The Grand Illusion

Can You Handle the TRUTH???

Some Skepticism on Heller (D.C. Gun Law Ruling)

Radley Balko Nails it again! Too often "patriots" hear what they want to hear and NOT what was actually being said. Yes, Heller is a win but it only goes so far. When dealing with the religion of law it is wise to remember that just as with a theistic religion, interpretations of "holy writ" are subjective to the personalities involved and the contemporary times. SCUSA has reversed itself before as has the Vatican and other major religions on what were thought to be immutable positions.

Some Skepticsm on Heller

By Radley Balko

I hate to pee in the pool, here, but I’m having a hard time getting too excited about today’s decision.

Justice Antonin Scalia’s opinion avoids any decision on incorporating the Second Amendment to the states, and his history suggests a strong reluctance to incorporate individual rights. Scalia’s opinion does interpret the Second Amendment as an individual right, but only for self-protection, and only in the home. The concept of the Second Amendment as a bulwark against an overly oppressive government seems dead.

In the past, when Scalia’s limited government principles have conflicted with his law-and-order instincts, law and order has won handily. He’s been a happy federalist when it comes to allowing states to infringe on individual rights, but will bring down the hammer of the federal government on states that defy the feds by giving their citizens a bit more freedom.

As Jacob Sullum noted earlier, Scalia also goes out of his way to note that the "individual right" the Court found today doesn’t undo onerous regulations on the sale of guns, leaves untouched bans on "unusual or dangerous" weapons, and doesn’t overturn existing bans on concealed carry.

So what’s the real practical effect of today’s ruling? Seems to me, it’s limited to the following:

• A future Congress is barred from passing a uniform federal ban on handguns or rifles in the home. Just about any other federal regulation would probably still be okay, provided it meets the minimal Commerce Clause test in U.S. v. Lopez.

• The 600,000 residents of Washington, D.C. and residents of other federal protectorates now have the constitutional right to own a handgun, provided they meet a set of conditions put forth by the city council—the limits of which will be litigated at a future date. Also, even this right for this small group of people extends only to handguns or rifles kept in the home.

Any other city, state, or locality may still pass a gun law just as restrictive as the one struck down in D.C. And even the D.C. city council can still make its citizens jump through a number of hoops before allowing them to own a handgun.

Today’s ruling gave the right a rhetorical victory (remember, elections are "all about the judges!"), but I’m not sure what it accomplished in actually protecting Second Amendment rights. To be fair, Scalia explains that Heller was basically a case of first impression, and there’s much to still work out through litigation. But given the narrow reach of his opinion, I guess I’d just caution against too much optimism that any new litigation will come out the right way.

Kicking the Dragon

Kicking the Dragon

(Confessions of a Tax Heretic)

By Larken Rose

Conventional wisdom said he was wrong.
The evidence said he was right.
The government’s reaction to him said a whole lot more.

The book which chronicles the eight year saga of this “tax heretic” lays out in detail the sometimes amusing, sometimes infuriating tale of a modern-day witch-hunt, a corrupt and dishonest government bent on harassing, demonizing, persecuting, silencing and imprisoning those who publicly question the gospel according to the powers that be. The disturbing facts of the case pull back the facade of “due process” and the “rule of law” to reveal the United States government for what it has devolved into: a gang of lawless criminals interested only in preserving their own power by any means necessary.

Written almost entirely in prison, Kicking the Dragon (Confessions of a Tax Heretic) exposes truths about the United States federal government which will disturb every decent American, from the most devoted, patriotic flag-waver, to the most apathetic, jaded cynic.

The government has gone to great lengths to keep you from hearing the truth about this story, for reasons which the tale itself makes obvious. Get your copy now before the powers that be come up with some new legal excuse for suppressing the truth.

From LewRockwell.com an excellent article that echoes my own sentiments. I am often asked,"Why are you so anti-cop?" Below explains most of the reasoning and the other articles and videos I post here explain the rest. Another source is listed at the top of the links in the left column. Roger Roots' disertation, Are Cops Constitutional?

