Stephen Green has an excellent column this week at Pajamas Media where he cautions his fellow libertarians to stay away from the siren call of the “state’s rights” movement: We need to give up this notion of “states’ rights.” First of all, it’s in bad taste. The phrase used to be code for “Jim Crow.” [...]

The NYT has a story today about a student racking up a crushing amount of student debt to earn a degree at NYU, blaming everyone except the student for allowing her to build up that debt. Of course, I have some serious blame for the lenders too, when I realize exactly what they were investing [...]

If the only book on libertarianism that you ever read was Wayne Allyn Root’s The Conscience of a Libertarian, then you’d be compelled to conclude that the most important liberty issues facing America are internet gambling, tax cuts for small businesses, and home schooling. That’s because Root, a former Republican who became the Libertarian Party’s [...]

Yesterday SCOTUS decided they will hear Hank Skinner’s case; arguments will likely be heard sometime next year. However, even if Skinner ‘wins,’ SCOTUS is unlikely to decide once and for all if convicts have a Constitutional right to challenge their convictions if exculpatory evidence becomes available post-conviction. Legal experts say that the most Skinner can [...]

The journalist responsible for the original uproar about the MMR vaccine and autism has been shown to have produced very shoddy research, and widely discredited. He was even recently banned from the practice of medicine in the UK. This has, of course, not quieted the debate. In fact, it’s gotten even worse, with his vaccine [...]

Made by several of the most prominent libertarian scholars out there: “I think Rand Paul is wrong about the Civil Rights Act,” libertarian Cato Institute scholar Brink Lindsey wrote in an e-mail. “As a general matter, people should be free to deal or not deal with others as they choose. And that means we discriminate [...]

Re: Rand Paul Under Attack from the Left for his ‘Lunch Counter Libertarianism’ This is why politics sucks. When you actually consider what the significance of Paul’s very nuanced view on this is and then juxtapose over what his potential duties as Senator would be, you quickly come to the correct conclusion that this matter [...]

Saw this (original comic by Wuerker of Politico) at The Big Picture: My question… In what world is it fair that any entity stakes a forcible claim to 40% of your income? It doesn’t matter that the number was higher in the past, the number is simply too high. Again, that number is 40%! You [...]

Now that Dr. Rand Paul easily dispatched the big government establishment Republican candidate Trey Grayson in the Kentucky senate primary, the Left is already on the attack. Rachel Maddow had Dr. Paul on her show regarding some comments he made concerning the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The issue: the notion that the federal government should [...]

William F. Buckley Jr. is famous for once having said: “I am obliged to confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.” If he were still around today, I’m [...]

Pretty much sums up one of the main problems with modern democracy: In a widely quoted book entitled The End of History, Francis Fukuyama wrote about the intellectual and practical triumph of democracy as a system of government. No further political paradigm shifts would be required. Democracy was the omega end point of the historical [...]

Racial clashes have sprung up in Northern California, and without the expected suspects: At least four high-profile attacks involving blacks and Asians have occurred since January in San Francisco and Oakland, including the beating death of Tian Sheng Yu, 59, last month. Two 18-year-old men have been charged with the murder. Rongshi Chen, 64, was [...]

The votes are still being counted, but so far it looks like Rand Paul’s margin of victory will be huge: WASHINGTON — Political novice Rand Paul rode support from tea party activists to victory in Kentucky’s Republican Senate primary Tuesday night, delivering a jolt to the GOP establishment and providing fresh evidence of widespread voter [...]

Howard Zinn passed at the beginning of this year, and I will admit part of me was saddened at his passing. My mother owned his People’s History of the United States, and my fellow students at college seemed to adore his work. My best friend is a Zinn fanatic, bringing him up nearly every time [...]

As I noted on Sunday, Wayne Allyn Root had announced his participation in a “trial” of President Obama led by Rev. James Manning, a noted birther and virulent Obama critic. Late yesterday, Root issued a statement saying that he had decided not to participate in the event: I had a chance today for the first [...]

Of all the races that will come to an end to tomorrow night, the one that may be the most interesting is the Republican Senate Primary in Kentucky, where the race has essentially become a proxy for the battle between the Establishment GOP and the Tea Party Movement: FLORENCE, Ky. — Rand Paul grabbed a [...]

Two contrasting stories out of the Supreme Court today, that bring home the fact that jurisprudence in this country is profoundly… hopefully not irreparably… broken. First, from the New York Times: NO MORE LIFE SENTENCES FOR MINORS WHO HAVEN’T MURDERED…. In yet another 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court said this morning that incarcerated minors can’t [...]

Sometimes this gets tiring. I’m getting a bit sick of showing that bad consequences, entirely foreseeable (and possibly planned) and predicted, are coming to fruition — and the power-brokers in Washington have the gall to actually act appaled? The great mystery surrounding the historic health care bill is how the corporations that provide coverage for [...]

As someone whose great-grandparents were the ones who dropped everything they knew, hopped on a boat to cross an ocean to an entirely new continent, and built an entirely new life in the freedom of America, I’m somewhat blessed. So I share TJIC’s thoughts here. What I’d never considered is exactly what it would take [...]

From TJIC: In short, 1 American out of a million obeys every single law they are aware of. The vast majority of us first consider whether a law is necessary and moral, and if it is not, we then do a cost benefit comparison, and follow they law only if we want to. Most will [...]