March 2, 2020

Politicians want to destroy Section 230, the Internet's First Amendment

fromReason: Four myths about the law that made the modern internet possible.

Indoctrination and Censorship

John Stossel: Bloomberg the nanny

fromCreators: Bloomberg targeted smoking, flavored tobacco products, fattening sodas, loud music, grass clippings, cellphones in schools, salt, guns, Styrofoam and restaurant menus without calorie counts.

Regulation Nation

Schools are pushing the boundaries of surveillance technologies

fromActivistPost: Schools are experimenting with the very same surveillance technologies that totalitarian governments use to surveil and abuse the rights of their citizens everywhere: online, offline, and on their phones.

Government is Watching Every Move You Make

California reinvents the English language yet again and other nitwittery

fromDailyBell: In the latest attempt to sugarcoat turds, California will now refer to “at risk youth” instead as, “at promise youth.”

Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

Vaping prohibition would create black markets and put American health at risk

fromTownhall: "Democrats are attempting to take things too far and are promoting prohibitionist policies that we know don’t work and often cause more harm than good."

Regulation Nation

How can Bernie Sanders happen in America

fromTownhall: Why would any people trade individual liberty for government control?

Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

April 15, 2019

Julian Assange and WikiLeaks deserve our thanks for making governments more transparent

fromReason:  The world is a better place now that it's harder than ever for governments to keep secrets.

The Government is Not Us       Government is Watching Every Move You Make     

The Washington establishment seems pretty happy about Julian Assange’s arrest

fromReason:  Deep state tyrants figure to sleep a little better if they can eliminate Assange.

The Government is Not Us       Government is Watching Every Move You Make 

Assisted dying: The death panels are coming

fromGaryNorth:  Rationing is inevitable in a world of scarcity. You can ration by price: high monetary bid wins. You can ration by standing in line: first come, first served. You can ration by bureaucratic procedure: fill out forms. 
But there is always rationing.

Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

Why an internet regulator is a bad idea

fromSpiked:  We should be stripping away curbs on speech – not adding more.

Indoctrination and Censorship

Looking into surveillance

fromProvidenceJournal:  If our government has improperly used its immense power to spy on citizens for political purposes, it is vital that it be stopped, and those involved be punished, lest we become a police state.

Government is Watching Every Move You Make        Police State America

Your Volvo will soon call the cops on you if it thinks you've been drinking

fromZeroHedge:  It is unclear if demand for Volvos will collapse as a result of big brother watching over every move, or if potential customers will welcome this latest incursion of their privacy.

Government is Watching Every Move You Make        Police State America

August 7, 2018

Kamala Harris is Martin Luther King's worst nightmare, choosing identity politics over individual liberty

fromFoxNews: A California politician advocates that people be judged as members of groups, not as individuals.
Individual Liberty: America's First Principle     Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

The ACLU appears to endorse a ban on catcalling, despite huge free speech concerns

fromReason: The ACLU has been proven to not give a damn about civil liberties unless it forwards a leftwing cause.
Indoctrination and Censorship            Individual Liberty: America's First Principle 

Walter E Williams: Colleges, a force for evil

fromCreators: The threat to our future lies in the fact that today's college students are tomorrow's teachers, professors, judges, attorneys, legislators and policymakers.
Indoctrination and Censorship      Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

US Senators to introduce a bill regulating e-liquid flavors

fromVapingPost: Busybodies minding YOUR own business. 
Regulation Nation

VIDEO: Thomas Sowell: Legacy of the Welfare State

fromLibertyPen/YouTube: Thomas Sowell explains the damage done by the welfare state mechanism.
The Welfare State: Promoting Dependency

Senate Democrats are circulating plans for government takeover of the Internet

fromReason: The end game of the Russian hoax is taking shape.  Plus: Testing telemedicine abortion and 3D printed guns.
The Government is Not Us          Regulation Nation

July 6, 2016

Why I'm teaching my son to break the law

fromReason: Making the world freer is always right, especially when the law is wrong.
The Government is Not Us