I Used To Not Be Anti-Cop

by Manuel Lora

There was a time when I used to believe that the police had a duty to serve and protect, to care for our property and to keep criminals away. Over the years, however, I have come to realize that though real crime exists in society, it is the cops who commit most of it.

This was not a very easy decision to make. Whenever I saw injustice and brutality, I would brush it off as a sporadic episode and move on. Having seen (and this is another reason why it’s very important to keep the internet free) video after video of people being tasered, shot, beaten, executed, roughed up, fined, ticketed, jailed, harassed, insulted, and being subjected to an infinite number of abuses, it’s hard to stay optimistic about the police and the system that runs it.

Government police is subject to the same ethical and economic analysis that is applicable to other government functions. Given that the state has no incentive to protect; that it can always count on taxes; that it is institutionalized aggression; that it legislates and therefore steals and plunders – given all these things, I had to change my tune. What I had thought to be random incidents of abuse were nothing but the normal, symptomatic function of the government at work: a series of inefficient and unethical monstrosities committed against society, allegedly for its own good.

I understood, then, that police departments are just another government program. Government programs, because they rely on taxation and legislation, are not wanted by society. And we know this is true because by resorting to taxation and regulation we have eliminated competitors who in the market would otherwise be free to meet the demand for security with a supply of such a service. Therefore, it is impossible to know that the quality and quantity of defense that is offered by the government reflects what people want. We cannot express our preference.

So far I have talked mostly from an economics perspective and determined that since there is no choice, there is no real efficiency to speak of for one cannot decide how to best spend money and allocate scarce resources for defense. Now I shall continue to develop the idea that started this short essay: most crimes are carried out by the police.

When I refer to "crime" I don’t mean crime as defined by state legislature but seen as the violation of property rights. Things like taxation and eminent domain are clearly theft. And so are conscription and minimum wage laws because the former constitutes theft of the use of one’s body while the latter violates the right to contract freely.

We are now in a position to recognize that most crimes are committed by cops. Since cops are the enforcement arm of the state, they are the ones who must physically interact with citizens. And what do they do? Well, it’s business as usual: raids, searches and seizure, the war on drugs, on immigrants, on various "inequalities" and the list goes on and on.

The amount of "public crime," crime carried out by the government is overwhelmingly larger than "private crime." Indeed, there are probably not many people alive who have not been forced to pay some sort of tax or been subjected to regulation. And taxation and regulations are ultimately enforced by the police or another police-like executive authority. The existence of the state (even a minimal one) guarantees that the amount of public crime will always exceed the amount of private crime because while one can chose not to be a criminal, the state is nothing but a criminal entity.

There is one last point that remains to be said, and that is whether the police can respect your rights and act legitimately in the occasion where they prevent a true crime from occurring. At first it would seem that this would be an exception of the criminality and inefficiency of the police. But let’s not forget that state-based defense is essentially socialist – you pay for it regardless of your need and often the cost is the same no matter how much you use it. Thus, one can be glad that in some instances the police do protect you against private criminals, but it would be unlibertarian to forget that your defense was financed by aggressing against everyone else. Sounds a little bit like welfare doesn’t it?

And what about the rights of the pacifist? To the extent that pacifists are taxed to support the police, they are being forced to support something they don’t believe: any kind of violence, aggressive and defensive. Here, too, we see inefficiency and unjustness (this is similar to the vegetarian who must still pay for government-mandated meat inspections and regulations). Finally, even the Supreme Court has ruled that the police do not have a duty to protect you.

Unlike juries and judges and unlike legislators and prosecutors, the cops are the ones ultimately doing the dirty deeds. The judicial and legislative branches must count on someone to carry out their edicts. Of course, that implies that they are also guilty in the causal chain of criminality and are not exempt of guilt. The reason why I am picking on cops is because they are the most visible branch. Almost every interaction between the state and serf occurs through the executive branch – police officers, tax collectors, the various inspectors, regulators, confiscators and so forth.

