tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29662558164886566702024-03-13T12:00:41.476-07:00Let Liberty RingThis blog is for libertarians who are mainly of the voluntaryist, laissez-faire, and anarchistic and agorist variety and who want to sound off on their thoughts on issues of the day as well as politics, current events, and other liberty-oriented projects of interest. This blog is pro-liberty, anti-state, anti-war, and pro-free market.
<center>Opposing and Delegitimizing the State since 2007.</center>Todd Andrew Barnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326847219909577374noreply@blogger.comBlogger592125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2966255816488656670.post-55119288778535410302012-08-28T10:30:00.000-07:002012-08-28T10:31:01.562-07:00An Open Letter to Ron Paul - August 28, 2012<br />
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This is what I posted on my Facebook note, dated today, August 28, 2012.<br />
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Dear Ron Paul:<br />
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My name is Todd Andrew Barnett, and I'm the host of a talk radio show called Liberty Cap Talk Live on TalkShoe.com. It's a weekly show that becomes podcasted as soon as it goes off the air at 10 p.m. EST my time, although it airs precisely at 8 p.m. EST my time. It is currently on hiatus, and it will be back for its fourth season this upcoming November 10th. But that's not the topic of discussion which I wanted to speak with you. I am a former campaign supporter and activist who was involved in your presidential campaigns in 2007-2008 and 2011 and this year. Although I wasn't that actively involved in the campaign to the extent where I was hanging up signs every day to promote your cause, I did support you towards the end of last years as a Precinct Leader in the Michigan Ron Paul for President affiliate.<br />
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Earlier this year, just shortly prior to the primaries months ago (and that was this year at the end of winter/towards the beginning of spring), I was involved with several activists one day to canvass the neighborhood and urged residents, in the name of going door to door, to support your campaign at the height of the debates, especially while Newt Gingrich, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, and Rick Perry were in the debates with you and the presumptive presidential nominee Mitt Romney (who will be anointed at the GOP convention in Tampa either today or tomorrow as I write this). Although I did this kind of activism for a day, it was too much for me to do, as I have diabetes and cirrhosis, and my legs tire out due to lack of consistent physical activity, and it was hard for me to keep up with the other people involved in my group in that neighborhood.<br />
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The reason I left the campaign at the state and national level, and I made my decision on here on Facebook at that point, is that I was unhappy with the way things were going. It seemed like the campaign was making great strides for liberty, at least it did to me for a time. You weren't winning in the straw polls (although it appeared to me that you were originally), you weren't winning at the caucus states, and you weren't winning in other primary states at all. Although it seemed like you were poised to win at the national level on the night of the primary election within the first 20 to 30 minutes, that began to change when the rest of the votes came in. My heart broke when you were losing. Everyone I knew believed that the voting was rigged, and, while I was parroting those talking points myself, I started to realize that you weren't really winning politically. Your ideas may be winning in the minds of some people who were starting to wake up, but I didn't think you were winning at all.I suspected for a while that something was up. And then when I saw Adam Kokesh's interview with Penny Langford Freeman on his show Adam Vs. The Man, I began to realize that the light bulb started to go off. I knew that Jesse Benton, your campaign manager, is mostly the reason why the campaign was failing across the board.<br />
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But this is what hurts me the most, Ron. This is what perturbs me and distresses me the most, and I find myself so confounded, so angry, so bitter, so cynical, and so resentful about the campaign now that it has finally come to the point where I must say this to you.<br />
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I've lost a lot of respect for you. You, sir, have failed me and the movement. You let me - a former Ron Paul supporter - down. I believed in you when I shouldn't have - twice in a row, especially when it should have been against my better judgment. But it didn't. And that is my fault. I shouldn't have given you a second chance, despite my inner voice telling me, "Don't do it. He's gonna let you down."<br />
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But I did it anyway. And I now wish I hadn't. I should've known better, should've listened to that voice warning me outrightly, but I must learn to live with those mistakes and move on. Now I realize that I am a better man admitting my frailties and my mistakes that I have made, and now I've learned not to trust so easily because of those experiences.<br />
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You've let me down for the following reasons: <br />
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Lew Rockwell and his connections to and involvement with the campaign. Lew Rockwell, Walter Block, and their own operatives at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and largely, Lew Rockwell.com are responsible for promoting your campaign and employing it to attack principled libertarians such as Wendy McElroy, Stefan Molyneaux, or any lover of liberty who has made open, critical remarks about you in the past, even though they have not done so this nearly-over campaign season.<br />
