From RR

• Berlusconi under fire over Italian right-to-die case. Details here and here from Hilary. ‘He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.’ Per crúcem et passiónem tuam, líbera ea, Dómine.
• Less stuff, more freedom. Something even that bitter but funny man George Carlin would have appreciated as centuries of monks and nuns (actually women monks) have done. That said poverty in itself is not ennobling as going into a slum can show you, the hard way.
• Gaza activist detained.
• eBay helps British government keep its citizens unarmed. Although this story is about knives I’ll add that gun rights often seem an American preoccupation poorly understood across the pond by well-meaning, Christian-bred (ex-Christian) Europeans. I remember in England people thinking that daily gunfights in the streets are normal here! To which I can say: look to Switzerland, peaceful and minding its own business, which is mostly business, but not at all pacifist. On top of formidable natural defences every man owns and knows how to use a rifle.
• Authoritarians pretending to be libertarians?!
• Government, back off. Don’t tread on me. The government is compiling a database to track and store the international travel records of millions of Britons.
• 100 years of failed drugs prohibitions.
• Kellogg’s wimps out over Phelps’s bong hit.
• How republics die.
• The federal government is using the general-welfare clause to rob you.
• Police-state Keynesianism.
• Christian support for killing Iraqis. No, thanks.
• Afghanistan: Two US troops killed in blast.
  
  Grammar-cop alert.
  
  This is a soldier:
  
  
  This is a troop:
  
  
  Got it? Good.