Police officers technically must enforce all laws. Given the number of laws out there, let’s be thankful that they are incapable of doing that. Let’s also be thankful that we don’t get all the government we pay for. If the state is institutionalized aggression, then the last thing we want is an efficient government, or, for that matter, efficient cops.

November 19, 2007

Manuel Lora [send him mail] works at Cornell University as a TV and multimedia producer. Visit his blog.

I'm Better Than You

Today's message is from one of the heroes of the Freedom/Liberty movement, Larken Rose. He has a subscriber list linked here, To subscribe, send a blank message to tmds-on@mail-list.com.
This is one of the BEST cogent and succinct extrapolations of the significant premises of liberty contrasted with contemporaneous rationalizations for authoritarianism.

I'm Better Than You
By Larken Rose

Why is it that so many people treat one's political affiliation as no more significant than one's preference of ice cream flavor or choice of hats? People talk as if "politics" is something that polite people shouldn't bring up, because we wouldn't want to offend someone who simply has a different political viewpoint. After all, someone's party affiliation has nothing to do with whether he's a good person, does it?

OF COURSE IT DOES!

Someone's "political" belief is nothing more than an opinion about what type and what degree of VIOLENCE should be initiated against everyone else. How is that NOT a moral issue? How does that NOT reflect on whether the person is moral or immoral, good or evil? People who supported the Nazis, or supported slavery, supported something EVIL. Calling it "politics," and treating it like something of no importance is looney.

In this age of moral relativism, people like to imagine that every opinion is "equally valid." Aside from being patently insane (is the "opinion" that 2 + 2 = 5 as "valid" as the "opinion" that 2 + 2 = 4?), it also serves as a great get-out-of-responsibility-free card for all those who advocate unjust violence--which is almost everyone.

In fact, many can only just barely bring themselves to say that someone who routinely robs and kills people is a bad person. (They'd rather say he is misunderstood, or had a rough childhood.) Well, guess what: if you steal from people and assault people, and I don't, I'm a BETTER person than you. Yes, I know that's very "judgmental" of me to say. Too bad. But here comes the part 99.999% of Americans really won't like:

If you advocate robbery via "taxation," or murder via "war," or kidnapping via "law enforcement" of non-violent "crimes," then I'm a BETTER person than you, because I don't. Politics is 100% about morality. If you advocate unjust violence, as ALL Republicans and ALL Democrats do, you are a WORSE human being than those who don't. And the ONLY people who DON'T advocate the initiation of violence against their neighbors at all are anarchists (voluntaryists) and "hard core" libertarians.

You can wear the "honest, upstanding, church-going model citizen" badge all you want, but if, via your "vote" or your expressed opinions, you are a proponent of the initiation of violence against innocent people, then you are a BAD PERSON. Yes, someone ELSE will be carrying out the evil you support, but that doesn't make you blameless or good; it makes you evil AND a coward, for not doing it your own dang self.

I'm finished treating people as if they aren't responsible for the evils committed as a direct result of their "political beliefs." If today someone publicly admitted to being a Nazi, he would be rightfully subjected to scorn and ostracization. Well, when Americans admit to subscribing to the modern Nazi-lite parties (Republican and Democrat), why should they get a pass? Why is it OKAY for half the beer-swilling country to support the forced imprisonment of nearly two MILLION human beings for possessing a DIFFERENT mind-altering substance? It isn't. Why is it OKAY for almost all of the country to advocate the extortion and robbery of anyone who has more than they do? It isn't. And why do these people think they have a right to advocate such evil, and a right to not be publicly condemned for it?

Today (6/24/08) happens to be my 40th birthday. My birthday wish is that all those of you who understand and advocate freedom (I mean all the way) ask some statist you know why he feels okay about advocating that YOU be forcibly robbed every year to pay for things you don't support--whether it's the welfare state, the military, etc. See what he says. And see if he can look you in the eye, with an expression of confidence and shamelessness, as he explains to you why it's okay for him to want you forcibly controlled and extorted.

Sincerely,

Larken Rose
http://www.tyrantbook.com

RIP George Carlin you were an inspiration!

