association to “The Y,” defended their decision.
“It wasn’t replacing; it was transitioning,” said John Rappaport, executive director of the McBurney YMCA. “We realized that change is sometimes good, and that Frosty is a great winter character who would appeal to a broader number of kids.”
The decision to ditch Father Christmas came down from McBurney branch administration, not the Y’s Chicago headquarters.
A chilly reception greeted the news that the YMCA — an organization founded to spread Christian values in 1844 — was replacing the Christmas icon with a secular cartoon character.


Continue article




Is this a sign of the times or political correctness gone awry. ? 

The answer seems to be not much. [click here]