Ezra Klein quotes approvingly from Bruce Bartlett’s new book, The New American Economy: The Failure Of Reaganomics And A New Way Forward:
The reality is that even before spending exploded to deal with the economic crisis, the government was set to grow by about 50 percent of GDP over the next generation just to pay for [...]

Crossposting something my wife wrote, from here:
I’ve been in an incredibly foul mood the last couple of days, and until this morning I did not understand why.
We’re planning on moving to where we actually want to be. We’re constantly being asked why we want to move to the middle of nowhere. I tell everyone, [...]

From the time of 1765 forward, the American people, in fits and starts, began moving closer and closer to breaking ties with Britain and declaring independence. They grew increasingly angry at being dragged into [or paying for] the wars of the Crown. The King had largely held a hands-off approach with the colonies, [...]

Iced Earth
“Declaration Day”
The Glorious Burden (2004)

Written by Jon Schaffer
A desperate situation
Forced to retaliation
The task ahead a burden
Men will suffer, that’s for certain
We’ll charge into the fire
The cause, we must inspire
We raise our fists to tyranny
A high price, freedom is not free
The odds are stacked against us
But with our resolve relentless
And arrogance their weakness
Our cause [...]

“It’s Independence Day, dammit, not the ‘Fourth of July,’” properly noted a close friend on Twitter.

This was countered by what I consider another valid point. “That depends on who you’re asking,” responded African-American Jefferson County (AL) Commission candidate Iva Williams. “Plymouth Rock landed on me!”
In my opinion, there is a lot of truth to both [...]

Many Republicans, having discovered that Bush’s policies are tyrannical, are making noises about wanting out of the fascist state that they were cheering on a few months ago. While we may wonder why it took the trivial matter of having people who have the letter D appended to their names on [...]

This morning, the 9th circuit court of appeals confirmed that the 2nd amendment is indeed incorporated against the states under the selective incorporation doctrine, in the case Nordyke Vs. King.
This means that the 2nd amendment has a lawful status equivalent to that of the first, fourth, fifth, and other amendments which explicitly protect our fundamental [...]

I’m not going to make it to any Tea Parties today, because frankly I think my personal time is far better spent earning money at my job than engaging in a bit of populism that will likely be forgotten and ignored by the mainstream media — at least those portions of the MSM that don’t [...]

If book sales of “Atlas Shrugged” are any indicator, the Obama administration may have just given the freedom movement a much needed shot in the arm. From the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights:
Sales of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” have almost tripled over the first seven weeks of this year compared with sales for [...]

For a long time, I’ve been pissed off about Daylight Savings Time. In my job, I work with a lot of people across the country, and thus I get into work early (7:30 or so) and leave about 5:00 PM. Before it went into effect this year, each morning I would drive to [...]

A writer at The Washington Post says the answer is yes:
First, it isn’t the 1950s anymore. As religion scholar Will Herberg noted in his influential 1955 essay “Protestant-Catholic-Jew,” at that time 68 percent of Americans were Protestant, 23 percent Catholic, and 4 percent Jewish. (The remaining 5 percent expressed no religious preference.) “Not to be [...]

Mark over at Publius Endures discusses the current state of the Republican Party, as it has changed from the 1994 version to the 2008 version (emphasis added):
With libertarians leaving the party in droves, the remaining GOP opinion-makers are increasingly free to abandon free market rhetoric; put another way, they have become smaller and thus have [...]

So, today is Constitution Day, a day to celebrate the ratification of the Constitution. Aptly, then, I’ve been reading John Ferling’s

The View seems to be an endless source of idiotic commentary, especially in the realm of politics. It appears that Whoopi picked up where Rosie left off when Sen. John McCain appeared on the show.

To have “a strict constructionist” philosophy means to return to slavery and other injustices of the era of the [...]

Ron Paul spoke in front of a crowd of approximately 10,000 at the “Rally for the Republic” (AKA the “Ron Paul Convention”) across the river from the Republican National Convention.
Below are the first 3 parts of his speech, the full text of the speech can be read here.

Other speakers on the last [...]

No, I didn’t ask you about your net worth but what dollar value would you say that your life is worth to you. Most of us would not be able to come up with a figure or might say that putting an exact dollar amount on one individual’s life (especially one’s own) is impossible to [...]

This morning, I’m noting a lot of ill informed …or perhaps just informed by misunderstanding of the text… opinions and statements regarding the historic Heller ruling on the scope and applicability of the 2nd amendment.
This of course is unsurprising when many people of varying levels of knowledge about law, history, and firearms have just a [...]

Given that the D.C. vs. Heller ruling is a historically important ruling for the Second Amendment and given that the next president could appoint between two and three Justices to the Supreme Court over the next four years, I think the responses from Bob Barr, John McCain, and Barack Obama might give us some insight [...]