Warning - Adult Language!
However, that actually depends upon your definition of "adult." Also, it depends on whether or not you believe that the use of vulgarities is "adult." Whatever!
If you have an over sensitivity to guttural, hard consonant sounding euphemisms for human behavior, body parts, the various forms of evacuation of bodily fluids and the comparison of religio-political personages and behavior to the excrement of various ruminants, then DON"T PRESS THE FRACKIN PLAY BUTTON!

A Universal Philosophical Refutation of...

Philosophy is a game with objectives and no rules.
Mathematics is a game with rules and no objectives.
Theology is a game whose object is to bring rules into the subjective.

A philosopher once had the following dream.

First Aristotle appeared, and the philosopher said to him, "Could you give me a fifteen-minute capsule sketch of your entire philosophy?" To the philosopher's surprise, Aristotle gave him an excellent exposition in which he compressed an enormous amount of material into a mere fifteen minutes. But then the philosopher raised a certain objection which Aristotle couldn't answer. Confounded, Aristotle disappeared.

Then Plato appeared. The same thing happened again, and the philosophers' objection to Plato was the same as his objection to Aristotle. Plato also couldn't answer it and disappeared.

Then all the famous philosophers of history appeared one-by-one and our philosopher refuted every one with the same objection.

After the last philosopher vanished, our philosopher said to himself, "I know I'm asleep and dreaming all this. Yet I've found a universal refutation for all philosophical systems! Tomorrow when I wake up, I will probably have forgotten it, and the world will really miss something!" With an iron effort, the philosopher forced himself to wake up, rush over to his desk, and write down his universal refutation. Then he jumped back into bed with a sigh of relief.

The next morning when he awoke, he went over to the desk to see what he had written. It was, "That's what you say."

THEY'RE MADE OUT OF MEAT!

by Terry Bisson

"They're made out of meat."

"Meat?"

"Meat. They're made out of meat."

"Meat?"

"There's no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They're completely meat."

"That's impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars?"

"They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don't come from them. The signals come from machines."

"So who made the machines? That's who we want to contact."

"They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made the machines."

"That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in sentient meat."

"I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in that sector and they're made out of meat."

"Maybe they're like the orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that goes through a meat stage."

"Nope. They're born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several of their life spans, which didn't take long. Do you have any idea what's the life span of meat?"

"Spare me. Okay, maybe they're only part meat. You know, like the weddilei. A meat head with an electron plasma brain inside."

"Nope. We thought of that, since they do have meat heads, like the weddilei. But I told you, we probed them. They're meat all the way through."

"No brain?"

"Oh, there's a brain all right. It's just that the brain is made out of meat! That's what I've been trying to tell you."

"So ... what does the thinking?"

"You're not understanding, are you? You're refusing to deal with what I'm telling you. The brain does the thinking. The meat."

"Thinking meat! You're asking me to believe in thinking meat!"

"Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you beginning to get the picture or do I have to start all over?"

"Omigod. You're serious then. They're made out of meat."

"Thank you. Finally. Yes. They are indeed made out of meat. And they've been trying to get in touch with us for almost a hundred of their years."

"Omigod. So what does this meat have in mind?"

"First it wants to talk to us. Then I imagine it wants to explore the Universe, contact other sentiences, swap ideas and information. The usual."

"We're supposed to talk to meat."

"That's the idea. That's the message they're sending out by radio. 'Hello. Anyone out there. Anybody home.' That sort of thing."

"They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?"
"Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat."

"I thought you just told me they used radio."

"They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat, it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat."

"Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise?"

"Officially or unofficially?"

"Both."

"Officially, we are required to contact, welcome and log in any and all sentient races or multibeings in this quadrant of the Universe, without prejudice, fear or favor. Unofficially, I advise that we erase the records and forget the whole thing."

"I was hoping you would say that."

"It seems harsh, but there is a limit. Do we really want to make contact with meat?"

"I agree one hundred percent. What's there to say? 'Hello, meat. How's it going?' But will this work? How many planets are we dealing with here?"

