The City Club of Cleveland extended an invitation to the top six presidential candidates*. Of the six candidates, Libertarian Party candidate Bob Barr, Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin, and independent candidate Ralph Nader participated; Democrat Barack Obama, Republican John McCain, and Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney were no-shows. Unlike the debates we have already seen [...]

I just received my mail-in ballot a week or so ago. The ballot, with multiple choices with arrows to be filled out next to each choice, reminds me of taking standardized tests back in the day. Some tests were easier than others but I knew that if I did not study, one of two things [...]

For the better part of a decade, Hugo Chavez has been running “La Revolución!” It’s been an attempt to remake Venezuela and then the rest of South America into a socialist powerhouse that would stand up to el Diablo del Norte. He’s financed this movement on high oil prices. As an oil exporting nation, and [...]

Some readers have questioned the veracity of the article I cited in yesterday’s post (which is a good thing and should be encouraged). I am not familiar with the work of the article’s author, Amir Taheri and cannot speak to his credibility one way or the other. I realize that there is a great deal [...]

If this turns out to be true, this could be the most damning scandal exposed of any of the candidates seeking to be the next president or vice president. According to an article in The New York Post, Sen. Barack Obama told Iraqi leaders to delay a U.S. troop withdrawal agreement until after the presidential [...]

There’s a lot of hoopla and hullabaloo over the politicization of the Olympics, including the fact that it’s held in a country that is horrendously restrictive of social freedoms. But there’s another aspect that’s largely ignored. There is a certain nationalism that follows the Olympics, which is wholly unjustified. As Americans, we are expected to [...]

One of the key ideas that I find myself discussing in any election cycle is the desire of Americans to elect a savior. Not gonna happen. The system is bigger than the players, and the system is flawed. But that doesn’t stop the average voter from trying to elect someone who will “run the country”, [...]

John McCain must hate little girls. It is one of many inescapable conclusions that arise from reading his National Security position paper, which promises all things to everyone – well almost everyone. His foreign policy plans promise more submarines, more ships, more aircraft, more divisions, more security, more military assistance for allies, more attacks on [...]

Looks like the “reveal” may be a few short years away. Maybe it will finally be understood just how deeply the rottenness and fraud has gone: to imagine the IMF investigating the US financial system is unthinkable, or was. But, at the weekend, Der Spiegel reported that the IMF would conduct a full investigation into [...]

In barbaric cultures, when people find themselves facing unpleasant changes, like the failure of crops or natural disasters, they look for scapegoats to blame. In the Europe and early colonial America, all to often the quest for a scapegoat took the form of a persecuting old women, who were charged with having used magic to [...]

Liberty Papers: I’m here with Libertarian Presidential Candidate Wayne Allyn Root and Cornelius Swart of The Portland Sentinel Portland Sentinel: Okay, so how did you feel about yesterday’s debate based on the rankings? Root: I don’t think that really had anything to do with it. This is a very different crowd. The debate was not [...]

Time Magazine asks the question: That’s why it’s time to consider a more serious option: invading Burma. Some observers, including former USAID director Andrew Natsios, have called on the U.S. to unilaterally begin air drops to the Burmese people regardless of what the junta says. The Bush Administration has so far rejected the idea — [...]

About a month ago, I blasted an article by a tongue-in-cheek reporter who wanted to use Raul Castro’s easing of restrictions on cell phone ownership as an excuse to criticize cell phones (suggesting– implicitly– that oppression and no phones is better than freedom and phones). I stand by that post, but I stepped over the [...]

There’s been a bit of deriliction of duty going on here at The Liberty Papers. I’ve been trying to keep track of happenings in Zimbabwe, but we’re now 25 days into an electoral nightmare in that nation, and I’ve not had the time to address it. Zimbabwe has spent most of the last decade as [...]

Venezuela’s health care system, a place only Michael Moore could love: Palacios, Venezuela’s largest public maternity hospital and once the nation’s beacon of neonatal care, has fallen on hard times. Half of the anesthesiologists and pediatricians on staff two years ago have quit. Basic equipment such as respirators, ultrasound monitors and incubators are either broken [...]

Now, you’re not going to hear me defend Raul Castro very often, but he has at least made some slight easing on the restrictions of ordinary Cubans. Among other things, he’s lifted the ban on private ownership of cell phones. Most of the changes are very small, but typically freedom is an infectious organism, and [...]

On Thursday, President Bush decided to offer some encouragement to the troops in the war Afghanistan (a war he has often neglected in favor of his disastrous vanity project in Iraq) by offering this bon mot on his personal feelings about the mission and the service rendered by our armed forces: I must say, I’m [...]

Britain has long been a bellwether for what is coming to the United States. First it was smoking bans, soon it will likely be national health care. And shortly to follow will probably be a federal DNA database. What will follow that? The inevitable stories of DNA database abuses: IT IS an object lesson in [...]

Or, maybe not… Last year the statistics institute launched its own study on the impact of the social missions. This was supposed to be ready by January. But delays in buying equipment mean it has yet to start, according to Irene Gurrea, the economist in charge. Asked if there were any reliable statistics on the [...]

Foreign policy is one of the areas where Ron Paul and I part company, and this is an example of why: The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a resolution strongly defending how Israel has repelled rocket attacks. The non-binding resolution, passed 404-1 on Wednesday, was substantially rewritten since its introduction in January to include [...]