A sweet opportunity to spread the message

Yahoo News has reported that an Australian man was booted from a Qantas flight for not changing his t-shirt.

Allen Jasson said on Monday he was turned away last Friday at a Qantas departure gate in the southern city of Melbourne when he tried to board a flight to London while wearing a shirt with the a picture of Bush and the slogan “World’s #1 terrorist.”

Qantas offered to put the London resident on another flight if he wears a different shirt, but the man refused to change.

I might forfeit the fare but I have made up my mind that I would rather stand up for the principle of free speech,” he said.

You can’t mention Bush, speech and terrorist without being reminded of the SOTU Address tomorrow. I can’t sleep through it either. HDNet has invited me to sit on a panel to discuss the speech. We are taping tomorrow in Dallas and Dan Rather is hosting from New York. Given news like this, it should be an interesting discussion and I am thankful HDNet thought to include a libertarian.

I hope to represent us well so if you have any pointers, make them known in the comments section.

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Burridge Gets Big Bloody Red Nose, Starts Taking Off Ass-Clown Costume

A few days ago, we reported about how state representative Burridge in NH responded to a constituent's polite email in favor of decriminalizing marijuana by calling him a dumb pothead who should become a snitch and CC'ed the local cops.

Now,
Homeland Stupidity reports that all the calls and emails that Burridge has received as a result of the coverage of this issue on blogs such as this one has caused him to change not just his tone, but possibly his mind as well.

The Keene Sentinel reports

“This is a learning process for me,” said Burridge, who has received dozens of calls from as far as Florida, Missouri and California. “I’m certainly learning the power of blogs. … It’s fascinating.”

When the Internet storm dies down, Burridge would like to meet with Iselin to discuss the issue further, he said. “He’s certainly a very energized and passionate young man.”

Iselin said he would be open to a meeting, as well. He is even hoping that Burridge might appear on his television show.

“I was just trying to get in touch with him in the first place,” Iselin said. “That’s what this whole thing was about.”

This blog was one of many,
like this one which experienced the most traffic we ever had due to reporting this story,
and (just like us) suggesting ways people both in and out of NH can take action. This blog, like ours, has many good ideas and templates for letters you can use in the comment section.

Going beyond what is reported in the Sentinel, the MassCann blog reports:

State of NH had a decrim meeting today. LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition) spoke. Delmar (Burridge) was at the meeting. He has listened and talked to many of his constituents over the last few days and he is now publicly pledging to support marijuana decrim and will vote for it.

Sweet!

Let's keep in touch with Burridge, make sure that this is true and if so, that he keeps his word.

Phillies campaign update: 1/22/2007

The man himself shot me off an email a few days ago and I haven’t had the opportunity to check my inbox until now. But I figure that since we’ve got plenty of coverage up for the Kubby campaign, we should also do the same for Phillies.

Anyway, here’s a list of appearances for Phillies. If you’re in the area for any of this, it’d be a good idea to check out what he’s saying and how he’s saying it. Let’s make the most informed decision about our Presidential candidate as we possibly can.

Too brilliant not to share.

I think I just read one of the smartest approaches to the Reformer/Radical divide yet. Yeah, Paulie’s a contributor here but that’s not why I’m giving him props. Just read this shit for yourself, cowboy:

The best solution to Republitarians and warmongers in the LP is to out-recruit them. Rather than dropping out of the party, what we should do is engage in tons of activism, outreach and party growth and sign up new members, activists and supporters.

Here are two things that will help

1) Nominate a LP presidential candidate who is not a Republitarian and who appeals to the left-libertarian border. We’ve never done this, yet we can in 2008 – Steve Kubby is running for President. The campaign is in its very early stages, yet he has already spoken to a crowd of 50,000 at a time (how many libertarian candidates have ever done that) and been featured alongside non-libertarian candidates in a “viral video” which has been viewed by tens of thousands, mostly outside the party and movement.

I’m the assistant national volunteer coordinator and we are seeking volunteers in every state.

Even moderate “reform” libertarians, like Chuck Moulton, who I talked to yesterday acknowledge that Kubby is the leading candidate for the LP nomination of those who have so far announced their intent to seek it. Kubby will be on Angela’s show on the 25th – Angela, if you area reading, how can we listen live?

2) We need to hand out massive amounts of info at antiwar rallies about how taxes fund the war machine. This should also be a part of our tax day protests at the post office. Non-LP libertarians can adopt these ideas to whatever organizations they want to promote, or to leaderless resistance.

We need to have an intra-party dialogue about the relationship between radicalism and reform, but ultimately, both sides want the Party to succeed in its goals. And so if the Radical Caucus brings in a ton of people and kicks our asses… well, wonderful! They just brought in a ton of people and helped the party. And if it’s the other way around, well, same thing. I think, though, that it will be competition like this that ultimately does the best for the party, not either side’s ideas in a vacuum.

Well at least he’s honest.

Go to hell, gringos!

President Hugo Chavez returned to his weekly radio and TV broadcast Sunday, extolling the ideals of socialist thinker Karl Marx and telling U.S. officials to “Go to hell!” for what he called unacceptable meddling in Venezuela’s affairs.

Chavez defended his government’s effort to establish a socialist model and rejected U.S. concerns over a measure to grant him broad lawmaking powers, saying: “Go to hell, gringos! Go home!”

Score one for having balls big enough to be confused for flesh-colored beanbags. Scratch a couple for being a socialist douche. Wait, what’s that?

The National Assembly, controlled by the president’s political allies, is expected to give final approval this week to what it calls the “enabling law,” which would grant Chavez authority to pass a series of laws by decree during an 18-month period.

Oh, you’re passing an “enabling act”? Well gee golly willakers, where’ve I heard this before? And before someone cries about Godwin’s Law… the dude named it himself, and it follows basically the same lines as the original, so yeah.

So I’m not sure, but I think this pretty well means that you lose at politics, bucko. But look on the bright side-after the world undoes the damage you’ve done and your own country is embarrassed to have ever elected you to anything higher than dogcatcher, you’ll have a lot of lameass kids spraypainting your name all over the place and listening to really shitty metal that talks about you. Maybe some nutcase will talk about Venezuelan UFOs based in Antarctica, to boot.