Police union calls for banning of books in high school because they mention police brutality

fromFreeThoughtProject: Making the world freer is always right, especially when the law is wrong.
Police State America

School strip-searches 22 sixth-grade girls because a cop thought they were hiding $50 in their underwear

fromReason: It seems government schools are acclimating students to a police state in which they will be treated like human livestock.
The Government is Not Us       Police State America

Trump's case for tariffs is unraveling

fromReason: Automakers, motorcycle manufacturers, the stock market, and even the White House's own analyses are telling Trump to change course.
Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

Sports world fought gambling but now wants money from it

fromReason: Sports has the same relationship with gambling that government has with marijuana. It is immoral and dangerous to the integrity of the sport/nation until an angle for obscene profits is discovered.
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

Free speech means a free internet — even if Democrats don't like it

fromTheHill: It’s up to Americans to decide which ideas to support or oppose. Political advertising only brings them more ideas to consider — and broadens the parameters of our political debates.
Indoctrination and Censorship      Media Bias on Parade

June 25, 2016

Congress wants to give Jeff Sessions unprecedented new drug war powers

fromReason: The SITSA Act would turn the attorney general into the chief arbiter of what substances Americans can buy, sell, and put in their bodies. 
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

The ACLU abandons its free-speech absolutism

fromNationalReview: Free speech for me but not for thee. Leftwing causes now trump free speech.
Indoctrination and Censorship      Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

Government court rules in favor of more government revenue: Tax the Internet!

fromAP: The Supreme Court seldom misses an opportunity to enrich their legislative cousins. 
Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

Fighting the high minimum wage: first "robot created burger" restaurant opening in San Francisco

fromEconomicPolicyJournal: On June 27, the world’s first robot-crafted burger will roll off a conveyor belt in San Francisco and into the hands of the public. Creator is located at 680 Folsom St., South of Market. 
Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market       Regulation Nation

5 times Child Protective Services separated kids from parents for no good reason

fromReason: No illegal aliens, no foul -- according to American media.
The Government is Not Us        Media Bias on Parade

Iraqi murderer of German girl bragged: Everything is for free here, no working and a salary from the state

fromAP: Let's hope Merkel got several boatloads of money from Soros for wrecking her own country. 
Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption       Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

February 13, 2018

Why Americans trust CEOs more than politicians

fromTheDailyBell: Just 15% of Americans think the government will bring us to a better future. 59% say the government is the most broken institution, followed by 21% who think the media is the worst.
Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

China’s surveillance police glasses could usher in a new age of government tracking

fromSanvada: China's cops will wear sunglasses with facial recognition technology capabilities as their police state marches on.
Police State America

John Stossel: Silk Road

fromCreators: Give me a break. Locking some people up forever will not stop sales of drugs. Americans should have learned that from our last attempt — Prohibition. 
Justice is a Result, Not Just a Process     The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

VIDEO: Insights of ex-CIA Ray McGovern - Corruption@FBI 9

fromLibertyPen/YouTube: Ray McGovern knows a lot because after 50 years in the CIA, he has seen a lot. Closely examining the recent facts revealed regarding FBI corruption, McGovern shares his take.
Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

Libertarian Party spotlights jury nullification

fromDailyInterLake: “Jury nullification is a tool, and like any tool you can use it in a lot of ways. And one of the ways is to uphold the rule of law when government is violating the rule of law.”
Justice is a Result, Not Just a Process

Here’s what’s wrong with Ayn Rand’s Philosophy

fromTheObjectivistStandard: An accounting of some of the problems created by this philosophy.
The Pursuit of Happiness      Individual Liberty: America's First Principle

December 27, 2017

Walter E Williams: Educational Rot

fromCreators: Professors at schools of education tend to have the lowest level of academic respectability. American education could benefit from eliminating schools of education.

Indoctrination and Censorship

Don’t regulate the internet. It holds the media accountable

from TheDailyCaller: Any attempt to regulate the internet comes into direct conflict with the First Amendment, which is what makes the internet work in the first place. Restricted online speech = one-sided political dialogue and less ideological diversity.
Media Bias on Parade   Indoctrination and Censorship

Santa calls it quits

from Reason: Red tape and the holidays.

