January 27, 2018

Businesses are being forced to pay the police to let them spy on customers

fromMassPrivateI: In Michigan, politicians are mandating businesses install surveillance equipment connected to the police department.
Police State America     Government is Watching Every Move You Make

Why no gadget can prove how stoned you are

fromReason: The truth contained within this article is for your consumption only. Don't expect it to influence authorities to who are vested in the prevailing wisdom being otherwise.
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange   Regulation Nation    Police State America

Venezuela's economy circles the drain, inflation jumps 1000 % in just one day

fromEconomicPolicyJournal: Prof Steve Hanke reports: Yesterday, Venezuelan inflation surpassed 6,000% for the first time. Today, it has surpassed 7,000%, sitting at 7,155%. #Venezuela is in an economic free fall.
Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

New York governor wants taxpayers to fund college education for illegals

fromReason: Andrew Cuomo refuses to take a back seat to Jerry Brown in the crazy car.
Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption      Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

Tyrannical Law will throw waiters in jail who offer customers unsolicited plastic straws

fromReason: Busybodies minding your own business. Lawmakers will use the barrel of a gun to enforce a tyrannical state laws to reduce customer service.
Regulation Nation

The plan is for driverless police cars to patrol freeways to insure zero speeders

fromDigitalTrends: The filings explain Ford’s autonomous patrol car would primarily rely on a vehicle-to-vehicle communication system. 
Regulation Nation    Police State America    Government is Watching Every Move You Make

January 18, 2018

Lawmakers want James Clapper prosecuted for his testimony lies before statute of limitations runs out

fromWashingtonExaminers: Congress looks to keep a big swamp gator from wriggling off the hook.

Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption      The Government is Not Us

Minimum wage hikes inflict maximum pain

fromReason: Hiking the minimum wage is feel-good humanitarian idea that’s guaranteed to hurt actual humans.

Regulation Nation

Learn how California’s 2018 cannabis taxes work in two minutes

fromGetNugg: The new California taxes on recreational and medical cannabis purchases place a huge premium on the price of products compared to what we’re all used to. It’s important you understand exactly what these taxes mean and what they’re for.

The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

5 senators are filibustering an attempt to expand warrantless surveillance of Americans

fromMotherboard: 3 Democrats and 2 Republicans are filibustering the Senate vote on the reauthorization of FISA Section 702.

Government is Watching Every Move You Make

VIDEO: Everyone You Love Did Drugs

fromReasonTV: It turns out that a lot of accomplished, well-respected historical figures did drugs. From Winston Churchill taking amphetamines to Thomas Edison lacing his wine with cocaine.

The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

Pew: US media bias ranks worst in the world

fromWashingtonExaminer: Americans on both sides of the political aisle believe the media does a poor job covering political issues fairly, according to a blockbuster new survey of media consumption in 38 nations.

Media Bias on Parade

December 23, 2017

The secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook

from Politico: An ambitious U.S. task force targeting Hezbollah's billion-dollar criminal enterprise ran headlong into the White House's desire for a nuclear deal with Iran.

Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption   Defense Versus The War Machine

Cops kill 7-year-old boy while executing unarmed woman in a neighborhood full of kids

from TheFreeThoughtProject: Multiple deputies opened fire on an unarmed woman in a neighborhood full of children on Christmas break and they killed a 7-year-old boy.

Police State America    The Government is Not Us

VIDEO: The Vision of Harry Browne

from LibertyPen/YouTube: From C-Span (2000), former Libertarian presidential candidate Harry Browne shares his philosophy on the gun rights, affirmative action, taxes, Social Security, drug laws and other political topics.

Individual Liberty: America's First Principle   2nd Amendment Assaults

Rand Paul: Obama administration against Trump might be 'worse than Watergate'

from WashingtonExaminer: Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., argued Thursday that senior Obama administration officials might be guilty of trying to keep President Trump from getting elected last November.

Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption   The Government is Not Us

The trillion dollar welfare program

from FFF: What is especially significant about fiscal year 2017 is that total outlays of the Social Security Administration (SSA) exceeded a trillion dollars for the first time

The Welfare State: Promoting Dependency

The myth of the playground pusher

from Reason: In Tennessee and around the country, "drug-free school zones" are little more than excuses for harsher drug sentencing.