"Just one. They can travel to other planets in special meat containers, but they can't live on them. And being meat, they can only travel through C space. Which limits them to the speed of light and makes the possibility of their ever making contact pretty slim. Infinitesimal, in fact."

"So we just pretend there's no one home in the Universe."

"That's it."

"Cruel. But you said it yourself, who wants to meet meat? And the ones who have been aboard our vessels, the ones you probed? You're sure they won't remember?"

"They'll be considered crackpots if they do. We went into their heads and smoothed out their meat so that we're just a dream to them."

"A dream to meat! How strangely appropriate, that we should be meat's dream."

"And we marked the entire sector unoccupied."

"Good. Agreed, officially and unofficially. Case closed. Any others? Anyone interesting on that side of the galaxy?"

"Yes, a rather shy but sweet hydrogen core cluster intelligence in a class nine star in G445 zone. Was in contact two galactic rotations ago, wants to be friendly again."

"They always come around."

"And why not? Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the Universe would be if one were all alone ..."

the end

The Wide Divide: You Are Being Ripped Off

The Wide Divide: You Are Being Ripped Off

Steve Elliot
OpEdNews.com
Wed, 18 Jun 2008 08:48 EDT

Here's what's wrong with corporate America, folks. You are being badly ripped off.

This "wide divide," this economic disparity, is what happens when you rely on unbridled capitalism and "market forces" to set wages, and count on the fairness and generosity of our corporate masters.
pay

By 2004, the top 10 percent of executives earned at least 350 times the average worker's pay, up from 122 times in 1990 and 74 times in 1950. Talk about trickle-down economics!

Next time someone tells you, "If the government would just leave business alone to do business, things would take care of themselves," you can remember this chart and its message: The private sector has BEEN left alone by government, when it comes to "letting wages find their natural level." That area is completely unregulated on the top end, with minimum wage laws being the only restraints on the bottom end.

Here's the real-world result of those "market forces" of which conservatives (yes, even -- hell, especially -- the libertarian kind represented by Ron Paul) are so fond.

Reality check: The laissez faire approach to the economy has already been tried, people. See the history of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in America: Robber barons, greedy monopolists, exploitation of workers, child labor, sweat shops, environmental despoilation in the name of profits, economic suppression of the working class, all for the miserly profits of a few big tycoons.

Base an entire society and economic system on human greed and the acquisition of wealth and material goods, and this is what happens. The powerful exploit the weak. The rich buy political influence, and the working class gets an insulting pittance with a super-sized helping of condescension. Should anyone be surprised?

Here's what you have in America today, as a result of trusting corporations to do the right thing: Working men and women are out of luck. If working class families have anything besides crushing debt, for the most part, it's their houses, for the lucky ones. And holy hell, look what's happening to the housing market. For the first time in two decades, real estate values are dropping like a stone, and the bottom's not in sight yet.

Debt's piling up. Under the Bush administration, credit card companies have been deregulated and unleashed to practice their particularly nasty brand of predatory lending and interest rate hiking, and it's tougher than ever to declare bankruptcy.

There's nothing in the bank for a rainy day, for a medical emergency, or worse, for retirement. And due to the Wal-Martization of jobs in corporate America, every year, more and more people don't even have health insurance or a retirement plan.

What do I mean by Wal-Martization? Well, when a company increases its profits by underpaying its workers and by keeping most or all of them "part-time," thus dodging requirements to provide bedrock benefits like insurance and retirement -- and gets away with it! -- you can damn well believe that other corporations are watching and learning. Welcome to the new America.

"A persistent slide in work-based health insurance is largely to blame for a 2.2 million rise in the number of uninsured in America," according to policy experts.

United States Census Bureau figures released last year show that the number of people without coverage increased to 47 million from 2005 to 2006. The jump is "appalling," said American Medical Association President-elect Nancy H. Nielsen, MD, PhD. "I was so disappointed, because we have had years of people talking about this problem."

