For years now, I have been under the impression that in an election, undervotes (ballots where there aren’t votes for all the races) aren’t counted.  I read this years ago in a source that I considered reliable at the times.  Truth be told, I can’t even remember where I read it, only that I considered [...]

I think it’s too early to tell. There are some very legitimate concerns that many Libertarians have about Barr’s commitment to Libertarian principles. Barr defeated Ruwart 54% to 46% and I can tell you from being there that many of the delegates who supported Ruwart were very dissatisfied with the outcome. It’s very unclear to [...]

The Libertarian Convention of course! Which convention did you think I was talking about? The Libertarian National Convention will run this Memorial Day weekend beginning on Thursday, May 22nd and ending on Monday, May 26th. I plan on attending the convention representing The Liberty Papers as a citizen journalist on Saturday, Sunday, and possibly Monday. [...]

Back in the early days of The Liberty Papers, one of the founding contributors was Quincy. Life interceded into his desire to blog, and he eventually took an unspecified hiatus from the blogosphere. Thankfully, he’s back! Head on over and see what he’s up to.

The Constitutionalism of Ron Paul has ignited a debate that’s sorely needed in this country. The Founding Fathers envisioned a nation of individual States, each with its own quirks and ideas, and each with wide latitudes to set its own internal laws and policies as it saw fit. The central government was tasked only with [...]

As I’ve pointed out, I’m a believer in prediction markets. For me, though, it’s more of an intuitive expectation that markets (i.e. revealed preference) are likely to be more accurate than stated preference. The question has come up with Doug, who isn’t yet a believer in prediction markets, as to whether there is any empirical [...]

Doug recently posted a “Libertarian Hard Cases” thread about how to deal with issues related to children. Libertarianism is one of the few political systems that treats adults like adults and holds them responsible for their actions; it assumes that people are rational actors who are capable of making decisions in their own life and [...]

OSHA is now considering regulating ammunition as explosives. If OSHA has its way, ammunition will become very difficult to purchase, store, or transport and would seriously curtail the individual’s constitutional right to bear arms without specifically banning firearms. One can only wonder how the courts would rule if OSHA’s proposed regulation were challenged. I for [...]

Nick, who responded to Doug’s recent post made some great points and some which I disagreed with. I was going to respond to the original post’s thread, but as my response became longer and longer, I thought it should be a stand alone post. Here’s what Nick had to say: Ron Paul is dead wrong [...]

While most of us learn from the words of those who we admire, it is also possible to learn from those we detest. Here is a collection of quotes from some of the vilest despots in human history. From these quotes, perhaps we can gain some insights from their thought processes. You may also find [...]

This YouTube video humorously illustrates some of the hidden ways we are taxed. The ad was created by David Zucker (one of the brilliant minds behind the Naked Gun movies) for the 2006 campaign to warn viewers of the Democrats plans to raise taxes higher than any point in American history. Unfortunately, it seems that [...]

The comment thread can be (and sometimes actually is) an excellent vehicle for reasoned discussion. It can also be a great way to disabuse well-meaning ideologues of their naïve, utopian sense of “social justice”. A classic example of the latter comes in the form of an exchange on a recent Julian Sanchez post, which is [...]

Council Prepares for Vote to Give Fenty Control In the three months since he proposed a dramatic restructuring of the District’s public school system, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty has outmaneuvered the Board of Education, using his political capital to shore up support and turning the contest over his plan into a rout. On Tuesday, the [...]

As Doug mentioned Monday night, we here at The Liberty Papers have been brainstorming some interesting new features here. One, that we will roll out shortly (likely before the end of the week) is called Point/Counterpoint. While our contributors generally agree on most issues, there are always issues where we don’t. We all share a [...]

Over in a comment at Catallarchy, I came across this from Constant: To give an example, I am not personally bothered by taxation. I don’t get an adrenaline rush (in a bad way) from taxation, but I do get a bad adrenaline rush from being mugged. My feelings about taxation that I feel each year [...]

In my recent post about Michael Charles Smith, I received a response from a reader by the name of Carl Deen regarding my support for the war against terror Islamofascism (Not the war on terror. Terrorism is the method the Islamofascist uses to accomplish his political-religious goals). I think his challenge is worth a post [...]

Chris Clarke, at Pandagon, has written a long article about How To Explain Things To Libertarians. As you might expect, as he leads into all of this, he gets some things wrong. The things he gets wrong are the traditional propaganda of the left related to why we need social democracy. For example: If those [...]

If the 2008 presidential campaign wasn’t about electing the first woman, African American, Hispanic, or Mormon president but rather about ideas, candidates like Ron Paul might have a fighting chance to be the next president. For the purposes of this post, I’ll pretend that this race is about ideas. Ron Paul seems to be a [...]

A few days ago, I reposted The Future Of Liberty, in order to set the stage for a post on the American’s article on Milton Friedman & blogging. Yesterday, though, Doug jumped in between steps A and B with his own post… But I think there’s more that can be said. A lot of people [...]

Over at Coyote Blog, Warren takes WaPo columnist Steven Pearlman to task for an article on health care. It’s far too extensive to summarize, but I highly recommend taking a look. An excerpt: But let’s get into all that money-grubbing. Mr. Pearlstein reads the study as saying the problem is all that profit. Because we [...]