First, the American people – or, at the very least Florida SOS Katherine Harris and 5 of 9 Supremely Kangaroo Kort “justices” ruling in a case over which they had zero jurisdiction (2000) and Ken Blackwell (2004) – picked a friggin’ Chimpanzee as POTUS. Twice.
Now, it turns out that one of the leading contenders for the NSGOP nomination may very well in fact be a reanimated corpse who feeds by draining and consuming the blood of living beings. Holy shit – what are the odds on that?
This is really scary…we must take all due diligence to keep this unclean, living undead, blood-sucking creature out of the white house, or else face even more international shame – and who would have thought it possible, after Clinton and Bush? – for our presidential selection.
So a gaggle of right-wing racists and faux libertarians want to build a wall on the border. They are going to “secure” the borders. Nice.
So what does securing the borders mean? Well, one taste of it is that the historic right of Americans to cross into Canada or Mexico without a passport is gone. To travel you have to a government document giving you permission to do so. You can see why I think the “libertarians” who support this measure are not really libertarians at all.
And they want to build a big wall on the Mexican border. Also nice. Real nice. (You do know I’m being sarcastic.)
Since the United States was founded (and before) the borders with Canada and Mexico were never “secure”. Never. So the communities developed often without regard of that imaginary line in the dirt.
Now the authoritarians want “secure borders” and that means problems. It doesn’t mean problems for would-be terrorists. After all the 9/11 criminals didn’t cross the border illegally. They came in with government permission. They had passports and the US government said to them: “Welcome to America. Want some flying lessons?”
No one came in through Canada or Mexico. They didn’t cross the borders but flew in and handed over their permission slips to the hall monitors at the airports. They were roaming around killing people because they passed government security and had state permission to be in the US. You would think the government would look at how they approve would-be terrorists to enter the US. Instead Americans are being forced to get passports to spend a few hours shopping in Mexico. Read the rest of this entry »
Here’s an actual conversation/epiphany I had with my husband not very long ago while driving in the car.
Titaniumgirl: I’ve always heard that the Federalist Society was good, but wouldn’t the Anti-Federalists be the true good guys?
Titaniumboy: Federalists are the good ones, the anti-Federalists are not.
Titaniumgirl: That’s what we are told, but the War of Northern Agression was most certainly supported by the federalists.
Titaniumboy: But, we are told that the Federalists are good.
Titaniumgirl: We are also told that Abe Lincoln was among the best presidents ever, and he was actually an authoritarian dictator who suspended habeaus corpus and killed approximately two hundred thousand people. Every other country on earth ended slavery peacefully, but he was hell bent on wielding power and destruction to anyone who did not support “federalism”.
Titaniumboy: Hmmm
Titaniumgirl: Maybe the problem is that all of these law schools have elite “Federalist Societies” and they act like it’s just and honorable. The Anti-Federalist’s are overlooked, not even spoken of. The Articles of Confederation were a great thing yet we are told/were told in history class that they needed to be discarded because the government needed MORE POWER. You can call me an Anti-Federalist because I would like a very limited government. I’m an Anti-Federalist because I don’t like death, destruction and dictators.
Titaniumboy: (looking very confused) Okay, whatever.
This is actually pretty funny. When confronted about her previous statements, first by Edwards’ wife Elizabeth, then by Chris Matthews of Hardball, Coulter plays dumb, pretending like she doesn’t remember saying, just the day before this interview, that she wishes John Edwards would be killed in a terrorist attack, and pretending like she doesn’t know what Matthews is talking about when he quotes some very personal insults about Hillary Clinton from her book. I have a pretty good hunch that, in a debate where Coulter isn’t allowed to talk over others and actually has to defend her abhorrent behavior, she’d lose in record time, and quite embarrassingly so.
I knew she had called Edwards a “faggot”, but I had no idea that she had made cracks about the death of one of John Edwards’ children. In fact, I didn’t even know the Edwards had lost a child. So, I decided to look it up, since it apparently happened about three years ago, and I have never followed Republicans, much less Republican loudmouths in mini-skirts.
Lo, and behold, I found the exact quote, wherein she made a crack about the death of Edwards’ 16-year-old son, Wade, in a car accident. How horrific for them, to lose a beloved child so unexpectedly. So I can only imagine the hurt they felt when they read the following trash from Coulter:
Edwards has talked about his son’s death in a 1996 car accident on “Good Morning America,” in dozens of profiles and in his new book. (”It was and is the most important fact of my life.”) His 1998 Senate campaign ads featured film footage of Edwards at a learning lab he founded in honor of his son, titled “The Wade Edwards Learning Lab.” He wears his son’s Outward Bound pin on his suit lapel. He was going to wear it on his sleeve, until someone suggested that might be a little too “on the nose.”
If you want points for not using your son’s death politically, don’t you have to take down all those “Ask me about my son’s death in a horrific car accident” bumper stickers? Edwards is like a politician who keeps announcing that he will not use his opponent’s criminal record for partisan political advantage. I absolutely refuse to mention the name of my dearly beloved and recently departed son killed horribly in a car accident, which affected me deeply, to score cheap political points.
My God. There are no words to describe anybody who would sink that low to insult political rivals. Well, there are a few, but those are words I would never use. Has this coldhearted bitch any idea what it’s like to lose a child? Apparently not. That’s Darwin’s fault, though, since he correctly predicted that scum-sucking bottom feeders like her could never breed.
I have to say, I loved seeing that loudmouth Coulter on the hot seat for once, since she usually mouths off about people who aren’t there to defend themselves against her vicious personal attacks. Note the brainwashing of an innocent child going on over her right shoulder. This entire sick scene reminds me why I have never supported a Republican candidate.
Incidentally, Coulter once wanted to run for Congress as a Libertarian, and the Connecticut LP turned her down flat. Smart thinking on their part, because she’s just another wackjob who wants to pretend to be a libertarian.
Nov 14th, 2006, around 11:30 pm, Powell Library CLICC computer lab, UCLA: student shot with a Taser multiple times by UCPD officers, even after he was cuffed and motionless.According to eye witnesses, it started when student Mostafa Tabatabainejad did not show a Community Service Officer his student ID. Eye witnesses said the student was on his way leaving the lab when a UCPD officer approached and grabbed him by the exit of the lab. He objected to the physical contact by loudly repeating “don’t touch me”, and this is the point where the video starts.
According to wikipedia, Mostafa Tabatabainejad is a fourth-year student of philosophy and Middle Eastern and North African studies at UCLA. He is an American citizen of Iranian descent. He was 23 years old at the time of the incident and is Baha”i’ by religion.
Here’s a letter written by Jose M. Gonzalez, the father of one of the men at the Ed and Elaine Brown house (Cirino aka Reno). Jose went to Plainfield to defend Ed and Elaine alongside his son, only to be asked to leave. His impression of Ed Brown is particularly enlightening. [I have separated the paragraphs, to make it easier to read, but otherwise have not edited this in any way - ENM]
My emotions are bouncing around in my mind and I want to settle down before I write out and post a complete report
Although everyone of the Browns’ supporters have individual agendas, the cause of “Show me the tax law” is worthy of continuation.
When equal rights folks were ready to make their move in 1956, they researched several individuals and chose Rosa Parks for a very special reason. Rosa Parks was not the only Black person having refused to sit on the back of a bus. She was chosen for her dignity, honest past, and willingness to cooperate with the equal rights promoters for the greater cause; not her own personal glory.
Although Elaine Brown may have these qualities, I fear that Ed probably cannot even spell them. I found him to be an arrogant, ambitious, self-serving man that is using everyone around him (including Elaine) for his own personal political gain. From what little I could gather, he is looking for ’supporters’ willing to DIE for him but he has no intentions of dying himself. Cirino was/is frustrated at the lax security but Ed blocked all efforts to make the place defendable and give the occupants a better chance of surviving.
After meeting with the security team, I requested (of Ed) that we ALL meet with Ed & Elaine to configure an acceptable security plan.
He refused to meet and kicked me, Lee, AND Cirino out. Cirino managed to convince Ed to let him (Cirino) stay longer and I fear for his life even more so now. However, I will not risk the life of TWO sons over this less than honorable man.
I have experienced personal hardship and ramifications over this issue and stand to gain absolutely nothing in return nor do I want anything but the safety of my children, family, and friends.
This is spirit in which Cirino has gotten involved with such a cause.Maria has my permission to post this or anything I write. I trust in her values. I have not completed my thoughts on this matter and am torn between continuin
It appears that he ran out of space (it was posted as a comment on his son’s myspace page) but the gist is pretty clear, I think.
On his own myspace page, Jose states that he has a BA in psychology/sociology, and an MS in counseling with a specialization in marriage & family therapy. If that’s true, his opinions of Ed and Elaine should be given greater weight than that of the average person, especially since he has actually been to the house and met the Browns.
At a time when Libertarian Party membership continues to rise, a recent Rasmussen Report survey indicates that Republican Party affiliation continues to decline while Democratic Party affiliation is decreasing, as well.
Republican numbers have been dropping since the November 2004 elections and they continue to decrease with no bottom in sight. For the last four consecutive months, the amount of self-identified Republicans continued their decline – from 31.1 percent to 30.8 percent in a telephone survey of 15,000 adults.
The number of self-identified Democrats fell to 36.3 percent, its lowest number in seventeen months. Democrats have suffered losses in the last three consecutive months, resulting in a six month decrease of 4.5 percent.
At the same time, Libertarian Party membership numbers have been on an upswing. For the last five months, people willing to pay at least $25 per year for Libertarian Party affiliation have increased at a rate of approximately 2.7 percent per month, which is a 14 percent increase from December’s figure.
Not only that, but we’re disproportionately getting the troops on the frontline. The guys who have seen “Islamo-fascism” firsthand are turning to us. Apparently the best way to support the troops is to support the Libertarian Party, straight from the horse’s mouth.
“I think people have the right to bear arms at a hunting reserve. But you’re not hunting deer with semi-automatic weapons,” Jackson said in a phone interview. “We’re going to keep protesting until America becomes more conscious of the domestic terrorism allowed by guns.”
I don’t think Jesse Jackson ever read the 2nd Amendment. It clearly states that every American has the right to bear arms whether it’s in their homes, cars, on their persons not just at the hunting reserve.
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
The 2nd Amendment is clear to me. I’ll say that arms could include private ownership of tanks, fighter jets, rocket launchers, grenades, ect…. Protesting at a legal business is not the solution. You should be encouraging law-abiding citizens to take up arms to protect themselves against gangs, rapists, thieves and murderers. Disarming the people is not going to eliminate the problem, it will lead to increased crime.
Jesse Jackson doesn’t get it-people kill people, not guns! Another tidbit for Uncle Tom…I mean Jesse…the domestic terrorist you speak of lives at the White House and most members of Congress, not gun owners exercising their RIGHTS!
Perry ”Bit” Whatley, 84, a former Baytown refinery worker and lifelong Texan, spent his final days in self-imposed exile, a fugitive from a more than two-year-old fight with the state probate courts.
Whatley was living in Arizona when he died, but it was not where he wanted to be, away from his home, cut off from his family and his $2 million fortune.
It was an unlikely, but perhaps unavoidable, end for the retired machinist, a frugal man who had wisely invested his savings in Humble Oil, which became Exxon, then Exxon Mobil. The investment made him a millionaire nearly twice over, and yet for 20 years after his retirement he lived a simple life in a simple Baytown bungalow until last summer, when he fled the jurisdiction of Harris County Probate Court.
Whatley died Feb. 14 in a rental home in Tempe in the company of his longtime caregiver, Dawn Johnson Whatley, 63, whom he married in a bedside ceremony in January 2005. His wife was his sole heir.
The Whatleys, both seniors with serious health problems, abandoned their own home and went into hiding together last summer. They left to avoid a hearing and, later, orders issued by Probate Judge Mike Wood that declared Whatley incapacitated, took away control of his assets and could have forced him into a nursing home.
Perry Whatley’s sad saga started out as a dispute between his niece and his new wife, two people who professed devotion to him and who also sought control over his fortune, his health care and his basic life decisions.
But the fight, taken to court in April 2005 by Whatley’s niece, morphed quickly into a twisted legal free-for-all and a near-infamous example for critics who claim Texas probate courts have run amok. It also underscores how worries over a loved one — seemingly simple at first — can escalate into a costly and chaotic legal conflict.
It took decades for Whatley to make his money.
In less than two years, nearly $1.5 million has been spent on legal bills and court-authorized expenses for his probate case and related litigation, based on case documents.
And though Whatley is gone, the fight over what remains of his money is far from over.
Considering that I regularly use the word “trash” to describe ultra-skanky heiress Paris Hilton, I found this a little amusing. From Yahoo News:
LOS ANGELES – So, how much would you pay for an empty dog-food can if you thought it was snatched from Paris Hilton’s trash? So far the answer is $0.
But the people from HollywoodStarTrash.com are counting on someone forking over at least $40. That’s the starting bid listed on eBay for the can that once contained a helping of Party Animal organic gourmet. Bidding closes Sunday.
As of midday Monday, the can had no takers. Nor had anyone put down a bid for the used toothbrush, the Hilton fan letter or the Hilton-autographed postcard also said to have been plucked from the hotel heiress’ garbage.
According to a video placed on hollywoodstartrash.com, a guy wearing an Uncle Sam mask tracked down Hilton’s address from a map to movie stars’ homes. Then he and a colleague, who remains off camera, sneaked into Hilton’s neighborhood before dawn on a recent Thursday and absconded with six bags of garbage.
“We discovered that Paris Hilton throws out a well organized and quite neat bag of trash, save for a few Cobb salads and banana peels,” says one of the two.
Neither immediately responded to an e-mailed request to elaborate.
Their Web site indicated that as time goes by they’ll be sifting through other celebrities’ trash and offering it for sale. A man identified as a lawyer, who appears on the video, tells them their actions are legal as long as they wait for celebrities to put their trash cans out on the street and don’t trespass on their property.
As to whether the trash is really Hilton’s, they place the following statement on each of the eBay offerings: “We guarantee that each item comes from the trash bins outside the celebrity’s home!”
And who wouldn’t believe a guy in an Uncle Sam mask?
Outside the initial amusement factor, though, I find this more than a little disturbing. The website doesn’t stop at empty dog food cans and used toothbrushes. It also has photos of prescription bottles and, although they have “censored” over identifying information, it’s not at all hard to figure out what those bottles contained. I also find it disturbing that these folks actually believe there’s somebody out there, so obsessed with Paris Hilton, that they’d pay for her used tissues and Q-tips. That’s beyond weird. It’s sick.
[TiGirl is unavailable right now, so at her suggestion I'm updating one of her previous entries by posting a new article from my blog - ENM]
By now, most people have probably heard about the case involving Roy Pearson, a Washington, DC administrative law judge, who sued a dry cleaner for $54 million, over a missing pair of pants. Today, a judge ruled that he not only doesn’t get a dime from the dry cleaner, he will also have to pay the dry cleaners’ legal fees and costs.
The trial proved nearly as dramatic — and unusual — as the plaintiff’s claims. On the witness stand, Pearson broke down in tears and had to take a break from his testimony because he became too emotional while questioning himself about his experience with the missing trousers.
In his opening statement, Pearson came out swinging, telling the court, “Never before in recorded history have a group of defendants engaged in such misleading and unfair business practices.”
Repeatedly referring to himself as “we,” Pearson sought to present himself as the leader of a class of tens of thousands, if not a half million people, consisting of local residents he believes are at risk of falling for such insidious business practices as posting “Satisfaction Guaranteed” and “Same Day Service” signs. Pearson said at one point in court filings that he planned to call 63 witnesses.