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Walter Block has attacked Wendy by slapping what is arguably a "litmus test" on whether she is a libertarian or not (in his piece, she's not one) on Lew Rockwell's website in an op-ed he wrote recently, dated December 11, 2011.<br />
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URL: http://lewrockwell.com/block/block188.html<br />
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Wendy's response came in a blog post on her website WendyMcElroy.com shortly after Block published his missive.<br />
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URL: http://www.wendymcelroy.com/comment.php?comment.news.4414<br />
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You could have stopped this by telling Block to back off from his attack, but you didn't, Ron. Wendy, yes, has criticized you in the past, but with good reasons, and I find it immensely impossible to argue against them. She has rightfully taken umbrage at your position on abortion, which she clearly spells it out while on the air on Stefan Molyneaux's podcast show Freedomain Radio (with Molyneux and fellow libertarian Brad Spangler on the phone as well).<br />
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Freedomain Radio Episode 953: The Anarchist RoundTable #1 features Wendy's position on abortion and her objections to you on the air as they are laid out.Podcast URL (from the Freedomain Radio Feed Burner at the FDR website (http://www.freedomainradio.com): http://media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_953_Freedomain_Radio_The_Anarchist_Roundtable_1_Ron_Paul.mp3<br />
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YouTube URL to FDR's YT Channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/stefbot): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEZsOZO5hmk&feature=plcp<br />
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iTunes URL to FDR feed: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freedomain-radio-total-feed/id276675528?mt=2<br />
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Lew Rockwell has even been instrumental in covering up the racist newsletter ruckus by having direct influence on your campaign, and you allowed it to happen, Ron. I have it on good authority from a reliable source (the former Chair of the Republican Liberty Caucus who got wind of this information by a former legislative assistant of yours) that you were about to expose the newsletter controversy in a press release early on in your 2008 bid, but then Rockwell, as I understand it, told you that, if you released that press release and came forward with it, he would no longer support you, he would tell his allies not to support you, and your campaign would not have any backing (financially, politically, or otherwise) from him whatsoever. You proceeded to tear up that letter and disposed of it, and it has never reached the light of day. EVER.<br />
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Even though your former campaign staffer Eric Dondero has come out and attacked you on the newsletter controversy and your positions and even though I despise him ideologically and politically, he is right to point out the hint of anti-Semitism that has been part and parcel of your campaign for years, thanks in large part to Rockwell and his cronies. (I did initially reject that, and I have a Facebook group called Ron Paul Haters Watch, which contained some members responding to Dondero's attacks, but I later felt that his statements were correct, despite his anti-libertarian views in the grand scheme of things.)<br />
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Even globs of anti-abortion rhetoric has been a large part of your campaign, in which you have come out against abortion entirely because your religious beliefs drive your goal to outlaw them in a politically-charged sense.<br />
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Even Wendy McElroy has noted that you have sidestepped and used a "states' right" tactic, which I regard as a means for political expediency.<br />
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URL: http://www.wendymcelroy.com/news.php?item.964<br />
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Lew Rockwell and his Operatives' Positions Influencing You to Vote in Their Favor. You've allowed Rockwell and his operatives' political and ideological positions to influence you, to the point where you have used them as the basis for your positions on issues such as immigration and abortion. This is even true when you have voted on congressional matters relating to spending appropriations, the congressional budget, and other affairs that have become top priorities for Lew Rockwell.Even the immigration issue that you've taken on has been a major disappointment.<br />
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In August 2007, Liberty Magazine, once a subscription-based magazine (which is now free on its website), did a spotlight position on you. The writer of the piece, Bruce Ramsay, in which he said the following:<br />
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"The envelope of a Paul fundraising letter sent in early June says, "Time for a real conservative!" The four-page letter inside uses"conservative" 13 times, all on the first page or the last, and "libertarian" not once. It uses the term 'truly pro-American foreign policy' rather than 'noninterventionist,' and it does not mention that he is for withdrawal from Iraq. It does mention that he is for the Constitution, that he would withdraw from the United Nations and resist the push to a 'New World Order' and a 'North American Union.' It also says he considers illegal immigration 'an invasion.' It all sounds as if it were aimed at the readers of The New American."<br />
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Liberty's URL for a .pdf of the print issue can be found here.URL: http://www.libertyunbound.com/sites/files/printarchive/Liberty_Magazine_August_2007.pdf<br />
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Even you have made some various anti-immigration statements over the years, which have been collected and displayed in great detail at Issues2000.org.<br />
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URL: http://www.issues2000.org/tx/Ron_Paul_Immigration.htm<br />
