Free Republic

Former Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson is considering jumping into the race for the U.S. Senate in New Mexico, raising the profile of a race that Democrats seeking to capture the majority in Congress had seen as a safe seat. Johnson consultant Ron Nielson told The Associated Press on Friday that the former governor is “strongly considering” running if Libertarian candidate Aubrey Dunn quits the race as expected. “He is weighing it over right now,” Nielson said. “He doesn’t want to get into a race he can’t win.” […] During the presidential campaign, Johnson vowed to cut military spending,...

Javonnie McCoy was growing marijuana when the cops came to his Middle Georgia home. He was caught red-handed with it. Almost a pound of it, in fact. He admitted it to police, and later he looked jurors in the eye and said, yep, it was mine. I used it as medicine. The jurors let him go. He was minding his own business and wasn’t hurting anybody, they reasoned. He just doesn’t belong in prison. The jury’s decision earlier this month in Dublin, Ga., may have been due to a muddled prosecution of a muddy case. Or it may have been...

Former Texas U.S. Congressman Ron Paul, a three-time presidential candidate, has endorsed Murray Sabrin’s U.S. Senate candidacy. “I am pleased to endorse my good friend of 35 years Murray Sabrin for United States Senate,” said Paul. “Murray’s dedication to, and knowledge of, the principles of liberty will make him an effective advocate for freeing the people of New Jersey—and the nation–from excessive taxes, debt, and inflation, as well as ending the ongoing violations of our right to free speech, property, and privacy.” “Murray will also be an outspoken Senator for peaceful relations with other nations, and work to ensure that...

---snip--- Government has three primary functions. It should [1] provide for military defense of the nation. It should [2] enforce contract between individuals. It [3] should protect citizens from crimes against themselves or their property. When government, in pursuit of good intentions tries to rearrange the economy, legislate morality, or help special interests, the costs come in inefficiency, lack of motivation, and loss of freedom. Government should be a referee, not an active player.” —Milton Friedman I found this on numerous blogs. There is an amazing amount of truth behind this heartfelt meme. Come to your own conclusions regarding ---snip---

Seriously, the Democrat party should embrace this guy as their poster child candidate. ======================================= He believes in instituting a patriarchal system, with women under the authority of men; he supports abolishing age restrictions for marriage and laws against marital rape; he believes that white supremacy is a “system that works,” that Hitler was a “good thing for Germany,” and that incest should be legalized, at least in the context of marriage. And at one point in a conversation with The Post, he seemed to express admiration for the system run by the Taliban in Afghanistan, noting that the country’s birthrate...

The Broward County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled the death was accidental, police said Wednesday. Diaz said no one will be charged in the incident. The male pit bull — 3 or 4 years old — was raised by the family since it was a puppy, police said. Its sibling and mother, both pit bulls, were also family pets. All were removed from the home the day of the attack, but the dog owner has only surrendered Thor,...

Apple is one of ten tech giants to once again call on the US Government not to reauthorize the Patriot Act in its current form. The Act expires on 1st June unless it is renewed by Congress. Apple was joined by AOL, Dropbox, Evernote, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo.In an open letter to President Obama, NSA Director Admiral Rogers and other prominent government figures, the companies urge Congress to end the bulk collection of communications metadata–the logs that determine how and when ordinary citizens contact each other.The letter says that mass surveillance must end, and that a revised bill must contain mechanisms to ensure...

They can't be this dumb, can they? They just can't be. Our progressives Democratic friends aren't that stupid, right? But they are counting on the American people being stupid when it comes to world affairs. And there's very little to suggest they won't be successful in that endeavor. Be it the president saying ISIS is "contained" hours before the group unleashed evil on the streets of Paris, or the secretary of state saying the Paris attacks were crazy, unlike the attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo, where there was "legitimacy" and a "rationale" to them, nothing they say can...

Ever-higher temperatures are melting the ice sheets faster than projected. Sea level is rising. International efforts to reduce greenhouse gases are taking longer than expected. It's a nightmare scenario that could soon demand an emergency response. What to do? One idea gaining traction is to seed marine clouds with salt water or other particles, increasing their potential to reflect solar rays, cooling the earth. It's part of a nascent and controversial branch of science known as "sunlight reflection methods," or SRM. "We think SRM could buy time for other (carbon-reduction) measures to be put in place," said Philip J. Rasch,...

First they tried suing the utility companies. Then they tried suing the automakers. They even tried suing oil companies on behalf of an Alaskan village in danger of being inundated by oil-fueled rising sea levels. Each approach ended when courts said that the judiciary branch wasn’t the right place to address human-induced global warming, a problem so big it requires a coordinated international response that only legislators can implement. Now private plaintiff lawyers and their allies in government are trying a new strategy: Suing under state-law theories of public nuisance. San Francisco and several other California cities and counties have...