“Mr. Pearson, you are not ‘we.’ You are an ‘I,’” Bartnoff told him.
As Pearson explained the details of the missing pants, he struggled to get through his hour and a half of testimony, most of which concerned his credentials and his background.
He became visibly emotional when he reached the point in the story in which he recounted a confrontation with Soo Chung from the dry cleaning store.
“These are not my pants,” he testified, and said he told her, “I have in my adult life, with one exception, never worn pants with cuffs.”
Pearson testified that Chung insisted, saying, “These are your pants.”
Pearson then rushed from the courtroom, overcome with emotion.
From that description, I think it’s pretty obvious that Pearson is more than a little off in the head. I’m not saying the pants presented were his pants, because I’ve had a lot of dry cleaners screw up on my stuff so it’s very possible they made a mistake; but at the same time, $54 million over a lost pair of pants? Give me a frickin’ break.
Obviously, it was a frivolous lawsuit which should never have been brought in the first place (after all, the Chungs at one point offered him $12,000, which is more than enough to make up for his lost pants). It has damaged the Chungs’ reputation, their credit rating, and generally destroyed their lives. One of the Chungs said that they just want to go back to Korea after this fiasco.
So I think paying the Chungs’ attorney fees and court costs just is not enough. Allow them to amend their counterclaim, if necessary, then grant them major damages for what they’ve endured. That not only will be a step in the direction of making this right again for a couple of hardworking immigrants who have suffered greatly at the hands of a man who intentionally abused our system of justice, it will also serve to warn others who might be tempted to do something that stupid.
Then again, I think you really need to be crazy in order to think you’re entitled to that much money just because your pants were lost at the drycleaner’s, so even that probably won’t serve as a deterrent to other crazies who think something that small is worth zillions.
Jane Balogh had a pretty good idea who was calling when the phone rang and the caller asked for Duncan M. MacDonald.
Duncan is the dog Balogh registered as a voter seven months before the November 2006 election.
Duncan’s absentee-ballot envelope was signed with a picture of a paw print.
“You can’t sign with a paw print,” the election worker told Balogh on Nov. 9.
“I said, ‘he can if he’s a dog,’ ” answered Balogh, a 66-year-old grandmother and Army veteran who lives in Federal Way.
The election worker told her a supervisor would call, but she never heard from anyone.
After making her point — how easy it is for a voter to register illegally — Balogh will be arraigned in King County Superior Court on Tuesday on a misdemeanor charge of making a false statement to a public official.
If she declines to plead guilty, prosecutors told her in a letter this week, they will file a felony charge of providing false information on a voter-registration application. She doesn’t plan to contest the misdemeanor: “I’m not going to claim to be innocent when I know I’m guilty.”
Balogh’s crime was signing Duncan’s name on a registration card under a declaration that he meets all the requirements to vote. She submitted ballots in his name in the September and November 2006 and May 2007 elections. She wrote “VOID” on the ballots, and didn’t cast any votes.
Balogh, who lives with Duncan, an Australian shepherd-terrier mix, and four other dogs and four cats, registered her dog as a protest of a 2005 state voter-registration statute that she says makes it too easy for noncitizens to vote. She put her phone bill in Duncan’s name, then used the phone bill as identification to register him as a voter.
“I wasn’t trying to do anything fraudulent. I was trying to prove that our system is flawed. So I got myself in trouble,” she says.
If she accepts the plea deal offered by prosecutors, they won’t ask for jail time but will recommend she be sentenced to 10 hours of community service, pay a $250 fine and commit no other crimes for a year.
Acting Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg says his office “can’t simply look the other way. They say you should let sleeping dogs lie, but you can’t let voting dogs vote.”
I can’t help but wonder how many other people have done something like that. After all, if she had put a signature on it, instead of a paw print, no one would have noticed.
I1connect News: Ralph Nader and Daniel Imperato “More Voices and More Choices”
In what has been one of the busiest weeks for independent political activity, corporate activist and former presidential candidate, Ralph Nader, has indicated that he is exploring another run at the White House in 2008.
During a televised interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Thursday, Nader stated that America needed “More Voices and More Choices.”
Nader has gained some significant media coverage since New York City Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, announced that he is splitting from the Republican Party and declaring himself as an independent. The move was widely seen as a precursor to a 2008 Presidential run.
Thus far, leading the independent charge has been Florida businessman, Daniel Imperato. Imperato has been consistently the most active independent campaigner, and has recently started working with Libertarian Party in an effort to gain ballot access.
Imperato has openly stated that he is interested in working with members of the Green, Libertarian, Constitution, and Reform Party as well as other independents for a 2008 Presidential bid.
Now, with Ralph Nader in the presidential fray, perhaps an Imperato Nader collaboration could be a possibility.
Imperato brings a strong corporate background, and a no-nonsense style of governance, and straight talk that could be very appealing in the upcoming election.
Nader is a corporate whistleblower who brings an activist philosophy to a potential President-Vice Presidential ticket, and already has previous presidential election experience.
Both candidates are grass-roots oriented and rely very heavily upon strong organization.
Also a potential Green and Libertarian Party collaboration would increase the voter base, viability, and ballot access status of any third party presidential ticket.
So with Imperato, Bloomberg, and now, Ralph Nader on the table for the American public, America may now have more voices, and more choices for the 2008 presidential election.
The CIA ran secret prisons in Europe, including in Poland, said the head of a European investigation who was to present new findings Friday on what he has called a “spider’s web” of human rights abuses during the war on terror.
“We have proof, on the basis of information collected, of the existence of illegal prisons in countries closely collaborating with the United States, such as Poland,” the French daily Le Figaro quoted Swiss senator Dick Marty as saying.
Marty, leading an inquiry on behalf of the Council of Europe, has spoken to former CIA agents to corroborate his earlier accusations against Poland and Romania, where he suggested CIA planes landed to drop off detainees, a person familiar with the investigation said.
Marty was to release his latest findings Friday. In Romania, a senator who headed a panel investigating the allegations on behalf of the Romanian parliament rejected Marty’s conclusions.
“The report is totally unfounded,” Norica Nicolai said on news television Realitatea TV. “There are very serious allegations and I would not have expected a European lawmaker to make such serious accusations without evidence.”
President Traian Basescu’s former security adviser Sergiu Medar also denied allegations Romania’s military intelligence department was involved in the CIA prison scandal.
It goes zero to 60 in about four seconds. Its top speed is 130 miles per hour. And it doesn’t use an ounce of gasoline.
It’s the Tesla Roadster, a new car that’s fueled entirely by electricity and could be hitting the lot just in time. Today the Energy Department reported that the average gallon of regular gasoline is now $3.10 — a new nominal record price for the United States.
The Tesla Roadster is named after Nicola Tesla, the largely forgotten genius inventor of alternating current electricity, and it’s the brainchild of Martin Eberhard, who said he designed it because he cares about the environment and because he wanted one for himself.
“It’s time for us to do something about our dependence on foreign oil,” Eberhard said. “It’s time for us to do something about global warming. But I wasn’t ready to go drive around some goofy little car. … Think of how electric cars look. All the ones you’ve ever thought of.”
There haven’t been many electric cars. Early automobiles ran on electricity, as did General Motor’s ill-fated and quickly abandoned EV1, which debuted in the 1990s and died soon thereafter. Eberhard said there’s “nothing beautiful” about the Prius, perhaps the best-known hybrid car. “It doesn’t do anything for me,” he said. “Think of it this way. A world of 100 percent hybrids is still 100 percent addicted to oil.”
All of her life, Zoila Meyer believed she was an American. She even won election to the City Council of Adelanto.
But now she is facing a threat of deportation for illegally voting, because she never became a citizen after being brought to this country from Cuba when she was 1 year old.
“To be honest with you, I’m scared. How can they just pluck me out of my family, my kids?” the 40-year-old mother of four said in a telephone interview Friday.
“If they can do this to me, they can do it to anybody,” she said.
After Meyer was elected to the council in Adelanto in 2004, someone told officials that she was born in Cuba, prompting an investigation.
Eventually, “the police came to me and said, ‘Zoila, you’re not a citizen. You’re a legal resident but you’re not a citizen,’” said Meyer, who now lives in the San Bernardino County desert town of Apple Valley, near Adelanto.
She resigned after 10 weeks in office in Adelanto, a town of about 23,000.
Meyer, whose story was first reported in the Victorville Daily Press, applied to become a naturalized citizen and continued with her life: raising her children and attending two local colleges to earn degrees toward her goal of working in the justice system as a forensic nurse.
However, because she was not a citizen, Meyer faced a felony charge of illegally voting in the 2004 election.
In April 2006, she pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of fraudulent voting and was placed on probation, fined and ordered to pay restitution.
What Meyer didn’t realize is that fraudulently voting is a deportable offense.
On June 18, Meyer said, immigration officials showed up at her home and told her to appear at their San Bernardino office.
Her husband drove her to the office on Tuesday, “and they handcuffed me,” Meyer said. “They put me in jail and they frisked me and processed me.”
“I said ‘You’re doing this because I voted?”‘
The case is unusual but immigration officials were just doing their job when they arrested Meyer, said Lori Haley, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
This man hasn’t strayed far from the headlines. Whether it’s the dustup over LibertyMix or his recent resignation from National, he’s been in the forefront of Libertarian news as of late. LFV got a chance to talk with Stephen Gordon recently about his involvement in LM, his resignation, and his plans for the future.
Last Free Voice: You have taken a lot of flak from various corners of the libertarian blogosphere for your support of LibertyMix in the past, and have yet to disavow that support. What exactly did you do in support of LibertyMix, and knowing what you know today, would you do it again?
Stephen Gordon: I strongly believe in the project. However, if I had it to do over again, the timeline would have been promoted in a significantly different manner. Stephen Van Dyke and I spent a good deal of time discussing the project in
the past and his technical vision is, in my opinion, very sound. My role was to primarily handle marketing and he was/is the key technical person. I even had several people who had promised to sign on as paid advertisers (those who have paid their $25 don’t have to worry about that). I’m very sorry that the project is considerably overdue and regret any hardship this may have caused anyone.
LFV: You have talked to Stephen VanDyke repeatedly about this project. Do you, in your personal opinion, think that LibertyMix will ever be launched? Do you think Hammer of Truth will even ever be back online and operational as a blog again?
SG: I frequently pester Van Dyke about the project and I talked with him again last night. I’d call him more often if I thought it would speed things up. I’d be more than willing to bet that both sites will be operational in the future. Like most of you, I’d not be willing to place any money on the exact launch date, though. Read the rest of this entry »
Well, I finally got internet yesterday after the move from Dallas to Houston, and I discovered that Houston’s Ron Paul meetup group was campaigning tomorrow at the farmer’s market. It was a 10-minute drive for me requiring only two turns (much less chance of getting lost), so I was happy to come. The farmer’s market is open from 7:30 AM to noon. I showed up at 10.
The strategy was to start by talking to people about the National Animal Identification System; to quote LivestockWeek, “USDA’s proposed program could be compared to a finely crafted blueprint for a concrete blimp.” We started by handing out NoNAIS.org’s information on the idiotic program which will bankrupt small-time farmers such as those at the farmer’s market, then moved on to an excellent article by Ron Paul on NAIS. Then it was “This is an article by Ron Paul – are you familiar with him?”, etc. Finally, a Paul information card came out.
This strategy worked quite well. Pretty much everyone who talked to us came away liking Ron Paul. Some were concerned about his being a Republican (or in one case, about his being a politician at all), but we had little business-card-size things with a brief summary of his voting record (never voted for higher taxes, never voted for gun control, voted against going into Iraq, etc), and that quickly calmed them.
One woman came up to us and said “I’m SO glad to see other Republicans here! I’m an ultra-conservative and I support Rudy Giuliani, but I wish Paul the best of luck.” We tried to point out the astounding number of contradictions in what she had just said, but she just repeatedly changed the subject, so whatever. (She’s a political consultant for the Harris County GOP.)
The only people who we seriously had conflicts with were two old men who also happened to be followers of Lyndon LaRouche. I had thought that these guys didn’t actually exist, but apparently they’re fairly active in Houston. One entered the back of the booth and started talking about “parity pricing” and so on. When one of our people said that “That’s socialism”, his friend motioned to him from in front of the both and they moved on.
Overall, it was a pretty awesome experience, and I encourage all supporters of liberty (remember, even if you, like me, don’t agree with Paul on everything, we’re all heading the same direction – smaller government) to get off the computer and do something in the real world.
As someone who regularly takes in rescued dogs, I was interested to see this item. Poor little fella. I’d adopt this one in a minute, for fear that no one else would.
Elwood, a 2-year-old Chinese Crested and Chihuahua mix, was crowned the world’s ugliest dog Friday, a distinction that delighted the New Jersey mutt’s owners.
Elwood, dark colored and hairless save for a mohawk-like puff of white fur on his head is often referred to as “Yoda,” or “ET,” for his resemblance to those famous science fiction characters.
“I think he’s the cutest thing that ever lived,” said Elwood’s owner, Karen Quigley, a resident of Sewell, New Jersey.
Quigley brought Elwood out to compete for the second year at the annual ugly dog contest at the Marin-Sonoma County Fair. Elwood placed second last year.
Most of the competing canines were also Chinese Crested, a breed that features a mohawk, bug eyes and a long, wagging tongue.
Quigley said she rescued Elwood two years ago. “The breeder was going to euthanize him because she thought he was too ugly to sell,” said Quigley.
“So ha ha, now Elwood’s all over the Internet and people love him and adore him.”
Beyond the regal title of ugliest dog, Elwood also earned a $1,000 reward for his owner.
We’ve probably all heard the story of Edith Isabel Rodriguez, who died in a Los Angeles emergency room after being refused treatment. Concerned people on the scene called 911, and were told there was nothing cops or paramedics can do, since she was already in a hospital. Hospital personnel stepped over her while she was on the floor, writhing in pain. A janitor mopped around her, to clean up the blood which came from her body. Concerned individuals who tried to bring the woman’s condition to the attention of hospital personnel were told that it was not blood coming from her mouth, but chocolate.
The woman, unfortunately, died.
The part of this story being left out of most news accounts, however, is that the hospital called the cops to have her removed from the premises.
When cops arrived, they picked her up off the floor, blood coming from her mouth, and arrested her for a probation violation.
What the hell?
Cops were transporting her to jail when her heart stopped. They returned her to the hospital, but by then it was too late, and she died. She had suffered a perforated bowel sometime within 24 hours after arriving at the hospital. Had she been seen when she had first arrived at the hospital hours before, she probably would have survived.
The problem here lies not just with the hospital, but with the cops. The cops should have demanded that she be seen before they transported her. After all, it’s not rocket science that somone is probably dying when they’re in that kind of condition.
A number of hospital employees have been fired and reported to licensing authorities, and the state has taken steps to close down the hospital since she’s not the only person who appeared there deathly ill and was refused treatment. A murder investigation has also been opened.
As far as I can tell, though, no action has been taken against the cops on the scene, despite their undeniable responsibility to intervene on the woman’s behalf.
Connecticut’s governor, a cancer survivor, vetoed a bill that would have allowed people with certain serious illnesses to use marijuana, saying it was fraught with problems and sent a mixed message to children.
Gov. M. Jodi Rell said Tuesday that she struggled with the decision.
“I am not unfamiliar with the incredible pain and heartbreak associated with battling cancer,” the Republican said. Rell was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004, a few months after taking office, and she underwent a mastectomy.
