January 20, 2020

Why laws against hate speech are dangerous

fromGatestoneInstitute: Pending legislation seeks to bar all kinds of large cash payments to "fight crime and money laundering." Banning cash will allow the government to monitor all citizen transactions for approval.

Indoctrination and Censorship            Individual Liberty: America's First Principle

Top priority for California voters heading into 2020 primary? Homelessness

fromSacBee: Candidates visiting California will likely need to focus more of their energy on explaining how they’d tackle homelessness and work to make housing cheaper.

Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

Michelle Obama’s school lunch program faces new cuts on former first lady’s birthday

fromImpact2020: The proposed rule announced Friday would increase “flexibility” for vegetable requirements and allow schools to change fruit servings during breakfast in favor of meats or meat alternatives.

Regulation Nation 

Trump and Comey are united against encrypted communications

fromReason: Don’t worry—America’s ruling factions still disagree over who should be in charge of the snooping.

Government is Watching Every Move You Make

Australia aims to ban cash spending

fromAsiaTimes: Pending legislation seeks to bar all kinds of large cash payments to "fight crime and money laundering." Banning cash will allow the government to monitor all citizen transactions for approval.

Regulation Nation               The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

Proposed bill to make cellphone use under 21 a crime punishable by 1 year in prison

fromAsiaTimes: Pending legislation seeks to bar all kinds of large cash payments to "fight crime and money laundering." Banning cash will allow the government to monitor all citizen transactions for approval.

Regulation Nation                   Individual Liberty: America's First Principle

Feb 5, 2019

A no-knock raid in Houston led to deaths and police injuries. Should police rethink the practice?

fromTexasMonthly:  The official HPD narrative is the only one we’ll have. Acevedo said none of the officers had been wearing body cameras during the raid. Tuttle and Nicholas will never be able to tell their side of the story.

Police State America

Government to Facebook pipeline reveals a corrupt mix of social media and the state

fromFreeThoughtProject:  The official HPD narrative is the only one we’ll have. Acevedo said none of the officers had been wearing body cameras during the raid. Tuttle and Nicholas will never be able to tell their side of the story.

Indoctrination and Censorship

‘Cooling is warming’: climate hoaxters panic as US freezes, media provides cover

fromWaatsUpWithThat?:  But here is my personal favorite headline from, where else?, NBC News…. “Yes, it can be this cold outside in a time of global warming.”

Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

How to cop proof your cell phone

fromTargetLiberty:  The official HPD narrative is the only one we’ll have. Acevedo said none of the officers had been wearing body cameras during the raid. Tuttle and Nicholas will never be able to tell their side of the story.

Police State America      Individual Liberty: America's First Principle

Marine vet films traffic stop from his porch; California cop gives him a concussion

fromReason:  Adrian Burrell was well within his rights to record the officer.

Police State America

Walter E Williams: Is reality optional?

fromCreators:  Suppose I declare that I am a king. Should you be required to address me as "Your Majesty"? You say, "Williams, that's lunacy! You can't prove such nonsense." You're wrong. It's proved by my declaration.

Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

Jan 18, 2019

VIDEO: Tucker Carlson - Trump's FBI inquiry

fromLibertyPen/YouTube: From Tucker Carlson Tonight, Tucker applies compelling reason to the allegations of Democrats and their media allies that Donald Trump is a Russian agent.

Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

The slow diminishment of the 4th Amendment

fromDailySentinel: Colorado doesn't impose criminal penalties for refusing to submit to a warrantless search, but refusal leads to immediate, and virtually automatic, license revocation. Big penalty for invoking a right!

Police State America

Cannabis deliveries OK’d in California: 'The public spoke loud and clear'

fromUSAToday: California endorsed a rule Wednesday that will allow home marijuana deliveries statewide, even into communities that have banned commercial pot sales.

The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

Defaming Milton Friedman

fromCATO: In the future, if you tell a student or a journalist that you favor free markets and limited government, there is a risk that they will ask you why you support dictatorships, torture, and corporate welfare.

Indoctrination and Censorship       Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

Feds can't force you to unlock your iPhone with finger or face, judge rules

fromForbes: The ruling goes further to protect people’s private lives from government searches than any before and is being hailed as a potentially landmark decision.

