Free Republic

Evacuations are not a benign process. Twenty-four people were killed when a bus carrying 38 Houston nursing home residents and six employees caught fire in a traffic jam. It's thought that oxygen tanks used by elderly evacuees had a role in the fire. Given the hurricane predictions for Houston and Galveston, one can't blame officials for ordering evacuations, but the lesson to be learned is evacuations can be costly. In addition to injuries and loss of life, when evacuations are ordered, there are costs associated with opportunistic criminal behavior such as looting, which there were reports of in Houston.

(2003-06-26) -- In a little noticed addendum to today's Lawrence and Garner v. Texas decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the citizens of Texas are not intelligent enough to rule their own state. Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy noted, "Representative government is a good notion as far as it goes. But the citizens of Texas clearly lack the mental ability to elect representatives and make laws properly. We'll be keeping eye on them to protect them from themselves." Justice Kennedy also wrote that "citizens of many other states probably lack the intellectual capacity to rule themselves as...