Economist Donald Marron:
I often tell my students that, in my humble opinion, one purpose of government is to help people be happy. The DC government did a good job on Wednesday.
I disagree with that on so many levels. The government’s job is to secure people’s rights, and as Thomas Jefferson so eloquently said, one [...]

Those of us who truly believe in limited government* tend to be simultaneously amused and irritated hearing the folks at CPAC speak of limited government as though it’s a principle they truly support. Yesterday, the Libertarian Party’s Executive Director Wes Benedict, monitoring the CPAC festivities from afar, said some of the things that many of [...]

From The Associated Press:
Crystal Mangum, 31, was arrested late Wednesday on charges including assaulting her boyfriend, Durham police said in a press release.
Durham County jail records indicate she also was charged with identity theft, communicating threats, damage to property, resisting an officer and misdemeanor child abuse. A judge ordered that she remain in jail on [...]

North Carolina has at least one criminal justice reform that all states ought to adopt: an innocence commission (particularly for states which currently have a death penalty). So far, North Carolina is the only state which has such a commission.
Greg Taylor, convicted of 1st degree murder of prostitute Jacquetta Thomas in 1993, was the [...]

I regularly read the Science Based Medicine Blog since it is an interesting combination of intelligent, rational examination of medicine and the naive monstrous morals of a toddler.
This week’s column by Dr Steven Novella does not disappoint. The good doctor reviews the medical impact of modern sodium consumption and states:
As usual, the medical and [...]

This has been making the rounds, and I’d be remiss not to post it here considering how much time I spend in the air.

Okay, maybe not. But I sure have a great way to do so (and maybe to turn a few readers).
I’m in Chicago visiting family, sadly with little internet access (sitting outside Panera Bread Co in the car with my napping son in the back). Today we celebrate my grandmother’s 90th birthday. This [...]

…Doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have any choice at all. The first freedom is the freedom to fail…
And when it comes to choosing our leaders in this country… whoooo boy have we failed big time, for a long time.
So fellow gunblogger Tam, being an Ovarian American, got a bit tweaked at a comment over at Travis [...]

This is as succinct, and as masterful a description of the relationship between the rights of man, and the government of a free state, as I have yet seen.
“I cannot, and will not, consent that the majority of any republican State may, in any way, rightfully restrict the humblest citizen of the United States in [...]

Referring back to my post I wrote last week about the “perfect storm” the Obama Administration has created regarding medical marijuana, Colorado in many ways seems to be in the eye of this storm. It seems that more and more people are starting to understand the insanity of declaring war on a substance which has [...]

For the first time today, TASER international has acknowledged that the use of their electro-compliance device has a higher risk to the health of the restrainee than they have advertised

Taser: Don’t shoot stun gun at chest
First time company has suggested there is any risk from its stun guns
AP – updated 8:23 a.m. PT, Wed., Oct [...]

The first recorded mention of the term “War on Terror” in the New York Times did not occur after 9/11 as many would assume… In fact it was in 1934, and wasn’t even about the U.S.
You might be shocked as to exactly which nation it was about… or perhaps not…

War On Terror

(New York Times) December [...]

The PATRIOT Act was sold to the country as the line in the sand protecting us from the murderous hordes of Islamist terrorists. Passed in a hurry following 9/11, they told us that these powers were needed for terrorism only, and not for general law-enforcement. Civil libertarians didn’t believe this assertion, of course, [...]

“This court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually’ innocent. Quite to the contrary, we have repeatedly left that question unresolved, while expressing considerable doubt that any claim [...]

A 38 year-old mother of three, who posed no threat to the police or anyone else, was tasered right in front of her children in January of this year. Yet to my knowledge, President Obama has failed to address this genuine case of the police “acting stupidly.” Maybe it’s because Audra Harmon cannot help the [...]

THIS BOOK IS BASED on a single idea: You should be allowed to do whatever you want with your own person and property, as long as you don’t physically harm the person or property of a nonconsenting other.
Thus begins a book that everyone interested in politics should read; Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do: The Absurdity [...]

Tell me, just once, where a government that has created a million-name no-fly list gets a legitimate power to ban people arbitrarily placed on that list from firearm ownership?
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Rahm Emanuel, Chief of Staff to the Obama White House!

Critical text (h/t David Rittgers, Cato@Liberty):
“if you’re on that no-fly list, your [...]

…and route around them

By the by, for those who don’t get the reference, it’s a paraphrase of a quote from John Gilmore – “The internet interprets censorship as damage, and routes around it”

First a little humor in this Sprint Spoof from Reason.tv

Now Dr. Ron Paul’s prescription for reforming healthcare in America