Free Republic

A major Democratic Party benefactor and Obama campaign bundler helped pay for professional petition circulators responsible for getting Virginia Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Robert C. Sarvis on the ballot — a move that could split conservative votes in a tight race. Campaign finance records show the Libertarian Booster PAC has made the largest independent contribution to Sarvis’ campaign, helping to pay for professional petition circulators who collected signatures necessary to get Sarvis’ name on Tuesday’s statewide ballot. Austin, Texas, software billionaire Joe Liemandt is the Libertarian Booster PAC’s major benefactor. He’s also a top bundler for President Barack Obama. This revelation...

A major Democratic Party benefactor and Obama campaign bundler helped pay for professional petition circulators responsible for getting Virginia Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Robert C. Sarvis on the ballot — a move that could split conservative votes in a tight race. Campaign finance records show the Libertarian Booster PAC has made the largest independent contribution to Sarvis’ campaign, helping to pay for professional petition circulators who collected signatures necessary to get Sarvis’ name on Tuesday’s statewide ballot. Austin, Texas, software billionaire Joe Liemandt is the Libertarian Booster PAC’s major benefactor. He’s also a top bundler for President Barack Obama. This revelation...

In polite society at least, questioning the fundamental claims that people make about themselves is rather frowned upon. If a person says that he is a Catholic, then one is expected to believe that he is a Catholic, even if there is no evidence for this whatsoever. If a person says he is a conservative when he clearly agrees with not a single conservative position, we are likewise expected to smile and nod grimly. “No, you’re not!” is not a socially acceptable response to erroneous self-description, alas. There is some virtue in this convention, I suppose, even if it is...

A major Democratic Party benefactor and Obama campaign bundler helped pay for professional petition circulators responsible for getting Virginia Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Robert C. Sarvis on the ballot — a move that could split conservative votes in a tight race. Campaign finance records show the Libertarian Booster PAC has made the largest independent contribution to Sarvis’ campaign, helping to pay for professional petition circulators who collected signatures necessary to get Sarvis’ name on Tuesday’s statewide ballot.

Is Ken Cuccinelli closing in on Terry McAuliffe in the Virginia governor's race? The latest poll from Emerson College shows McAuliffe, the Democrat, with 42 percent support and Cuccinelli, the Republican, with 40 percent. Libertarian Robert Sarvis has 13 percent in the poll of 874 likely voters. The two-point lead for McAuliffe is the smallest he's had in any poll since September.

In polite society at least, questioning the fundamental claims that people make about themselves is rather frowned upon. If a person says that he is a Catholic, then one is expected to believe that he is a Catholic, even if there is no evidence for this whatsoever. If a person says he is a conservative when he clearly agrees with not a single conservative position, we are likewise expected to smile and nod grimly. “No, you’re not!” is not a socially acceptable response to erroneous self-description, alas. There is some virtue in this convention, I suppose, even if it is...

Libertarians have long supported the legalization of marijuana and putting an end to the expensive War on Drugs program on constitutional grounds, arguing the federal government has no business regulating drug use. But, the legalization of marijuana has an attractive side benefit as well – it would flood government coffers with billions in additional revenue. According to a Cato Institute study, legalizing marijuana will result in an additional $8.7 billion in yearly federal and state tax revenue. In a time of excessive national debt and threats of a credit default, the prudent and expeditious dismantling of drug prohibitions is a...

MERCER COUNTY — Irresponsibility and drug addiction, not poverty, is the driving force behind most local crimes, according to District Judges Ron Antos, Dennis Songer and Brian Arthur, who spoke to a United Way committee searching for the best way to spend its donated dollars.

[RINO ALERT] Typically, when a politician says that a party is soulless, he's talking about the other guys.

While I’m closer to Sarvis’s viewpoint than Cuccinelli’s on marriage, marijuana, and I am sure other policy issues as well, there have been a number of concerning red flags about Sarvis’s positions. Take tax policy, for instance, where Sarvis just doesn’t sound like a libertarian at all to me. Virginia is around the middle of the pack when it comes to tax climate, and could desperately use additional reforms in a time when the state economy is doing so well to lighten the burden on workers. Yet Sarvis told Chuck Todd he didn’t actually favor more tax cuts, but finding...

Country music icon, satirist and one-time gubernatorial candidate Richard "Kinky" Friedman has announced his bid for agriculture commissioner in 2014. Friedman will run in the Democratic primary. The 68 year old said he’s interested in legalizing and regulating marijuana as an agricultural crop to revitalize the Texas farming industry.

