Libertarian Commentary on the News, 12 October 2015, #15-41A:

Posted on 2015-10-12 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

My discussion in the last commentary on free speech was eerily echoed by an excellent column by Walter E Williams in Townhall about suppressing free speech: as he points out, it is growing more common and more blatant. Lip service is paid to liberty: we who are “extremists” must be put in our place: and MUST shut up.

At least a few (hundred) people in Oregon don’t understand that they have to shut up.  The Washington Times reports that several hundred people showed up at the squatter’s ghoulish visit to the community college to demand an end to gun-free zones and tell him (and Miz Clinton) to stay out of it.  Meanwhile, although his “advisers” pooh-poohed Clinton”s claim that executive orders can end the “gun violence” crisis, he appears to be trying to do just that.  Well, I’m sure that the Secret Service is working overtime processing the photos and setting up files on all the people out protesting. Like voting, if protesting like this did any real good, they’d outlaw it. More about Oregon and gun laws in a minute. Continue reading →

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Libertarian Commentary on the News, 09 October 2015, #15-40D: War on free speech

Posted on 2015-10-09 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

The fight AGAINST free speech has a long tradition of evil abuse in the Fifty States, going back to before the Revolution, when the doctrine of jury power to decide both the law and the facts (usually ignored today) was established in response to a man being punished for his free speech. His public, published condemnation of crimes committed by a government official. It continued through the Sedition Acts under the first President Adams, and right through Lincoln’s war on some Northerners, Wilson’s attacks on German speakers and pacifists during WW2, and right down to the present. Here are a few examples this week. Continue reading →

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Libertarian Commentary on the News, 08 October 2015, #15-40C: How gullible are we?

Posted on 2015-10-08 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

“Interesting tidbit,” said Debby in forwarding this story from 9News in Denver that the Rocky Mountains wildfire history shows that temperatures were much warmer, and that wildfires were much more major and frequent a thousand years ago, so that modern “global warming” would also be expected to cause (or allow) more forest fires. This claim, of course, is based on something almost NEVER taught in high school or college history classes: that brief industrial and high-tech era in which the AmerInd tribes achieved incredible heights of sophistication and production, dominated the planet, and reached out to the planets. This was, of course, before their hubris and the massive flooding and horrific weather triggered by the AmerInd-caused global warming completely wiped out their massive industrial civilization so completely that two centuries later the remnants of their population were living in cliffs and tipis and worse. And then quickly slid into the nature-loving and preserving, environmentally-sensitive “noble savages” that modern environists love so much. [Actually, maybe they DID make it to the planets: any idea about why they call Mars the “Red Planet” or how it got that way?] Continue reading →

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Libertarian Commentary on the News, 07 OCT 2015, #15-40B: Cops and religions

Posted on 2015-10-06 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

After reporting the rude behavior of a cop when she asked for directions, The Free Thought Project reports that the mother was beaten by three cops, in front of her children, after being stopped on a bogus charge.  It is all on video, including the way people tried to intervene (unarmed, I might add). Why are these three police officers not already in prison, bond set at millions? Where are the protesters in Carlsbad?  Why not?

Mama Liberty answers these questions: In prison?  Ha. We already know that’s not going to happen.  Where are the protesters in Carlsbad?  Why not? Too many people still think that anything the “cops” do is justified; that they have the “authority” to stop people like this. Few will see the video, and will get the twisted “news” from their local MSM. An unarmed woman alone, and especially with children, would be much better off not speaking to cops at all, under any circumstances. And complaining to the cop’s boss is worthless and dangerous, as she discovered. But I’ll bet she STILL thinks government has actual authority over everyone, and these are just “bad apples.” And besides… it’s California. sigh. Continue reading →

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Libertarian Commentary on the News, 05 OCT 2015, #15-40A: Responsibility, stupidity, and (evil) cops

Posted on 2015-10-05 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

Reading this, published by World Net Daily was enough to make me sicker to my stomach. Parents have to try and understand their children, and sometimes make apologies and amends for the behavior even of their adult chilldren. But the father of the murdering madman who shot and killed so many people in an Oregon college’s campus last week is not doing that. It is everyone (things) fault but his son’s. “That’s what guns are,” the killer’s father stated. “The killers. It’s as simple as that. It’s black and white.” The facts are even simpler: His son massacred nine people and wounded seven more, some severely. Mercer also blames Congress for not enacting more stringent gun laws. “They talk about gun laws,” he said. “They talk about gun control. Every time something like this happens, they talk about it and nothing is done.”  Continue reading →

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Man Alive – A Survival Manual for The Human Mind

Posted on 2015-10-04 by MamaLiberty

By Greg Swann

Save the world from home – in your spare time!

