Jacob Hornberger released on Tuesday the first episode of his new podcast LibertyView. The show promises to be interesting and informative given Hornberger’s long history as an effective communicator of libertarian ideas.
Continue readingIn a September 10 The Soho Forum debate, United States Libertarian Party Chairman Nicholas Sarwark declared the number of libertarians in America is “roughly 600,000” because that many people are registered as affiliated with the Libertarian Party in America. Sarwark then used this declaration of the number of libertarians in America as the basis for concluding that the party’s 2016 presidential ticket received several times the number of votes as there are libertarians in America.
Declaring that the registered Libertarians in America are synonymous with the libertarians in America is absurd.
In a Wednesday Fox News video commentary, former New Jersey state Judge Andrew Napolitano describes the great privacy invasion capability of government entities in Great Britain using many cameras along with facial recognition software and databases of personal information. Further, notes Napolitano, the use of facial recognition by police for surveillance has already been approved in court in Britain. “The people in Great Britain have lost their right to be left alone,” asserts Napolitano.
“Tough for the British,” some Americans may say, “but there are privacy protections that will prevent that from happening in America.” However, Napolitano, who is the senior judicial analyst for Fox News, explains that “sadly” the same thing “has begun to happen here” in America. Napolitano points to facial recognition software being acquired by police in New York City, Chicago, and Orlando, as well as in “smaller police departments around the United States.”
Continue readingLawrence Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel and the chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell in President George W. Bush’s administration, places good odds on President Donald Trump choosing Douglas Macgregor, also a former Army colonel, for the national security advisor position recently held by John Bolton.
Wilkerson, in a new interview with host Aaron Maté at Push Back, puts the odds of Trump choosing Macgregor, who tends to recommend non-interventionist foreign policy actions much like those supported at times by Trump, at “50/50.” But, says Wilkerson, “if there is a personal interview, Trump talking to Doug and Doug to Trump, I’d raise that to 70/30, and I’d bet on it.”
Loyola University Economics Professor Walter Block did not hold back in responding to the Trump administration’s plan to ban flavored e-cigarettes, as well as efforts by local and state governments to impose various types of vaping-related bans. Interviewed Wednesday at RT by host Rick Sanchez, Block derided banning vaping products as “fascist,” as well as “idiocy,” “moronical behavior,” and “utter nonsense.” Like other prohibitions of adults engaging in nonviolent activities, Block categorizes prohibitions on vaping as improper paternalist actions by government.
Continue readingLast month the executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), who many people would expect to support the United States government butting out of marijuana matters, was urging the US government to tightly regulate the marijuana market. On Wednesday, two major marijuana industry associations joined in, urging the US government to impose regulations on marijuana businesses.
Continue readingPresident Donald Trump announced Tuesday morning at Twitter that John Bolton is no longer his national security advisor. Who might replace Bolton in this position the holders of which have a history of playing a significant role in shaping United States foreign policy? On July 23, Steven Nelson wrote at the Washington Examiner that insiders said retired Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor was being considered as a potential replacement for Bolton.
Continue readingMany states have for decades imposed difficult to virtually impossible hurdles that third parties must jump over for their candidates to appear on general election ballots. But, it is not only Libertarian, Green, and other third-party candidates who can be denied their places on election ballots. Alex Isenstadt reported Friday at Politico that the state Republican parties of Arizona, Kansas, Nevada, and South Carolina were “poised to cancel their 2020 GOP presidential primaries and caucuses, a move that would cut off oxygen to Donald Trump’s long-shot primary challengers.”
Continue readingThe Extreme Risk Protection Order Act (S 506) is legislation proposed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) in the United States Senate. The bill seeks to subsidize the operation of state red flag law programs in which, via ex parte and low-proof-threshold determinations, people are denied the legal ability to possess guns and subjected to gun confiscation.
Feinstein’s bill, however, does not go far enough: It should be amended to also subsidize ensuring some of those people so deprived of the ability to legally possess guns are also thrown into involuntary mental treatment. That is the recommendation of D.J. Jaffe in a Friday National Review editorial.
Condemning and even barring people who support, or refuse to oppose, boycotting, divesting from, or sanctioning Israel from being employees or contractors of state or local government entities has been the rage in American state legislatures over the last few years. Kentucky has become one of the latest states to impose one of these anti-boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) laws, with Governor Matt Blevin having signed such legislation last week.
On Tuesday, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a resolution that calls for treating people and businesses who have interacted financially with the National Rifle Association (NRA) much as states with anti-BDS laws treat people with particular ideas related to Israel. The resolution terms the NRA a “domestic terrorist organization” and declares that “the City and County of San Francisco should take every reasonable step to assess the financial and contractual relationships our vendors and contractors have with this domestic terrorist organization” and “should take every reasonable step to limit those entities who do business with the City and County of San Francisco from doing business with this domestic terrorist organization.”
Continue reading