Regulation Nation

Citizen pedophile hunter arrested for catching child predators better than police

from TheFreeThoughtProject: A self-proclaimed pedophile hunter, who lures would-be child molesters into public spaces where they can be arrested, has been arrested for this practice.

The Government is Not Us

Cities, volunteers clash over feeding homeless in public

from Yahoo: One reason for the clash is that citations to those feeding the homeless helps feed the coffers of politicians.

The Government is Not Us

When leftist virtue signaling goes horribly wrong

fromTheDailySheeple: HuffPost writer Andy Ostroy attempted to virtue signal as a progressive liberal by attacking Republican Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina as a token black man and a “manipulated prop” being used to sell the tax bill. Then ...

Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption   Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

December 21, 2017

VIDEO: Fox News Reports - Corruption@FBI 4

from LibertyPen/YouTube: James Rosen, Bret Baier, Greg Jarrett, Tucker Carlson and others report on the conflicts of interests and double standards in play within the FBI and how the credibility of their investigation is effected.
Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption    The Government is Not Us

‘Drugs are too expensive for the NHS – and people are paying with their lives’

from TheGuardian: The high cost of "free" socialized medicine in the UK.
Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

Martial law in America: Cook County commissioner asks the U.N. to send troops to Chicago 

from ActivistPost: Liberal leaders in Chicago are now openly planning to declare martial law, complete with UN shock troops on the streets to police the American population.
Police State America

Trump and the GOP take a crucial bite out of the death tax

from WashingtonExaminer: Family-owned business across the country have extra reason to celebrate this Christmas season. President Trump will soon sign the GOP tax bill, which doubles the estate, gift and generation-skipping tax exemptions.
Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

Net neutrality vs. Internet freedom

from CapitalismMagazine: The Internet is not a collectivist commune; it is a free, voluntary, and private association of individuals and corporations harmoniously pursuing their individual goals.
Regulation Nation

Because Cali legalized weed, 500,000 ‘convicts’ get a second chance at freedom

from FreeThoughtProject: Nearly half a million people who have been labeled as felons for possessing a plant, could see their cannabis convictions cleared in California.
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

November 24, 2017

Good Samaritans shutdown, ticketed for feeding homeless during Thanksgiving holiday

from TheFreeThoughtProject: Feeding the homeless is now illegal in Atlanta and you will be ticketed and extorted unless you pay the state for permission beforehand.
Regulation Nation

VIDEO: Libertarian Car Talk

from LibertyPen/YouTube: From the Tom Woods Show, Eric Peters on the latest libertarian car issues.
Regulation Nation

NSA Internet surveillance under Section 702 violates the First Amendment

from EFF: It’s not just our Fourth Amendment rights to privacy that are in the crosshairs, but also our First Amendment rights. These rights to anonymously speak, associate, access information, and engage in political activism are the bedrock of our democracy, and they’re endangered by the NSA’s pervasive surveillance.
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

How Jeff Sessions plans to end medical marijuana before the year is over

from Newsweek: Sessions is known for being one of the nation's toughest critics of legal pot. He once said the KKK was "OK until I found out they smoked pot."
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai: Killing Net Neutrality will set the Internet free

from Reason: Promises that "we're going to see an explosion in the kinds of connectivity and the depth of that connectivity" like never before.
Regulation Nation

Pro–net neutrality graphic makes argument against net neutrality

from Reason: Do net neutrality advocates fear consumer choice?
Regulation Nation

November 10, 2017

TSA fails most tests in latest undercover operation at US airports

from ABC News: Procedures that are highly effective in eroding individual rights are not so effective at detecting contraband.
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

Marijuana Legalization 2017: States and cities where weed won this November

from Inverse: Pot remains illegal at a federal level and is still seen as a “life-wrecking” substance by the country’s Attorney General. But cannabis advocates made enormous strides in elections across the country this week.
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

Could giving property rights to the world's poor unlock trillions?