The bill she vetoed would have allowed people older than 18 with medical conditions such as cancer, multiple sclerosis and AIDS to grow and use four marijuana plants after getting written permission from a doctor and registering with the state.
The issue pits broader patients’ rights against concerns of legalized access to an illicit drug. Twelve states let some patients use marijuana despite federal laws against it.
“I think this is a big step backward,” said Republican state Rep. Penny Bacchiochi, a widow who risked arrest more than 20 years ago to obtain marijuana for her husband while he struggled with bone cancer.
TV talk show host Montel Williams, diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1999, lobbied at the state Capitol in support of the bill. He said he uses marijuana to help alleviate the pain and debilitating symptoms.
Third-party candidates take to the Web
They don’t have a chance in hell, but they’ve got awesome MySpace pagesBy Helen A.S. Popkin & Guest Avatar Ree Hines
MSNBC contributorsUpdated: 6:56 p.m. ET June 21, 2007What Third Party candidates lack in funds, MySpace friends and a snow ball’s chance in Hades, they more than make up for in heart on their MySpace profiles. Well, not really.You’re welcome to vote for a third party candidate, but as “Simpsons” space alien Kang quipped “Go ahead, throw your vote away!”
Still, from the Green Party and the Libertarians to the Vampires, Witches, and Pagan Party, outside candidates understand the importance of a good MySpace profile, even if they don’t all manage to make one.
Here’s their review of the Libertarian candidates on MySpace:
George Phillies (Libertarian)
“George Phillies, Libertarian Candidate for President”
Age: 59
Star sign: Leo
Friend count: 791 (Including “Jack Tripper, and Green Day!)
Comments: 57
Best comment: “Thanks for the add!” – Mike Gravel
Interests: Books: (“I’ve written eight … ) and heroes (Josiah Willard Gibbs)
Other social network memberships:
Facebook
Yahoo Groups
This free MySpace page, with its default layout with obligatory American flag graphics, was “paid for by Phillies 2008.” In yet another blatant abuse of the “interest” fields, George includes videos, debate audios and a plug for his books. The site previously featured a lively a cappella Libertarian anthem, “Get Out.” But last time we checked, it was “deleted by the artist.”
Helen: What’s with George’s Grandpa glamour shot? The big plastic glasses are endearing, but the off-white windbreaker is too much. Put on a tie for criminy’s sake! You’re running for president!
Ree: Under the “children” field he’s written “someday.” Dude! You’re 59! And you ain’t no Tony Randall. Further, the only personal tidbit we get is his hero, Josiah Willard Gibbs, a theoretical physicist and chemist. George is out for the brainiac vote.
Steve Kubby (Libertarian Party)
“Let Freedom Grow!”
Age: 60
Star sign: Capricorn
Friend count: 4,564
Comments: 168
Best comment: Tokin’, drinkin’ pot leaf graphic that says: “Just stopped by to say high” — Rev. Cannabis Connoisseur
Interests: Books about pot.
Other social network memberships:
None
Possibly even more garish than Elaine Brown’s MySpace page, Steve Kubby’s profile also suffers from an intense background (this one blue) and a non-sequiturous array of changing font sizes and colors. Seriously, stare at this site for one minute and look away. You’ll still be seeing it three days later. Bob Marley’s “One Love” loads with the site.
Helen: Dang, who built this site? Jeff Spicoli? P.S. Steve’s “Daily Show” clip is totally handicammed straight from the TV screen, bootleg-movie style.
Ree: Steve’s statement that, “This is no more about marijuana than the Boston Tea Party was about tea” is somewhat compromised by the photo of a big hairy bud that follows it. Not to mention that photo of Steve in the universally understood “take a toke” pose. And the Bob Marley music. You know, I’m beginning to suspect this is entirely about pot.
Wayne Allen Root (Libertarian Party)
“Root for America 2008″
Age: 43
Star sign: Cancer
Friend count: 64
Comments: 4
Best comment: We don’t know as we can’t read them.
Interests: None listed.
Other social network memberships:
None
Perhaps misunderstanding the statement, “transparent candidate,” Wayne Allen Root’s profile challenges the optical nerve of the American with an image of Old Glory bleeding over his entire content. This includes portrait, videos and red text boxes with white font.
Helen: Is it me, or does this dude look just like Marjoe Gortner?
Ree: All I know is that Wayne’s “W.A.R. Story” (get it?) states that he is not only “the most prolific and recognized sports oddsmaker/prognosticator in American television history,” he “has morphed into high profile CEO and entrepreneur, self-made millionaire, best-selling author, TV celebrity, and Libertarian Presidential candidate.” With all that juice, why not hook up a better MySpace profile?
If you want to see their smartass comments about other third party candidates (and some of them are pretty funny, I’ll admit) here’s the article in its entirety.
By MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 7 minutes ago
WASHINGTON – The Bush administration is nearing a decision to close the Guantanamo Bay detainee facility and move its terror suspects to military prisons elsewhere, The Associated Press has learned.
Senior administration officials said Thursday a consensus is building for a proposal to shut the center and transfer detainees to one or more Defense Department facilities, including the maximum-security military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., where they could face trial.
President Bush’s national security and legal advisers had been scheduled to discuss the move at a meeting Friday, the officials said, but after news of it broke, the White House said the meeting would not take place that day and no decision on Guantanamo Bay’s status is imminent.
“It’s no longer on the schedule for tomorrow,” said Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council. “Senior officials have met on the issue in the past, and I expect they will meet on the issue in the future.”
Three senior administration officials spoke about the discussions on condition of anonymity because they were internal deliberations.
Expected to consult soon, according to the officials, were Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Peter Pace.
Previous plans to close Guantanamo ran into resistance from Cheney, Gonzales and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. But officials said the new suggestion is gaining momentum with at least tacit support from the State and Homeland Security departments, the Pentagon and the Intelligence directorate.
Cheney’s office and the Justice Department have been against the step, arguing that moving “unlawful” enemy combatant suspects to the U.S. would give them undeserved legal rights. Read the rest of this entry »
Yours truly has been scheduled to be interviewed on Angela Keaton’s Liberated Space internet radio show. The topic is getting more racial/ethnic minorities into the LP/libertarian movement. The show airs on Tuesday July 10th at 4:30 Pacific/7:30 Eastern on BlogTalkRadio.com I want to get some input from our LFV readers. Is there anything in our party’s platform that would encourage more minorities to join us? Any outreach techniques that are successful in the past that might have helped? I was “recruited” into the LP by Richard Boddie via his speech during the 1991 LP National Convention on C-SPAN.
The show is on in 19 days, so pour in your thoughts.
I found a nifty little tool, which rates blogs just like movies are rated, based on content.
Not surprisingly, LFV got an R rating. That rating was based on the words “gay”, “gun”, “shit”, and “kill”. Apparently Paulie’s favorite word is rated G these days, LOL.
I ran my own blog through it, and shockingly, it was rated NC-17. That rating was based on the presence of the words “death”, “hell”, “ass”, “crap”, “dead”, “dangerous”, “gun”, “suicide”, “kill”, “sex”, “piss”, “crap”, “shit”, “steal”, “hurt” “rape”, “breast”, “lesbian”, “dick”, “masochist”.
Now, while I am known to use the words “hell” and “crap” as profanity (neither of which would garner anything above a PG, if that), the rest of that list of questionable words looks really, really bad. In fact, it makes me look more than a little loony. However, in truth, those words are taken completely out of context. Here is what my blog really says when using some of those words:
dick = “A Texas man, Dick Simkanin, was convicted of tax crimes last month in connection with his failure to withhold federal income taxes from employees’ pay. Simkanin faces a statutory maximum sentence of 129 years imprisonment and millions of dollars in fines.”
shit = “In another video [Paris Hilton] made the comments ‘fat ugly Jewish bitch’, ‘little black whore got f***d in the butt for coke’, ‘nigger’, ‘black and steal shit’, all in the course of less than five minutes. There was no outrage over those comments, and no one even questioned why she would say things like that. Don Imus got fired for far, far less. Yet her reality show continues, and there were no consequences whatsoever for her outrageous behavior. That’s disturbing, because many young girls look up to Paris as a role model, when she is in fact anything but that.” [Paris used the word "fucked", not f'd", but I try to keep my blog at least reasonably clean so I didn't want to spell it out, even in a quote.]
rape = “A California man is facing rape and kidnapping charges after his alleged victim recently spotted him appearing as a contestant on the NBC Universal reality show ‘Blind Date.’”
piss = “One elderly investor wrote to him after he asked for even more money, saying that she has no money left but that she trusts him to pay off the principal plus interest. She doesn’t understand that he is a scammer, much less that her money is gone forever. Now, that pisses me off.”
lesbian = “‘We were both inspired to come here after the sitting president said the vile and vicious and hateful comments he did.’ — comedian Rosie O’Donnell, explaining how she and her lesbian partner, Kelli Carpenter, rushed to San Francisco to get married following President Bush’s call for a U.S. constitutional amendment banning gay marriages.”
kill = “Why did he kill the family dog, you might ask? Well, the poor little fella’s name was ‘Felony’, and it reminded the frickin’ ‘tard Watkins that he had just been charged with a felony. Apparently this dumbass had been charged with grand larceny in connection with the theft of a pickup truck, and had just bailed out of jail.”
suicide = “Here’s an audioblog wherein Gene ‘TogaDude’ Chapman reads a letter he wrote to the governor of Oregon (whose name he doesn’t know, and he has never lived there) asking to be allowed to commit assisted suicide because he has a ‘terminal illness called biblical Christianity’.”
OOPS – I bet if LFV were re-rated right now, it would also get an NC-17 as a result of this post alone. LOL
At any rate, when I realized what was going on, I was amused that my blog received an NC-17 rating, so I posted it on the blog. I wouldn’t want to fail to warn parents that their 16-year-old may be subjected to the real world, after all.
UPDATE: I decided to run my old Gene Chapman blog through the same site, and it also got an NC-17 rating. When I checked the keywords, though, they were almost all included in quotes from other people, and the rest were taken out of context. Still, I put the NC-17 logo on it, because considering Gene’s incredibly bizarre platform items, that blog perhaps deserves that rating simply for discussing the ravings of a lunatic.
As you may be aware, OJ Simpson’s book, titled If I Did It, describes how – if in fact he were guilty – he would have murdered his ex-wife (Nicole Brown Simpson) and her friend (Ronald Goldman). Admittedly, it’s an extremely strange idea for a book, but was also sure to be a bestseller.
However, publication of the book was cancelled due to public outrage (although I’d be willing to bet that many of those people would have secretly purchased it), and all copies of the book were destroyed by the publisher. Later, rights to the manuscript were awarded by a bankruptcy court to the Goldman family, as the result of a longstanding $33 million wrongful death civil judgment they won against OJ Simpson.
The original publisher, Judith Regan, called the book “a confession”. His attorneys denied that it was a confession.
Not surprisingly, a news organization received a leaked copy of the manuscript. Newsweek published an article in January about what was in the manuscript, and the writer stated that, in his opinion, it was a confession. However, they did not print any excerpts, so the reader was left wondering how accurate their characterization of a confession really was.
Today the manuscript was leaked again, to celebrity gossip site TMZ, and they published excerpts. I have posted those excerpts here so LFV readers can decide for themselves whether this is, in fact, a confession to the most notorious murder case of our time.
It begins with the following passage:
I’m going to tell you a story you’ve never heard before, because no one knows this story the way I know it. It takes place on the night June 12, 1994, and it concerns the murder of my ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her young friend, Ronald Goldman. I want you to forget everything you think you know about that night because I know the facts better than anyone. I know the players. I’ve seen the evidence. I’ve heard the theories. And, of course, I’ve read all the stories: That I did it. That I did it but I don’t know I did it. That I can no longer tell fact from fiction. That I wake up in the middle of the night, consumed by guilt, screaming.
OJ describes the murder scene:
I looked over at Goldman, and I was fuming. I guess he thought I was going to hit him, because he got into his little karate stance. “What the fuck is that?” I said. “You think you can take me with your karate shit?” He started circling me, bobbing and weaving, and if I hadn’t been so fucking angry I would have laughed in his face. “O.J., come on!” It was Charlie again, pleading. Nicole moaned, regaining consciousness. She stirred on the ground and opened her eyes and looked at me, but it didn’t seem like anything was registering. Charlie walked over and planted himself in front of me blocking my view. “We are fucking done here, man-let’s go!”
I noticed the knife in Charlie’s hand, and in one deft move I removed my right glove and snatched it up. “We’re not going anywhere,” I said, turning to face Goldman. Goldman was still circling me, bobbing and weaving, but I didn’t feel like laughing anymore. “You think you’re tough, motherfucker?” I said. I could hear Charlie just behind me, saying something, urging me to get the fuck out of there, and at one point he even reached for me and tried to drag me away, but I shook him off, hard, and moved toward Goldman. “Okay, motherfucker!” I said. “Show me how tough you are!”
Then something went horribly wrong, and I know what happened, but I can’t tell you exactly how. I was still standing in Nicole’s courtyard, of course, but for a few moments I couldn’t remember how I’d gotten there, when I’d arrived, or even why I was there. Then it came back to me, very slowly: The recital-with little Sydney up on stage, dancing her little heart out; me, chipping balls into my neighbor’s yard; Paula, angry, not answering her phone; Charlie, stopping by the house to tell me some more ugly shit about Nicole’s behavior. Then what? The short, quick drive from Rockingham to the Bundy condo. And now?
Now I was standing in Nicole’s courtyard, in the dark, listening to the loud, rhythmic, accelerated beating of my own heart. I put my left hand to my heart and my shirt felt strangely wet. I looked down at myself. For several moments, I couldn’t get my mind around what I was seeing. The whole front of me was covered in blood, but it didn’t compute. Is this really blood? I wondered. And whose blood is it? Is it mine? Am I hurt? Read the rest of this entry »
In this week’s “radio address,” Steve Kubby appreciates Massachusetts and looks forward to the day when Libertarians can routinely do what Democrats and Republicans rarely do:
It’s not very often that I find good reason to thank Democrats and Republicans for standing up and defending freedom, but I like to seize that opportunity when it presents itself.
It’s also not very often that I find it necessary to condemn grassroots political action, but when such action is taken for the purpose of depriving others of their rights, it is wrong regardless of how popular it is.
So: Congratulations to the Massachusetts legislature, which last week declined to put the right of Massachusettsians to marry up to a public vote; and shame on those who chose to focus their political energy on trying to force such a vote.
Despite enormous pressure from anti-family advocates, who spent a good deal of time and money gathering petition signatures and lobbying their legislators, 144 Democrats and seven Republicans comported themselves in the best Massachusetts tradition. Like the Minutemen at Lexington and Concord, they stood up against organized tyranny and for the freedoms of their fellow citizens.
Stephen Gordon has resigned from his position at LPHQ. From the email:
June 17, 2007
Dear Shane,
This letter is to inform you of my intention to resign from the position of Political Director of the Libertarian Party. If acceptable to you, my last working day in the office will be Thursday, June 28. Currently, I don’t feel that I’m being as effective or productive as I should be in my current position and that the Libertarian Party and the libertarian movement would benefit if my time and talents are spent on other projects.
I’ll most likely be moving back to Alabama in early July, where I’ll be able to spend more time with my family and assist more with my state party organization. While I may take an interim position on a political campaign, my key objective over the next year will be to establish a new libertarian public policy organization.