The corporate fat cats make billions of dollars cutting the international deals whose end result is making workers unemployed or underemployed and thanking their lucky stars for a $15 buck-an-hour job wearing an apron at Wal-Mart or flipping burgers at McDonalds. This, while the CEOs and upper management play golf, cultivate decadent habits and mistreat the illegal immigrant yard help at their palatial estates.

Meanwhile, the corporate bigwigs want you to continue to vote against your own economic interests by supporting the party that issues huge tax cuts for the rich while trickling pennies on the working class. "But who'd be stupid enough to vote that way?" you might ask.

People who are scared can be convinced to do stupid things. If you can rig the system so that people are scared of each other, scared of terrorists, scared on the issues of race and gender and sexual orientation and ethnicity, it's easy to control them. Teach people to fear and hate diversity rather than celebrating it, and you can get them to march lockstep right into their own economic doom.

Teach them that speaking out leads to consequences. Teach them that they should unquestioningly accept a government which spies on their phone conversations, email, and text messages, and you'll have a populace too intimidated to stand up for themselves. Teach them that under the Patriot Act, any deviation from the plans your corporate masters have for you can be defined as "terrorism," and you can be locked up indefinitely without knowing if or when you'll be charged or tried.

Pass laws that make it easy to outsource their jobs to other countries should they demand decent benefits and living wages and safe work environments. Keep that threat hanging over their heads and they'll remain compliant.

Teach the workforce that they should accept a corporate culture that is not only concerned with your productivity in the workplace, but which also makes it the business of the company what you choose to do in your off time. Teach them that they should accept the invasion of their privacy and the confiscation of the very fluids of their bodies as some kind of chemical loyalty oath, and that if they choose to indulge in substances that don't bear the seal of corporate approval and corporate profits, they can lose their livelihood.

This is what happens when the market drives the economy. Things will be different come the Revolution.

I'm a 47-year-old writer, editor, ex-musician, dreamer, reality catcher, ex-con, and father. I have three kids, five tattoos, a criminal record, a terminal disease, and an attitude. I was born in Alabama and spent the first 38 years of my life there and in Mississippi. In the 1970s and 1980s, I was a drummer in various hard rock bar bands in Alabama and Mississippi. Since 1985, I've worked for newspapers, ad agencies and magazines. I've also taken inventory, indulged in independent entrepreneurship, run a newspaper route and served time. I've been on the West Coast, L.A. or Seattle, since 1999.

Rall is on a Roll!!!

Tom Russell-Who's Gonna Build Your Wall

Police State Schools!

Campaign for Liberty

Dear Supporter,

These past 17 months have been among the most exciting and eventful of my life. Together you and I delivered a message of freedom the likes of which American politics had not seen in decades. I wasn’t sure the country was ready for it. But it was a message, I discovered, that many Americans had been waiting for a long time to hear.

I have been blessed with the most informed, well read, and enthusiastic supporters of any presidential campaign. Your extraordinary efforts in organizing and fundraising grabbed the attention of millions of Americans and shocked just about everyone in politics and the media. I still cannot get over all the fantastic work you did.

Something of great significance has just occurred in our country’s history.

With the primary season now over, the presidential campaign is at an end. But the larger campaign for freedom is just getting started. Therefore, I am happy to announce the official launch of the Ron Paul Campaign for Liberty.

The work of the Campaign for Liberty will take many forms. We will educate our fellow Americans in freedom, sound money, non-interventionism, and free markets. We’ll have our own commentaries and videos on the news of the day. I’ll work with friends I respect to design materials for homeschoolers.

Politically, we’ll expand the great work of our precinct leader program. We’ll make our presence felt at every level of government, where just a few people with our level of enthusiasm can make a world of difference. We’ll keep an eye on Congress and lobby against legislation that threatens us. We’ll identify and support political candidates who champion our great ideas against the empty suits the party establishments offer the public.

We will be a permanent presence on the American political landscape. That I promise you. We’re not about to let all this good work die. To the contrary, with your help we’re going to make it grow – by leaps and bounds.