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Lew Rockwell Using Your Campaign to Attack Libertarians Who Do Not Follow Your Ideology. Rockwell has allowed his stalwarts (such as Walter Block) to attack Jewish Libertarians like former LP member/now libertarian Republican Aaron Biterman who has taken you to task on your position on Israel. While I have disagreed with Biterman's actions regarding his successful attempts to sabotage three Ron Paul Facebook groups (and he has been attacked by various pro-Ron Paul elements for doing so), Ron does come off as anti-Israel (as opposed to anti-Israel's government or anti-corrupt Israeli government).<br />
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Here's evidence of Biterman's attack on pro-Paul groups supporting you.<br />
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URL: http://libertarianpeacenik.blogspot.com/2012/05/aaron-biterman-sabotages-ron-paul.html<br />
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Even your pal Rockwell has attacked Gary Johnson on his "Political Theatre" blog and his current blog LewRockwell.com. While it is true that Gary isn't ideologically pure, you are, Ron? You get a free pass, yet your competitor Gary gets slammed by your cohort Bob Wenzel (who is a sloppy interviewer) for not being libertarian enough.<br />
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URL: http://www.lewrockwell.com/politicaltheatre/2011/04/gary-johnson-the-next-ron-paul/<br />
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URL: http://www.lewrockwell.com/politicaltheatre/2012/06/how-libertarian-is-gary-johnson/<br />
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If that's the game we need to play, fine. But it's a horrible game to play.<br />
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Lew Rockwell, His Compadres, and You Have Turned A Blind Eye to Jesse Benton and Trygve Olson's Actions In The Movement. Here's another horrible thought here, Ron. Rockwell, Block, and you have turned a blind eye to what Jesse Benton and Trygve Olson (a Republican plant who was brought in by Benton) have done to ensure that your son Rand will inherit your legacy and run for the presidency in 2016. That's what I find objectionable. That's what I find repulsive.<br />
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Thanks to Benton's outlandish behavior calling so many heartbroken and disillusioned Ron Paul supporters who have since Friday fled the Republican Party because the Maine GOP have plainly and successfully lobbied for the Ron Paul delegation not to seated in favor of voting for you, many of them will not come back. Many of them have quit altogether. Some have decided to join the Libertarian Party and support Johnson.<br />
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And where were you, Ron? Why didn't you publicly denounce it? Why did Benton call the attendees at your festival "ragamuffins" and "fringe"?<br />
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I've been told by a good source from the Republican Liberty Caucus that anything Jesse Benton does, you approve. Is that true? If it is, and if you approved of Benton's latest actions, then shame on you, sir. Shame on you for doing what you did. Many of those activists spent days, hours, and minutes pouring blood, sweat, and tears into your campaign, giving their time and money to you so that you can advance your most crucial cause. And what did they get in return? An outright dismissal. How appalling and repugnant! How arrogant and condescending! How smug and detestable!<br />
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There's more, but I think we all get the point.<br />
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In conclusion, Ron, I will no longer be supporting you. I am supporting Gary Johnson for President on the LP, despite his shortcomings.<br />
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I don't wish you any harm or the worst now that you are retiring in your golden years. But I do wish you will think of this: you blew it. You had an opportunity to win when you said you couldn't imagine yourself in the Oval Office, that you weren't running to win. And yet the libertarian movement has been corrupted.....because of you.<br />
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Goodbye, Dr. Paul. Enjoy your life and live it well. I, for one, will not miss it.<br />
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Please, I urge you not to run for 2016. It's time for you to let go and make your last years the best.<br />
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Sincerely and in Liberty,<br />
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Todd Andrew Barnett<br />
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Host of Liberty Cap Talk Live<br />
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Publisher and Editor of Let Liberty RingTodd Andrew Barnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326847219909577374noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2966255816488656670.post-33763451620782938392012-06-01T20:21:00.001-07:002012-06-02T11:22:43.674-07:00Chris Hayes and the Conservatives' Open Warfare Attack Campaign on the First Amendment<a href="http://www.msnbc.com/">MSNBC</a> host <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46979738/vp/47581623#47581631">Chris Hayes</a>' recent comments about <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/msnbc-host-chris-hayes-trouble-calling-fallen-soldiers-heroes-sparks-controversy-article-1.1085596?localLinksEnabled=false">his discomfort with appending the label "hero" to soldiers killed in action</a> has engendered a <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/76799.html">significant amount of hate-fueled, vociferous invectives from the military establishment and conservative talking heads and bloggers</a> who were deeply irate with and angered by his comments on <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46979738/ns/msnbc_tv-up_with_chris_hayes/">Up with Chris Hayes</a>.<br />
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This is what Hayes said on his show:<br />