While I may no longer by employed by the Libertarian Party, you will continue to have my strong support. I wish you the best of success and feel free to call on me at any time if I am able to assist you with some special project or activity. It’s certainly been a rewarding pleasure working with you and the other wonderful people at LPHQ and I’ll miss you all.
Your friend,
Stephen Gordon
I think Stephen has done a fabulous job in D.C., but I can certainly understand his decision to move on. His wife and parents are still in Alabama and I couldn’t imagine living away from my family. He and Deb have made great personal sacrifices during the last year, and if we are honest, we’ll admit that serving LP members can be a trying experience under the best of circumstances.
I wish Stephen luck in whatever his future may bring. No matter the hat he wears, or cigar he smokes, I know he will continue the fight for liberty. Hell, I’m excited to see him around more often. It’ll be fun reading his comments on the blogs again. Are you ready Meg?
Some people have let me know recently that I have channeled too much energy into the whole LibertyMix scam. I disagree – look at posting history – you’ll see the majority of the posts I’ve made are on other topics. And besides, $10,000 is missing. It’s worth being pissed about.
But I try to take that to heart. How about working for a positive outcome? I like positivity. So, I wrote the article Help L. Neil Smith Complete the Ceres Project!. I was all enthusiastic (and still am) about doing my part to get a new libertarian book/movie made. But I was told by one Mr. Phillies that I had no idea what I was talking about, and that my ideas would actually HURT Smith’s chances, and told by another poster that my new efforts somehow meant I worship Smith as a deity. First of all, I got news for you – I don’t worship no one but Satan. But in any case, I’m having a hard time posting things which get A) Get positive feedback and B) I enjoy writing about.
The fact is: I enjoy watching people get what they deserve. Sorry, it’s what I like. I like the wrongdoers to be punished. I like people to get just desserts. I like Karma to take place, if such a thing can be said to exist. So I was thinking of a new project, and I realized that it might be fun for others in the Liberty community as well, so I thought I’d post it here. If you’re interested, leave a comment or email me at MEG@LastFreeVoice.com.
The idea: Pick a really deserving person, and make them really, really sad. There are many ways to make someone sad – ruin their public reputation, make them lose their job, make them lose money, have them sent to jail, etc. Just find some way and make it happen. Nothing illegal of course – all I’m saying is pick someone who has done something bad, and make them pay for that. It can be someone in government, or in private industry (like Blackwater, for example.) LFV needs something high profile to get more readers and notoriety. From my time here, I’ve noticed that the threads that get the most play are those that generate controversy, and this could be it.
Have you ever read the Eyeballing Series from Cryptome? Something like that, maybe. Just pick someone deserving, and using totally legal means, ruin their life. Make them cry. Make them feel the pain they’ve caused others. I know that some people on LFV and other libertarian groups/blogs/sites have lots of pent-up aggression – wouldn’t it be totally fun to just RUIN someone? You know it would. Email me – I won’t tell anyone your identity, I swear. Let’s just get someone.
I’ve been thinking about who to pick, but many of my candidates are protected by executive privilege and other White House stonewalls – I’m not convinced I could do what it took to bring them down. Any good candidates for such a person? I’m open to suggestions.
While reading a recent article by LFV’s own pauliecannoli, I was shocked to read about a woman who was arrested for making faces at a dog. Shocked, but not surprised.
But if you’re too lazy to read the article, what happened is this drunk woman started making faces at a police dog. The police dog became enraged by this, and the cops arrested her for cruelty to animals. Also for resisting arrest. Thankfully, the prosecutor dropped both charges – the first, because you’re allowed under the first amendment to make faces at police and their pets, and the second, because if you’re allowed to do that, how can the police arrest you for it, so therefore resisting arrest is okay (I guess.)
So, I’m glad the woman is free. She should sue them. I hope she does, if/when she sobers up.
Police arrested a student for saying that a police horse was gay. He said “Excuse me, do you realise your horse is gay?” That’s exactly what he said, and they decided to arrest him. He spent the night in jail, and they wanted to charge him 80 pounds. Of course, they released this guy too, but they still really exceeded their boundaries. From the article:
Mr Brown, who made the comment during a night out with friends in Oxford after his final exams, was arrested under section 5 of the Public Order Act for making homophobic remarks.
First, WAS the horse gay? If it was, then to call it gay is certainly factual, and is not a “homophobic remark”.
Second, is to call someone gay “homophobic”? I mean, if you call a horse gay, and that somehow insults the horse, isn’t it the HORSE that’s homophobic, and not you?
Third: I assume England has a right to confront your accuser. If it was me, I’d have gone to trial and called the horse as a hostile witness, totally. And if he refused to testify, I’d have the judge compel him – and if he still refused, he should go to jail. Seriously, I have zero tolerance for this kind of stuff.
On another “Pets of the State” note, I’ve heard that killing a police dog carries the same charge as killing a police human. It’s a dog – I love dogs a lot more than I love police, but the taking of a canine life shouldn’t carry the weight as the taking of a human life. They just want to rub it in your face – that THEY’RE in charge and if you mess with them they’ll make you pay.
I guess the point of these three stories: The state has no problem killing YOUR animals – I’ve read dozens of stories about police home invasions and the first things they do is SHOOT THE DOG. So, your dog is meaningless to them. But even INSULT one of their animals, and you’re in for at least a night in jail. And kill one, and you’re looking at capital punishment.
Any more stupid “Pets of the State” stories I should know about?
Below is an announcement from XM Satellite Radio. There’s no word on whether they will provide third party coverage, but it would certainly seem so since 24/7 commercial-free is an awful lot of airtime to fill (and it’s going to get very boring, very quickly, if it covers only the two major parties):
XM Satellite Radio announced it will launch a new radio channel dedicated to the 2008 presidential election, marking the first time that a national radio channel has been devoted to a presidential campaign. The 24-hour, commercial-free channel, created in association with C-SPAN and other media outlets, will be called “POTUS ‘08.” The channel’s name (pronounced POH-tus) is the acronym used by government insiders for the President of the United States.
From their website, here’s a rundown of what to expect from POTUS when it goes live in September:
THE MISSION
Provide unbiased and commercial-free coverage of the 2008 presidential election.
Create a destination for voters to get politically neutral information about the election process and unprecedented access to the candidates.
Provide a pipeline to the candidates and their campaigns to communicate without filter to the American people.
Provide information from beyond the traditional media to include new media sources.
Provide perspective on the election process from a historical and current view.
Maintain the highest standards of professional integrity and neutrality.
FREE TO AIR Created as a public service, POTUS ‘08 will be broadcast free to all XM radio receivers. Whether you are a paid subscriber or not, you can still listen to all the presidential coverage.
Senator Charles Bishop (R-Arley) got a standing ovation for puching Senator Lowell Barron on the Senate floor. Mike Hubbard, the chairman of the Alabama Republican Party, was recognizing distinguished guests when he asked all state legislators to stand as a group to be recognized — there were too many in the audience to recognize individually.
After they all seated, however, he then specificially recognized Senator Charles Bishop “who has been much maligned by the press” recently, obviously a reference to the “Alabama Senate fight.” Applause erupted and people began to stand — a reaction only matched that night as US Senator John McCain approached the podium.
Brian D. Kelly (18) didn’t think he was doing anything illegal when he used his videocamera to record a Carlisle police officer during a traffic stop. Making movies is one of his hobbies, he said, and the stop was just another interesting event to film. The police noted the camera and asked him to turn it off; Kelly complied and handed the camera over when it was requested. Nevertheless, he was arrested by a force of “six or seven” cops and the 18-year-old has been charged with felony wiretapping, which carries a penalty of up to 7 years in state prison. It also carries the lifelong prospect of being turned down by universities, employers, etc. who check his record. Kelly spent 26 hours in Cumberland County Prison “until his mother posted her house as security for his $2,500 bail.” Apparently Pennsylvania statutes prohibit the intentional recording of anyone’s conversation without their consent. In short, it is the audio portion of the recording and not the video for which Kelly could receive 7 years.The police reported have “an exception to the wiretapping law” that allows them to film and record people during traffic stops.
And if that was not bizzare enough,
Animal cruelty case yields ‘doggone’ dismissal A woman facing jail time for “staring” at a police dog had charges against her dropped Monday after an Orange County prosecutor viewed videotape of the alleged crime. Jayna Hutchinson, now of Lebanon, N.H., was scheduled for a jury trial this week on a misdemeanor charge of cruelty to animals.
And:
11-Year-Old Arrested For Using Rubber Band Gun An 11-year-old Ocoee boy was arrested for playing with a toy gun. Police said the arrest was necessary, because it was a safety issue. The boy was using a rubber band gun and his father said the kid did nothing wrong, but police said they take it as a serious threat and the 11-year-old is facing felony charges.
The Bush administration cannot use new anti-terrorism laws to keep U.S. residents locked up indefinitely without charging them, a divided federal appeals court said Monday. The ruling was a harsh rebuke of one of the central tools the administration believes it has to combat terror.
In 2002, a project was started from an idea by Thomas L. Knapp and libertarian sci-fi author L. Neil Smith. That project was called <a href=”“>”Project Ceres”. The idea was to raise $50,000 to allow Smith to take time off to write a sequel to his book “Pallas”, a space adventure taking place on an asteroid. He would write both a book and a film treatment, following up on the adventures of the family that was the center of “Pallas”. The idea of patronage of the arts is a time-tested idea, and what better way to bring the concepts of libertarianism and freedom than with a new book/movie by an already successful author, right? So, Smith and his people would be able to walk right up to major New York publishers (and presumably, Hollywood producers), finished draft of book/screenplay in hand, and “with a lot of moxie, mojo, and power behind us. Having a syndicate of investors tells these guys, ‘hey, this is going to be an amazing book – pay attention!’”
Investors were able to invest $1,000 or more in the project. According to the official page of the project, they raised money by January of 2003, about a year and a half. $50,000 to allow the next big libertarian thing to be created!
So successful was this fundraising effort, that Smith and Company started The Ares Alliance. Similar in nature to the Ceres Project, investors would now be allowed to invest a mere $500 in the project (The Ceres Project had a minimum investment of $1000.) This would allow Smith to take time off to create yet ANOTHER book/movie project, a book/film script that would take place between “Pallas” and “Ceres”.
Just as with “The Ceres Project”, participants in “The Ares Alliance” invest a certain amount of dollars, and agree to wait a certain period of time for the book and film treatment to be produced. These “deliverables” are then sold to a publisher and a film producer or studio for the highest bid, and each investor gets their principal returned as well as a percentage of the profits based on their level of investment. Participation may also include e-books, comic books, audio-books, and other media depending upon the level of investment. In case the deliverables are not sold, each investor is guaranteed by contract to receive at least their principal back. All of this is backed by the assets of the project itself.
These are exciting idea. Smith is a published author, with a track record of making with the libertarian ideals. Sure, critics say his works can be kind of talky, maybe a little preachy, and his characters mere speechboxes for libertarian points of view. But he’s the best we’ve got, and no one doubts his libertarian credentials.
I’ve been aware of this project for a long time, but I realized I never found out what happened with it. Was the book published? Was it made into a movie, which just slipped under my radar, maybe released by Troma? What’s up? So, I went to Smith’s official website. Unfortunately, the latest update on the projects was made back in 2004 – almost 4 years ago. So, I wrote to Smith for further details. I mean, he’s got like $100,000 of Libertarian money, right? So, I wanted to know: What’s he done with it?
Smith says he has finished Ceres, and is still working on Ares. That makes sense – it takes a long time to write 2 books and 2 screenplays! He also says he is having trouble finding an agent who is “up to handling the material”. He says he is also including, apparently to sweeten the deal, the rights to “Pallas”, as well as “Beautiful Dreamer”, a projected 4th book in the series that began with “Pallas”. You’d be a damn fool to turn down such a great offer, in my humble opinion.
Why can’t anyone “handle the material”? What this means is that he hasn’t been able to find professional representation who he thinks would be good at selling his ideas to the suits at the publishing companies. Why that is, I have no idea – the stuff would sell itself, I imagine. What we need to do is to make the publishers/movie people beat down Smith’s door in a bidding war for this stuff. What can we do to accomplish that goal?
I’ve been brainstorming about this. I think we could ask Smith to what publishers he submitted his material (if any), and out of those, which ones he likes best (if any). Then, we could start a letter-writing campaign or some other sort of crazy campaign to get them to see that it would be in their best interest to buy the material. You know, kind of like how those fans of the TV show “Jericho” sent CBS a bunch of cans of nuts. Something so crazy, it just might work.
Maybe we could make an online petition on the topic, it could be something along the lines of “We would buy ‘Ceres’ and ‘Ares’ if they should ever be published, and if they’re made into a movie, we’ll go see it.” That’s how they were able to make a movie of “Firefly” – they were able to extrapolate outward from the “Firefly” DVD sales and say “If X amount of the fans who liked it enough to drop $25 dollars on the DVD box set of FIREFLY will also drop $10 on movie tickets, and $20 on the DVD when it is eventually released, we could make money with this.” And they ended up doing that. Unfortunately for Smith, he doesn’t have a successful track record of movie/DVD sales to show them that he’d be a good investment, but he does have a track record of BOOK sales. Maybe in our massive letter writing campaign we could point out how many books he’s sold as an indication of future success (assuming the past sales are something to brag about, I don’t actually know about this.)
Now, there is always the chance that Smith will not actually tell us what book companies he’s submitted his stuff to. Or, if he has professional representation, who that person has submitted the stuff to. That’s okay – that’s the author’s prerogative, right? But he has tens of thousands of libertarians out here who are willing to help him. If he doesn’t want to provide those details, I have a backup idea:
1) I will go to the library and pick up the latest edition of “Writers Market”. I will scour that book for 20 or so publishers who look like they’d be interested in the type of stuff Smith cranks out.
2) I will recruit 100 people online who would be willing to engage in a massive “Buy Smith’s Book and Movie” campaign.
3) I will actually devise such a campaign.
4) The books will get made, and the movies too.
5) The books will be best-sellers. One of them will be Oprah’s selection for her book club.
6) The movies will be box office hits, and everyone who sees them will become Libertarians.
7) The 2012 presidential election will be ours!
This could work. Who’s with me here? Or, do you have any better ideas? I’m willing to do my part, here – how far are YOU willing to go???
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Just curious. A quick check of the LibertyMix countdown clock shows that LibertyMix.com is currently 438 days late. I guess my whining finally got to the site creator, because a month ago he said he’d be launching a “development blog” to explain why the site is so incredibly late, and what progress is being made on it.
Um, just one problem. The development blog, apparently to be called “The Liberty Mixing Bowl” was due to launch on May 25th, which was like 23 days ago. Huh? Can’t even set up a blog? Sup wit dat, yo?
It’s now time to start thinking about next year’s elections. Libertarians and the LP do not have millions of dollars at our disposal. We don’t even have the manpower to run candidates for every race. Our ideas are far superior to the “boot to the neck” parties. We have factions within the libertarian movement that can be successful in promoting and educating the public about libertarianism. Education is a key goal in advancing liberty and freedom;I’m all for it but if we don’t elect Libertarians to advance those ideas, the cause is lost.
Things are beginning to take shape. I formed LibertyConsulting a few years ago to help Libertarian candidates across the country. My political consulting group will not be the only like-minded group. Mark Rutherford from Indiana formed Atlas! PAC which will be doing the same thing LibertyConsulting hopes to achieve: more LP electoral success!