This is the most ambitious venture of my political career, and I think it can achieve great things. But I can’t do this alone. I need you to help me. I need your energy, your creativity, your ideas, and your dedication.

People frustrated with our political system often wonder what they can do. I have founded this organization to answer that question, to give people the opportunity to do something that really makes a difference in the fight for freedom. Please join me by becoming a member of the Campaign for Liberty. Our goal is 100,000 members by September. Can we reach it?

Our campaign netted 1.1 million votes in the primaries of a shrinking Republican Party. Millions more support us. I need you to help me reach them – and to keep making new converts to the cause. What a force we can be, if only we rise to the occasion.

Now what about the Republican Convention in St. Paul? Our delegates will attend, of course, and I expect our contingent to have a visible presence there. Without disruption, we will do whatever we can to influence the party and its platform, and return the GOP to its limited-government roots. This is very important.

This brings me to my second announcement. I invite you to join us at Williams Arena at the University of Minnesota on Tuesday, September 2nd, for a grand rally. We intend to draw over 11,000 people. We’ll have live music and entertainment, and special guests. I’ll address you all as well. A massive rally will generate still more interest in our ideas. And what a great time it will be.

Remember that it was Senator Robert Taft, who shared our views, who was called Mr. Republican. But we are not merely the Republican Party’s past. If the enthusiasm of young people for our campaign is any indication, we are also its future.

Right now I will need your patience and input as we develop our program and assemble just the right team of individuals. But it is my intention to launch the Campaign for Liberty in its full capacity at our rally in Minneapolis this September.

Over the past week we’ve learned that the Democratic presidential nominee, supposedly an antiwar candidate, is committed to the same rhetoric, the same propaganda, and the same aggressive intentions toward Iran as the Bush administration. As usual, the major parties refuse to offer Americans a real choice.

The Campaign for Liberty will lay the groundwork for a different America, the kind of America you and I, and millions of our fellow countrymen, want to inhabit.

“Dr. Paul cured my apathy,” a popular campaign sign read. Others said our campaign cured their cynicism. We have now reached a moment of great moral decision: will we let ourselves retreat into apathy and cynicism once again, or will we dig in for the long haul and fight all the harder? Will we retire from the scene quietly, or will we give the establishment the fight of its life?

“In the final analysis,” I wrote in my new book The Revolution: A Manifesto, “the last line of defense in support of freedom and the Constitution consists of the people themselves. If the people want to be free, if they want to lift themselves out from underneath a state apparatus that threatens their liberties, squanders their resources on needless wars, destroys the value of their dollar, and spews forth endless propaganda about how indispensable it is and how lost we would all be without it, there is no force that can stop them.”

The time has come to act on these words. May future generations look back on our work and say that these were men and women who, in a moment of great crisis, stood up to the politicians, the opinion-molders, and the establishment, and saved their country.

Join us, and be a part of it.

For liberty,

"Don't Talk to the Police" Lecture by Prof. James Duane

"Don't Talk to the Police" - Confirmation by police officer G. Bruch

Phracking Professional Porcine Hypocrisy

When it comes to sacrificing civil liberties in the name of fighting crime, Washington D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty and his administration are full of innovative ideas. Among them:

• Giving police officers bigger, badder guns.

• Sending officers door to door requesting to conduct "voluntary" gun and drug searches of citizens’ homes.

• Cordoning off portions of the city with almost certainly unconstitutional checkpoints requiring citizens to tell the police where they came from, where they’re going, and what their business is in that particular neighborhood. The Washington Post reports that motorists refusing to answer questions or to submit to requested searches of their cars risk arrest.

But here’s one idea Fenty adamantly opposes: Letting law-abiding D.C. residents own a gun for self-protection. Seems that only the government can be trusted to protect you from crime. Except, of course, when it doesn’t.

It’s interesting that crime-fighting ideas requiring the citizenry to give up some of its freedoms are "innovative," while proposals that would give some freedom back are "dangerous."