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<blockquote>Why do I feel so uncomfortable about the word 'hero'? I feel uncomfortable about the word hero because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war. Um, and, I don’t want to obviously desecrate or disrespect memory of anyone that’s fallen, and obviously there are individual circumstances in which there is genuine, tremendous heroism, you know, hail of gunfire, rescuing fellow soldiers and things like that. But it seems to me that we marshal this word in a way that is problematic. But maybe I’m wrong about that.</blockquote>Interestingly enough, Hayes had a panel of commentators who espoused similar viewpoints and agreed with his assessment. <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/columnists?columnist=2.1988">John McHorter</a> of <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/">NYDailyNews.com</a> buttressed Hayes' statement with this following argument:<br />
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<blockquote>No, words take on residences, and that happens to almost any word. And sometimes you need to revise. I would almost rather not say 'hero' and come up with a more neutral term, which, of course, would take on partisan residences as time went by. But that's true of the word 'sacrifice, that's true of the word 'valor,' that's true of the word 'hero.' Instantly you get [makes trumpet sound] in a certain way of looking at things, and it is manipulative. I don't think that's necessarily deliberately. We use language unconsciously. But nevertheless, I share your discomfort with those words, because they are argumentational strategies in themselves often without wanting to be.</blockquote><a href="http://www.blogger.com/www.thedailybeast.com">Daily Beast</a> contributor <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/contributors/michelle-goldberg.html">Michelle Goldberg</a>, who was also on the show, concurred with McHorter and Hayes by saying:<br />
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<blockquote>Well, and they're also a little bit empty, because, I mean, there is - there are people who are genuine heroes but that kind of implication is that death is what makes you a hero, you know, as opposed to kind of an affirmative actor or any moral act or, I mean.</blockquote>Undoubtedly, the second the word about Hayes' uncomfortableness got out, the <a href="http://uscode.house.gov/download/pls/36C2301.txt">congressionally-chartered</a> <a href="http://www.militaryindustrialcomplex.com/">Military-industrial complex-backed</a> <a href="http://www.blogger.com/www.vfw.org/">Veterans of Foreign Wars</a> dispatched Director of Public Affairs a.k.a. spokesman <a href="http://www.vfw.org/uploadedFiles/VFW.org/News_and_Events/Richard%20L.%20DeNoyer.pdf">National Commander Richard DeNoyer</a> <a href="http://www.examiner.com/article/vfw-demands-msnbc-chris-hayes-apologize-for-disgusting-anti-veteran-comment">to denounce Hayes' comments on mainstream media outlets like Fox News and many others</a>, calling on Hayes and MSNBC to make "an immediate and unequivocal apology," in which he declared:<br />
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<blockquote>Chris Hayes' recent remarks on MSNBC regarding our fallen service members are reprehensible and disgusting.</blockquote>Furthermore, DeNoyer stated:<br />
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<blockquote>His words reflect his obvious disregard for the service and sacrifice of the men and women who have paid the ultimate price while defending our nation. His insipid statement is particularly callous because it comes at a time when our entire nation pauses to reflect and honor the memory of our nations' fallen heroes</blockquote>The VFW's top spokesman Joe Davis told The Daily Caller on Sunday:<br />
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<blockquote>If Mr. Hayes feels uncomfortable, I suggest he enlist, go to war, then come home to what he expects is a grateful nation but encounters the opposite. It’s far too easy to cast stones from inexperience</blockquote>DeNoyer told the press that the "anti-hero" comments made by Hayes on his show are "devastating" for "those grieving loved ones."<br />
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He further in part stated:<br />
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<blockquote>Such an ignorant and uncaring and blatant disregard for people's deep feelings are indefensible, and that is why the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States demand that Mr. Hayes and MSNBC provides an immediate and unequivocal apology.</blockquote>Unsurprisingly the conservative response to Hayes' remarks was even much harsher than the VFW's. Daniel Halper of the Weekly Standard <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/vfw-seeks-apology-after-msnbc-hosts-reprehensible-and-disgusting-comments_645944.html">harshly noted</a>:<br />
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<blockquote>Nevertheless, [Hayes] hasn't apologized and seems to stand by what he said.</blockquote>Conservative Twitter-feeded website <a href="http://www.twitchy.com/">Twitchy</a> <a href="http://twitchy.com/2012/05/28/no-hiding-for-msnbc-and-chris-hayes-repugnant-remarks-spark-msnbcheroes/">retorted</a>, while noting that a new hashtag #MSNBCheroes has been created, the following:<br />
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<blockquote>Leave it to Twitter to teach someone a much-needed lesson. Media accountability, baby! Hayes made the mistake, in a fit of deplorable moral relativism, of saying out loud what the Left thinks and believes. At least admit it, MSNBC</blockquote>Twitchy's staff even commented ad nauseum on this subject <a href="http://twitchy.com/2012/05/27/msnbcs-chris-hayes-observes-memorial-day-weekend-im-uncomfortable-calling-fallen-soldiers-heroes/">here</a>.<br />
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<a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Columnists/Kurt-Schlichter">Kurt Schlichter</a> of <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/">Breitbart.com</a> <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/05/28/Chris-Hayes-Uncomfortable-with-Calling-Troops-Heroes">leveled an ad hominem at Hayes</a>, stating:<br />