Right now I need four active and dedicated libertarians to complete the Board of Directors and four advisers. I am beginning a list of states where the LP has ballot access and where ballot access isn’t too difficult to achieve. In addition to these positions, I need to find someone who will volunteer their time to create a website for LibertyConsulting because it only exists on Facebook and as aYahoo group. If you are interested e-mail me at blacknight_80751@yahoo.com
The most cited instance of this is the War in Iraq (and possibly Afghanistan; it may have had a lot to do with the proposed oil pipeline through Afghanistan).
This view of
Operation
Iraqi
Liberation
has worked its way into popular culture:
Many have denied the connection, but the new Iraqi Oil Law
makes it harder to give any credibility to such denials.
Nor is the regime’s energy fascism solely confined to grand projects abroad; sometimes, it can also be quite petty and domestic.
Francois Tremblay reports:
Despite his good intentions, the state fined Teixeira $1,000 for not paying motor fuel taxes. North Carolina officials also told him that to legally use veggie oil here he’d have to first post a $2,500 bond.
Such penalties have also been levied against other North Carolina drivers whose vehicles were powered by alternative fuels.
Aaron Russo is truly an American hero. His movie has inspired millions to take a stand against some of the most controversial acts of our time. I got an e-mail tonight about Aaron’s declining health:
Greetings,
As you may have heard, Aaron Russo has resigned his position as the
head of America: Freedom to Fascism and Restore the Republic in order
to focus on personal health concerns regarding his battle with cancer.
He wishes to maintain complete focus on getting well and has therefore
entrusted Gary Franchi, National Director, as the head of these
organizations. Along with Samuel Anthony Ettaro, National Media
Director and Ilona Blakely, his Press Secretary, Mr. Franchi and the
growing national team will continue both organizations as true to Mr.
Russo’s vision as possible.
We are asking the members of our organizations to contribute to a fund
drive effort to raise money for Mr. Franchi to join Aaron in California
and establish his wishes through a personal visit.
Please visit www.restoretherepublic.com and use the paypal link on
the site to contribute to this effort. Any funds above the cost of
the expenses for the trip will go toward our general fund for continued
growth and operation.
Please, send get well wishes to Aaron here:
http://restoretherepublic.com/forum/index.php?board=85.0
We thank you for your support.
Yours in Freedom and Truth,
Gary Franchi
RTR National Director
NationalDirector@restoretherepublic.com
I was Russo’s Scheduling Coordinator when he ran for the LP Presidential nomination back in 2004. No matter what happens to Aaron, we must keep his DREAM alive and fight the atrocities that keep America from being free. Get better soon buddy!
This guy thinks he has impenetrable logic saying that “we” should do something about global warming: To be fair, if you follow the same assumptions he does, he’s correct. However, one of his implicit assumptions is that the government program(s) to stop global warming will succeed. Firstly, if anybody can name me a government program that was an unqualified success, I’ll give them a virtual cookie.
So what’s the most likely scenario if government “does something about global warming”? Well, let’s go with the assumption that global warming is real and anthropogenic. Governments put programs into place to stop CO2 emissions. Even giving them the very unlikely benefit of the doubt that the programs would work as written, sleazeball politicians would without a doubt let some of their big corporate friends through. Shady countries like China would claim compliance but let their projects continue with no care to CO2 emissions in the areas of the country where nobody else can go. So, you’d have a huge amount of resources devoted to stopping something that happens anyways, and those resources aren’t available for the market to adapt.
If you seriously think government is capable of doing something about climate change, look at the Kyoto Treaty. It’s based on economic assumptions that are not necessarily true – that certain countries need fossil fuel energy to develop, that other countries can stay developed without using fossil fuels, population estimates that could be wildly variant from what actually happens, etc.
Worst, even if the Kyoto Treaty were signed onto and fully followed by all the world’s nations (unlikely, since secretive countries like China would probably try to cheat on it), it won’t prevent all climate change. Assuming the greenhouse theory is right (which I believe it to be), we’ve already changed the atmosphere significantly – a great deal of warming is already committed to.
Positive feedback from this unstoppable warming is likely to happen, too – Siberia’s rapidly melting permafrost, for example, holds a huge about of carbon that is already going into the atmosphere, exacerbating what we’ve already done. Greenland’s ice sheet is melting, potentially unstoppably, raising sea levels and decreasing the amount of reflective ice preventing energy absorption by the earth.
This is stuff we can’t do anything about. Climate change is going to happen no matter what. The best solution for humanity is to get government out of the way and let the market do what it does best and what government does worst – adapt, because things are going to be changing soon.
Admittedly the site could be improved, since it lists no LP candidates except Kent McManigal (who’s no longer even running except as a write-in candidate) and references a lot of organizations that I’ve never even heard of (but they expect me to say whether I agree with their platform).
It would be a lot more accurate if, for example, you were given a choice to state you believe the war should be ended immediately. As it is, the only options are setting or not setting a deadline for returning the troops, or neither (and that could mean anything).
That being said, the results still appear to be fairly accurate, since Ron Paul came up as #1, followed by a Democrat (I used to be a Democrat, so that sounds about right even though I’m not familiar with the candidate). Kent McManigal tied for #3, while the vast majority of Republicans are at the end. Honestly, I’m not familiar with all the candidates listed, and the lack of specificity with regard to issues such as war could have thrown it way off. I suspect that, with more specific answer options, the results may be quite different.
It is very strange that Kent McManigal and two Democrats tied for third place, though. LOL
The following is my full ideal candidate list according to that site, based on percentage of agreement and level of importance on the issues:
Ron Paul 72%
Dennis Kucinich 62%
Al Gore 60%
Barack Obama 60%
Kent McManigal 60%
Christopher Dodd 58%
Wesley Clark 53%
Mike Gavel 52%
John Edwards 51%
John McCain 49%
Hillary Clinton 47%
Bill Richardson 47%
Joseph Biden 47%
Alan Auguston 46%
Newt Gingrich 45%
Tommy Thompson 43%
Tom Tancredo 37%
Chuck Hagel 36%
Fred Thompson 36%
Sam Brownback 36%
Mitt Romney 36%
Duncan Hunter 34%
Rudolph Giuliani 34%
Jim Gilmore 29%
Elaine Brown 20%
Mike Huckabee 18%
I’d be interested to know how accurate others believe their results to be, and it might be interesting to take them up on their offer to provide free code for our own candidate survey. I bet it would be a lot more accurate, at any rate. Hat tip Kent McManigal
President George W. Bush’s approval rating has dropped to 29 percent in an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released on Wednesday, his lowest mark ever in that survey, which also found only 23 percent approved of the job Congress was doing.” President George W. Bush’s approval rating has dropped to 29 percent in an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released on Wednesday, his lowest mark ever in that survey, which also found only 23 percent approved of the job Congress was doing.
Bush’s approval rating slid 6 points from 35 percent in April, NBC said, citing a decline in support within his own Republican Party. Sixty-six percent said they disapproved of Bush’s job performance.
In the poll, 62 percent of Republicans approved of Bush’s job performance, down from 75 percent in April. Thirty-two percent of Republicans in the latest poll disapproved of Bush’s performance, up from 21 percent in April.
NBC tied the drop in Republican support to Bush’s efforts to promote an immigration reform measure that many conservative Republicans oppose. Polls have also shown a decline in Bush’s popularity due to the war in Iraq tied the drop in Republican support to Bush’s efforts to promote an immigration reform measure that many conservative Republicans oppose. Polls have also shown a decline in Bush’s popularity due to the war in Iraq.
The latest poll also found Americans growing more discontented with the Democratic-led Congress, with 64 percent disapproving of Congress’ job performance. Only 23 percent approved, down 8 points since April.
Sixty-eight percent believe the United States is on the wrong track. Only 19 percent believe the country is headed in the right direction — the lowest number in nearly 15 years, NBC said.
The poll of 1,008 adults conducted from Friday to Monday had a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.
Believe it or not, this is real. I’ve been to Lakeland, and they have a helluva lot bigger problems than teenage boys stealing condoms. I bet the boys are really wanted for something else. Either that, or everyone in Lakeland is an idiot. I could go either way.
I just received an email from Make The Stand, the support group site for Edward and Elaine Brown. It says:
Dear MakeTheStand.com Users,
It’s happening again!!! Neighbors have evacuated the area again. There are many men in the woods in gilly suits and other camouflage. We have completely lost contact with the browns.
WE NEED PEOPLE TO GO THERE NOW!!! DON’T BE AFRAID — YOU WILL NOT BE SHOT. WE NEED PEOPLE WHO KNOW ED AND ELAINE TO GET ON THEIR PROPERTY, REACH THE HOUSE, AND STAY WITH THEM TO PROTECT THEM. THE FEDS CANNOT GO AND DO THIS WHEN OTHER PEOPLE ARE AROUND. THEY CAN ONLY DO IT WHEN ED AND ELAINE ARE ALONE OR ALMOST ALONE!!!
THIS IS SERIOUS — GO NOW IF YOU ARE IN THE AREA. Matt from infowars.com is on the radio right now saying we need to get out there. PLEASE help save the lives of Ed and Elaine!!!!!
The site describes conditions as:
–Power out
–Agents in woods
–Neighbors evacuated
–Communications shut down and jammed
–Feds have said they will shut down roads again
And offers these words of inspiration:
“They tell us, sir, that we are weak — unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance, by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot?
Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of the means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. Three millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us.
The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable — and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come!
It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, “Peace! Peace!” — but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, GIVE ME LIBERTY, OR GIVE ME DEATH!”
– Patrick Henry March 23, 1775
To Ed and Elaine, I’m worried for you. To the government folk who lurk around this site, I hope you don’t make this a violent occasion. Allow the Browns their constitutionally protected day in court. Allow them to submit their evidence to the jury as demanded by our constitution. Do you really have to prove your position with SWAT units and snipers, or is it the only way you can?
UPDATE: 2pm CST – Matt Kazee has now managed to get in touch with Elaine Brown who told him that she had received a call from federal marshall Gary Dimartino who has admitted that the authorities are coming in at some point but “not to kill” the Browns.
I am writing in support of Jason Gatties For Pokagon Tribal Council.
Jason stands for both individual and tribal sovereignty.
He believes that a truly free people can not take money and services from an occupying state and retain its independence and dignity at the same time.
He believes the flow of information, much like the people themselves, ought to be free.
He believes real qualifications, not titles, should matter most.
Virgil Vogel wrote in 1974 in a documentary history of the American Indian:
Montaigne, Rousseau, and Jefferson paid tribute to the Indian capacity to organize human affairs in a libertarian manner. The Iroquois developed a system of confederated government which, according to Benjamin Franklin, served as an example for his Albany Plan of Union, and eventually for the Articles of the Confederation.
Could I get you guys to write a “LTE” on my behalf? We are coming up on 1 month until the election and the more LTE’s I can get published, the better. I’m in a unique situation in that our tribe members are basically spread out over a 10 county/ 2 state area, which makes your typical style of campaigning tough. Thats why I’m hoping LTE’s will reach those I’m unable to visit or those who are unable to check out my campaign site.
It’s only mid-2007, and already the Democrats and Republicans are conducting an unprecedented series of internal debates among themselves to help them choose their 2008 presidential candidates. Fortunately, they’re conducting those debates in public, where we can see what the contenders have to offer.
Are you as underwhelmed as I am?
Are you as disappointed in the lack of vision shown by those who are asking you for your vote and your support?
Are you looking for a better candidate?
Well, I’ve got good news for you — the Republicans and Democrats aren’t the only ones debating. There’s a whole other set of candidates out there, taking on the issues and offering DIFFERENT answers to the questions on your mind. We’re called Libertarians.
Don’t miss the next two scheduled Libertarian debates:
Steve Kubby and Wayne Allyn Root on The Liberated Space — June 14th, 6:30pm Central Time on Blog Talk Radio. Click here to listen live at that time or to the archived audio afterward.
Libertarians Steve Kubby and George Phillies square off with Green Party candidates Alan Auguston and Kat Swift. June 27th, 6pm Central Time on Blog Talk Radio. Click here to listen live at that time or to the archived audio afterward.
Archived debate audio: Steve Kubby versus George Phillies (click here for MP3), and a multi-candidate debate at the Nevada Libertarian Party’s 2007 convention (part 1 and part 2).
You heard it here first. The ACLUNE is stepping up to defend the God Hates Fags crowd in the recent flag-stomping case in my quasi-hometown of Bellevue, Nebraska. The director, Amy Miller, just sent me this in an email before she sent it off to the other news sources. Omaha World-Herald, you just got scooped.
ACLU Nebraska Announces Entry into Flag Desecration Case
For immediate release: June 8, 2007
Contact (402) 476-8091 for more information
ACLU Nebraska announced today it will enter an appearance for Shirley L. Phelps-Roper, a member of a controversial conservative Christian church, who has been criminally charged in Bellevue Nebraska.
Phelps-Roper was charged under a Nebraska law that prohibits flag desecration. The arrest happened while Phelps-Roper and other members of her church were conducting one of their protests outside the funeral of a soldier from the Iraq War.
Phelps-Roper is a member of the Westboro Baptist Church. Its members believe that homosexuality is a sin and an abomination and further believe that God is punishing America for the sin of homosexuality by killing American soldiers. During the most recent protest in Bellevue, Phelps-Roper was arrested because she draped an American flag around her waist and her son stood on the flag.
“Free speech and the right to protest extends to all Americans, even when the message is very unpopular and upsetting,” said Laurel Marsh, Executive Director of ACLU Nebraska. “This is the essence of the First Amendment.”
The Nebraska law was enacted in the late 1970’s, which was before the US Supreme Court issued its ruling that even burning a flag is protected by the First Amendment. The Nebraska law states: “A person commits the offense of mutilating a flag if such person intentionally casts contempt or ridicule upon a flag by mutilating, defacing, defiling, burning, or trampling upon such flag.” (Nebraska Revised Statute Section 28-928)
“The Nebraska law is simply a dead letter law that should not be on the books anymore,” said Amy Miller, Legal Director of ACLU Nebraska. “The Supreme Court has had three separate cases involving so-called flag desecration charges, and each time has found that protestors may use the flag as part of their message.”
“Clearly, the ACLU disagrees with the Westboro Baptist Church’s message that gay people are an abomination,” said Miller. “The ACLU spends a significant amount of time working for equality on the basis of sexual orientation and I myself am gay. But disagreeing with the message doesn’t mean that we can allow the government to try to silence protected free speech. Punishing this use of the flag is contrary to the very spirit of freedom the flag stands for.”
The criminal charges are scheduled for first hearing on July 11 at 9 a.m. in Sarpy County Court. ACLU Nebraska will be preparing legal documents to submit to the court which outline how Phelps-Roper’s conduct was legal and protected by the First Amendment. As with all of their cases, ACLU is representing Phelps-Roper free of charge.
—-
I found this open letter to Libertarians. The author, Paul Donovan, was wondering why libertarians are so obsessed with Ron Paul and not supporting Dennis Kucinich? One person in the comment section asked these questions below:
With all the political jargon of theories aside. If Ron Paul whom the Libertarians claim and he seems to claim them is elected, what would happen to the following programs in our society.
1. The Graduated Income Tax of Roosevelt over against a flat rate tax which the super wealthy demands.
2. Social Security.
3. Medicare and Medicaid if a single pay national health insurance policy is not enacted. Where do the Libertarians stand? They have historically opposed them on grounds of being a Federal programs interfering with individual rights.
4. Public Education through high school if not college over against the Libertarian program of vouchers which the super wealthy love. Where do the Liberatarians stand?
5. The Anti-monopoly laws and Anti-trust laws enacted by Theodore Roosevelt to keep a few wealthy from owning everything. They have become meaningless in the US. Where do the Libertairins stand in regards to these two sets of laws with real teeth in them?