From The Agitator

State of Emergency - 10 Day National Bank Holiday Declared

McBush's Straight Jacket Express

John McCain's "Straight Talk Express" bus suffered a flat tire sometime around the announcement that he'd had a falling out with a couple of evangelical pastors, Hagee and Parsley, who according to themselves, are on a first name basis with Gawd and Jesus. This can't be very good for ol' John because being for their endorsements before he was against them will have repercussions with this base. It's been reported that up to 20% of Americans are religiously insane and with Hagee and Parsley withdrawing their support for McCain, one has to wonder where McCain goes to fill this void.

It's unlikely he's going to find much support among those earning less that a few hundred grand a year as he's pledged to make Bush's tax cuts for the already filthy rich permanent, anymore than he's gained favor with homeowners facing foreclosure whom he's referred to as speculators. He has another equally pressing dilemma in spite of his war hero status with military personnel by voting against the popular GI Bill which passed the Senate 75-22 and the House with a similar veto-proof majority.
This leaves the racists and chauvinists which Barack and Hillary wouldn't get anyway. So, looking into the 2008 general election future with both eyes open, there is no way McCain should win fair and square against either Obama or Clinton. Unfortunately we've seen just how fair and square worked in both 2000 and 2004.

So fasten your political seatbelts, the road is about to get very bumpy because the GOP and their corporate controllers have too much to lose now that they've tasted the spoils of their excesses the past twelve years. Expect every dirty political trick and then some with the support of a compromised media punditry.
Gawd help us all.

Freedom Tour '08 - The Road Trip Revolution

http://revolutiontour08.com/



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Too Weird for Words

Too Weird for Words

As anyone who reads my rants knows, I like to make fun of people who deserve it (particularly tyrants and their stooges). And I often employ sarcasm, exaggeration, and analogies to do so. However, I just ran across a story that has all but left me speechless. It's just too weird, too funny, and too amazingly ironic to fully express in words.

Apparently two sets of federal parasites--those from the IRS and those from "Homeland Security"--had a little difference of opinion recently down in Austin, Texas (to put it nicely). It seems that the IRS parasites, as members of the National Treasury Employees Union, wanted to protest how the agency treats them. (Stop that snickering!) However, the other set of parasites showed up and informed the IRS parasites that they needed a permit to do a protest. They didn't have a permit, and so "Homeland Security" ordered them to disband. Yes, the cops forcibly silenced the IRS employees by breaking up their demonstration.

HOW DOES IT FEEL, YOU SOCIALIST BASTARDS?!

Sorry. That was a typo. Unfortunately, none of the IRS parasites were flung in cages for a year or so for speaking their minds (unlike some people I know).

But here is where the story gets REALLY amazing. If you watch the video at the following link, you can see IRS employees carrying protest signs. When I first watched it, I thought some "tax protestors" had decided to get in on the action. But no, the signs were being proudly waved around by employees of the INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/perry/perry44.html

Some of the signs said "IRS anti-family" and "IRS not family friendly." How's that for an understatement? And how's that for hypocrisy? Does having my home invaded by IRS thugs, so my kid had to hide under a dresser in terror, count as the IRS being "anti- family"? I hope all the IRS employees protesting get raided by armed thugs. THEN they'll know what it means to be "not family friendly." And have any of the paper-pushers who were protesting taken two seconds to ponder just how "family friendly" their day-to- day extortionistic activities are? Highly unlikely.

But wait. It gets worse. Others were carrying signs saying: "Empower, not raw power." Yes, these were IRS employees carrying signs saying that. Like I said, I'm at a loss for words. How psychotically hypocritical can someone possibly be?! How about whining to the hundred MILLION people you robbed this year, by means of your "raw power," and asking them what they think of your complaints, you damn thieves?

But, just when you thought it couldn't get any more insane, there were other IRS employees carrying signs that said this:

"IRS management: follow the law"

Un-freaking-believable.

Sincerely,

Larken Rose

http://www.kickingthedragon.com

(P.S. Next time IRS employees and Homeland Security thugs have a disagreement, I hope someone is there to hand out machine guns to both sides.)