Former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson, known for vetoing over 750 bills, decreasing the size of and improving the efficiency of the state government of New Mexico while promoting freedom of choice in all aspects of life, is seen here speaking at the 2010 CPAC.
Gary Johnson is a fiscally conservative, social liberty politician seeking the presidency in 2012.
In her 88 years, Florence Siegel has learned how to relax: A glass of red wine. A crisp copy of The New York Times, if she can wrest it from her husband. Some classical music, preferably Bach. And every night like clockwork, she lifts a pipe to her lips and smokes marijuana.
Long a fixture among young people, use of the country’s most popular illicit drug is now growing among the AARP set, as the massive generation of baby boomers who came of age in the 1960s and ’70s grows older.
The number of people aged 50 and older reporting marijuana use in the prior year went up from 1.9 percent to 2.9 percent from 2002 to 2008, according to surveys from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
The rise was most dramatic among 55- to 59-year-olds, whose reported marijuana use more than tripled from 1.6 percent in 2002 to 5.1 percent.
Observers expect further increases as 78 million boomers born between 1945 and 1964 age. For many boomers, the drug never held the stigma it did for previous generations, and they tried it decades ago.
Some have used it ever since, while others are revisiting the habit in retirement, either for recreation or as a way to cope with the aches and pains of aging. Read More
There’s a major political fraud underway: the GOP is once again donning their libertarian, limited-government masks in order to re-invent itself and, more important, to co-opt the energy and passion of the Ron-Paul-faction that spawned and sustains the ”tea party” movement. The Party that spat contempt at Paul during the Bush years and was diametrically opposed to most of his platform now pretends to share his views. Standard-issue Republicans and Ron Paul libertarians are as incompatible as two factions can be — recall that the most celebrated right-wing moment of the 2008 presidential campaign was when Rudy Giuliani all but accused Paul of being an America-hating Terrorist-lover for daring to suggest that America’s conduct might contribute to Islamic radicalism — yet the Republicans, aided by the media, are pretending that this is one unified, harmonious, “small government” political movement. Read More
By Kaj Grussner of Mises.org
Austrians have long called for a reform of the monetary system. The current, Fed-driven, fiat-money system is on the verge of collapse. But however bad the current system is, a new system won’t necessarily be better.
Many libertarians would favor a return to the gold standard, while others would be content with simply repealing legal-tender laws and allowing competition in currencies. However, even in a great collapse like the one looming now, these reforms may still seem too extreme to the general public. This is especially true if they have an alternative that seems reasonable and gives total control over the monetary system to the state. One such alternative is the 100-percent-reserve solution advocated by Stephen Zarlenga, director of the American Monetary Institute, and author of the book “The Lost Science of Money.” (more…)
A 42-year-old HIV patient with leukemia appears to have no detectable HIV in his blood and no symptoms after a stem cell transplant from a donor carrying a gene mutation that confers natural resistance to the virus that causes AIDS, according to a report published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. Read More
Freedom means you are able to live your life as you choose so long as you bring no force against others. Anything less is a form of slavery. Are you free?
What is a Progressive Libertarian?
Progressive Libertarian – A capitalist market supporter that understands the need for programs that provide a small degree of regulation in order to ensure that the market is run in a transparent and honest manner to foster an environment in which businesses have equal entry to the market, and provides consumers with adequate information concerning products and business practices; advocates for individual liberties and privacy, low taxes, consumer awareness, and a smaller, less imposing government with more decisions being made on a local level. (more…)
“The compound government of the United States is without a model, and to be explained by itself, not by similitudes or analogies,” James Madison said late in his life.
For all the truth of that, the Founders had models and ideas in mind as they hashed things out in Philadelphia in 1787, and the notes taken that summer by Madison and others are full of them. The Founders were practical men, almost all of whom had had some experience in government. But they also were keen readers and alert to history, as it was known in their day.
Among the models or theories they often brought up in debate or correspondence are the writings of John Locke and Charles Montesquieu; the works of Hume and other writers of the Scottish Enlightenment; British history; and the accounts then available of the confederacies, democracies and republics of ancient Greece and Rome and the Germanic tribes. (more…)
The founding document of the United States, the Declaration of Independence, states that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Today, however, just 21% of voters nationwide believe that the federal government enjoys the consent of the governed.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 61% disagree and say the government does not have the necessary consent. Eighteen percent (18%) of voters are not sure.
However, 63% of the Political Class think the government has the consent of the governed, but only six percent (6%) of those with Mainstream views agree.
Seventy-one percent (71%) of all voters now view the federal government as a special interest group, and 70% believe that the government and big business typically work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors. Read More
Nearly three-quarters of all Americans think Tibet should be an independent country, according to a new national poll.
However, the CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Thursday also indicates that most Americans think it is more important to maintain good relations with China than to take a stand on Tibet.
The poll’s release came as President Obama was to meet with the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader in exile, at the White House.
The Dalai Lama is popular with Americans, according to the survey, with 56 percent holding a favorable view of him and only 18 percent having an unfavorable impression. Read More
— The study also found many Americans to be hypocritical as they support Tibet’s secession from China, but balk at the notion of allowing a state to secede from the US. Talk about double standards.
Hackers in Europe and China successfully broke into computers at nearly 2,500 companies and government agencies over the last 18 months in a coordinated global attack that exposed vast amounts of personal and corporate secrets to theft, according to a computer-security company that discovered the breach.