Police State America

Jeff Sessions deals one more blow to criminal justice reform on his way out the door

fromReason: The former Attorney General has made it much for difficult for the DOJ to crack down on police departments accused of civil rights violations.

Police State America

October 1, 2018

Feds force suspect to unlock an Apple iPhone X with their face

fromTheFederalist: It finally happened. The feds forced an Apple iPhone X owner to unlock their device with their face. That's by any police agency anywhere in the world, not just in America.
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

VIDEO: Andrew Napolitano - Freedom is in Danger

fromLibertyPen/YouTube: From “The Rise and Fall of American Freedom,” Judge Andrew Napolitano warns Americans about the deterioration of the Constitution and future of liberty.
Individual Liberty: America's First Principle

Your "privilege" level: how much we can steal from you in the name of equality

fromMises: It’s hard to imagine a more effective way to increase division in society than by splitting everyone into different groups that are either good or bad, privileged or oppressed.
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

TSA furious as LA bucks the Feds by allowing citizens to fly out of state with weed

fromFreeThoughtProject: The TSA will rat you out to the police if you are caught trying to fly with weed, but as long as you abide by state laws, the police will leave you alone.
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

California versus the rest of the nation

fromEricPetersAuto: The control freaks of left coast seek to dictate the future of automobiles.
Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

The Kavanaugh hearings are about reason versus emotion

fromTheFederalist: There is only one fundamental dividing line in the reaction to the televised hearings about accusations against Brett Kavanaugh, and it’s not solely a partisan one.
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

July 27, 2016

Can border agents search your phone without a warrant?

fromReason: Court waters down the Fourth Amendment again. So what happens when an American citizen is returning home from abroad and U.S. border officials want to search the contents of that person's phone?  
Government is Watching Every Move You Make    Police State America

VIDEO: Shelby Steel - White Guilt and the Identity of Innocence

fromYouTube: “White guilt is black power.” From Life, Liberty and Levin, Shelby Steele explains how “white guilt” is a tactic of the Left to disarm whites of moral authority.  
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

San Francisco bans straws, cocktail swords

fromReason: With homelessness rampant, streets littered with needles and feces, murders at BART and tourism tanking, SF politicians spring into action.  
Regulation Nation

Court: Hawaii's restrictions on handguns in public unconstitutional

fromHawaiiNewsNow: It is always notable when a U.S. court upholds the Constitution.  
2nd Amendment Assaults

San Francisco straphangers on edge after third BART murder

fromNYPost: The third homicide on Bay Area Rapid Transit in less than a week. Like more and more of California, politicians have allowed it to become a ghetto.  
Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

Liberty makes us unfree, says the ACLU

fromReason: The government wouldn’t abuse us if we’d stop making it upset, according to the one-time civil liberties advocacy group. The ACLU is a joke.
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

June 17, 2016

Apple to undercut popular law-enforcement tool for cracking iPhones

fromReuters: The setting change is certain to draw criticism from U.S. law enforcement officials who have been engaged in ways to force technology companies to maintain access to users’ communications. 
Government is Watching Every Move You Make     Police State America

⭐️  VIDEO: The Rise and Fall of American Freedom

fromLibertyPen/YouTube: LP's magnus opus on freedom. Features Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, Paul Harvey, Andrew Napolitano, Walter E Williams, Tom Woods, Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater, Penn Jillette and more.
Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption      The Government is Not Us

VIDEO: Tate Fegley: The Case for Private Policing

fromLibertyPen/YouTube: From the Tom Woods Show, a look at why private policing would serve the public better than government policing.
Police State America     Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

A closer look at extreme FBI bias revealed in OIG report

fromZeroHedge: Horowitz: "These texts are “Indicative of a biased state of mind but even more seriously, implies a willingness to take official action to impact the Presidential candidate’s electoral prospects."
Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

Trump should hurt Sessions by helping drug offenders

fromReason: Commutations for people serving absurdly long sentences would not only serve the cause of justice but be a great new way to torture little Jeffy.
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

Liberal doctors claim gun ownership is a disease

fromConservativeHQ: The problem, of course, is that some physicians who generally pride themselves on being men and women of science act on pure emotion and leftwing politics when it comes to guns.
2nd Amendment Assaults       Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

