Free Republic

A few months ago I wrote about how you can encrypt your entire life in less than an hour. Well, all the security in the world can’t save you if someone has physical possession of your phone or laptop, and can intimidate you into giving up your password. And a few weeks ago, that’s precisely what happened to a US citizen returning home from abroad. On January 30th, Sidd Bikkannavar, a US-born scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory flew back to Houston, Texas from Santiago, Chile. On his way through the airport, Customs and Border Patrol agents pulled him aside....

ROME -- President Bush, determined not to upstage the funeral of Pope John Paul II, kept an unusually low profile in Rome yesterday, although former President Bill Clinton gave a television interview watched by millions. "He recognizes the significance of the moment," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said of Mr. Bush. "And the focus rightly should be on the Holy Father." Mr. Bush became the first president in years to conduct a full day's schedule on foreign soil without allowing a single press question, photograph or even fleeting image on videotape. His father, the first President Bush, also refrained from...

Recently, during the final weekend push of voter registration up and down the Golden State and helping an energized public become eligible for the Nov. 2 General Election, I had the privilege of volunteering for the High Desert Republican Headquarters off Highway 18, and was starkly reminded just how deep the rancor exists for those opposing the re-election campaign of George W. Bush. Realizing how important the outcome of the upcoming presidential election is to my family and our nation’s future, I joined my wife and six-year-old daughter to set aside our entire Saturday and Sunday to work with fellow...

I had established the foundations of philosophically verifiable etiquette in the Public-Private Ethical Distinction, which is explicated in an essay of the same name. Etiquette is thoroughly grounded in rational egoism; it is a scientific classification of the instances and categories of action which are best for an individual to keep solely to himself or within a self-defined delimited circle of pertinent associates and which it is to his advantage to seek the cooperation and contribution of others toward. That former treatise had addressed with considerable specificity the alternative of withholding or disclosing and how profoundly it permeates all public...