Gasp! No, seriously, this is shocking.

Mark the date on your calenders, folks, because today's something truly special:

I feel an actual - slight, very slight, but real - pride about New Jersey.  It's old news that I missed the first time around, but I can't let it pass without comment. 

Apparently in Rome, lighting up the Colosseum has become something of an anti-death penalty statement.  They did it in protest when Saddam Hussein was executed.  And, more recently, they lit it up in celebration when New Jersey banned the death penalty.  

So there it is.  Some of the international community honored something New Jersey did that promotes human rights.  

Now if you'll excuse me, I think I need to go lie down until this feeling of goodwill towards the state of New Jersey goes away.  It's just too weird for me to deal with.

Out with the old, in with the new

Fidel Castro has resigned as the president of Cuba.

In a way, it's not surprising.  He's 81 years old and has been in power for nearly fifty years.  That's a long time.  And hopefully, our president's smarmy-as-hell reaction won't put the Cuban people off from demanding democracy and justice.  In my opinion, the biggest problem with our perpetual embargo against them is not simply that it's absolutely retarded (which it is), but that it prevents us from addressing the serious issues.  Yes, the missile crisis was very scary and sure commies are bad.  Communism is an economic theory, though, and really has nothing to do with their justice system.  The cause for an economic embargo should have been human rights violations all along.  Give me the choice between a nice, shiny, capitalistic nation where journalists are tossed in jail for not censoring themselves, and a grittier, socialist nation that has a truly free press, I'll take the socialism any day.  So hopefully, Castro's resignation may be the catalyst the world needs to tell Cuba to knock it off.

In other news: welcome, Kosovo.  

I'm surprised that the burning and fighting took so long to start, but here it is.  Russia, of course, isn't pleased, but Russia as a general rule isn't a tremendous fan of change to political establishments.  

I'll be the first to admit I'm shamefully ignorant about the situation in that region.  But my point of view is that if you've got a group of people in a given geographic region who don't get along.  You can try to get along under the same rule, and inevitably fight and fight and fight and fight and fight.  Or, at some point you can say, "Look.  This just isn't working out between us.  How about you go your way and we go our way?  It's probably going to be easier to tolerate being neighbors rather than roommates."

Maybe something crazy will happen, the rioting will die down, the situation will stabilize without NATO or the UN stepping in too much, and everyone will be at least not terribly dissatisfied.  That would be a nice change, wouldn't it?

Por que no te callas?

Here is a video of the king of Spain* telling Hugo Chavez to shut up.

Apparently during an Ibero-American summit meeting, the PM of Spain was speaking. Hugo Chavez (whose microphone was off) kept interrupting. Eventually, the king of Spain, sitting next to the PM, leaned forward to face Chavez and said, "Why don't you just shut up?"

I love when diplomats say 'the hell with this politeness crap' and say what they're really thinking. (Also, while I'm not a rabid Chavez-hater, the guy's a total moonbat and does, sometimes, need to shut up.)

*Apparently they still have a king, which I had absolutely no idea of.

Smuggle drugs, pay less tax!

The Netherlands? Strange place. A court ruled that a convicted drug smuggler could deduct the costs of buying and moving the drugs. Which are illegal.

Europe is weird.

Barring freedom of speech in Europe

Full circle, much? Chill out, Germany.

Yes, the Nazis weren't real nice people, what with the totalitarianism and genocide and ill-fated attempts at world conquest. I'm firmly on the side of Nazi = Bad.

But something being bad doesn't mean that people should outlaw the mention of it. One of the consequences of the good guys winning WWII is that you still have the right to call yourself a Nazi. The right to commit genocide? No, sorry, we'll be stopping you. But one of the ways that the Nazi party came into power was by stifling free expression, outlawing certain opinions, and tossing people in jail for voicing unpopular sentiments. We (and by we I mean "the allied powers", not America) stopped them, at a huge cost in lives. If we were the good guys and we fought that war for justice and equality and puppies and such, then we have to tolerate the inevitable outcome.

Another commission official said that Sweden, for example, whose constitution guarantees absolute freedom of speech, could be granted an opt-out if the EU-wide criminalisation was agreed.

Right. Freedom of speech should be the default, not a special fine-print situation.