A new Gallup poll indicates that more Americans than ever recognize the need for a third party to threaten the political monopoly that Democrats and Republicans clearly represent in our country. According to Gallup, 60% of those polled believe that the United States needs a third party – that is the highest percentage of Americans answering in the affirmative since the polling organization began asking the question 10-years ago. The poll also found only a quarter of those surveyed believe the Democrats and Republicans are doing an adequate job at representing them in government.

The very first bit of anti-libertarian humor I ever posted was this clever video about the anarcho-capitalist paradise of Somalia.I then shared two cartoons, one on libertarian ice fishing and the other showinglibertarian lifeguards.That was followed by a very funny list of the 24 types of libertarians.But I haven’t shared anything making fun of people like me since this “think I do” montage last year.Thanks to Buzzfeed, however, we now have something new for our collection. They came up with “23 Libertarian Problems” and here are two of my favorites from the list.

On Sept. 30, Newsmax/Zogby Polling released a poll of the gubernatorial race in Virginia. The race now appears to be nearly tied, with Democrat Terry McAuliffe, a former chairman of the national Democratic Party, leading Republican Ken Cuccinelli, the current attorney general of Virginia, by a margin of 32.5 percent to 32.4 percent. 24.3 percent are undecided, while 10.8 percent support another candidate. But when Libertarian candidate Robert Sarvis is named as a choice, he gets 12.7 percent of the vote, with McAuliffe at 32.2 percent and Cuccinelli at 27.4 percent. Among 18-to-29-year-olds, the difference is far more pronounced. A...

For better or for worse, libertarianism is on the upswing in the Republican Party.... ...."68% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents agree with the statement that 'individuals should be free to do as they like as long as they don't hurt others, and that the government should keep out of people's day-to-day lives.'.... "Some fundamentalist Christians are very libertarian in their beliefs," explained Dave Nalle, Chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus, to The Washington Times Communities earlier this year.... "They understand that the governmental restraint which is central to libertarianism works to their benefit in protecting them from government interference in...

SPOILER ALERT! AMC's Breaking Bad's finale last night vindicated team Walt. While Walt died, the show's premise was always that Walt's days were few. The question was what Walt might accomplish with his remaining life. Certainly not how he anticipated, but Walt did indeed leave money for his family, bring closure to Hank's murder, settle scores with his enemies, and die largely on his own terms. Compared to the moral morass where Hank lived, Walt's dive into crime looks admirable. No doubt Walt's product is highly dangerous and prone to abuse; meth addicts are among the sorriest stories. However, Hank...

During his Ironman 21-hour speech, Sen. Ted Cruz read excerpts from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, name-dropped "libertarians" at least six times, and yielded to Sen. Rand Paul, who invoked Frederic Bastiat's "What is Seen and Unseen," a favorite among libertarians. Ted Cruz, who retained remarkable composure over the long night, seems in all things deliberate. Political leaders seem to have become more comfortable talking about libertarians, even identifying themselves as such. Libertarians may have reached a tipping point within the Republican Party. Last week, a FreedomWorks study on public opinion found that libertarian views within the Republican Party are at...

Hush Over The Hub: NSA foes fall silent on Obamacare by Daniel Clark By the start of October, the Obamacare “data hub” is expected to be operational. Now that libertarianism is supposed to be all the rage, you’d think we’d be hearing outbursts of righteous anger at least as intense as the ones that have been directed at the NSA surveillance program. So why aren’t we? According to the Health and Human Services’ regulation authorizing the hub, it is a means of gathering “personally identifiable information (PII) on individuals who apply for Obamacare through a Health Insurance Exchange,” as we...

Robert Sarvis lags in the polls, but leads on the merits. According to the conservative Media Research Center's analysis of this year's race for governor, coverage of Republican candidate Ken Cuccinelli has been "viciously negative," with 24 critical stories for every uncritical one. Coverage of the Democrat, Terry McAuliffe, hasn't exactly been glowing: By the MRC's estimate, negative stories about him outnumber positive stories three to one. But Robert Sarvis, the Libertarian candidate, probably would switch places with either of them in a heartbeat. He barely gets mentioned at all – garnering only about 2 percent of all coverage –...

The libertarian philosophy is taking the Republican Party by storm, according to a poll conducted by FreedomWorks, a DC-based grassroots service center with over 6 million members. With Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) and many other liberty-minded politicians gaining influence, libertarianism has generated new interest inside the Republican Party, much to the chagrin of the GOP's political establishment.... "FreedomWorks' poll shows that 42 percent of Republicans have a favorable view of the word ‘libertarian,' and only 10 percent don't know the word, compared to 27 percent who don't know nationally," they added. And the term "libertarian" may...