June 10, 2019

U.S. government’s moves against Julian Assange are a blueprint for making journalists into felons

fromTheStar: Empowering prosecutors to decide who does or doesn’t deserve press protections would restrict “freedom of the press” to a small, cloistered priesthood of privileged citizens designated by the government as “journalists.” The First Amendment was written to avoid precisely that danger.  

The Government is Not Us        Individual Liberty: America's First Principle

VIDEO: Homelessness - California's Ugly Growth Industry

fromLibertyPen/YouTube: California has an epidemic of homelessness that is hard to believe. A look at what is going on in Golden State’s richest cities. Karen Hix, Tucker Carlson.  

Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market      The Welfare State: Promoting Dependency

Hacking dirty government secrets is not a crime

fromCounterpunch: "Corporate media’s instant reversal on Assange—from rapist scum to First Amendment hero—elevates self-serving hypocrisy to high art. But that’s OK. Whatever gets Assange closer to freedom is welcome."  

The Government is Not Us        Individual Liberty: America's First Principle

Give up your password or go to jail: Police push legal boundaries to get into cellphones

fromNBCNews: “The world should know that what they’re doing out here is crazy,” said a man who refused to share his passcode with police.  

Police State America

You’re under arrest: How the police state muzzles our right to speak truth to power

fromRutherfordInstitute: "What the architects of the police state want are submissive, meek citizens who don’t talk back, don’t challenge government authority and don’t speak out against government misconduct."  

Police State America

Oakland, California decriminalizes magic mushrooms and peyote

fromUSAToday: The city council’s vote directed law enforcement to cease investigating and prosecuting individuals for using or possessing drugs sourced from plants, cacti and – most commonly – mushrooms.  

The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

January 10, 2018

Operation Condor – How NSA Director Mike Rogers saved the U.S. from a massive Constitutional crisis…

fromConservativeTreeHouse: This outline is the story of how the FBI Counterintelligence Division and DOJ National Security Division were weaponized and the full story of what House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes is currently working to expose.

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

Charges against Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and his sons tossed from federal court

fromReason: Judge cites "flagrant prosecutorial misconduct" on the government's part.

The Government is Not Us     Justice is a Result, Not Just a Process

Red Robin eliminates positions after minimum wage hikes

fromFOX23: In the wake of minimum wage hikes around the country, a chain hopes to save some money. Red Robin announced Monday it plans to cut bus boys from 570 restaurants. The move will save the company about $8 million over 2018.

 Regulation Nation      Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

Elite universities get low rankings for viewpoint diversity

fromCampusReform: The University of Chicago topped the list with a score of 98, while the University of Oregon came in last with a score of just 10.

Indoctrination and Censorship

Federal agencies may be regularly hiding surveillance methods in criminal cases

fromReason: "This use of secret evidence may be occurring regularly in cases throughout the country."

The Government is Not Us    Justice is a Result, Not Just a Process    Government is Watching Every Move You Make

Justice Department claims that increasing traffic stops by 56% will lower crime

fromMassPrivateI: In what can best be described as government sanctioned theft, our justice system has devised a new way to take money and liberty from minorities. Police are using traffic citations to help balance budgets and much more.

Regulation Nation    Police State America

Juries Should Rein In Prosecutors With Too Much Power

by Glenn Harlan Reynolds, Washington Post.    If there’s strong evidence that you’ve committed a crime, there’s still hope. Despite the evidence, those responsible for convicting you may choose to let you go, if they think that sending you to jail would result in an injustice. That can happen through what’s called “prosecutorial discretion,” where  ... MORE

VIDEO: Robert Nozick - The Tale Of The Slave

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

Hard Times For The Nixon Of The Democrats

by Wesley Pruden.  The wheel that goes around comes around, as life teaches us all, even Hillary Clinton. She was 27, a reckless and ambitious lawyer for the House Judiciary Committee, working to impeach Richard Nixon. She couldn’t imagine that she would one day be the Nixon of the Democrats, a reckless and ambitious presidential candidate   ... MORE

Why Grand Juries Are A Prosecutor's Best Friend

by Sara J. Berman.   Choosing evidence to control the outcome. Unlike a preliminary hearing, held in court with the defense side present, the grand jury does not make its decision in the context of an adversary proceeding. Rather, grand jurors see and hear only what prosecutors put before them. (Prosecutors technically have an obligation to     ... MORE

Julia Vitullo Martin: Drunk With Power

How Prohibition led to big government.       If they think about Prohibition at all, most Americans probably accept Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter’s conclusion that it was a farce, a “ludicrous caricature of the reforming impulse,” an ineffective albeit financially costly moral crusade imposed on a reluctant populace. Decades   ... MORE

VIDEO: Does Fear Cost Us Our Liberty?

