September 30, 2019

Brett Kavanaugh debate exemplifies culture war between left and right

fromTheHill: Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh is either a sexual brute or a badly-aggrieved victim of a witch hunt. The debate on this question exemplifies two diametrically opposed approaches to justice.

Justice is a Result, Not Just a Process

Face masks to decoy t-shirts: The rise of anti-surveillance fashion

fromThompsonReutersFoundation: Fashion designers are coming up with novel ways to stay private in public.

Government is Watching Every Move You Make

Court says using chalk on tires for parking enforcement violates Constitution

fromNPR: Anything that weakens the state's ability to exploit the citizen with confiscatory fines is ok with me.

Regulation Nation

This law allows hospitals to kidnap you for profit

fromTheDailyBell: "Florida’s Baker Act allows doctors, police, or judges to involuntarily commit patients to psychiatric hospitals for up to 72 hours if they show signs that they may hurt themselves or others."

The Government is Not Us

VIDEO: Tucker Carlson - That Existential Threat

fromLibertyPen/YouTube: Tucker Carlson explores the veracity of claims that climate change is as “existential threat.” Do the presidential candidates who advocate policies based on that premise believe it themselves?

Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery           Economic Policy: Statism Vs The Free Market

51% of young voters believe humanity could be wiped out within 15 years

fromScottRasmussen: No wonder poor little Greta is a basket case. She has been convinced that climate change is an existential threat. See video above.

Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

July 19, 2019

Could I have some news with my emotions, please?

fromTheHill: From the earliest days of television, journalists understood the power of an image to overwhelm objectivity. That’s why Cronkite and others worked hard to present the news without emotional cues.

Media Bias on Parade

New numbers show San Francisco's homeless population has grown by 30 percent

fromReason: Democrats love the poor. That's why they make so many.

Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

Libertarian group demands NASA remove false '97 percent consensus' global warming claim

fromPJMedia: The study — and the 97 percent figure that depends on it — is fatally flawed, and NASA has 120 days to respond to the CEI complaint..

Indoctrination and Censorship

Barr: Justice Dept. is 'all in' on criminal justice overhaul

fromNewser: Under the resentencing provisions of the law, more than 1,600 inmates have qualified for a reduced sentence and more than 1,100 have already been released, a Justice Department official said. 

Justice is a Result, Not Just a Process

VIDEO: Tucker Carlson - Climate Change Wasn't About the Environment At All

fromYouTube/LibertyPen: So you thought climate change was about the environment? From Tucker Carlson Tonight, a peak inside the great Green New Deal deception. Marc Morano, Tucker Carlson. 

Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

Beware, the IRS is eyeing your inherited money

fromMarketWatch: From the earliest days of television, journalists understood the power of an image to overwhelm objectivity. That’s why Cronkite and others worked hard to present the news without emotional cues.

Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

May 13, 2019

President Trump's tariffs, once described as negotiating tools, may be here to stay

fromGreenwichTime:   Failure of the United States and China to reach agreement Friday on a comprehensive trade deal raises the possibility that high tariffs on imported goods may be a permanent feature of the U.S. economy.

Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

VIDEO: Tucker Carlson - Trump's Claims of Spying

fromLibertyPen/YouTube:   From Tucker Carlson Tonight, a look back at Trump’s allegations that the Obama administration was spying on him and the accompanying media coverage as well as the upshot to the story.

Media Bias on Parade        Politics and Other Official Act of Corruption

Food prices to soar thanks to the trade war's tariffs

fromSHTF:   The consequences of the Trump Administration’s trade war on China and other countries will be rising food prices for the American consumer.

Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

The new green serfdom

fromReason:   The Green New Deal is a path to a more militarized and authoritarian society.

Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

Walter E Williams: Higher education in America

fromCreators:   "Colleges should be forced to share in covering loan defaults, namely they need to have some skin in the game. More importantly, Vedder says that we should end or revise the federal student aid program."

Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

Idaho repeals its regulatory code

fromMercatus:   Forcing a fresh start by repealing the entire regulatory code may be the newest arrow in the red tape cutter’s quiver.

Regulation Nation

Feb 14, 2019

Green New Deal: A Democratic suicide note

fromWND:  Among the endorsers of this Green New Deal is Sen. Cory Booker, who compares the battle to stop climate change to fighting the Nazis in World War II.

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

Senate has uncovered no direct evidence of conspiracy between Trump campaign and Russia

fromNBCNews:  The two and a half year long Democratic Party witch hunt comes up snake eyes.

Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

VIDEO: Tucker Carlson - Environmental Crisis: The Last Straw

fromLibertyPen/YouTube:  Across the nation, the movement to ban plastic straws is gaining momentum. Tucker Carlson looks at the danger posed to Americans by this tubular menace.

Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

National debt hits a new record high: $22 trillion

fromReason:  A new record, but one that won't stand for long.

Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

Cory Booker: ‘This planet simply can’t sustain’ people eating meat

fromWashingtonFreeBeacon:  The latest clown to pile into the car says he "is vegan because eating eggs 'didn't align with my spirit'.

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

Students' free speech rights need to be strengthened

fromNWI:  In 1965, the court reasoned, “It can hardly be argued that students shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”  What happened?
Indoctrination and Censorship

Feb 11, 2019

The real reason 4 cops got shot in Houston last week

fromDailyBell:  When you look deeper at the case, you realize these cops didn’t get shot because of anti-police rhetoric. They got shot because they invaded an innocent couple’s home without announcing themselves.

Police State America   

Green new deal—same old progressive policies

fromReason:  Using climate change to justify government-guaranteed jobs, health care, and housing.

Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

Jackboots in the morning: No one Is spared from this American nightmare

fromRutherfordInstitute:  Whatever dangerous practices you allow the government to carry out now— rest assured, these same practices can and will be used against you when the government decides it wants.

Police State America

Bezos protests invasion of his privacy, as Amazon builds sprawling surveillance state for everyone else

fromTheIntercept:  If the surveillance powers of the NSA, FBI or other agencies were used to obtain incriminating information about Bezos due to their view of him as a political enemy ...

Government is Watching Every Move You Make

New York police killed her son, then refused to answer her questions. The law they’re hiding behind.

fromReason:  An obscure provision designed to protect personnel records makes it nearly impossible to hold the state’s cops accountable.

Police State America      Justice is a Result, Not Just a Process

The libertarian case for a border wall

from71Republic:  Though the wall would require a small amount of force, its long-term savings in government spending shows a principled and pragmatic necessity.

The Welfare State: Promoting Dependency

Dec 17, 2018

District court judge in Texas holds Obamacare is unlawful

fromReason: Do you really care why or are you just going to rejoice?

Regulation Nation

Greedy California politicians eyeball text messaging tax as new resource to mine

fromTheMercuryNews: Millennials favor socialism. They are also the ones who text message most. Perhaps there is a warped kind of justice going on here. 

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

He ain't no Henry Ford---Elon Musk's taxpayer-funded gravy train

fromDavidStockmansContraCorner: Tesla cars are financed by over $280 million in federal tax incentives, including a $7,500 federal tax break and millions more in state rebates and development fees. Can you say crony capitalism?

Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

The EPA wants to get out of puddles and ditches. Environmental activists are outraged.

fromReason: A welcome new federal approach under the Clean Water Act. The Obama EPA defined "navigable water" as basically every ditch, puddle, pond, etc. which made them all fall under its jurisdiction.

Regulation Nation

Three Clinton Foundation whistleblowers to testify about tax Crimes, pay-for-play

fromZeroHedge: Following allegations of sloppy accounting, potential tax fraud and pay-to-play, the Clinton Foundation will be under a Congressional microscope this week.

Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

The EFF gift guide: What’s creeping us out

fromEFF: Here are some gifts being pushed this year that, from a privacy or security standpoint, are on our naughty list.

Government is Watching Every Move You Make

February 28, 2018

Armed and dangerous: If police don’t have to protect the public, what good are they?

fromRutherfordInstitute: In the American police state, police have a tendency to shoot first and ask questions later. So when police in Florida had to deal with a school shooter, what did they do?
Police State America    The Government is Not Us

How environmentalists keep heating bills high

fromCreators: Making the poor poorer is merely collateral damage for those with a religious devotion to environmentalism.
Regulation Nation    Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

VIDEO: Victor Davis Hanson: Obama's Legacy of Identity Politics

fromLibertyPen/YouTube: A look at how the Obama administration deployed tribal affiliations to divide the American people by creation of a majority grievance culture.
Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption    Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

Walter E Williams: Another Liberal-Created Failure

fromCreators: The dollar cost of the liberal vision of deinstitutionalization of mentally ill people is a relatively small part of the burden placed on society. Many innocent people have been victimized by mentally ill people.
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

The pension nightmare for California’s cities is getting scarier

fromSacramentoBee: For politicians who have long been buying votes from the public employees union, the chickens are coming home to roost.
Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market    The Government is Not Us

Venezuelan inmates eating rats and pigeons to avoid starvation

fromBreitbart: Venezuelan prisoners are eating rats and pigeons as a means of survival as food supplies continue to dissipate in the failed socialist state, according to a report published this weekend.
Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market 

September 4, 2017

The greening of Gore's bank account

from Forbes:  How crony capitalists used environmentalist propaganda to justify fattening their accounts with taxpayer dollars.

Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

How society grew cold

from The Daily Bell:  Compelling essay about how dependence on institutions is now out of control. A far more interesting piece than the title suggests.

The Government is Not Us

How Facebook, Twitter silence conservative voices online

from The Hill:  The intolerant left recognizes they cannot win the arena of ideas. Therefore, censorship.

Indoctrination and Censorship

Congress is finally working to defund civil asset forfeiture

from The Hill:  Jeff Sessions may be thwarted in this ratcheting of the police state.

Police State America

Dear AG, Conspiring Against Free Speech Is A Crime

by Glenn Harlan Reynolds.    Breaking the law to shut up climate change dissenters. Federal law  makes it a felony “for two or more persons to agree together to injure, threaten, or intimidate a person in any state, territory or district in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him/her by the Constitution or the laws of   ... MORE

EPA Dodges Accountability For Flint Water Crisis

by Paul Dykewicz.  Government failures at the federal, state and local levels that led to toxic water flowing from the faucets in Flint, Michigan, spurred the House Oversight Committee to hold two hearings this week in which the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and its former Midwest region administrator claimed agency officials    ... MORE

A VERY Inconvenient Truth: Scientists Finally Admit Climate Models Are FAILING To Predict Global Warming

by Michael Bastasch.    A group of scientists recently put out a new study confirming the 15-year “hiatus” in global warming. That study made headlines, but what went largely unnoticed was a major admission made by the paper’s authors: the climate models were wrong. “There is this mismatch between what the climate models are producing     ... MORE

Hottest Year On Record? Claim Not Backed Up By The Data

from Investors Business Daily.    The narrative says we’re living in dangerous times as man’s carbon dioxide emissions heat Earth. But a scientist testifying before Congress showed that the temperature record telling that story can’t be trusted. When the media reported — gleefully because it allowed them to advance their agenda — that 2015  ... MORE

VIDEO: Are Electric Cars Really Green?

Coral Davenport: To Help Pimp Alternative Energy Sources, Obama Is Willing To Impose A $10-A-Barrel Fee On Oil

A tax on production, what could go wrong.     President Obama’s budget request to Congress will include a new fee on oil companies, requiring them to pay $10 to the federal government for every barrel of oil they produce, the White House said on Thursday. The money, which could bring in up to $32 billion in new federal revenue annually, would ... MORE

Flint Lead Poisoning: The Anatomy Of Government Failure

by Shikha Dalmia.         In the simple morality tale that is modern mainstream liberalism, government spending leads to good things and cutting government spending leads to bad things. So when news broke that Flint, Michigan’s, water system was laced with lead and may have poisoned up to 2 percent of city residents, including 23 children, they      ... MORE

5 Ways We Know Al Gore Ran A Global Warming Racket

from Investor's Business Daily.    Fraud: Ten years ago Monday, Al Gore said we had only a decade left to save the planet from global warming. But Earth has been doing just fine. Why do we listen to this man? While preening at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2006 during the premiere of his “An Inconvenient Truth” fib-umentary, Gore    ... MORE

Jack Healy and Kirk Johnson: This Land Is Your Land

The folly of federal land management.    Ken Ivory, a Republican state representative from Utah, has been roaming the West with an alluring pitch to cattle ranchers, farmers and conservatives upset with how Washington controls the wide-open public spaces out here: This land is your land, he says, and not the federal government’s. Mr. Ivory,   ... MORE

Capitalism Loves The Earth But The Greens Hate Capitalism

by Stephen Hicks.    Some parts of the world really are environmental Hells. They are dirty and depleted, making them unhealthy and economically unsustainable. We can argue about the severity of the problems in various places, but I want to focus on another aspect of the debate: determining accurately the causes of the degradation    ... MORE

Obama’s Top Ten Constitutional Violations Of 2015

by Ilya Shapiro.     As we approach the final year of Barack Obama’s presidency, there isn’t much that the president can do to change people’s opinion of him, for better or worse. His legacy, barring some extraordinary occurrence — including an extraterrestrial one, as the holiday advertising blitz for the new Independence Day movie reminds us — is     ... MORE

California Has Plenty Of Water — And Too Much Politics

by Steven Greenhut. Almost everyone knows California is running out of water as it enters the fourth year of a grueling drought. The results are stark, as massive reservoirs turn into mud pits, and state inspectors fine residents for watering their lawns. But in the state's second most populous county, there's a problem of a different sort. The San Diego   ... MORE