6. Libertarians in the United States have historically stood against Labor Unions. Where do they and and Ron Paul claim to stand today? Right to work is the right to starve and prohibits Labor Unions.
7. Where does the Libertarian Party and Ron Paul stand on a single pay insurance program for every American citizen?
8. As regards to a universal draft of every individual as Israel has, what is the position of the Libertarian Party and Ron Paul?
9. As to states rights being predominant over federal rights, where do Libertarians stand? I would hate to think were civil rights would be if Mississipi, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina were able to decide for themselves.
10. As to abortion and anti-abortion; the right of a woman against the right of a fetus; right to choose and right to life; where does the Libertarian Party Stand and where does Ron Paul stand?
The answer for 9 and 10 can vary. Someone did respond to these questions?
1. Ron Paul said he’ll sign any bill that comes to him to get rid of the IRS. The wealthy would probably prefer a flat tax over the Fair Tax proposal, but remember they currently try to sneak as much income as they can through our incredibly complex tax codes.
2. He says he wants to let the young “opt out” of it, since he thinks it could be hopelessly bankrupt. Of course, he’d like to cut spending and actually pay off its obligations, but I don’t know if thats really realistic at this point. He’s stated is not his goal to get rid of welfare or social security.
3. Ron Paul mostly takes the position I mentioned in my comment, on how government regulation is resposible for the costs of healthcare, and this “mixed” system we have (which in some ways could be the worst of both worlds).
4. Vouchers, all the way. Libertarians believe parents should have the choice on where and how to education their children.
5. I don’t know. The commerce clause seems to authorize them when they cross state boundaries, so I suppose they’d stay. It looks like Friedman thought antitrust laws were usually used to do more harm than good, though. Of course, the constitution is hardly a pure libertarian document.
6. Well, they are against giving special privileges to labor unions, just like they are against giving special privileges to corporations. Naturally we’ll always have unions, they are an importat part of how the market works.
7. He’s likely against it. 3rd-party payment leads to the waste that drove our insurance costs so high, after all.
8. Libertarians and Ron Paul are absolutely opposed to the draft.
9. They would follow the constitution, which rather planely spells out what the federal government can do. Thankfully, we have the 14th amendment with guarantees everyone equal treatment under the law.
10. Most all libertarians agree the federal government is not granted the authority to rule on abortion by the constitution, and that Roe v. Wade was highly contrived. So it goes to the states. But most also believe a fetus is not a human life, and so support abortion. Ron Paul believes it IS a human life, and is against abortion, but does not want to rule on it at the federal level.
Okay, let’s start with their physical appearance. No, I have not altered these photos in any way, with the exception of scaling down the Chapman photo to fit the space:
Hmmm …… well, they sure do look alike.
Both also seem to have a proclivity for shameless self-promotion (almost everything you’ll find on either of them was written by them – Chapman on blogs, and Imperato in self-published “press releases”). Both also seem to exaggerate their accomplishments tremendously, starting with claims about advising Fortune 500 companies.
It gets better (or worse, depending on how you view it). Chapman claims to have been tutored in economics by none other than billionaire investor Warren Buffett who, he claims, he can out-do in the stock market (yet he can’t seem to rise above driving trucks or changing oil for a living; and Buffett says he doesn’t know Chapman but he’d definitely remember if he knew somebody who could out-do him in the stock market …. you do the math). Imperato claims to actually be a multi-millionaire, though there is no evidence that it’s true except his claims in the endless self-published (literally, he owns the website which puts them out) press releases. However, according to the SEC filings for his corporation, Imperiali, Inc., the company had an accumulated deficit of $11,172,386.28 on November 30, 2006, operated on deficit for the quarter (and it appears most of that money went to him), and almost all of the company’s worth appears to be in unsold stock. [Click here to see the SEC documents.]
Imperato, in a self-published press release, boggles the mind with his claim (or is it a claim?) to own (or not to own?) a $5 billion undersea telecommunications cable, and another claim that he somehow suffered (or did he suffer?) a $3 trillion loss when Osama bin Laden caused 9/11, not as a purely terrorist act against America, but so he could short the stock market to his own financial advantage.
Wow. Just, wow. I’ve never heard that 9/11 conspiracy theory before. But, speaking of stocks, I need to buy stock in Goody’s Headache Powders if I’m going to keep following the lunatic fringe candidates.
Chapman states he never got even one donation, and gives that as his reason for dropping out of the presidential race (and while that is a legitimate reason, it appears it wasn’t the real reason given that some very serious anonymous accusations were leveled against him on several blogs less than 24 hours before he dropped out). Imperato doesn’t appear to have received any donations either, although he loans money to his own campaign (which looks more than a little like funds on paper only; for example, according to the FEC, he spent $125,000 in January – money his campaign didn’t have – then loaned his campaign $250,000 in March). Click here to see the FEC documents. Read the rest of this entry »
“Evolution, that is, the idea that human beings developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life” is probably or definitely false”: 44%
“Creationism, that is, the idea that God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years” is probably or definitely true”: 66%
15% said that they would be more likely to vote for a candidate that did not believe in evolution.
That last line is the only bright spot to be found in the poll as the majority don’t think a candidate’s acceptance, or lack thereof, of evolution is relevant on how qualified a person is to be President. Though, in its own way, that’s sort of depressing as well.
Sometimes it’s amazing to me that half our population manages to avoid having their heads implode from the vacuum within.
I’ve posted a lot on Ron Paul, but it is time that I give an LP hopeful some time.
About Steve Kubby
Steve Wynn Kubby (born December 28, 1946) is a Libertarian Party activist who played a key role in the drafting and passage of California Proposition 215. The proposition was a ballot initiative to legalize medical marijuana which was approved by voters in 1996. Kubby himself is well-known as a cancer patient who relies on medical cannabis. He was a candidate for Governor of California in 1998 and has declared his candidacy for the Libertarian Party’s 2008 presidential nomination. — Wikipedia
But enough dry biography!
Steve Kubby is the only 2008 presidential candidate who’s played a key role in passing pro-freedom legislation, then gone to court — and to jail — defending that legislation. Since the passage of Proposition 215 in 1996, twelve states have adopted “compassionate use” laws to protect patients whose ailments require them to use medical marijuana.
As a founder and director of the American Medical Marijuana Association, Steve Kubby has continued to fight for Americans’ right to protect their health without facing political persecution. In that role, he has negotiated with federal regulators, including the Attorney General of the United States, on behalf of patient rights.
Like some other former, current or likely presidential candidates, Steve Kubby is a cancer patient. As a matter of fact, he is the longest-surviving known victim of malignant phenochromocytoma, a rare form of adrenal cancer with a 100% fatality rate within five years. Steve has lived with malignant phenochromocytoma for more than 30 years, and his condition remains under control … thanks to medical marijuana.
Right now, I have a friend in CA that this might be important to.
Repeal the Patriot Act
Repeal the Military Commissions Act
Enforce the Bill of Rights
End government discrimination based on sexual orientation
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Energy & Environment
Require government and military fleets to go non-petroleum
End taxpayer subsidies to the petroleum and agriculture industries
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Foreign Policy & Iraq
Immediate, unconditional withdrawal from Iraq
Return to America’s traditional non-interventionist foreign policy
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Guns
No new “gun control” legislation
Repeal of all existing “gun control” legislation
Forbid and prosecute violations of gun rights by government
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Immigration
Open immigration for all peaceful people
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Taxes & Spending
Veto any and all tax increases, new taxes, and unbalanced budgets — period.
Work to cut spending, splitting resulting surpluses between tax cuts and debt service.
Work to eliminate the federal income tax.
Until the income tax is eliminated, seek annual across-the-board tax cuts through increases to the personal exemption.
——————————————————————————–
The War on Drugs
End it!
There is much time before we nominate the Libertarian Party candidate for president, and barring the entry of any new, more qualified candidate, I support Steve Kubby. He has, quite literally, “done time” for freedom and liberty.
He has, in his fight to use medical marijuana, taken the War on Drugs to its proper place: Freedom. From his position paper on the WOD:
Let me preface my position by pointing out one thing: This is no more about drugs than the Boston Tea Party was about tea. It’s about freedom:
Freedom to look after your own health without a bureaucrat snooping around in your medicine cabinet.
Freedom to choose the substances that you’re going to eat, drink, smoke or otherwise ingest without having to fear that midnight knock at the door and the shout of “police!”
And, yes, freedom to “get high” without risking arrest and imprisonment.
Some people call Kubby a “single issue” candidate, but I think his issue is the most important. Either you are free, or you’re not. There is no freedom greater than that which allows a person to RUN or RUIN his life as he sees fit. Steve Kubby gets it. Ron Paul gets it. And, Mike Gravel gets it (@ 5:37 anyway).
Congressman Ron Paul’s donations have moved up – not by hundreds of thousands – but by millions as a result of his debate performances and groundswell of support on the Internet and in New Hampshire, observers close to the campaign say.
The move is especially impressive since as of March 31, 2007, he had perhaps $500,000 on hand (see candidate estimates below).
FMNN had previously reported – after the GOP presidential debate in South Carolina – that candidate Ron Paul’s (R-Tex) donations, large and small, had nearly doubled.
Now observers close to the campaign are revealing – with some astonishment – that donations to the campaign in recent weeks have pushed the total up to perhaps $4 or $5 million.
It seems that a small government, libertarian leaning message is, indeed, a message that America wants to hear. Ron Paul and I will never see eye to eye on every single issue, but kudos to him for waking the real sleeping giant: the free American people.
Our judicial system is a joke. Another celebrity gets out of jail early because of a bogus medical condition. I’m sure you know who I’m talking about-Paris Hilton. We know that our judicial system is not fair nor blind. If you are rich- you get special favors; if you are poor- throw away the key. The system is also racist, sexist and elitist. Paris Hilton knew before she was sent to jail that it wasn’t going to be Club Med. When are these celebrity “criminals” going to accept the fact that they are NOT above the law and they should do their time like any other criminal. When is the judicial system going to stop giving preferential treatment to these celebrities? What kind of message does that send to our children, especially those who look up to these celebrities. It sends the message that “if you become rich and famous you can be above the law and escape punishment for your actions?” Twenty-three days in jail is a walk in the park;that’s all Paris would have had to serve. Now she gets to go serve 40 days in her posh mansion in Hollywood Hills on an electronic monitoring ankle bracelet. The judicial system works for the celebrities!
FINAL: It’s too dispiriting to list and rebut every wrongheaded policy on sale tonight, so I won’t. Suffice to say that, despite the frequent references by CNN’s John King to the strength of the antiwar movement among Democratic voters, each of the candidates with a shot at becoming president or vice president is a committed imperialist. If this is how they play to their supposedly antiwar base, imagine what they’ll be saying when they turn right after the primaries.
This is their liveblogging of the Democratic debate. Jesus tits, it looks painful. We let the Democrats win for one reason and one reason only-to get us out of the war. We figured that’d be worth the domestic policy clusterfucks they’d inevitably foist on us. But no. Right now, the only good thing coming from the 2008 elections is that it smashed the GOP over the head with the cold hard brick of reality-or, at least, the GOP voters.
First Nancy Pelosi sells the fuck out on the war funding issue, and now all the Democratic candidates are sucking military-industrial schlong. The Democrats are, to put it like this article did, “whimpering welfare-warfare half-wits.” And I hope to God that the anti-war vote pulls them out of Congress if they can’t pull us out of Iraq.
Apparently the DOJ wasn’t just kidding around yesterday. From WCAX:
Neighbors of convicted tax evaders Ed and Elaine Brown reported police SWAT teams and at least one armored vehicle assembling near the Browns’ Plainfield (New Hampshire) home this morning.
I’ll do my best to keep up on any developments and post them here.
And yes, I recognize they’re crazy.
[2:57] Apparently the cops are leaving the house, but they have surrounded Elaine’s commercial property which has…nobody in it, but used to be her dentist’s office. If you want to listen to alternate craziness and news, Elaine Brown is on live here.
Spiegel Online International interviewed James Shikwati, an economics expert, on the effects of international aid to Africa. Here’s a taste:
SPIEGEL:
Mr. Shikwati, the G8 summit at Gleneagles is about to beef up the development aid for Africa…
Shikwati: … for God’s sake, please just stop.
SPIEGEL: Stop? The industrialized nations of the West want to eliminate hunger and poverty.
Shikwati: Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor.
SPIEGEL: Do you have an explanation for this paradox?
Shikwati: Huge bureaucracies are financed (with the aid money), corruption and complacency are promoted, Africans are taught to be beggars and not to be independent. In addition, development aid weakens the local markets everywhere and dampens the spirit of entrepreneurship that we so desperately need. As absurd as it may sound: Development aid is one of the reasons for Africa’s problems. If the West were to cancel these payments, normal Africans wouldn’t even notice. Only the functionaries would be hard hit. Which is why they maintain that the world would stop turning without this development aid.
SPIEGEL: Even in a country like Kenya, people are starving to death each year. Someone has got to help them.
Shikwati: But it has to be the Kenyans themselves who help these people. When there’s a drought in a region of Kenya, our corrupt politicians reflexively cry out for more help. This call then reaches the United Nations World Food Program — which is a massive agency of apparatchiks who are in the absurd situation of, on the one hand, being dedicated to the fight against hunger while, on the other hand, being faced with unemployment were hunger actually eliminated. It’s only natural that they willingly accept the plea for more help. And it’s not uncommon that they demand a little more money than the respective African government originally requested. They then forward that request to their headquarters, and before long, several thousands tons of corn are shipped to Africa …
It is a fascinating interview and well worth a read.
Matt Lepacek had valid CNN press credentials and was doing freelance reporting according to InfoWars.com. He asked Adolf Giuliani some inconvenient questions about the events of 9/11/01.
Thereupon, Adolf Giuliani’s reichsminister of propaganda press secretary had the gestapo state police rough up Lepacek and fellow reporter Luke Rudkowski.
He said police physically assaulted both reporters after Rudkowski objected that they were official members of the press and that nothing illegal had taken place. Police reportedly damaged the Infowars-owned camera in the process.
Furthermore,
Though CNN staff members tried to persuade police not to arrest the accredited reporter– in violation of the First Amendment, Lepacek was taken to jail. The police station told JonesReport.com that Lepacek is being charged with felony criminal trespass.
According to Rudkowski, Lepacek was scared because he had been told he may be transferred to a secret detention facility because state police were also considering charges of espionage against him– due to a webcam Lepacek was using to broadcast live at the event. State police considered it to be a hidden camera, which led to discussion of “espionage.”
Wearing a webcam at a press event is not an act of espionage.
The state police in Goffstown, New Hampshire, where the arrest was made, confirmed that Lepacek is in custody on charges of criminal trespass.
These are blatant violations of the First Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Actions like this would be more appropriate in the Third Reich, a communist nation, or perhaps Italy under Mussolini. A clue, perhaps, as to what awaits America if this moral leper of an authoritarian dirtbag thug is allowed to stink up the white house the way he did Gracie mansion?
We look upon authority too often and focus over and over again, for 30 or 40 or 50 years, as if there is something wrong with authority. We see only the oppressive side of authority. Maybe it comes out of our history and our background. What we don’t see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.
OMAHA, Neb. — A woman was arrested in Bellevue, Neb., on Tuesday during the funeral for a fallen soldier.
Shirley Phelps-Roper was arrested on suspicion of contributing to the delinquency of a minor for allegedly allowing her 8-year-old son to stomp on an American flag.