That headline is my favorite advertising joke, a send-up of all those hokey old matchbook covers. I don’t know if anyone still advertises on matchbook covers. I don’t even know if anyone still makes matchbooks. Presumably, by now, smokers can light their cigarettes with the fire of indignation in other peoples’ eyes.

But I have always believed that ordinary people should be able to save the world from going to hell on a hand-truck. Our problem is not the tyrant-of-the-moment. The only real problem humanity has ever had is thoughtlessness – the mindless acquiescence to the absurd demands of demagogues.

That’s the subject of this little book: The high cost of thoughtlessness – and how to stop paying it. It weighs in at around 75 pages. I’m nobody’s matchbook copywriter, and I would have made it even shorter if I could have. But it covers everything I know about the nature of human life on Earth – what we’ve gotten wrong, until now, and how we can do better going forward. Continue reading →

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Libertarian Commentary on the News, 03 OCT 2015, #15-39D: Islamic wars

Posted on 2015-10-04 by TPOL Nathan

by Nathan Barton

Islamic wars abroad and at home. Coming to a town near you!

As Europe continues to get trashed by the “Syrian refugees” or invading migrants, World Net Daily reports that the FedGov is admitting that the information on these so-called refugees is both very, very limited and from sources of dubious accuracy. Hundreds of cases of forged or stolen identities have been found among those in Europe, with organized syndicates involved, and they seem perfectly willing to do the same favors for those that the White House intends to allow into the Fifty States. The mess seen in Germany, the Czech Republic, and Greece seems likely to develop quickly here. More and more reports are coming from Brit, German, and French news sources of more and more faux Syrians, actually Muslims from Pakistan, Turkey, and Egypt, are claiming to be Syrian and sneaking in with the “legitimate” refugees. (I sometimes wonder if there ARE any legit ones, or if they are all being enslaved back home.) Continue reading →

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Libertarian Commentary on the News, 30 September 2015, #15-39C: Ain’t so.

Posted on 2015-09-30 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

Someone once said that it isn’t what we don’t know that is dangerous, it is what we KNOW that ain’t so that creates trouble.  News stories today make that point.  We can see how we take things for granted, that make life worse for us, especially when we voluntarily give up the liberty that should be so precious to us.

Will we stand for it?  Government getting involved not just in regulating but in producing what we drink?  The Casper Star-Tribune reports that  Wyoming officials consider spending $3 million for malting plant to make whiskey. Continue reading →

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Libertarian Commentary on the News, 28 September 2015, #15-39B: Mining in space and other fun things

Posted on 2015-09-28 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

Popular Science babbles on about how it may soon be legal to mine asteroids, and has this article filled with references to the Outer Space Treaty and how companies might be “given the right” to mine on other bodies in the Solar System.  To me, it is the wrong approach, the wrong answer, and the wrong question.  The primary question is WHO or WHAT gave ANY of the states that signed that treaty the power to regulate who does what in space?  On another planet, at least: they might have SOME claim to regulate things in earth orbit – at least LOW earth orbit.  But they cannot, LOGICALLY, not just morally or legitimately, regulate and dictate something that they cannot enforce.  No cop cars in space, fellers.  No “Space Precinct.” No Solar Patrol, no Gray Lensman. Continue reading →

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Libertarian Commentary on the News, 27 September 2015, #15-39A: Where is the outrage?

Posted on 2015-09-27 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

Where is the outrage?  7 of 12 judges in an appeals court have decided that the Little Sisters of the Poor, a Catholic order, are NOT having their religious freedoms abridged by being forced by the Abominable Act (ObummerCare) to provide contraceptives to their workers, according to CNS News. The reasoning is that the nuns are not interpreting their own religious rules “properly.” The five outnumbered judges said this was the equivalent of telling a Jew that, since the real reason for the Torah’s prohibition on eating pork was good health, and proper feeding and testing of pork made it a good, safe food to eat, then Jews can legally be forced to eat pork.  But… if that WERE the case (or if the same argument were made but it was a Muslim and not a Jew), the screams of outrage would be heard in orbit. But for these poor sisters – well, even the Pope isn’t supporting them, I guess: now he says contraception is okay, it is just abortion that is sinful. Continue reading →

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