December 15, 2017

Government is the cause of—not the solution to—online censorship

from Reason: As people worry about the net neutrality vote, public officials threaten our rights to free speech.
Indoctrination and Censorship

Bogus wiretap charges brought against man who recorded cops costs NH taxpayers $275,000

from TechDirt: Even though courts have found use of wiretap statutes in this fashion unconstitutional, in the Live Free or Die state, the statute lives freely and dies even harder.
Police State America

Bill O'Reilly: Secret tape exists of woman offered $200K to file sexual harassment charges against Trump

from ZeroHedge: The tactic of shaming, a favorite of the political left, seems to be kicked up a notch.
Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

FCC votes to repeal net neutrality rules

from The Hill: The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has voted to repeal its landmark net neutrality protections, capping off a months-long campaign by the agency’s Republicans to deregulate the broadband industry.
Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

Scared Cops Are Scary

from Reason: The acquittal of the officer who killed Daniel Shaver illustrates a double standard in judging self-defense claims.
Police State America

California Brags It Will End Gun Violence With Sudden Enforcement Of 50-Year-Old Law

from DownTrend: Significant as an admission by the state that instead of enforcing existing laws, they have been passing gun control laws that only restrict the rights of law abiding people.
2nd Amendment Assaults

November 22, 2017

HuffPo memory-holes piece blasting Al Franken’s alleged victims as partisan liars

from Brieitbart: On Friday, the day after two women accused Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) of harassment, HuffPo published an article titled, “The Framing Of Al Franken By Two Trump Supporters." The story was removed just a few hours later.
Media Bias on Parade

Black leaders silent over Mugabe’s destruction of Zimbabwe

from Capitalism Magazine: Walter E Williams: "There’s a deafening silence, the same silence when Africa’s black tyrants elsewhere on the continent commit brutalities making those committed by former colonial masters pale in comparison."
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

Pennsylvania cops terrorize elderly couple after confusing hibiscus plants for marijuana

from PhotographyIsNotaCrime: The woman was forced to stand outside in her underwear and handcuffed for ten minutes, then walked barefoot down a gravel driveway to a squad car where she remained handcuffed for four and a half hours.
The Government is Not Us   The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

Cop sentenced to 5 years for shooting into car of teens, 16 times

from TheFreeThoughtProject: Chicago police officer Marco Proano was sentenced for dumping 16 rounds into a car occupied by six unarmed teens who posed no threat.
Police State America

The good, the bad, and the unspeakably ugly: a reason surveillance reform bill primer

from Reason: Congress must make a choice before the end of the year on the level of protections Americans get from unwarranted snooping.
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

FCC plans total repeal of net neutrality rules

from CNet: Chairman Ajit Pai says he's fixing the Obama-era "mistake," which allowed the US government to micromanage the internet.
Regulation Nation

November 18, 2017

The spurious move to stifle speech on campus because it is 'dehumanizing'

from Reason: The latest tactics for intolerant leftists to silence opinions academics and like-minded students disagree with.
Indoctrination and Censorship

FCC approves TV technology that gives better pictures but less privacy

from Reuters: Of course they approved the technology, government likely subsidized it. It allows third parties to tap into television recording devices (cameras, voice activation), a fundamental piece of the puzzle if 1984 is the instruction manual.
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

New rules with hefty fees set for growing, selling marijuana in California

from KTLA5: An array of licenses, permits and fees insure the black market will flourish in the Golden State for the foreseeable future.
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

FDA loyalty to Big Pharma exposed in move to ban plant that’s CURING opioid addiction

from The Free Thought Project: Sometimes the goals of crony capitalism and the drug war clash.
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange   The Government is Not Us

VIDEO: Tucker Carlson - Can Government Force Speech Against Your Beliefs? 

from LibertyPen/YouTube: Can state politicians demand a Catholic pregnancy center to pimp pro-abortion propaganda. The state of California says yes. Attorney Thomas Glessner is filing a lawsuit that says no.
Indoctrination and Censorship

High schoolers win $3 million against sheriff for warrantless drug search molestation

from NY Daily News: The molesting cops continue on the job, ever vigilant in their quest to rid drugs from bras everywhere.
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange   Police State America

The Real Tragedy Is That The Presidency Matters

by Jeffrey Tucker.     Freedom lovers everywhere are biting their nails this election season, wondering how the damage can be limited. Depending on who gains control, we could have trade wars, nationalized health care, the pillaging of Wall Street, more war in the Middle East, a VAT tax, direct surveillance of your smartphone, internment     ... MORE