So, she brought her kid to this funeral to protest. Disgusting, yes, I know. They’re part of that reprehensible “God Hates Fags” church. Disgusting again, IMO. She brings her kid, and a flag. Her kid stomps on the flag, and she goes to jail.
First, I thought the people that hated gays so much were all sexually attracted to the flag, so I’m surprised they’d be okay with stomping on it – you’d think that they’d support the stupid 1977 law that bans, according to the article, “intentionally casting contempt or ridicule upon a flag by mutilating, defacing, defiling, burning or trampling upon such flags”. Maybe she got confused and thought the organization was “God Hates Flags”?
But whatever. This law needs to be overturned immediately and she needs to be let loose. I mean, she didn’t even do the flag-stomping herself, her kid did it, and they busted her for “contributing to the delinquency of a minor”. I always thought that charge was for people who gave kids alcohol or porn or something like that, not people who allow their kids to jump up and down on a piece of cloth.
And another thing: is it okay to mutilate, deface, defile, burn, or trample on a flag if your intent is NOT to cast contempt or ridicule upon it? I mean, I don’t think the kid truly hates the flag – I bet it was just fun for him. So in reality, what he was doing wasn’t really a crime, right? I mean, what they’re trying to charge her with, really, is a thoughtcrime by-proxy, right?
But then, you get the government trying to do something else. From the article:
Sarpy County Attorney Lee Polikov said the words from the group are fighting words, which are not protected speech.
So, which is it? Contributing to the delinquency of a minor, or inciting a riot or something? They can’t even make up their own minds – they just know they have to get her on SOMETHING. And if jumping on a flag counts as “fighting words” – I mean, come on. Besides, according to FreedomForum.org, that charge is bogus:
The fighting-words doctrine was again reaffirmed in Street v. New York, 394 U.S. 576 (1969). After publicly burning an American flag and making defiant comments regarding the flag, Street was convicted of violating a New York statute making it a misdemeanor to “publicly mutilate, deface, defile, defy, trample upon, or cast contempt upon an American flag either by words or act.” The Supreme Court reversed Street’s conviction because his comments, considered a possible factor in his conviction, were constitutionally protected by the First Amendment. Emphasizing that the mere offensiveness of words does not strip them of constitutional protection, the Court again noted that fighting words must present an actual threat of immediate violence, not merely offensive content.
They need to let this woman go pronto, and Nebraska residents need to call upon their legislators to get rid of this outdated law.
And finally, my brilliant idea for the day: Buy a batch of these slippers and give them away free to Nebraska residents – then everyone will be guilty.
I was just looking through our recent hits (yes, Gene, using our free sitemeter) and found this. Now why in the hell would the DOJ be looking for that? As far as I know they’re still crazy (I supported them until they decided it was all about Jesus) and still holed up in Plainfield.
This is hilarious. I’m in a chat with one of Rudy’s aides where you can submit questions and watch as he only answers the questions he really wants to answer, and sometimes not even those. I’ll put the real gems on here first and continue updating, then paste the entire transcript of the debate at the end.
Brent: The question is how will the campaign expose other areas he’s been successful in such as the economy and the accountability of government. Over the coming months the Mayor hopes to highlight his remarkable record as Mayor of New York turning the city around both socially and economically. Talking with the Mayor it is amazing to hear how he did it. One of the key components was his CompStat programs that held departments accountable by measuring results. I like his idea of applying these types of programs to the Federal government. He’s been referring to it as FedStat.
More bureaucracy is clearly what we need for accountability, right?
Chelsey R. from CA: In Afghanistan, how does the Mayor propose to beat back the rise of the Taliban and bring stability in the region?
Brent: Chelsea from CA asks: In Afghanistan, how does the Mayor propose to beat back the rise of the Taliban and bring stability in the region? The Mayor understands that we must win the terrorists’ war on us and we can’t go back to the 1990’s when we were playing defense against terrorism. The terrorists’ war on us is bigger than just Iraq. We must leave Afghanistan as a stable nation and an ally in the terrorists’ war against us.
OK, first of all, try answering the question this time. Second, now it’s “the terrorists’ war on us”? New cliché alert.
Brent: Alex in Texas wants to know how many questions we’ve screened so far. We’re getting hundreds of questions and are overwhelmed with the response. We’re trying to get through as many as we can.
Considering that in 40 minutes of “chat” so far only 7 questions have been answered by my count, that means they’re getting a lot of questions they don’t like.
Fred D. from TX: As an independently minded father, I really care about the future for my children. How does Mayor Giuliani plan on keeping our economy growing and keeping us economically competitive with China and India?
Brent: The question is: As an independently minded father, I really care about the future for my children. How does Mayor Giuliani plan on keeping our economy growing and keeping us economically competitive with China and India? One thing we need to do is ensure that our children are educated to compete in a global economy. We need to engage countries like China in trade because its mutually beneficial and ultimately countries that are our allies in trade become our political allies in a free market economy. We can do more to engage Islamic countries in trade in order to bring them in to the global economy and make them our trading partners and allies.
Sounds like he ate Ron Paul. “Durr, this guy makes sense, why don’t I parrot what he says without having any idea what it means?”
bobby s. from WV: so that means more employees on the federal payroll? more beaurocracy, more expense, more layers of obfuscation?
Brent: Last question for today is: so that means more employees on the federal payroll? more beaurocracy, more expense, more layers of obfuscation? Actually 40 percent of government bureaucrats are scheduled to retire over the next President’s terms. If elected, the Mayor has said he would replace only 50 percent of the non-essential positions. This would amount to a substantial reduction in the federal workforce.
OK, so we would still have 60% of the non-essential positions, which to Rudy probably means the GAO, and then he’d replace another 20%? In other words, 80% of non-essential positions would stay.
Since I gave Michelle a hat tip earlier, might as well make it a pair. (It’s easier to get away with staring with my hat tipped low). Something is making me think of Michelle and pairs today. Not sure what that is. Wait, don’t tell me, I almost got it figured out….damn, I forgot again. What was it, I wonder? Anyway. A wolf, a sheep, and a wolf in sheep’s clothing went in the polling booth….did I mention voting was mandatory in the USSR?
Former LP presidential candidate (now a write-in candidate) Kent McManigal is engaged in a very interesting forum conversation with some folks from France who took an interest in his views and his campaign.
Here’s a taste of the questions they asked Kent:
Political fiction, again. You’re at the White House. Iran just acquired nuclear weapons, with abilities to launch them to Europe’s doors. It now threatens to launch one on Tel-Aviv if the Israelis don’t evacuate the territory under 48 hours. As the Commander in Chief, what do you do?
Ask Israel if they would like to purchase some nuclear weapons from America. Once again, America must stop interfering in world affairs, even when it seems like a good idea. It is a “slippery slope” to start down. Where does it end? There would be nothing to stop private American citizens from offering to aid in the evacuation, or to take steps to disable Iran’s weapons on their own, without government sanction or assistance, if they choose to do so.
What assessment do you make of George W. Bush’s presidency, and on which points will you be inspired or distance yourself from him ?
I think he has been a typical US President: an out-of-control megalomaniac. He has worked tirelessly to increase the strength and reach of the US government in America and across the world. He has violated the Constitution and Bill of Rights on a daily basis, which is treason. I would not be like him (or any other previous President) in any way.
Could you tell me about you day of September the 11th, 2001 ?
I was at work when the attacks happened. When the second plane hit the World Trade Center I knew it was not an accident. I quickly realized that once again, our government had helped kill many people. (If the people on the planes had been allowed to be armed, hi-jackers would not have had a chance. They were required by law to be victims.) I was angry that anyone had decided to kill so many innocent people. I was afraid that the US government would use the tragedy as an excuse to destroy more freedom in America.
What are, according to you, the 21st century’s greatest stakes, and how to face them ?
Government is working hard to incite hatred across national boundaries, and among economic classes. Fear and distrust of those different from yourself must be resisted. This in itself will take much power away form governments worldwide.
We were all marked by historical events. What are yours ?
When the US government murdered the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, my eyes were opened completely for the first time. I had not trusted government before, but had not seen it for the inexcusable evil it really is until that event.
What is your “vision of America” ?
I would really like for America to once again be the beacon of Liberty for the rest of the world, as symbolized by the French peoples’ gift: Liberty Enlightening the World.
You can read the rest of it, or join the forum to talk to Kent and others, here. Luckily, the vast majority of it seems to be written in English, and it’s a very interesting read.
As Paulie already mentioned, as many of us as possible are going to be going to be providing live libertarian coverage of tonight’s GOP debate in Manchester, New Hampshire. If WordPress doesn’t screw up, we’re going to be using this post for that purpose, continually editing it when we have comments – which will probably be often. All you have to do is refresh occasionally (if your browser for some reason decides to cache it and you don’t get any new comments, press ctrl+R to reload without caching). If WordPress has issues we might have to improvise something, but aside from that, just come to this post when the debate starts (at 7 Eastern Standard Time).
[6:49] CNN nicely distills the race to 3 candidates in each party. Great job, guys.
[6:59] Paul is on the far right.
[7:00] Blitzer: Candidates can take as long as I let them.
[7:04] Romney: I’ll answer the questions I want, damn it! Giuliani: INVADE EVERYONE!
[7:06] McCain: I didn’t read anything about Iraq, but I know everything! Brownback: I held hearings, but I don’t want to answer your question. I want to chop up Iraq.
[7:11] McCain: wars are good, even if Democrats start them. There’s a domino theory at work.
[7:13] Brokeback. I mean Brownback: The Iraqi congress gets to vote on US spending! Haven’t you read the constitution?!
[7:15] Ron Paul: Everyone here is talking nonsense so I think I’ll be different.
[7:15] Hucksterbee: If you don’t think Reagan ended the USSR, invented sliced bread, and led the Hebrews across the Sinai, you are an Al Qaida sympathizer.
[7:18] Dunkin’ Hunter: Iran reminds me of Cambodia.
[7:20] Hunter and Giuliani: Nuke Iran!
[7:21] Romney, Gilmore: Yeah, we agree. Moslems will be more moderate that way.
[7:23] Tancredo: Wait, we can’t just hate middle easterners! We need to hate Latinos and Asians too!
Ein Reich! Ein Volk! Hispanischen Raus!
[7:25] Giuliani: I want the government to track everything ever.
[7:26] McCain: But wait, there are great privacy-invading features in my amnesty bill!
[7:27] McCain, please shut up.
[7:28] Giuliani: We need to keep people from leaving the US, too. And bring back Total Information Awareness and TIPS!
[7:31] Tancredo: We need a new Berlin Wall. Or maybe a Great Wall, like China.
[7:34] Paul: Don’t subsidize illegal immigration. More applause. (But I support the wall too, just not with Canada!)
[7:39] Thompson. Yeah, we need a new one in the race. But not Fred. Ed.
[7:41] Romney: I experienced a heartfelt conversion on many issues which will help me win the Republican nomination.
[7:43] Hucksterbee: Many of my opponents are atheist heathens who believe in evil-lution.
[7:45] Brownback: Am not!
[7:46] McCain: Am Not!
[7:47] Romney: I’m a Mormon. I believe in a church-run state too.
[7:47] Paul: Federalism. No, seriously now. Federalism.
[7:48] Giuliani: I don’t know if global warming is real, but if it helps the government get more power and money, I’ll agree with it. (most Republicans proceed to agree).
[7:52] Ron Paul: Quit subsidizing oil corporations and going to war on their behalf.
[7:53] Gilmore: Let’s not just nuke the middle east. America should be nuked too.
[7:54] Paul: People being gay is not the issue. Disruption is the issue, if straights cause disruption, they should face the same problems. Not a bad answer on a weird question.
[7:56] Giuliani: In a time of WAR WAR WAR WAR WAR WAR WAR WAR WAR
[7:59] None of the Republicans would allow gays to serve openly in the military, but some would allow them to serve as long as they are in the closet.
[7:59] Thompson: I want Bush to teach kids how to love the government.
[8:01] Several people: Reagan was awesome. Bush, not so much.
[8:04] Hucksterbee: TSA gropers are great. They should grope Mexicans, too.
[8:05] Several Republicans: we’re tough on crime! But we should pardon Republican operatives who out CIA agents for political retribution. Also, border agents who shoot Mexicans fleeing back across the border in the ass, especially if they were smuggling pot.
[8:15] Hunter: If we can have anywhere between 5-20 years until the next war in Iraq, it’s totally worth it.
[8:17] Brownback: Let’s divide up Iraq, create an army in each one, and sell weapons to all of them!
[8:18] McCain: More war is the surest way to peace!
[8:19] Ron Paul: We’re not the world’s policeman. Lead by example instead.
[8:19] Giuliani: “People can only embrace democracy when they have ordered lives. So we should order it for them.” God I hate Giuliani.
[8:23] Gilmore: National security depends on government subsidies for oil corporations and shielding nuclear and oil corporations from liability.
[8:24] Giuliani: I’m going to make sense about health care just to confuse people. I don’t think I really mean it. Suckers!
[8:26] Hunter: I have no idea what free enterprise means.
[8:31] Romney: Fascist health care is better than socialist health care.
[8:33] Hucksterbee: I’m pro-life, unless you are of draftable age or a dirty foreigner. I love the welfare state, too.
[8:35] Giuliani: It’s a moral imperative to force foreigners to be free. Also, we’re a lot like the communists and fascists we forced to be free, now we’re friends, so I think it will work with the Jihadists too.
[8:35] Paul: Pre-emptive war is a really, really bad idea.
[8:36] Brownback: We need to defend “life” around the world.
[8:38] Romney: Damn, I just got owned.
[8:42] McCain: Immigrants are great if they can be used to invade other foreign countries! Yo hablo mucho Espanol. Yo readedo el libre de Dondero.
[8:45] Giuliani: If you liked what I did for the NYPD, like shooting unarmed suspects 41 times and putting plungers in people’s asses, you’ll love what I’ll do for America.
[8:47] Brownback: I have a government cure for cancer.
[8:48] Gilmore: We are the party of principle. And that principle is xenophobia.
[8:50] Tancredo: Ask not who wants to come to this country. Ask who this country can keep out.
[8:51] Hucksterbee: Immigrants are great, as long as they serve the interests of big corporations and government revenues.
[8:52] Giuliani: We need more great Presidents like Lincoln and more great generals like Sherman. I can be both.
[8:53] McCain: I think this is a good time to lavish more cheap praise on Reagan to get a cheap applause line.
[8:55] Duncan Hunter: I’m more like Reagan than you are.
[8:56] Romney: No, I am.
[8:57] Giuliani: No, I am. And I hate terrorists the most.
[8:58] McCain: No, I hate terrorists the most.
UPDATE
I am at TG’s house, and we have SG on the phone. We are trying hard to put up some video, but the two bottles of red seem to be slowing the mind and not the mouth. Here is a rundown of our initial thoughts.
Miche: OMG! Giuliani was struck by lightning! OK, not really but it did distort the feed.
TG: Miche, Do you now believe in God?
Miche: I will when Ron Paul gets the Repugnant nom. But can you believe that RP still wants a fence? I hope he was being as honest as ever when he spoke of scapegoats.
TG: Can you believe that he supports “Don’t ask, don’t tell?”
Miche: That really bites.
Speaking of Republican debates, we will be providing live coverage at Last Free Voice tonight. I’ve heard a rumor that Michelle and TG might show up drunk, and there may or may not be trampolines involved. You won’t want to miss it!
In this week’s radio address, Steve Kubby discusses the US Senate’s immigration “compromise.”
