You know, I find it bizarre to read about fascism descending on America, when (as always) it always descends on Europe. Well at least of you consider the UK part of Europe, which the people behind these civil rights monstrosities would like to.

We live in a country where young boys – one was just seven – are taken aside and questioned for trying to knock conkers out of chestnut trees on public ground. Where a grandmother whose neighbour accused her of not returning a ball kicked into her garden was arrested, fingerprinted and required to give her DNA. The police went through every room in her house, even her daughter’s drawers, before letting her go without charge or caution.

Where two sisters can be arrested after a peaceful protest about climate change, held in solitary confinement for 36 hours without being allowed to make a phone call, then told not to talk to each other as a condition of their bail. As this paper reported, their money, keys, computers, discs and phones were confiscated, their homes searched.

There is much more, all of it enabled by Blair’s laws and encouraged by a vindictive and erroneous contention that defendants’ rights must be reduced in the pursuit of more and quicker prosecutions. Our prisons are full, problem teenagers are, by default, exiled to a kind of outlawry and every citizen becomes the subject of an almost hysterical need by the authorities to check up on and chivvy them.

Heh.

Tell the base their votes won’t be counted, then wonder why they won’t vote – I will never be smart enough to be a Dem strategist.

I’ve been a long-time reader (and a rare poster) over there. It’s often a source for interesting news stories, and often quite amusing threads based on them. But Jim Robinson, the site founder and proprietor seems, to put it simply, to have gone nuts.

There have always been three topics that generate a lot of heat (and usually little light) over there: homosexuality, the War on (Some) Drugs, and evolution. It looks as though heretics who don’t believe in creationism will no longer be tolerated over there. Too bad–it was fun while it lasted.

Republicans, Democrats and Libertarians are all facing deep schisms. The Libertarians have been splintered by the war, as have the Dems, but these social issues are breaking down the long-time useful alliance between small-government conservatives and libertarians, and social conservatives within the Republican Party. It’s not clear whose split is worse, or what the long-term political consequences will be. I do think that it opens up room for a new political party of some type, perhaps by the disenchanted libertarians (e.g., me, Glenn Reynolds) who make up much of the blogosphere.