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

Ed Snowden Thinks A Global iPhone Attack Will Happen This Year As A Result Of The FBI's Battle With Apple

by Jason Lederman. A grim prediction in the wake the FBI's battle with Apple. In the wake of the FBI's legal battle with Apple, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has made a bold prediction. Snowden wrote in a pair of tweets today that he believes iPhones around the world will be globally compromised by August, due to the FBI's "refusal ... MORE

The Crypto Wars Are About Power, Not Terrorism

by Andrea Castillo.        The FBI may have been able to unlock San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook’s work-related iPhone without conscripting Apple as an unwilling hacker, but that has not slowed down the government’s broader war on encrypted technologies one bit. It didn’t take long for another tragic terrorist attack, this one in Belgium, ... MORE

Apple Engineers Say They’d Rather Quit Than Help FBI

by Maya Kosoff.   Individual liberty still valued in some quarters. The public battle between Apple and the federal government has taken a defiant new turn, as some Apple engineers say they would refuse to help the federal government break into their company’s devices. Engineers at the company have already talked about who would have to help   ... MORE

Obama And The Justice Dept. May Be Losing The P.R. Battle Over Encryption, But Watch The Larger War

by Scott Shackford.   Nobody believes it’s ‘just one phone.’   The government fight to access your private digital data has another front brewing. The Department of Justice wants to be able to listen in on conversations on WhatsApp, an encrypted messaging and phone service owned by Facebook. Everybody who knows anything about       ... MORE

VIDEO: John Oliver - Encryption (from HBO)

Obama Advocates Government Access To All Devices

by Jeff Mason.    No surprise that privacy invasion is the tyrant's choice. U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday made a passionate case for mobile devices to be built in such a way as to allow government to gain access to personal data if needed to prevent a terrorist attack or enforce tax laws. Speaking at the South by Southwest festival in Texas, Obama   ... MORE

Samuel Gibbs: If FBI Wins Case Against Apple, Feds Could Force Apple To Turn iPhones Into Surveillance Devices

Turning our property against us.  If the FBI wins in its case against Apple to help it unlock the San Bernardino killer’s iPhone 5C, it won’t be long before the government forces Apple to turn on users’ iPhone cameras and microphones to spy on them, according to the company’s head of services Eddy Cue. The FBI has demanded that Apple creates   ... MORE

Katie Kieffer: Apple Is On Your Side

Somebody has to protect individual liberty.    Obama’s order for Apple to let him hack your iPhone is not about fighting terror—it’s about iPhone dominion. This is the equivalent of gun control except in the tech sector. Terrorism is one of the top two issues concerning Americans, including Millennials. You deserve to know why and how Obama’s ... MORE

Andrew Napolitano: Apple's Involuntary Servitude

Liberty and safety are not in equipoise.     There is nothing new in the realization that the Constitution sometimes insulates the criminality of a few in order to protect the privacy of us all.”   -Justice Antonin Scalia (1936-2016).   After the San Bernardino massacre on Dec. 2, 2015, the FBI lawfully acquired the cellphone of one of the killers and     ... MORE

The FBI's Big Farce To Get Inside Your Phone

by Joshua Kopstein.     “The most important tech case in a decade.” Earlier this week, the U.S. government dropped a bombshell in its ongoing crusade against strong encryption: A court order demanding that Apple help the Federal Bureau of Investigation bypass the security features of an iPhone recovered from Syed Rizwan Farook, who, along with his ... MORE

The Apple-FBI Fight Isn’t About Privacy Vs. Security

by Brian Barrett.      Do not be misled. Throughout the ongoing fight between Apple and the FBI over custom access to an iPhone used by one of the two terrorists who killed 14 people in San Bernardino, the government has framed the argument as a simple trade-off: You must surrender a little privacy if you want more security. The scales don't balance quite ... MORE

VIDEO: Apple Is The Patriot

Anybody Believe The FBI Isn’t Out To Defeat Encryption?

by Scott Shackford.  FBI Director James Comey starts his defense of their effort to force Apple to help them break into the iPhone of San Bernardino terrorist and killer Syed Farook with a sentence that is that is extremely hard to take seriously: "The San Bernardino litigation isn't about trying to set a precedent or send any kind of message."       ... MORE