Just one day before the deadline late last year, I changed my party registration from Libertarian to Republican so I could participate in the caucus that took place yesterday evening (Colorado’s caucuses are closed to independent and third party voters). Being new to the caucus process, I didn’t know what to expect. Now that I’m [...]

Newt Gingrich calls Mitt Romney “a liar” but says he would support him over Barack Obama if he wins the nomination. Talk radio host and raving lunatic extraordinaire Mark Levin threatens to campaign against Rand Paul if his father chooses to make a third party run. What a petulant asshole. Sarah Palin warns: “G.O.P. had [...]

Wow… Just, wow. I’ve heard of people taking quotes out of context, but Rick Santorum is treading down a slippery slope that I think even he, as a hardcore social conservative, would find himself quickly uneasy with: His spokesman Hogan Gidley emails me in response to Mark Miners comments: “Senator Santorum is certainly an advocate [...]

“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!” – Barry Goldwater Ron Paul’s supporters and detractors would probably agree that many of his positions are out of the main stream of modern political [...]

The following is a continuation of The Liberty Papers’ “Point/Counterpoint” series. In this feature, two contributors (or, as in this case, a contributor and a guest) of semi-like mind debate a specific point of view. Today’s Point is provided by regular reader and commenter Jeff Molby, who wrote in response to a friend and offered [...]

[shakes head] A group of South Dakota lawmakers has introduced a bill that would require almost everyone in their state to buy a gun once they turn 21. Turns out it’s not a serious attempt. Rather, the lawmakers are trying to make a point about the new health care law — that an individual mandate [...]

On Boxing Day, our self-styled intellectual overlords at the New York Times gave us a gift of epic proportions: a gob-stoppingly vapid and shallow editorial on the principal of federalism. Let the fun begin! With public attention focused on taxes, the deficit, gays in the military and nuclear arms reduction, little attention has been paid, [...]

Will Wilkinson writing for The Economist: To get at the value of WikiLeaks, I think it’s important to distinguish between the government—the temporary, elected authors of national policy—and the state—the permanent bureaucratic and military apparatus superficially but not fully controlled by the reigning government. The careerists scattered about the world in America’s intelligence agencies, military, [...]

I do not support Ken Buck in the Colorado senate race and I will not vote for him. Actually, between his extreme position on abortion, on banning common forms of birth control, and his sexist comments he made about his primary opponent, I think he is quite a jackass. But even as much as I [...]

After Cuban leader Fidel Castro excoriated Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his anti-Semitism, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez appeared to get the message: During a visit to the International Tourism Fair in Caracas yesterday, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced he would meet with leaders of Venezuela’s Jewish community. “We respect and love the Jewish people,” said [...]

In an interview with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, some incredible quotes came from the aging Cuban dictator: (Reuters) – Fidel Castro said Cuba’s economic model no longer works, a U.S.-based journalist reported on Wednesday following interviews with the former president last week. Jeffrey Goldberg, a writer for the Atlantic Monthly magazine, wrote in a blog [...]

Reason’s Radley Balko reveals another disturbing story of America’s increasing police force gone awry: Last Sunday night, police in Morganton, North Carolina shot and killed 17-year-old Michael Sipes. The officers were responding to a noise complaint called in by a neighbor in the mobile home park where Sipes lived. His mother says there were three [...]

It’s beginning to be really easy to hate Facebook. While Google has stuck to its libertarian principles of free exchange of information by not cooperating with Chinese censorship, Facebook has become more and more creepy: The people behind the “Just Say Now” marijuana legalization campaign (oft-Boinged Salon contributor Glenn Greenwald is one of many political [...]

While I regularly disagree with Ezra Klein, I believe that honestly one of the main differences between him and many libertarians is that he still has faith in the political system. He’s smart, he understands incentives, he just refuses to take the next step and start understanding public choice theory and the malincentives rampant in [...]

Over at Popehat, Ken has posted a very thought-provoking question about the American Right’s rhetoric lately regarding armed rebellion. He delves into two topics, first exactly what the reasoning, scope, and result of revolution might be, and secondly into why the rhetoric tends to follow very similar paths to rhetoric of the socialist revolutionaries of [...]

It’s because they don’t realize that the elements of their “turnaround plan”, are what is causing them to lose in the first place: From Mark Halperin, writing in Time: “What has kept the easily panicked denizens of Capitol Hill from open revolt until now was a shared confidence that there was still plenty of time [...]

As Chris pointed out last week, Republicans might be able to get us to at least a divided Congress in November. One expects that if they do, they’ll stand athwart the tracks as the big-government train approaches, yelling STOP! But their bark is worse than their bite: Yeah! Go Red team! Go Democracy! via TJIC, [...]

Yet another in a long line of evidence showing that while democracy might be a way to gauge the public’s general mood or satisfaction, it’s certainly too clumsy of a tool to really have anything to do with setting policy: Led by Loyola Marymount University’s Andrew Healy, a team of researchers compared 44 years of [...]

This is a post in our continuing “Point/Counterpoint” series, where TLP contributors and/or guest posters debate a topic. In this installment, Michael Powell argues against the existence of “states’ rights”. Tomorrow, Brad Warbiany will defend states’ rights, and his post can now be found here. During the twentieth century, there were several confrontations between federal [...]