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<blockquote>I greatly enjoy watching progressives seethe as they are forced, for the sake of appearances, to pretend to support our troops. You know it’s killing them.<br />
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But it’s the progressives’ own doing – their sickening performance following the Vietnam War, when they figuratively and literally spit on our troops – so disgusted decent Americans of all political stripes that to do anything but treat our troops with the utmost respect is to draw near-universal contempt and scorn from across the mainstream political spectrum.<br />
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So, the real problem for Chris Hayes is that he actually said what he thinks. He thinks our soldiers are suckers and fools at best, brutal sociopaths at worst. At a minimum, he feels that honoring those who died for this country might encourage people to see that actually defending our country is a good thing. He’s not quite ready to make that leap; after all, most progressives are ambivalent about this whole 'America' concept, if not actively opposed to it.</blockquote>Conservative columnist <a href="http://www.anncoulter.com/">Ann Coulter</a> took some nasty potshots at Hayes, <a href="https://twitter.com/AnnCoulter/status/206882592782430208">opining</a> on her <a href="https://twitter.com/#%21/AnnCoulter">Twitter page</a>:<br />
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<blockquote>Chris Hayes 'Uncomfortable' Calling Fallen Military 'Heroes' – Marines respond by protecting his right to menstruate.</blockquote>A comment posted by a user named <a href="http://newsbusters.org/bios/azgal602">azgal602</a> to the widely-read conservative Republican-backed website <a href="http://www.mediabusters.org/">MediaBusters</a> (which has been claiming to be exposing liberal media bias [when, in fact, it's statist media bias])<a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/mark-finkelstein/2012/05/27/chris-hayes-im-uncomfortable-calling-fallen-military-heroes#comment-1697817">attacks Hayes' remarks</a> with the following:<br />
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<blockquote>People who feel this way and verbalize it should be shipped off on the first military transport to the front line. How dare they sit here in their comfortable safety and reap the rewards of what the military men and women sacrifice for us while belittling their ultimate sacrifice. The lowest of the low[.]</blockquote>Wizbang's <a href="http://wizbangblog.com/2012/05/27/msnbc-liberal-chris-hayes-uncomfortable-calling-our-troops-heroes/">Warner Todd Houston</a> attacked the liberal TV host himself, vehemently quipping:<br />
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<blockquote>This weekend Hayes felt compelled to warn everyone that calling our troops 'heroes' is something that should make us all 'uncomfortable.'</blockquote>That's a lie right there, because Hayes merely stated that, while some troops are heroes (such as coming to the aid of a fellow soldier who has been hit by rapid gunfire, etc.), he actually stated that the labeling of every American soldier who dies in a war makes him "uncomfortable," even though he also stated that he "might be wrong."<br />
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Stated Doug Mataconis in <a href="http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/memorial-day-should-be-sacred-even-when-you-oppose-war/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OTB+%28Outside+The+Beltway+%7C+OTB%29&utm_content=Google+Reader">his fierce objection to Hayes' attitude towards the term "hero"</a>:<br />
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<blockquote>I suppose the problem I have with Hayes’s comments, and with the comments of those who have been defending him online today, is that the objection to describing those who have died in service to their country as heroes isn’t based so much in a concern that it <i>diminishes the true acts of heroism that have occurred, and will continue to occur in wartime as it is in the fear that acknowledging the sacrifices that these men, and women, have made would somehow be a political statement<b></b></i>. <i>That strikes me as a deeply myopic, politically-obsessed, view of the world. Disagreeing with the political decision to go to war should never, I would submit, be a reason to either denigrate or ignore the sacrifices that those who served in that war have made, which seems to be the clear implication of what Hayes and his fellow panelists were saying in this segment.<b> <b>[emphasis added]</b></b></i></blockquote>Mataconis continued further:<br />
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<blockquote>Individual soldiers are not responsible for the decisions of those who sent them into battle, and it strikes me as incredibly callous to dismiss the sacrifices made by those who died in such endeavors.</blockquote>Pseudo-libertarian (yet proudly neoconservative Republican) blogger <a href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/02763399145451696076">Eric Dondero</a> <a href="http://www.libertarianrepublican.net/2012/05/best-blast-of-msnbcs-veterans-hating.html">spews his anti-Hayes venom, blasting the MSNBC show host</a> on <a href="http://www.libertarianrepublican.net/">LibertarianRepublican.net</a>. Here he said:<br />
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<blockquote>Honestly, does it get any worse than this? If you hadn't seen it yet, be prepared. It's been making its way around the right-to-sphere since Friday. His words are truly repulsive. Even liberal pundits and blogs are distancing themselves from his blather. </blockquote>Last but not least the conservative <i>Washington Times</i> <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/may/29/our-war-dead-heroes-or-dupes/?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS">editorialized the matter</a>, attacking Hayes by stating:<br />
