James Ostrowski responded today to my weekend post criticizing his comments that Ron Paul is Hillary Clinton’s greatest threat, and that he has a realistic chance of winning the the GOP nomination: [C]onsider the fact that on the key issue of the campaign, the Iraq War, Ron Paul beats Hillary. He voted against the war [...]

According to one U.S. District Court Judge in Texas, it’s against the law to hyperlink to copyrighted material if the copyright holder objects: A federal judge in Texas has ruled that it is unlawful to provide a hyperlink to a Webcast if the copyright owner objects to it. U.S. District Judge Sam Lindsay in the [...]

The deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, Charles “Cully” Stimson, made some troubling comments recently that threaten law firms who represent detainees at Guantanimo Bay. Stimson on Thursday told Federal News Radio, a local commercial station that covers the government, that he found it “shocking” that lawyers at many of the nation’s top [...]

At the National Conference for Media Reform that my fellow contributor Doug touched on earlier, FCC Commissioner Michael Copps spoke. During his speech, he outlined an agenda that he called The New American Media Contract. The rationale he follows is that the American people own the airwaves and there is: Too little news, too much [...]

Since 1970, the business of intercity and interstate rail passenger service has essentially been nationalized. In that year, Congress created the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, known more popularly as Amtrak. Not surprisingly, the history of the American passenger rail system since then has been little more than a disaster. Without the federal subsidies that it [...]

New legislation currently pending before the Senate would greatly expand copyright law in an effort by the music industry to stifle yet another area of innovation: Satellite and Internet radio services would be required to restrict listeners’ ability to record and play back individual songs, under new legislation introduced this week in the U.S. Senate. [...]

Democratic Presidential Candidate Dennis Kucinich, who is admittedly a gadfly with no chance of getting the nomination in 2008, has reignited the debate over the so-called “Fairness Doctrine”: Over the weekend, the National Conference for Media Reform was held in Memphis, TN, with a number of notable speakers on hand for the event. Rep. Dennis [...]

Illinois Senator Barack Obama has taken the first step to run for president. He has to be considered a front runner in the Democratic primaries because unlike Hillary people actually like him and unlike John Edwards he doesn’t come off as a dumbass everytime he opens his mouth. I want to see more about Obama [...]

Today’s Washington Post tells the story of a man who dared to take on one of Virginia’s largest counties on his own, and won: The Great Virginia Parking Ticket Battle began with a burst of expletives one Saturday morning in October 2000, when Woodbridge resident Robert W. Eberth, a retired Navy captain, found a $35 [...]

Glenn Reynolds has an op-ed in the New York Times extolling the virtues of mandatory gun ownership. IT’S a phenomenon that gives the term “gun control” a whole new meaning: community ordinances that encourage citizens to own guns. Last month, Greenleaf, Idaho, adopted Ordinance 208, calling for its citizens to own guns and keep them [...]

Senator and presidential candidate Joe Biden was in South Carolina this Martin Luther King Jr. Day and he had some comments about the Confederate flag that flies at the state capital. Sen. Joseph Biden, a Democratic presidential hopeful joining fellow Sen. Christopher Dodd at Martin Luther King Jr. holiday events, said Monday he thinks the [...]

Germany is proposing that the EUmake it a crime to deny the Holocaust as historical truth: Germany hopes to make Holocaust denial a crime across the EU as part of a package of laws it wants to introduce during its presidency of the bloc. Berlin is also set to outline plans to ban Nazi symbols [...]

Thanks to YouTube, we have this thirty-minute interview of Ayn Rand by Mike Wallace from 1959: Here’s Part One: Parts 2 and 3 below the fold:

There is no denying that the condition of blacks in the South for the 100 years after the Civil War was as much a travesty as slavery itself. Human freedom was denied and human beings were treated like animals. Martin Luther King, Jr helped advance human freedom by helping bring that shameful time to an [...]

First it was Vice-President Cheney saying that the United States would have invaded Iraq in 2003 even if Congress had said no, know President Bush has said that he will go forward with the so-called surge plan even if Congress votes against the plan: Faced with substantial opposition both in Congress and among the American [...]

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is running for president. Like the last Massachusetts politician that ran for president, Mitt is changing his tune on certain issues. For example, the issues he highlights and stances he takes on those issues are a lot different than when he ran in 1994 against the Chappaquiddick Swim Team captain [...]

The New York Times reports today that the CIA and military intelligence have been spying on Americans and others living in the United States: WASHINGTON, Jan. 13 — The Pentagon has been using a little-known power to obtain banking and credit records of hundreds of Americans and others suspected of terrorism or espionage inside the [...]

The comments that have been generated by this post at my personal blog on Lee-Jackson Day, as well as a comment thread I’ve been involved with in response to a related post at Republitarian, have led me to an interesting question. Namely, when the Confederacy seceded from the Union in the wake of the 1860 [...]

Apparently, every major social and political problem in the state of Tennessee has been solved, so they can now move on the really important stuff: NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A Tennessee state senator is tired of girls going wild on raunchy late-night TV ads, so he introduced a bill to fine cable companies up to [...]

Much has been written in the libertarian blogosphere, both here and elsewhere since news broke last week that Texas Congressman, and one-time Libertarian Party candidate for President, Ron Paul had taken the first steps on the road toward running for the Republican Presidential nomination in 2008. None, however, were quite as gung-ho as this post [...]