The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

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

December 2, 2017

We live in a police state, and our legal system is the cause 

from InsiderSources: Things have gotten so ridiculous in the search for victimless criminals that police have even taken to setting each other up, if only inadvertently. Recently, Detroit officers posing as drug buyers brawled with officers posing as dealers.
Police State America   The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

A non-political strategy for freedom

from LibertarianRepublic: You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. -- R. Buckminster Fuller
Individual Liberty: America's First Principle   Justice is a Result, Not Just a Process

It's too easy for the government to invade privacy in name of security

from LibertarianRepublic: The use of the cellphone as a surveillance tool is at the heart of a major privacy case heard by the Supreme Court this week in Carpenter v. United States. At issue may be the very future of privacy in America.
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

Bill expanding concealed-carry gun rights advances in House

from NY Times: Gun rights legislation that would allow concealed-carry permit holders from one state to legally carry their guns to any other state passed a key House panel and appeared to be headed for a vote on the floor of the House.
2nd Amendment Assaults

When legal drugs harm and illegal drugs help

from ScientificAmerican: The frequently arbitrary nature of our drug classification schemes is causing more and more confusion.
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

Libertarians: Our rulers are wearing no clothes

from the Libertarian Institute: Libertarians have always said that our rulers are wearing no clothes.  Now it’s turning out that this figure of speech is the literal truth.
Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

November 15, 2017

Financial tyranny: ‘we the people’ are the new permanent underclass in America

from Rutherford Institute: Americans can no longer afford to get sick. That’s because they are struggling to stretch their dollars far enough to pay their bills, get out of debt and ensure that if and when an illness arises, it doesn’t bankrupt them.
The Government is Not Us

Feminization of America is bad for the world

from Creators: Last week, The New York Times published an article, "Sweeping Away Gender-Specific Toys and Labels," that contained three sentences that explain one of the most important phenomena in American life.
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

Detroit cops posing as drug dealers brawl with colleagues posing as customers

from Reason: Maybe this is how the war on drugs should be fought from now on.
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

How the left uses blacks like stalking horses

from Creators: Professor Walter E Williams provides his customary dose of wisdom.
Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

Rand Paul says he will propose individual-mandate repeal

from Breitbart: Rand Paul Tuesday took up President Donald Trump’s challenge to Republicans to include the repeal of the Obamacare individual-mandate in their tax overhaul legislation.
Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

12-year-old sues Attorney General Jeff Sessions to legalize medical marijuana

from NBC News: A young girl files a lawsuit attempting to educate an old fart.
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

November 11, 2017

How to talk to your kids about guns

from Reason: Hint: It's the same way you should talk to them about kidnapping.
2nd Amendment Assaults

Police kick off program to warrantlessly test saliva to check for ‘drugged driving’

from The Free Thought Project: Civil liberties experts are up in arms over the police state rolling out a warrantless saliva testing program to test people for drugged driving. Warrantless searches are not-so-slowly being normalized.
Police State America      The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

VIDEO: Cop is caught planting drugs on black man

from CBS Los Angeles: So what was the motive? Were there vacancies at the jail or was this to set up a civil asset forfeiture? The public servant in question has no comment.
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange   Police State America

Taxation is robbery

from Mises: Law and sophistry have covered up the true character of taxation. There cannot be a good tax nor a just one; every tax rests its case on compulsion.
Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

The great flu vaccine hoax: new evidence

from The Daily Sheeple: Apparently, the powers-that-be want everyone to take the seasonal flu vaccine out of loyalty and blind faith. Because actual science reveals the hoax.
Indoctrination and Censorship

Roy Moore story unraveling? One accuser worked for Hillary, another for Biden

from Zero Hedge: The evidence is piling up indicating the Washington Post is up to its old fake news tricks.
Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption   Media Bias on Parade

November 8, 2017

Opioid commission mistakenly blames pain treatment for drug deaths

from Reason: The panel wants to make prescription analgesics even harder to obtain.
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

CNN caught editing video to make Trump look like a feckless boor in Japan 

from TheGatewayPundit: This is CNN. Compare the story to the video.
Media Bias on Parade

'Something has happened and it's very bad' - Democrats throwing Hillary Clinton under the bus

from AllNewsPipeline: Pundits are asking about what is coming.
Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

Good guy with a gun: Stephen Willeford named as man who stopped Texas shooter

from Breitbart: Since criminals, by definition, do not obey laws. Gun control only disarms the good guys. This is why
we don't want good guys disarmed.
2nd Amendment Assaults

Walter E Williams: Ignorance Versus Stupidity

from Creators: The beauty of market allocation of goods and services, compared with government fiat, is no one person needs to know all that's necessary to get apples to your supermarket.
Economic Policy: Statism vs The Free Market

The anatomy of a national nervous breakdown

from Rutherford Institute: How do you keep a nation safe when not even seemingly “safe places” like churches and rock
concerts and shopping malls are immune from violence?
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

October 2, 2017

8 really bad laws that went into effect today

from Reason: From cellphone tracking in Connecticut to gummy bear bans in Colorado and bitcoin surveillance in Japan.
The Government is Not Us

Cops now hiding behind kids on school buses to bust people texting while driving

from The Free Thought Project: In a new revenue generation scheme, police across the country are now using school buses as a vantage point to catch drivers who are texting while driving.
Police State America

🎬  VIDEO: Rush Limbaugh - The Plot to Kill the NFL

from LibertyPen: While some say the NFL protests are about police brutality and free speech, Limbaugh makes a compelling case that the end game is to weaken and destroy the NFL.
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