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<blockquote>The word “heroes” has been used to describe America’s fallen for more than 200 years. It’s not “rhetorically proximate” to justifications for war but a traditional mark of gratitude and respect for the sacrifice made by the person who was killed and the family members left behind. It’s a way of recognizing that regardless of how a person died, he did so in service to the country. It’s not a glorification of war but a solemn acknowledgment of sacrifice.</blockquote>Sadly but not shockingly Hayes <a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2012/05/28/msnbcs-chris-hayes-apologizes-anti-fallen-military-hero-remark#ixzz1wDARhpnN">backpedaled on his statements</a> - for telling the truth. While his statement from his blog can be found <a href="http://upwithchrishayes.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/28/11924150-statement-from-chris-hayes">here</a>, here's what he wrote:<br />
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<blockquote>On Sunday, in <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46979738/vp/47581623#47581623">discussing the uses of the word "hero"</a> to describe those members of the armed forces who have given their lives, I don't think I lived up to the standards of rigor, respect and empathy for those affected by the issues we discuss that I've set for myself. I am deeply sorry for that.<br />
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As many have rightly pointed out, it's very easy for me, a TV host, to opine about the people who fight our wars, having never dodged a bullet or guarded a post or walked a mile in their boots. Of course, that is true of the overwhelming majority of our nation's citizens as a whole. One of the points made during Sunday's show was just how removed most Americans are from the wars we fight, how small a percentage of our population is asked to shoulder the entire burden and how easy it becomes to never read the names of those who are wounded and fight and die, to not ask questions about the direction of our strategy in Afghanistan, and to assuage our own collective guilt about this disconnect with a pro-forma ritual that we observe briefly before returning to our barbecues.<br />
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But in seeking to discuss the civilian-military divide and the social distance between those who fight and those who don't, I ended up reinforcing it, conforming to a stereotype of a removed pundit whose views are not anchored in the very real and very wrenching experience of this long decade of war. And for that I am truly sorry.</blockquote>Shortly after his apology went out, the Atlantic's <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/in-defense-of-chris-hayes/257744/">Conor Friedersdorf issued an op-ed on the scandal</a>, noting that Hayes shouldn't be the one apologizing for his statements. Rather, his detractors should be making the apologetic rounds.<br />
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Friedersdorf partly notes:<br />
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<blockquote>If Hayes' critics merely articulated why they didn't share his perspective, even forcefully, public discourse would've operated as it ought to -- one person makes an earnest, comprehensible, intellectually honest argument; other people respond with assents or counterarguments; the best ideas win. Instead, many of Hayes' critics puffed out their chests, emphasized how outraged they were, and proceeded to either elide or mischaracterize much of what Hayes said.</blockquote>He continued in part:<br />
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<blockquote>A lot of Hayes' critics have said that, no matter if he's right or wrong on the merits, he shouldn't have been so insensitive as to raise this subject on Memorial Day Weekend, when it might upset people who've lost loved ones and are trying to focus on honoring them as, yes, fallen heroes. Whatever you think of that argument, know this: With no disrespect to Hayes, he spoke on an obscure show that aired early in the morning during a holiday weekend on a liberal cable network. Had his musings been permitted to drift off into the ether, vanishingly few family members of deceased veterans would've heard them; even fewer would've been offended.<br />
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But thanks to the Schlichters and Hustons of the world, and the Fox News folks who put their segment on the controversy together, a lot of military families were told on Memorial Day weekend that some smug liberal elitist at MSNBC thinks the troops 'are all knuckle dragging, murderous, bigots that just want to shoot someone,' to quote one Hayes critic. There's no getting around it. The people who demagogued and egregiously misrepresented Hayes caused far more upset to military families than his actual remarks, especially in context, ever could.<br />
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Yet no one is outraged by their behavior, or calling on them to apologize.</blockquote>The reality of the matter comes down to this. The conservatives have declared an open-warfare attack campaign on the First Amendment by engaging in smug name-calling, condescending, and hubristic remarks aimed at Hayes - in the form of <i>ad hominems</i> - rather than opening the dialogue for assents and counterarguments. They will attack anyone - and I mean, <i>anyone</i> - who freely dissents on the view that we must call all American GIs "heroes," whether they are right or wrong.<br />
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As libertarian writer, blogger, commentator, and ideological thinker <a href="http://www.fff.org/aboutUs/bios/jgh.asp">Jacob Hornberger</a> <a href="http://www.fff.org/blog/jghblog2012-05-30.asp">called out the conservatives on their hypocrisy on the subject in his op-ed</a> (which is posted on the <a href="http://www.fff.org/">Future of Freedom Foundation</a> website), in which he pointed out that the <i>Times</i> failed to make it vitally clear as to whether the principles of military heroism in wartime to which the military and conservative establishments hold themselves applies to <i>only</i> Americans or also to soldiers of other countries.<br />
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Here he says:<br />
