Arnold Kling, on the “gotcha” mentality of partisanism: If your goal is to accumulate a fan base and fire them up, then of course calling intellectual fouls on the other side is the way to go. However, I claim that if your goal is to contribute to a discussion in which fair-minded people will consider [...]

You may remember Wayne Allyn Root as the sports betting “expert” cum political commentator who ended up being Bob Barr’s running mate on the 2008 Libertarian Party Presidential ticket. In 2010 he was elected to a position on the Libertarian National Committee and, while many had figured he’d be running for the Presidential nomination this [...]

Over at Reason, Mike Riggs responded to President Obama’s former Green Jobs czar Van Jones’ tirade about “so-called libertarians” at an Occupy rally in L.A. In case you missed it, Van Jones said that libertarians “say they love America but they hate the people, the brown folk, the gays, the lesbians, the people with piercings.” [...]

Reading the point/counterpoint posts on the question of how the supreme court would decide on Obamacares constitutionality, was quite disturbing to me in several ways. On the one hand I was heartened, because clearly both Brad and Doug are sane and rational folks with a reasonably solid background in both law and politics, and a [...]

Sen. Arlen Specter was last Friday’s guest for The Jason Lewis Show to promote his new book. The interview started casually enough, discussing topics such as the Trayvon Martin case and various policies Sen. Specter supported while in the senate. Sen. Specter’s main complaint in his book, as he explained in the interview, was that [...]

Several members of the Colorado Senate introduced a bill yesterday that would reduce drug possession from a felony to a misdemeanor, favoring drug treatment programs over incarceration in state prisons. Lynn Bartels reporting for The Denver Post writes: Senate Bill 2012-163 deals with drug offenders who primarily are users and addicts rather than dealers, and [...]

The sweater vested theocrat Rick Santorum has struck again, this time promising to “vigorously” enforce obscenity laws. Tom Knighton at United Liberty thinks that there are higher priorities facing the next president than lax enforcement of pornography statutes writing: Take a look around for a moment. We have a nation that is falling apart. The [...]

Since 1920, the 43rd state has had either a convention, or a presidential primary to select the the Republican party presidential candidate (the Democratic party allowed each county to decide whether to have a caucus or a primary, up ’til 2008, and the counties varied between caucuses and primaries. In 2008 they changed the rules [...]

The war drums for war with Iran on behalf of Israel are getting louder by the day. I wouldn’t have ever imagined that after experiencing the failure to find WMD in Iraq following the invasion along with the tremendous sacrifices of blood and treasure we would be having an almost identical conversation concerning Iran years [...]

If Rep. Ron Paul has accomplished anything in his 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns it would be the way he has educated the American public about monetary policy and the Federal Reserve. I’ve listened to on line lectures from the Cato Institute and read about monetary policy but more often than not its either over [...]

One of the more distressing things for me concerning this 2012 campaign is the religious test being imposed on some of the candidates by the voters and encouraged by other candidates. There are at least some voters who will not support Mitt Romney under any circumstances because he is a Mormon. Once upon a time, [...]

Recently Chris has pointed out (here & here) the stupid/evil fallacy the left often uses* to paint the right. In short, the fallacy goes like this: 1) Republican policies are bad and designed purely to reward the current power structure. 2) If you are a Republican, you then must fall into one of two categories: [...]

Last week, I wrote a post about how the Left wants in the bedrooms of the people by mandating health insurance coverage for contraceptives. On the other extreme, we have Rick “every sperm is sacred” Santorum talking about the “dangers of contraceptives” and how non-procreative sex is somehow bad for society (as if concerns about [...]

As most of you are aware, Judge Andrew Napolitano’s final episode of “Freedom Watch” on Fox Business Channel aired earlier this week. The segment I will miss the most is the judge’s closing monologue he called “The Plain Truth.” Here is the final installment:

One way we libertarians often describe ourselves are individuals who don’t want the government in our bedroom or our boardrooms. Those on the Left typically agree with the former while disagreeing with the latter while those on the Right typically believe the reverse. Yet when it comes to the federal government mandating that all health [...]

A Daily Caller headline caught my eye yesterday from the Cato Institute’s John Samples: Is there a libertarian case for Rick Santorum? If Samples aim was to write an outlandish headline to bring attention to his article, it certainly did the trick*. In the article, Samples does not make the case that Rick Santorum is [...]

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 [...]

This post is a clarification of an ongoing theme I’ve addressed before… and which has been addressed many times before by myself, by other bloggers, and by scholars like Victor Davis Hanson, and Thomas Sowell. I’m talking about the “Stupid or Evil” false dichotomy. Those of us with a libertarian, or economic conservative bent (social [...]

We’re not going black today, over SOPA or PIPA. In case you by some miracle hadn’t noticed it yet, tens of thousands of web sites around the country and around the world, are “going black” or putting up banners explaining that they are not available or there is no content today etc… In protest against [...]

In last night’s debate, Gov. Mitt Romney said something quite incredible when asked if he would have signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA): Yes I would have [signed the NDAA] and I do believe it’s appropriate to have the capacity to detain people who are threats to this country who are members of Al [...]