David Harsanyi: Admit It. You Just Want Your Own Dictator

Leaders are unsavory, dangerous, and unAmerican.     This incessant clamoring by voters and punditry for better "leaders" and more "leadership" is one of the most unsavory, dangerous and un-American tendencies in political discourse. When Donald Trump was asked last week by Joe Scarborough what he made of an endorsement from       ... MORE

John Stossel: Politicians Without Borders

Today's politicians seem to have few limits.     When driving on treacherous roads, guardrails are useful. If you fall asleep or maybe you're just a bad driver, guardrails may prevent you from going off a cliff. Recently, The Wall Street Journal's Kimberley Strassel used the phrase "no political guardrails" to point out how many of today's    ... MORE

Damon Root: Donald Trump Vs. Clarence Thomas

Trump loves Kelo. Justice Thomas does not.    Speaking before a crowd in South Carolina this weekend, Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump spoke out about his least and most favorite Supreme Court justices. As the Associated Press reports, Trump attacked Chief Justice John Roberts "while praising Associate Justice Clarence Thomas   ... MORE

The Unelected Shadow Government Is Here To Stay

by John W. Whitehead.      America’s next president will inherit more than a bitterly divided nation teetering on the brink of financial catastrophe when he or she assumes office. He will also inherit a shadow government, one that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country. To be precise,       ... MORE

John Stossel: My Trump Problem

Using government as a weapon.  Sometimes I like Donald Trump. He makes me laugh when he mocks reporters' stupid questions. Sometimes he's smart. When Maryland's lefty governor said a tax on rich people would "raise revenue," Trump told me why it wouldn't. The taxpayers would just flee: "I know these people! They're international people!     ... MORE

Sheldon Richman: Representative Government Is A Fiction

If we really live under a representative government, how can a president take the country to war in Syria without even a show vote in Congress?   "The success of government...," the late historian Edmund Morgan wrote, "requires the acceptance of fictions, requires the willing suspension of disbelief, requires us to believe that the emperor   ... MORE

How To Steal $75,000 From The Poor In One Day’s Work

by Jeffrey A. Tucker. A tax-collecting scheme disguised as justice. The new liberality concerning marijuana possession in the United States is long overdue, but let’s not exaggerate how much progress we’ve made. Users might not be ending up in jail as frequently as they did 10 years ago. But cops, judges, and courts still exercise arbitrary power to ruin    ... MORE

Nick Gillespie: Why Intellectuals Hate Capitalism

Whole Foods CEO John Mackey explains.   "Intellectuals have always disdained commerce," says Whole Foods Market co-founder John Mackey. They "have always sided with the aristocrats to maintain a society where the businesspeople were kept down." Having helped create the global grocery chain intellectuals arguably like best,       ... MORE

Eminent Domain Trumps Your Property Rights

by Daniel John Sobieski.      In the ready, shoot, aim world of Donald Trump, the adage that a bell cannot be unrung undeniably applies and particularly with his statement that eminent domain, the government’s taking of private property for what Marxists and socialists would call “the greater good”, is “wonderful”. He has since, in Clintonian      ... MORE

‘Neutralizing’ John Lennon: One Man Against the ‘Monster’

by John W. Whitehead.  John Lennon, born 75 years ago on October 9, 1940, was a musical genius and pop cultural icon. He was also a vocal peace protester and anti-war activist and a high-profile example of the lengths to which the U.S. government will go to persecute those who dare to challenge its authority. Long before Chelsea Manning and    ... MORE

VIDEO: How To Create A Gun-Free America In 5 Steps