The political community’s been abuzz this week with news of a bi-partisan “deal” on immigration law. We go through this every few years as our politicians try to satisfy everyone, end up satisfying no one, and usually make things worse than they were.
The proponents of the new law claim that it will secure America’s borders, provide for a “guest worker” program and a “path to citizenship.” They’re wrong. It won’t secure the borders, and its “guest worker” and “path to citizenship” provisions are already blueprinted to quickly degenerate into yet another set of expensive, intrusive bureaucracies.
The opponents of the law claim that the “guest worker” and “path to citizenship” measures amount to an amnesty. They’re right as far as that goes, but they’re wrong when they suggest that that’s a bad thing, or that it’s incompatible with the national security. Not only is amnesty a GREAT idea — it’s the best thing to do when you’ve had a really, really stupid law in place for so many years — it is a prerequisite to ANY effective national defense.
This man is truly evil and insane. As the newly elected chairman of the Arkansas Republican Party, he thinks Americans deserve more deadly terrorist attacks.
“At the end of the day, I believe fully the president is doing the right thing, and I think all we need is some attacks on American soil like we had on [Sept. 11, 2001],” Milligan said to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, “and the naysayers will come around very quickly to appreciate not only the commitment for President Bush, but the sacrifice that has been made by men and women to protect this country.”
Sheer insanity. That’s like saying, “we need more women to be raped so they can appreciate what our law enforcement is doing to protect them” (not that law enforcement really is doing any such thing), or, “we need more people to contract tuberculosis so they can appreciate everything the medical industry is doing to wipe out deadly diseases.”
Uh, excuse me, Dr. Evil, but if we were to experience yet another horrific terrorist strike, wouldn’t that be clear evidence that your dear leader is NOT capable of protecting this country?
In my view, this is all the more reason why Ron Paul is needed on center stage to show ignorant and/or forgetful Republican voters that a constitutionally limited government based on peace and free trade is still a viable option.
I’m starting to get suspicious of all these “HAI GUYS WE GOT TEH TERRISTS” stories. Especially since this one is so ridiculously lame. Apparently a some dudes from Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago (the second two are one country), which are in South America and the Caribbean respectively, decided they wanted to blow up JFK International Airport to “get those bastards” (that would be us). The plan was to blow up the jet fuel pipelines that snake all over the airport – which sounds scary, especially if you’re a bureaucrat:
“The devastation that would be caused had this plot succeeded is just unthinkable,” U.S. Attorney Roslynn R. Mauskopf said at a news conference, calling it “one of the most chilling plots imaginable.”
Actually, if you know what the hell you’re talking about, it’s quite imaginable:
Richard Kuprewicz, a pipeline expert and president of Accufacts Inc., an energy consulting firm that focuses on pipelines and tank farms, said the force of explosion would depend on the amount of fuel under pressure, but it would not travel up and down the line.
“That doesn’t mean wackos out there can’t do damage and cause a fire, but those explosions and fires are going to be fairly restricted,” he said.
These attacks had apparently been thought of ten years ago, but they were just now arrested – which might make you think that the federales managed to sell them explosives or something – but entrapment is so passé. Now they just arrest you for thinking about it:
Despite their efforts, the men never obtained any explosives, authorities said.
“Pulling off any bombing of this magnitude would not be easy in today’s environment,” former U.S. State Department counterterrorism expert Fred Burton said, but added it was difficult to determine without knowing all the facts of the case.
That’s right, some idiots got arrested for thoughtcrimes. You could be next.
When I think about the war and why I’m opposed to it, this clip pretty sums up the way that I feel. It’s the human aspect of it that gets to me. People always tell me “well they signed up for it”. I just don’t buy that excuse, there is NO excuse for what is going on.
(Sorry that you got this twice, the formatting failed in the original!)
Well, folks, it is almost over.
With a little negotiation and adjustments to be done, some re-filing of FEC reports, the last bills paid, and only a few thousand more in contributions to make that happen, I will be able to close out the Badnarik for Congress campaign. Yes, that’s right, it’s down to just a few thousand (the hardest few thousand to get)!
[ http://badnarik.org/donate.php ]
To all of you who have supported us, I repeat my thanks and my vow to work twice as diligently to ensure that the things that undermined this campaign won’t happen again to anybody else. Toward that end, I’ll be developing Liberty’s Infrastructure Project. You may recall that I’ve been talking about LawfulGov.Org as my next project. Well, it is, but there’s more. LawfuGov.Org is important, but it can’t do everything needed. Yes, we need an entity that will sue the pants off rogue agencies and bureaucrats, filling in the gap with legal action where political parties can’t go. But the truth is, we need a complete infrastructure. Fundraising, outreach, social supports, ballot access, general public awareness…. there’s no way all of this is getting done by financially weak local parties, and the presidential campaign can’t be expected to carry it all. That hasn’t worked.
You will get one more email from me regarding B4C, and that will be the one announcing the final closing of the campaign and the publication of my final report. Watch for that, it will be a web address.
In the meantime, won’t you consider one more contribution to the campaign, to end this cycle and help us all move on? Read the rest of this entry »
One warmonger to respond to Ron Paul’s statements was Paul’s former congressional campaign manager Eric Dondero who now fulminates daily about fighting “Islamofacist” terrorists on a variety of forums. He declared he’s running against Paul for congress in his home district in 2008, unless Paul resigns or another republican stands up against him. See RightPundit, RedState.Com, and this blog.
. Dondero was Ron Paul’s travel aide when Paul was running for the Libertarian Party nomination, ran his 1996 congressional campaign where Paul re-took his seat, and worked for a time in Paul’s congressional office. I can say from personal experience that Dondero is a sleazy little operative, quick to insult and smear others with lies. So I thought a lot better of Paul when I heard he had ended their alliance.
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The most persistent unpleasant rumor whispered around about Dondero himself was that he allegedly “beat his wife.” He introduced me to her at the 1987 libertarian convention and she definitely had the kind of sad sack, always wary demeanor of a woman who expected a whack in the head momentarily. They later divorced.
. I therefore was quite suspicious when I read Dondero’s claim on a libertarian discussion group in November of 2006 that his NEW wife had been mugged three times. Two paragraphs from the post will make his boorish style of argumentation quite clear:
. Yup, I’m a bigot alright. Married to a Chinese woman. Been all around the world; 30 countries on 5 continents. Speak 15 to 20 languages. Have had more Mexican and Filipina girlfriends than you can shake a stick at.
. My wife has been mugged three times (!!!) in the last three years in Houston. Once where they put a gun to her head. All because she’s Asian. And illegals and others here in Houston prey on Asians, cause they think they’ve “got money.”
. After the posting I replied on the discussion group, referring to the 1987 rumors, and wondering if Dondero’s current wife really had been mugged or if the injuries came from someone a little closer to home. Dondero promptly dropped off the discussion group! EndAbuse.Org reports that as many as 3 million women a year are assaulted by their significant others. That sounds low to me!
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I also noted at the time some men may prefer to date immigrant women. First, many come from countries where deference to abusive males is still prevalent. Second, tenuous immigrant status makes them less likely to report physical assaults to police and/or are more easily intimidated by threats a man will press false charges against them. No wonder so many American men import “mail order brides.”If the rumors and impressions are true and Eric’s American born wife finally got up the gumption to call police on him, it would make sense he then turned to foreign born women.
One of my favorite childhood memories is a bird taking a dump on a statue of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov “Lenin” just as our tour guide was uttering solemn inanities about the Glorious Leader. Like Comrade Lenin, our own Bushevik apparently believes that imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism. Here is First Comrade Bushling getting carpet-bombed by a bird (which was no doubt a mind controlled puppet of Al Qaida terrorists):
Here, Mark Yannone documents some of the proposed mechanics of this connection are being put together. Like me, Yannone believes that the Trojan horse of a fraudulent “fair” tax will also be a key building block of this disturbing development. This guy, this guy, or maybe this one could easily be the perfect candidate to put the finishing touches on a domestic system of fascism.
Makes a lot of sense, except for this picture of ol’ Kris Kristofferson. What’s he got to do with it?
Stop the Experiment
by Mark Yannone
Half in jest, I’ve long referred to employment regulation as government’s attempt to make employment illegal. Legislation like the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 makes the federal government’s desire for complete control over our lives more evident than ever.
By ignoring existing immigration law for years, the law enforcement failure—in conjunction with welfare programs and other socialist policies—has helped to produce conditions that make Soviet-style control of its citizens a more palatable “solution” to the government-engineered problems associated with illegal immigration.
Is this draconian legislation the last straw for those who assert their inalienable right to earn a living without government interference? Maybe . . . if it were rigorously enforced. But it could never be fully enforced as long as we have cash. So, once again, Americans will have to surrender more freedom for the sake of the success of a government program. When our money is 100 percent digital, enforcement will be fairly easy, except where barter is used. Barter will include what was previously considered legitimate money: gold and silver coins. Of course, such transactions will have to be outlawed, but they won’t stop. Barterers who are discovered will lose their assets and what remains of their freedom to teach the rest of us that such behavior is ill-advised.
The final step in the system will be the implementation of the world’s most controlling system of taxation, currently referred to as the FairTax, a 30 percent national sales tax that will require everyone to receive a monthly living allowance from the federal government, transferred electronically into their bank accounts (as long as the citizen remains compliant).
The economy in such a government-controlled society cannot thrive. As it deteriorates, law enforcement will grow increasingly difficult and expensive, so the measures used will become extreme. Given the history of mankind, we can expect these enforcement tools to include labor camps and extermination. And if you think that can’t happen in our system of government then you must have missed the National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive from the White House.
The world is a living laboratory. The experiments outlined here have already been performed, and the results were all negative. They don’t need to be repeated, and you don’t need to continue to live as a lab rat.
I can’t believe this. A Kansas beef producer, Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, announced its plans to test all of its cows for mad cow disease – which sounds great to me. (The company does some other pretty cool stuff – its processing plant was designed by Dr. Temple Grandin, a specialist in animal welfare, for example.) The USDA, however, knew that
…if Creekstone should test its meat and advertised it as safe, [larger meatpacking companies] might have to perform the expensive tests on their larger herds as well.
Since the USDA regulates the mad cow test, it prevented Creekstone from testing its cows, using the blindingly lame argument that
…widespread testing could lead to a false positive that would harm the meat industry.
Naturally, they don’t care that widespread testing could lead to people not dying – it’s the big meatpacking companies that they’re around to protect.
On March 29th, Judge James Robertson of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that it was illegal for the USDA to prevent Creekstone from testing its own goddamn cows – but allowed the USDA to appeal until June 1st. On May 30th, they did. Creekstone’s CEO James Buhlke said that
We still hope to convince USDA to work with Creekstone on a voluntary BSE testing program. However, Creekstone Farms will continue to pursue our right to test even in the wake of this latest action by the USDA.
I don’t see how anybody who’s not a complete shill for Creekstone’s competitors could disagree. Creekstone owns the cows, Creekstone’s customers want safe beef, but the USDA thinks it owns all the cows in the country.
Political Futility / Endless Conflict / System Worship / Big Government Reagan / Leave Us Alone / Fall of Communism / Civil Disobedience / Anti Immigration Protectionist / Standing Armies / The Roads / Ron Paul Joins Us / Keene Visit / Immigration / Whiners? / Slavery / Public Exposure / Freedom
Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zones / Taking Risks / Freedom to Travel Activist Arrested Again / Drug War Deaths / Campaign Advertising / Acetone Gas Tank Bunk / Things Everyone Needs to Know / North Korea / License Plates / Salvia Prohibition
Shelly Roche joins us to discuss bringing women to liberty, her personal path to freedom, and more. / Govt Assuming Responsibility / Minarchy vs. Freedom / Using the System / Liberty-oriented Lawyers? / InjusticeEverywhere.com / Comfort Zones / Auditing the Fed / Agorism
UK Socialist Dental Care / Police Harassment and Standing Up For Your Rights / Socialist Health Care / Unemployment / Health Care Prior to Government Intervention / Black Man In KKK Robe Disrupts City Council Meeting / Miltary Man Refuses to Deploy / Swat Team Called to Back Yard Crew / Nightmare Story
Jim Babka joins us from Downsize DC / Failblog / Persuasion vs Arguing / Minimum Wage / Stamped Dollar Bills / Billing a Court? / Magic Incantations / Fully Informed Juries / Paytriot Scam Artists / More Extraordinary Claims Without Proof / Violent thugs don't care about words. / NH Hard Sell
Cutco Update / Disturbing Internet Speech Regulations Proposed / Government, Tool of Violence / Flag of Distress / Tax Freedom / Free Speech and Private Property / Excited Delerium / Unemployment / Abomination? / China and Freedom / Big Activist Weekend in NH / Police Chief Advocates Lowered Drinking Age / Medical Marijuana Failure / Guns and Canada / Las Ve […]
Mind Meld With Miles… Over Migas! Back in the day… when I was fresh out of high-school and working at Austin’s downtown public library, my boss had a party for me. To promote the little day-job shindig she’d created a flyer with a picture of Star Trek’s Jean Luc Picard all Borged-out with the caption, “Mind [...]
ANOMALY Magazine Welcome’s Brian Worsham! In late 2001, some friends and I were talking about our desire to see more and better quality paranormal and parapolitical TV shows on broadcast and cable television. We wanted our own Anomaly TV Network. We felt certain we had the drive, the skills, the equipment and the network of real [...]
Watching the ARGonauts Play If you’ve followed the Elfis Network from the beginning then you know of my early interest in Alternate Reality Gaming and their potential for “mucking up the works” for paranormal and parapolitical researchers. You may also know that my interests were rekindled in 2007 by the provocative hypotheses of blogger D […]
Anomaly TeleVision » Blog Archive » 60 Minutes - Mind Reading Tech 60 Minutes - Mind Reading (video) cnettv.cnet.com/2001-1_53-50004855.html How Technology May Soon “Read” Your Mind www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/12/31/60minutes/main4694713.shtml www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4697682n
Big news regarding evidence of evolution: Fossil Discovery Is Heralded In what could prove to be a landmark discovery, a leading paleontologist said scientists have dug up the 47 million-year-old fossil of an ancient primate whose features suggest it could be the common ancestor of all later monkeys, apes and humans. Anthropologists have long believed that h […]
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From The Houston Chronicle:
Considering that I regularly use the word “trash” to describe ultra-skanky heiress Paris Hilton, I found this a little amusing. From 
From ABC News:
From ABC News:
As someone who regularly takes in rescued dogs, I was interested to see this item. Poor little fella. I’d adopt this one in a minute, for fear that no one else would.
George Phillies (Libertarian)
Steve Kubby (Libertarian Party)
Wayne Allen Root (Libertarian Party)
As you may be aware, OJ Simpson’s book, titled If I Did It, describes how – if in fact he were guilty – he would have murdered his ex-wife (Nicole Brown Simpson) and her friend (Ronald Goldman). Admittedly, it’s an extremely strange idea for a book, but was also sure to be a bestseller.
XM Satellite Radio announced it will launch a new radio channel dedicated to the 2008 presidential election, marking the first time that a national radio channel has been devoted to a presidential campaign. The 24-hour, commercial-free channel, created in association with C-SPAN and other media outlets, will be called “POTUS ‘08.” The channel’s name (pronounced POH-tus) is the acronym used by government insiders for the President of the United States.
All you have to do is answer 25 questions
From 
Former LP presidential candidate (now a write-in candidate) Kent McManigal is engaged in a very interesting forum conversation with some folks from France who took an interest in his views and his campaign.