The damage from the latest cyberattack is still being assessed, and affected companies are still being notified. But data compiled by NetWitness, the closely held firm that discovered the breaches, showed that hackers gained access to a wide array of data at 2,411 companies, from credit-card transactions to intellectual property. Read More
Mises Daily: Tuesday, February 16, 2010 by Frank Shostak
At the end of January, President Barack Obama announced that he is planning to introduce new regulations for the banking industry, to prevent excessive speculation. According to the president, no bank or financial institution that contains a bank will own, invest in, or sponsor a hedge fund or private equity fund, or have proprietary trading operations unrelated to serving customers for its own profit.
The driving force behind this plan is the former Federal Reserve Board chairman Paul Volcker who, it seems, wants to resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. Instead of the separation of commercial and investment banking, we will now have a separation of banking business from proprietary trading, hedge funds, and private equity. In his testimony to the Senate on February 2, 2010, Volcker said,
The specific points at issue are ownership or sponsorship of hedge funds and private equity funds, and proprietary trading — that is, placing bank capital at risk in the search of speculative profit rather than in response to customer needs.
Some provisions of the Glass-Steagall Act, such as Regulation Q, which allowed the Federal Reserve to regulate interest rates on savings accounts, were repealed in 1980. The provisions that prohibited a bank-holding company from owning other financial companies were repealed on November 12, 1999. The repeal enabled commercial banks to underwrite and trade instruments like mortgage-backed securities, and establish structured investment vehicles (SIVs) that bought those securities. (more…)
THE OREGON WILDERNESS—Frustrated by the widely held assumption that he unequivocally endorses the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, a bald eagle said Monday that his thoughts on the conflicts were far more nuanced than many Americans might expect.
Speaking to reporters from his nest in the upper branches of a 175-foot ponderosa pine tree, the eagle explained that each member of his species was different and none should be taken for granted as a lockstep supporter of American military policy.
“I think World War II was justified, and I got behind the first Gulf War [in 1990],” said the bird, who has served as the national symbol of the United States since 1782. “But the recent war in Iraq, with its shifting rationale and poor planning, was clearly a huge mistake. Personally, I believe that these crucial, life-and-death matters deserve more honest and less politicized discussion than they get.”
“I’m not a hawk or a dove,” he added. “I’m an eagle.”
The majestic bird of prey, who said he is not registered with any political party, admitted to having some ambivalence about the current mission in Afghanistan, lamenting that any argument one could make seemed to prompt an equally valid counterpoint.
The Pentagon’s mad science arm may have come up with its most radical project yet. Darpa is looking to re-write the laws of evolution to the military’s advantage, creating “synthetic organisms” that can live forever — or can be killed with the flick of a molecular switch.
As part of its budget for the next year, Darpa is investing $6 million into a project called BioDesign, with the goal of eliminating “the randomness of natural evolutionary advancement.” The plan would assemble the latest bio-tech knowledge to come up with living, breathing creatures that are genetically engineered to “produce the intended biological effect.” Darpa wants the organisms to be fortified with molecules that bolster cell resistance to death, so that the lab-monsters can “ultimately be programmed to live indefinitely.”
Of course, Darpa’s got to prevent the super-species from being swayed to do enemy work — so they’ll encode loyalty right into DNA, by developing genetically programmed locks to create “tamper proof” cells. Plus, the synthetic organism will be traceable, using some kind of DNA manipulation, “similar to a serial number on a handgun.” And if that doesn’t work, don’t worry. In case Darpa’s plan somehow goes horribly awry, they’re also tossing in a last-resort, genetically-coded kill switch:
The age of adulthood — and the rights and responsibilities that come with it — is largely a matter of opinion. Age 18 traditionally separates minors from adults. But one can’t legally buy a drink in America until age 21. Meanwhile, many states are now sending minors into the adult criminal justice system, even for nonviolent crimes.
Some laws make no sense. For instance, 20 states ban driving while cell-phoning, but only for those under 18. Not only is this activity dangerous for all drivers, teen brains are actually better wired for multitasking than those of 60-year-olds. Many elderly people can no longer safely operate vehicles, but no state automatically takes the keys away for reason of advanced age.
Our society’s age-specific approaches often boil down to curbing the freedoms of the young — and increasing their punishments. Such contradictions bother Brian Wilcox, director of the Center on Children, Families and the Law at the University of Nebraska.
“Sometimes we draw these lines because policy makers want to do something about an issue but don’t want to offend all the constituents out there,” Wilcox told me. “They take the easy route by going after young people.” Read More
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This is exactly why young people should be highly politically active and voting in every election. The government is suppressing your rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness by dictating to you your personal life and spending money you haven’t even dreamed of making yet. The time to act is now, not some “convenient” time in the future.
A strange tale of oral sex, a knife fight and the most unlikely of pregnancies recently brought to light by the blogosphere has doctors touting the triumphant persistence of sperm.
In 1988, a 15-year-old girl living in the small southern African nation of Lesotho came to local doctors with all the symptoms of a woman in labor. But the doctors were quickly puzzled because, upon examination, she didn’t have a vagina.
“Inspection of the vulva showed no vagina, only a shallow skin dimple,” so doctors delivered a healthy baby boy via Caesarean, the authors wrote in a case report published in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.
Her birth defect — called Mullerian agenesis or Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome — didn’t necessarily surprise doctors, but her pregnancy did. Even the 15-year-old girl could not believe she was pregnant. Read More