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<blockquote>Applying the standard set forth by the Times, would it be appropriate for Germans to use the word 'heroes' to describe Germany’s fallen in the many wars in which Germany has been involved, including World War II? Could it be said that describing Nazi soldiers killed in World War II as 'heroes' would not serve to justify World War II but instead serve simply as a mark of gratitude and respect for the sacrifice made by the German soldier who was killed and the family members left behind? Could it be said that this would just be a way to recognize that regardless of how the Nazi soldier died, he did so in service to his country? Could it be said that describing the Nazi soldier as a hero would not be a glorification of war but rather a solemn acknowledgement of sacrifice? </blockquote><br />
At one point, Hornberger correctly notes:<br />
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<blockquote>In other words, would the Times apply its principles regarding war, soldiers, heroism, and patriotism only to the United States or universally?<br />
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Or do they apply only to the winners? Do they apply, for example, to the Soviet Union, one of the winners of World War II, which was governed by a brutal communist regime during the war and for decades afterward, a regime that oppressed Jews and others and kept Eastern Europe under its iron boot for decades after the end of the war. Were communist soldiers opposing Nazi soldiers heroes for serving their government during time of war? Were they heroes for their willingness to die to ensure that their country remained under communist rule rather than Nazi rule?<br />
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Indeed, how would the Times apply its principles to the Vietnam War, a war that the United States lost? Surely, it would say that American soldiers who served in Vietnam or who died there were heroes, except perhaps for the ones who committed war crimes. Would it say the same about North Vietnamese communist soldiers or about the Viet Cong?</blockquote><br />
Moreover, Hornberger quips:<br />
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<blockquote>It seems to me that the reason that Nazi soldiers have never been honored as heroes is because the world has long held Germany to a different standard than the one that the <i>Washington Times</i> applies to the United States. Both German soldiers and the German citizenry should have made a critical examination of what their government was doing and realized that their government was in the wrong. On reaching that determination, it was the duty of the individual soldier to refuse to participate in the military, and it was the duty of the citizen to oppose his government, even in time of war.<br />
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Obviously, the Nazi government didn’t take that position. Its position was that it is the solemn duty of the citizen to come to the support of his government in time of crisis or war. The Hitler regime viewed the citizen who joined the Nazi armed forces as a hero for his willingness to fight and die for his country. The German people who supported the troops and the rest of the government were looked upon as patriots.<br />
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Isn’t that the same standard adhered to by many Americans with respect to America’s wars, soldiers, and citizenry?</blockquote>Hornberger precisely notes the problems made by the conservative American pundit establishment while employing the German citizen and Nazi soldier analogy to buttress it. However, this is where he hasn't made this point, which is that conservatives have nothing but solid blood lust on their minds, especially after the 9/11 attacks. They have endorsed and codified into law the idea that we Americans collectively must embrace our long-term presences in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya to mean that the State's own warriors - American GIs - will and must be sacrificed on the altars of blind patriotism, fealty, obedience, and heroism, even if these soldiers have committed crimes such as rapes and murders in those countries and in past wars (especially during the first two World Wars). This is done all in the name of eliminating the terrorist threat, which can only be attained and accomplished via the global War on Terror.<br />
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When Private First Class (Pcf) <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Manning">Bradley Manning</a> gave <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange">Julian Assange</a> the video footage of the July 12, 2007 <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to3Ymw8L6ZI">"Collateral Murder" video</a> he needed via his <a href="http://www.wikileaks.org/">WikiLeaks</a> site to release the horrific footage of unarmed news journalists (who were initially pegged by the U.S. military as armed militants) being gunned down by an Army AH-64 Apache helicopter, was he branded "a hero"? No, he was branded the opposite - a traitor by conservatives and the military establishment. Even James Kirchick, the conservative writer and contributing editor for the New Republic, even believes Manning to be "<a href="http://www.out.com/news-commentary/2012/05/31/bradley-manning-no-gay-hero">no gay hero</a>." <br />
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On the same show in he made his statements, Chris Hayes did state this talking point:<br />
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<blockquote>The argument on the other side of that is, we don't have a draft. This is voluntary. This is someone making a decision to take on a certain risk of that. And they're taking it on because they're bound to all of us through this social contract, through this democratic process of self-governance in which we decide collectively that we're going to go to war. And how we're going to go to war, and why we're going to go to war. And they also give up their own agency in a certain way that, for a liberal caricature like myself, seems very difficult to comprehend -- submitting so totally to what the electorate or people in power are going to decide about how to use your body, but they do that all of full volition. And if the word hero is not right, there's something about it that's noble, right?</blockquote><br />
