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 19, 2017

Is the FBI really unaware of how they’ve abused its own surveillance?

from TheDailySheeple: It’s amazing when the fox guards the chicken house, and it’s no more apparent than with the recent testimony before Congress by FBI Director Christopher Wray.
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

Twitter deploys censorship to combat "hate speech"

from Alternet: Unpopular ideas have no place on Twitter as website becomes PC echo chamber.
Indoctrination and Censorship   Media Bias on Parade

$15 minimum wage studies predict bleak future for California, Seattle

from TheGazette: California became the first state to increase its minimum wage to $15 an hour, but that could mean the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs, a report warned last week.
Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market    Regulation Nation

The big con: The truth behind Net Neutrality and why the sky Is not falling

from TheDailyBell: An Obama era regulation which attempted to police businesses was repealed, paving the way for the free market to run its course.
Regulation Nation

California wildfires don’t have to be the new normal

from Mises: When land is privately owned, owners have strong incentives to maintain its long-term value. In the South, this means that owners monitor their land for concentrations of deadwood that could spark fires.
Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market    Regulation Nation

Musician arrested, strip searched, thrown in jail for singing without a license 

from TheDailyBell: Insecure bully cops will arrest citizens for questioning their orders, and will charge them with “obstruction of justice.”
Regulation Nation   Police State America

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 30, 2017

On patriotic correctness

from TheLibertarianInstitute: Our society is one of the most prosperous and freest that has ever existed. But society and government are not the same, and we would do well to remember that.
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

NY Times ‘Angry Hannity’ photo select confirms host’s belief of ‘liberal bias’

from Mediaite: And the NY Times has something of a predictable pattern of portraying progressive icons in a most flattering light. (see CNN’s Jeff Zucker, indie filmmaker Spike Lee and original Wikileaks discloser Chelsea Manning for example)
Media Bias on Parade

Why Net Neutrality was mistaken from the beginning (AOL edition)

from Reason: It turns out that Tom Wheeler, the FCC head who imposed the rules, doesn't know what he's talking about.
Regulation Nation

VIDEO: Carl Sagan - Science and Skepticism

from LibertyPen/YouTube: Scientist Carl Sagan is concerned about America’s future when citizens lack the scientific and technological understanding to make informed decisions.
Indoctrination and Censorship

FLASHBACK: Hypocrite Matt Lauer grilled Bill O’Reilly over sexual harassment

from NewsBusters: The time has come for Matt Lauer to answer the same questions he poised to Bill O'Reilly!
Media Bias on Parade

Cop tries to taser man for refusing to give ID, tasers fellow cop instead

from TheFreeThoughtProject: A man trying to assert his right not to give police his identification was arrested, but not before a cop tasered his own partner in the process.
Police State America   The Government is Not Us

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 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

September 12, 2017

End warrantless deep state spying: don't renew 702

from WND: One more chance to rein in warrantless domestic surveillance before it's too late.
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

The largest threat to our prosperity is government spending and we are all to blame

from Creators: The fabulous Walter E Williams explains that politicians are doing precisely what the American people elect them to office to do — namely, use the power of their office to take the rightful property of other Americans and deliver it to them.
Economic Policy: Statism vs. The Free Market

Entire student section detained, forced to have blood/urine tests after beer can found at football game

from The Free Thought Project: After high school officials found a single beer can during a football game, 75 students had their rights violated with forced blood draws and urine samples.
Police State America

Net Neutrality rules threaten internet free speech

from The Competitive Enterprise Institute: Advocates of net neutrality regulation profess preservation of free speech online as their motivation for heavy-handed government control of the Internet, but recent events show that just the opposite is true.
Indoctrination and Censorship

Feds spend $138,000 asking four-year-olds about their ‘internal sense of gender identity’

from The Washington Free Beacon: "Our current research study is recruiting children aged 3–12 who are transgender, gender nonconforming, and siblings of gender nonconforming children," Your tax money at work.
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

Carey Wedler: Inconvenient Truths - 15 News Stories From 2015 You Should Have Heard About But Probably Didn’t

What we don't know does hurt us.    In 2015, the iron fist of power clamped down on humanity, from warfare to terrorism (I repeat myself) to surveillance, police brutality, and corporate hegemony. The environment was repeatedly decimated, the health of citizens was constantly put at risk, and the justice system and media alike were perverted to   ... 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

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

Lawrence W. Reed: Internet at the Speed of Government

Government always quick to fix what is not broken.      Last month, the Federal Communications Commission launched a historic power grab over the Internet, euphemistically known as “net neutrality,” based on a Great Depression-era law to regulate public utilities. While entrepreneurs are pursuing cutting-edge business models and    ... 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

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

Net Neutrality Compromises the Internet’s Future

by Donald Rieck and Wayne Winegarden.     Perhaps President Obama envisions that the Internet is operated by Ernestine, the condescending telephone operator played by Lily Tomlin on Laugh-In. Otherwise, it is difficult to justify why he would want to hobble the 21st century broadband industry with regulations designed in the    ... MORE

If You Like Your Internet, You Can Keep Your Internet

What Comcast and Time Warner paid Obama to do.        The principle of net neutrality is easy to understand and support; to treat the delivery all data equally. This has been the status quo. Works great. Few oppose that, but supporting the principle of net neutrality is not the same thing as supporting the government's plan to enforce that   ... MORE

Regulating The Internet Hurts Entrepreneurial Freedom

by Ted Cruz.  Never before has it been so easy to take an idea and turn it into a business. With a simple Internet connection, some ingenuity and a lot of hard work, anyone today can create a new service or app or start selling products nationwide. In the past, such a person would have to know the right people and be able to raise substantial start-up    ... MORE