Doug today had a very good post on the concept of Libertarian/Conservative Fusionism. Suffice to say that I agree with him on the basic points, but had another take that is just too much to put into comments. It seems that the Conservative groups understand that they’re not a majority on their own, but that [...]

And yet another Ayn Rand quote (from Atlas Shrugged): For centuries, the battle of morality was fought between those who claimed that your life belongs to God and those who claimed that it belongs to your neighbors – between those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of ghosts in heaven and [...]

Warren from Coyote Blog, on Atlas Shrugged Part II: The one failure of both movies is that, perhaps in my own unique interpretation of Atlas Shrugged, I have always viewed the world at large, and its pain and downfall, as the real protagonist of the book. We won’t get into the well-discussed flatness of Rand’s [...]

The world is changing. It’s happening rapidly. And it’s freaking people out. Libertarians are concerned that constant surveillance, like that which helped identify the Boston bombers, is an infringement on our privacy. This can be true whether the cameras are public or private, as it’s not hard to justify a subpoena for a company’s tape [...]

From James Hamblin, The Atlantic: It’s a kind of nonchalant way to say that the organization in charge of making sure everything we eat and drink is safe for us is, decades into the mass marketing and sale of heavily caffeinated products without regulation to all U.S. markets, going to look into their safety. They [...]

This is absurd. Brad Plumer at WaPo recounts the 4 plans in play to stop the sequester. And it’s astounding. It’s made ever more clear to me that nobody in Washington is serious about cutting spending. Right now we’re 15 days away from the implementation of $85.3B in 2013 spending cuts. Oh, for the record, [...]

I finally finished reading Hitch-22, and this passage near the very end really caught my eye: It is not only true that the test of knowledge is an acute and cultivated awareness of how little one knows (as Socrates knew so well), it is true that the unbounded areas and fields of one’s ignorance are [...]

Ugh. House Republican leaders have signed on to spend up to $3 million to keep defending the Defense of Marriage Act in court, according to a copy of their newly revised legal contract obtained by The Huffington Post. House Republican leaders took over the legal defense of DOMA in the spring of 2011, when Attorney [...]

Thankfully, it was caught on video!

Governor Moonbeam? Or Governor Death Ray? You decide: Answering critics at a solar ribbon-cutting earlier this year, Gov. Jerry Brown laid down the gauntlet, affirming his commitment to solar energy and saying he would “crush” opponents of solar. “There are going to be screw-ups. There are going to be bankruptcies. There’ll be indictments and there’ll [...]

Here at TLP, we commonly bring you stories of police abuses, bad behavior, and general asshattery that often accompanies giving someone power over another… …but it’s not always like that. “Thin blue line” concerns notwithstanding, the vast majority of people who go into law enforcement do so because they honestly want to serve and protect [...]

Over at Ezra Klein’s place, Dylan Matthews points to the fact that elections are driven by the economy (and in some years, by war). And that George McGovern, who died yesterday, gets a bit of a bad rap based on the fact that he was up against an incumbent President presiding over a rapidly-expanding economy [...]

The Commission on Presidential Debates has been coming under a lot of fire for their exclusion of third parties this year, due largely to the fact that Gary Johnson is polling at 6% nationally and happens to be suing them* at the moment. As Reason points out, they’ve already lost three national sponsors, and are [...]

Ezra Klein’s believes that it’s a horrible thing that the big, dumb spending cuts that nobody wants might actually happen: The initial idea was that if the supercommittee failed, there would be automatic spending cuts and automatic tax increases. This way, both parties would have an incentive to reach a deal. But Republicans refused the [...]

Okay, so the title was a bit tongue-in-cheek to get your attention… But there is a serious issue to discuss here based on a campaign stop in Iowa: A surprising anecdote from a White House pool report this morning: Campaign official also offers up that potus was talking about white house beer, which apparently the [...]

From J.D. Tuccille at Reason Hit’n’Run: But I still think I’m correct in looking at the presidential race and seeing anything but an easy call. Strictly speaking, I see two midgets locked in a slap fight, and the loser is us as we confront the fact that one of them will be left standing. Well [...]

I’m posting this on behalf of Eric, who on twitter (@e_cowperthwaite) gave a series of tweets highlighting the key events leading up to the US Revolution & Declaration of Independence. I’m providing the whole list here: How did the American Revolution happen? Did we really fight a bloody, 7 year war only because of taxes [...]

Caught this across the wire today: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Wendy’s Spokeswoman ‘Wendy’ Stands With Gay Marriage Supporters Dublin, Ohio, July 25 2012: Wendy’s corporation found Dave Thomas believed in treating all people, customers, employees, and vendors with the utmost respect. As the woman you see on the sign and in the logo of Wendy’s, it [...]

David Brooks has fired up Radley Balko. And I highly recommend you go read Radley’s whole piece… It’s worth it. One bit that I found particularly poignant, regarding why democratic politics, in particular, is not worthy of blind deference: Politics—the quest for power because you’re sure that you, more than others, know what’s best for [...]

The AP, lamenting the fact that so many new college grads are having trouble finding work: College graduates who majored in zoology, anthropology, philosophy, art history and humanities were among the least likely to find jobs appropriate to their education level Actually, like the guy interviewed with a “creative writing” degree who now works as [...]