Bogus stoned driving arrests highlight dubious methods of 'drug recognition experts'

from Reason: A lawsuit by three sober drivers who were busted for DUI questions the pot-detecting abilities of DREs.
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

Marijuana drive-thrus and online weed orders are a real possibility in this state

from Motley Fool: The Pine Tree State could have consumers seeing a new form of green, at the drive-thru window and via online checkout, by next year.
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

Police union complains that public got to see them roughing up Utah nurse

from Reason: Transparency about behavior of government employees is not a violation of due process.
Police State America

September 18, 2017

Should you tell the cops you have a gun?

from Reason: Some gun owners argue that disclosure is considerate and prudent, while others worry it will escalate a routine traffic stop into a tense, unpleasant, and possibly life-threatening encounter.
2nd Amendment Assaults

25 most commonly used recreational drugs in America

from St. Louis Post-Dispatch: The drugs Americans prefer most. Of course, all of them are either illegal or severely restricted and heavily taxed. Government reverence for the pursuit of happiness is not exactly that of the founders.
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

Irma watch: How likely are prohibitions on ‘price gouging’ to help the poor?

from The American Spectator: Some gun owners argue that disclosure is considerate and prudent, while others worry it will escalate a routine traffic stop into a tense, unpleasant, and possibly life-threatening encounter.
Economic Policy: Statism vs The Free Market

Gun rights top media poll

from The Daily Caller: Lost in the storm of hurricane coverage, a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll demonstrates Americans’ growing support for gun rights. 

2nd Amendment Assaults

John Stossel: The best part of the Constitution

from Reason: Stossel shares his thoughts about Constitution Day (September 17).
Individual Liberty: America's First Principle

Will Las Vegas be ‘Amsterdam on steroids’? Door opens for pot lounges

from NBC News: What happens in Vegas will still stay in Vegas — but perhaps no longer behind closed doors, at least when it comes to pot.
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

The War On Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

Latest Update: July 25, 2017

Sessions suggests Trump lied when he advocated marijuana legalization be left to the states
The DEA says ‘marijuana is not medicine’ — reality says otherwise
The states are revolting; marijuana legalization not just happening at the ballot box 

Trump doubles down on failed drug war; wants more prisons less freedom

Kratom could be a cure for the Opioid Epidemic, yet the DEA wants to ban it

On 4/20, it’s a mixed bag for backers of pot legalization

The deadly war on drugs, waged by your local SWAT team

The war on drugs is a war on people

VIDEO: Carl Hart - The Science Of Illicit Drugs

A. Barton Hinkle: Coming Out of the Drug War Haze?

Cautious optimism may be appropriate. President Obama's recent speech on the opioid overdose epidemic offers a ray of hope that the country's approach to drugs might one day adopt what has been called the first rule of American business: When all else fails, try doing it right. Noting with considerable understatement that "treatment is    ... MORE

VIDEO: The Cost Of The War On Drugs

Law enforcement's spending addiction.

Stephanie Slade: 'Drug Users Need Treatment,' Says President Obama. Not So Fast, Says Dr. Carl Hart

The vast majority of drug users are not addicts.  "For too long we've viewed drug addiction through the lens of criminal justice," President Obama said yesterday at a conference in Atlanta. "The most important thing to do is reduce demand. And the only way to do that is to provide treatment—to see it as a public health problem and not a  ... MORE

Sheri Fink: Healthcare Rationing Begins - Drug Shortages

The new incentives.   In the operating room at the Cleveland Clinic, Dr. Brian Fitzsimons has long relied on a decades-old drug to prevent hemorrhages in patients undergoing open-heart surgery. The drug, aminocaproic acid, is widely used, cheap and safe. “It never hurt,” he said. “It only helps.” Then manufacturing issues caused a     ... MORE

Steven Greenhut: Price Controls Will Slow Drug Innovation

More bad ideas from the left coast. The California state legislature has a habit of legislating by anecdote. Assembly members or senators may have a bad experience at a state agency or with private industry and they write a bill to address it. Often, legislators offer proposals based on the latest news cycle. Ultimately there are hearings, a long vetting   ... MORE

VIDEO: Glenn Greenwald - Drug Policy In Portugal

Jeff Nesbit: We Have Lost The War On Drugs

Criminalizing drugs just destroys more people.     It's time, finally, to face the ugly truth. We've lost the war on drugs in America. We need a new playbook, now, before more lives are lost. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said last week that fatal drug overdoses in America were the highest in recorded history in 2014. The news   ... MORE

Effort To Curb Painkiller Prescribing Faces Stiff Opposition

by Matthew Perrone. The option destroyers meet opposition. A bold federal effort to curb prescribing of painkillers may be faltering amid stiff resistance from drugmakers, industry-funded groups and, now, even other public health officials. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was on track to finalize new prescribing guidelines for opioid     ... MORE