Left-wing scholars, particularly in academe, make lots of attention getting assertions. Regrettably, they usually offer little in the way of illuminating evidence. "In the midst of almost unimaginable horror in Puerto Rico, a bright light has shone on one of America's most unjustifiable and economically backward laws, the previously obscure Jones Act," Brink Lindsay and Steven Teles wrote on October 2, 2017 for Washington Monthly. "First created in the aftermath of World War I to buffer the impact of post-war demobilization, the Jones Act requires that all ships that carry cargo within the United States be built in America, with...

I think I must have been ill that day. At some point, no one can say precisely when, libertarians apparently swore a feudal oath of fealty to the Republican Party. In response to an American Prospect article on libertarian disenchantment with the Bush administration, Reason's own former editor in chief Virginia Postrel explained that "real Dean voters don't like Jeff Flake. (I do.)" On the Crossfire view of politics, this makes sense: You pick your team and root for it, come hell or high water. The Platonic Real Dean Voter can't possibly hold any affection for a member of the...

US Muslims are tolerant, peaceful, and integrated into American society. Donald Trump has proposed profiling Muslim Americans and shutting down mosques. He claims that Muslim “hatred is beyond comprehension.” But the truth is that Muslim Americans are not only integrating into U.S. society, but are actually more opposed to violence and more tolerant than many other Americans. Muslim Americans Hold Mainstream Religious and Political Views US Muslims score higher than most on Gallup’s religious tolerance index. Muslims are similar to other religious Americans. Pew’s major survey of Muslims in 2011 found that religion was equally important to Christian and Muslim...

Conservative climate champions are often laughed off or ignored. But what’s happening within the American political right could change everything, and fast.Each year since 1989, the JFK Library bestows its Profile in Courage award to a public servant who takes a principled but unpopular position. This year,the award went to Bob Inglis, a former congressman from South Carolina who’s turned into America’s best hope for near-term climate action. Oh, he’s also a Republican.As you might expect, Inglis wasn’t always a climate campaigner. In his acceptance speech last week at the JFK Library in Boston,he described how and why he changed...

To the casual observer, the American right can appear an undifferentiated wall of denial and obstructionism on climate change, but behind the scenes there are signs of movement. A growing number of conservative leaders and intellectuals have come to terms with climate science and begun casting about for solutions. Led mainly by libertarians and libertarian-leaning economists, they've begun to coalesce behind a carbon tax, which they consider the most market-friendly of the available alternatives. Jerry Taylor, a longtime veteran of the libertarian think tank Cato Institute who recently founded his own libertarian organization, the Niskanen Center, is a vocal proponent...

Taft unveils $2.3B tax-hike proposal Some Republicans stunned by governor's plan By William Hershey Columbus Bureau COLUMBUS | Gov. Bob Taft on Thursday outlined a plan to raise taxes by nearly $2.3 billion during two years as part of a sweeping reform package that would affect every major state tax and the municipal income tax system. Tax Commissioner Tom Zaino, who joined Taft at a news conference to unveil the plan, called it a "rebirth" of the state tax code. The plan prompted comparisons to the enactment of the state income tax in 1971 under Gov. John J. Gilligan and...

Behind the Headlines by Justin RaimondoAntiwar.com April 8, 2002 WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA POSTREL?Post-9/11: Who speaks for libertarianism – the Old Right or the Neocon Clones? A note from the author: I apologize, in advance, for the sheer length of this column, but since it addresses the sell-out of basic libertarian principles by people and institutions who purport to speak in its name, I thought it important to address these questions thoroughly, with extensive quotations from those I name. Too bad, in attacking Antiwar.com, these pathetic losers didn't do the same – but then what can one expect from craven...

Jerry Taylor believes he can change the minds of conservative climate skeptics. After all, he helped plant the doubts for many in the first place. He’s president of the Niskanen Center, a libertarian-leaning Washington, DC, think tank he founded in 2014. He and his colleagues there are trying to build support for the passage of an aggressive federal carbon tax, through discussions with Washington insiders, with a particular focus on Republican legislators and their staff. Lesson one: Pick the right targets Political scientists consistently find that mass opinion doesn’t drive the policy debate, so much as the other way around....

Richard Epstein contrasts two recent actions by the Trump Administration — the imposition of tariffs on steel and aluminum, and the blocking of a foreign company’s attempts to take over an American tech firm — to demonstrate when national security concerns justify restrictions on trade ... and when they don’t.

The pro-mass immigration billionaires Charles and David Koch, known informally as the “Koch brothers,” have committed to opposing President Trump’s popular plan to reduce legal immigration levels to raise the wages and quality of life for America’s working and middle class.