A Faster Internet? Not With FCC Regulations

by Steve Pociask.     Does the FCC’s public utility-style regulation of wireline incumbent telephone companies (abbreviated here as ILECs) and their legacy copper-based voice services work to protect consumers or impede broadband competition? That is the question explored by a new American Consumer Institute study. Telephone service regulations ... MORE

Net Neutrality Could Crush Political Websites

by Rudy Takala.    For Rep. Marsha Blackburn, who's leading the charge to stop "net neutrality" regulations, the possibility that political content on the web, like the Drudge Report or Fox News, could be regulated is a major motivation. "When it comes to the content side, I have the sense that this is the very beginning of the net neutrality debate," the   ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Ruling The Internet

How To Break The Internet

by Geoffrey A. Manne & R. Ben Sperry.     "Net neutrality" sounds like a good idea. It isn't. As political slogans go, the phrase net neutrality has been enormously effective, riling up the chattering classes and forcing a sea change in the government's decades-old hands-off approach to regulating the Internet. But as an organizing principle for the      ... MORE

Brendan Sasso: Internet Providers Sue to Kill Net Neutrality

Opposition to the FCC power grab.  Telecom companies filed a pair of lawsuits Monday in an attempt to reverse the Federal Communications Commission's new net neutrality rules. The suits are expected to be the opening shots in a long legal war against the controversial regulations. USTelecom, which represents AT&T, Verizon, and other     ... MORE

GOP Senators Rip FCC's Net Neutrality Decision

by Grant Gross.    Ted Cruz: "An abuse of its authority." The U.S. Federal Communications Commission's new net neutrality rules could open the door to rate regulation and could drive some small broadband providers out of business, some Senate Republicans said Wednesday. Some Republican members of the Senate Commerce, Science and    ... MORE

Google Works To Rank Sites Based On ‘Truthfulness’

by Maxim Lott.  In a step that critics worry will inject political bias into search results, a Google research team released a report this month on ranking search results based on how factual websites are. They propose eventually using that to change Google rankings, which are currently based on website popularity. The Google researchers give, as an     ... MORE

Andrew Napolitano: A Lone Wolf President

Can the president rewrite federal laws?      Can he alter their meaning? Can he change their effect? These are legitimate questions in an era in which we have an unpopular progressive Democratic president who has boasted that he can govern without Congress by using his phone and his pen, and a mostly newly elected largely conservative Republican ... MORE

VIDEO: Fox News - Intercepting Cell Phone Signals

Net Neutrality Is A Triumph of the Ruling Class

by Jeffrey Tucker.    A triumph of “free expression and democratic principles”? How stupid do they think we are?     It’s been painful to watch the gradual tightening of government control in the name of net neutrality. The Federal Communications Commission’s decision to rewrite the rules and declare the Internet as a public utility seals the  ... MORE

FCC Chair Appears To Be Hellbent On Internet Takeover

by Andrew Johnson.      Two prominent House committee chairs are “deeply disappointed” in Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler for refusing to testify before Congress as “the future of the Internet is at stake.” Wheeler’s refusal to go before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday comes on the eve of the FCC’s vote on ... MORE

VIDEO: The Folly Of Net Neutraility

Mark Cuban Says Net Neutrality Will ‘Fuck Everything Up’

by Dawn Chmielewski. Billionaire investor and ABC “Shark Tank” star Mark Cuban unloaded on the Federal Communications Commission’s plan to fundamentally change how it oversees the open Internet. “That will fuck everything up,” said the voluble Cuban in remarks Wednesday at the Code/Media conference at The Ritz-Carlton, Laguna Niguel, Ca.  ... MORE

VIDEO: Don't Mess With The Internet

Tammy Bruce: FCC, FEC Look To Ruin The Internet

The left lifts its boot toward the free flow of information. We knew this was coming. Within the last couple of weeks, both the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Election Commission declared their intention to regulate the Internet. Fascists always explain their actions as efforts to either make something more efficient, ... MORE

Andrew Napolitano: Chilling Free Speech

What's going on here?   Earlier this week, the federal government's National Science Foundation, an entity created to encourage the study of science — encouragement that it achieves by awarding grants to scholars and universities — announced that it had awarded a grant to study what people say about themselves and others in social media. The    ... MORE