One thing I am hearing right now is that Sarah Palin is a fiscal conservative. The Club for Growth released a statement on a potential Palin VP candidacy that praises her stance on earmarks and support for opening ANWR. Fighting earmarks and opening ANWR are important, but they are only half the battle. When the [...]

As with most third party campaigns, the Barr/Root campaign has had an uphill battle to make the ballot in certain states. In Texas, however, Bob Barr is the only presidential candidate on the ballot. The McCain and Obama campaigns have failed to meet the August 26th deadline to file the necessary paperwork and are not [...]

Reason’s Steve Chapman lists some reasons why libertarians should not panic if Barack Obama becomes President: —He’s liberal, but not that liberal. Contrary to the famous National Journal ranking that put him most leftward in the entire Senate, another study found he is really the 11th-most liberal. In the primaries, when Democratic candidates are under [...]

On a Purdue football message board, one of the off-topic threads asked what we thought of the Democratic National Convention. My reply: I hear Obama himself is speaking on Thursday, right? I think NC State @ South Carolina will be far more compelling viewing… As with most things when it comes to politics, the convention [...]

First, a disclaimer. I’m not singling out Joe Biden for the below piece for any reason other than that he’s now become a vice-presidential candidate. I firmly believe that situations like the below are quite common in our government, at all levels. That being said, this one is particularly conspicuous. Joe Biden, breaking ranks with [...]

A blogger at Lew Rockwell.com decries the notion that private organizations have the right to make their own rules: Homeowners’ associations can be filled with hordes of power mongering, petty, little tyrants who love to play Big Bureaucrat and run the lives of everyone else. In Texas – of all places – there is an [...]

Both The Club For Growth and The Cato Institute are out today with analyses of Joe Biden’s position on economic issues of importance to libertarians and, as you might suspect, it’s not good. First from Cato on the issue of international trade: Here are the highlights and lowlights of Biden’s voting record on trade: On [...]

Gross Tactical Error

There’s some interesting news coming out of Denver as the Democratic National Convention approaches. Apparently, the Denver Police are being urged to look the other way and not enforce the city’s law against marijuana possesion while the convention is taking place: DENVER – A city drug panel has voted to urge police to refrain from [...]

Ron Paul endorses Alaska Congressman Don Young (R., Bridge To Nowhere): Former Republican presidential contender Ron Paul has endorsed Don Young in his bid to win an 18th term in the U.S. House of Representatives. Paul, the 72-year-old congressman from Texas whose maverick presidential bid drew wide support in Alaska, sent out a letter to [...]

A few weeks ago, a man damaged the Total Air Temperature sensors on 9 aircraft. These sensors are critical to the airspeed gage, without them, a pilot can get an inaccurately low or high airspeed reading.. An inaccurate airspeed indication can cause a pilot to go unexpectedly into a stall. To understand the seriousness of [...]

This time, it’s an incredibly bizarre dispatch from the land of paleo-libertarianism: There is a case to be made for Deng Xiaoping, who launched the biggest, fastest increase in prosperity and freedom in the history of the human race, and brought the Chinese people back into the world economy, to their great benefit and ours. [...]

Sometimes, the wisdom of crowds is as bad as the insanity of a dictator: Nearly half of Americans (47%) believe the government should require all radio and television stations to offer equal amounts of conservative and liberal political commentary, but they draw the line at imposing that same requirement on the Internet. Thirty-nine percent (39%) [...]

This is an update to a post I wrote in late June. Maybe its time to propose some sort of “fully informed jury” legislation and demand a return to federalism?

If you want to go see Barack Obama speak on the last night of the Democratic National Convention, you’ll have to agree to be the guinea pig for his first exercise in forced volunteerism: Some of those hoping to wrangle a seat for Barack Obama’s speech were told this week they have to put in [...]

I didn’t see the press release from the Bob Barr campaign when I wrote yesterday’s post so I thought I would pass along some of his thoughts on the issue today. The case Barr is specifically referring to is the recent raid in Berwyn Heights, Maryland. Here are a few excerpts: “Absent exigent circumstances, not [...]

Back in June, the TSA decided that you were no longer allowed to fly without ID, even if you submit to a more strenuous search process. At the time, though, there was a loophole. Assuming you had lost or forgotten your ID, and were “cooperative” in assisting screeners to assess your identity, you would still [...]

There’s a lot of hoopla and hullabaloo over the politicization of the Olympics, including the fact that it’s held in a country that is horrendously restrictive of social freedoms. But there’s another aspect that’s largely ignored. There is a certain nationalism that follows the Olympics, which is wholly unjustified. As Americans, we are expected to [...]

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. For those who wore the badge, they could do no wrong. For the “badge-nots,” they could do no right. I only wish this was a work of fiction but it is not. When it comes to drug raids (often no-knock raids), suspects (whether [...]

Blogger Megan McArdle has a problem. 16 years ago, in college at the age of 19, she was caught drinking underage in a bar in Pennsylvania, arrested, and convicted. At the time, she was a college student, without a driver’s license, and thus had no license to suspend. Since then, she’s gone on to live [...]