from BBC: Some of the most important parts of our modern economy can't be seen - but they can be heard. That's what one Peruvian economist concluded while walking through the idyllic rice fields of Bali, Indonesia, in the 1990s.
Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

Congress is blowing its shot at real NSA reform

from The Verge: This year’s 702 reauthorization is the best chance in years to rein in the NSA.
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

Senate pushes to eliminate Jeff Sessions' civil asset forfeiture program

from Civilized: A bipartisan group of senators released a letter yesterday in which they called on the legislative body to pass a law to restrict the ability of the Department of Justice to enact civil asset forfeiture programs.
Police State America

Founder of web browser Opera says worried about online privacy

from Reuters: People should worry about online data collection by technology companies because it gives them unparalleled insight into users lives, the creator of one of the biggest web browsers, Opera, said on Thursday.
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

September 19, 2017

How the government can steal your stuff: 6 questions about civil asset forfeiture answered

from The Conversation: Civil asset forfeiture laws let authorities, such as federal marshals or local sheriffs, seize property – cash, a house, a car, a cellphone – that they suspect is involved in criminal activity.
Police State America

Stop encouraging people to live in dangerous places

from Reason: Make Harvey and Irma our last blank checks, and from here on out, have people pay their own freight for living dangerously.
Economic Policy: Statism vs The Free Market

Walter E Williams: The Welfare State Legacy

from Creators Syndicate: So you think that the problems of today's black Americans are a result of a legacy of slavery, racial discrimination and poverty?
The Welfare State: Promoting Dependence

Internet raises $80k for hot dog vendor mugged by government

from Foundation for Economic Freedom: A cop steals money from a hot dog vendor's wallet. Then, the Internet provides justice.
Police State America

🎬  So you think money is the root of all evil?

from LibertyPen: Excerpts from Atlas Shrugged in response to the comment that money is the root of all evil. From the brilliant Ayn Rand
Economic Policy: Statism vs The Free Market

America does not need socialism, but more laissez-faire capitalism

from Capitalism Magazine: Very often bad ideas do not die. They simply reappear during periods of supposed social and political crisis in slightly different intellectual garb.
Economic Policy: Statism vs The Free Market

VIDEO: Andrew Napolitano - The Need For Encryption

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

VIDEO: How To Chat Anonymously Online

Donald Trump Wants To 'Close Up The Internet'

by Joey Clark.       Exploiting the anti-terror hysteria. Donald Trump recently suggested “closing that internet up in some ways” in order to help combat terrorism over concerns that children and others are being propagandized by ISIS and other groups. Speaking to his usual raucous throng of supporters, Trump opined, “We’re losing a lot of people ... 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

Ted Cruz: Internet Freedom & Free Speech In Great Peril

by John Hayward.   Sen. Ted Cruz is issuing a strong warning about the threats to free speech and Internet freedom. “You know, the Obama FCC has invoked the Fairness Doctrine a number of times with sort of wistful glances to the past. Nostalgia,” he said. “You know if I had suggested years ago that the Obama administration would send government    ... MORE

Lawmakers: U.S. Plan For Internet May Be Unconstitutional

by Rudy Takala.       President Obama's plan to "internationalize" the Internet may be unconstitutional, key members of Congress are claiming. The group of lawmakers sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office last week, saying the plan to relinquish oversight of Internet domain name functions to a global, multi-stakeholder body raised      ... MORE

How Jeb Bush Would Destroy The Internet & Your Privacy

by Trevor Timm.          Do you want to live in a country where Internet Service Providers can slow down and censor your internet traffic at will, where the NSA has vastly more power than it does today and where end-to-end encryption may be illegal?   Then Jeb Bush is the Republican presidential contender for you: he has positioned himself       ... MORE

AT&T Has “Partnership” With NSA To Spy On US Internet

by Clayton Browne.     Your world delivered. The most recent release of secret documents by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden makes it clear that telecom giant AT&T has been actively cooperating with the NSA in its large scale program to spy on the internet traffic of Americans. Based on the documents, it appears that AT&T has been        ... MORE