Hayes is correct. Military service is now voluntary (unlike the service which was mandatory at the height of the Vietnam War), and any average Joe (or Jane) can choose to join it if he (or she) wishes. That individual takes a big risk for joining the military, knowing the potential dangers that come with the uniform.<br />
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Having said that, no one - or no persons - twisted the arms of the current rank-and-file troops to sign up for the military. Those men and women who chose that profession as a way to pay for college or to establish a career within that institution made their beds, and they must lie in them. They made their choices; now, they must take personal responsibility for those choices and live with them, whether they like it or not.<br />
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The word "hero" is casually thrown around like it has some paramount meaning in this militarized world in which we live. Whenever I think of the word "hero" or "heroine," I think of someone who risks his or her life to save the life of another person and rescues them from danger, even if it's done at his or her own risk. The word has now come to denote any soldier who is either killed or fatally maimed (by a device such as an IED, for instance) on the battlefield. That is a spurious use of the term, even if the glorification of the war and the act of a soldier dying "for the freedom of Americans" (especially when the term is heavily loaded and is deemed at best legitimate) seems like a noble, patriotic sacrifice for the country.<br />
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If conservatives ardently objected to Hayes' contentious statement, all they had to do was to state where he was wrong if they believe he is not right. Nope, all they did was resorting to name-calling, assassinating his character, and smearing him in the name of preserving the modern right wing-fueled military establishment.<br />
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If conservatives care about the troops as much as they say they do, then perhaps they can explain to anyone who isn't at the ripe young age of five years old as to why the military-industrial complex remunerates those fallen soldiers meager wages (which haven't been increased in years) and provides crummy Veterans Affairs-backed TriCare and housing that they have to pay for themselves (despite the lie stating the opposite), not to mention invalidating their right to vote (when they have to work long hours that prevent them from showing up at the election polls every four years)? Can someone with a backbone please justify that logic for me?<br />
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Conservatives who attack Hayes' First Amendment-protected rights will play the patriot card to their advantage as long as it benefits them and their corporate statist allies who want to keep the flow of the profits of the war profiteering coming. This isn't done to protect the troops; it's done to protect the status quo at the expense of the troops and the American taxpayers who will have to keep funding these military boondoggles.<br />
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And remember this much - the conservatives are merely biblically and patriotically correct, which, like the Left's own brand of political correctness, is used to protect popular speech from unpopular speech that is by default protected by the First Amendment (and not the other way around). It is a political weapon to protect the right's brand of free speech that must never be allowed to dissent and/or deviated from, because it is the State's own correct ideology. The individual doesn't matter in their eyes; only the massive State does, even though they hide behind limited statism (a.k.a. "small government") to justify its own existence.<br />
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Hayes' subsequent unnecessary apology serves as a reminder that, if you're going to state what you believe, then you must stand by your principles, whether you're right or wrong and regardless of how others feel about the situation. His principles have to mean something; otherwise, what's the point of stating them if they contain no meaning and no truth? But Hayes took the cowardly way out and refused to stand his ground. It didn't even please the conservatives anyway, because they were too busy hating him for not only making the statements but also for daring to make them in the first place.<br />
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The statists in the two major party camps are cheerleading this war and engaging in political masturbation, but one of them is rhapsodizing censorship. That's not a surprise, because the conservative war on free speech and dissent from the State has been unleashed upon us.<br />
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This time they're using the military as an excuse to justify it. Here comes the right wing open-warfare attack campaign on freedom of speech! The war has begun.Todd Andrew Barnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326847219909577374noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2966255816488656670.post-89578057804701444562012-02-09T09:26:00.001-08:002012-02-09T12:01:33.599-08:00Harry Browne's Interview with Eric DonderoHere's an old interview with infamous "pro-war libertarian" (more like neoconservative)<a href="http://www.libertarianrepublican.net">Eric Dondero</a> by the late, great <a href="http://www.harrybrowne.org">Harry Browne</a>. This interview was done at the time a sick and dying Browne was delving into the mind of a Republican nutjob who supported the War in Iraq and claimed that the "Islamo-Fasicists" (a massive force of Islamists who purportedly embraced fascism) are coming through our borders.<br /><br />Of course, Dondero called those who didn't support the War, who didn't support military action in Iraq, and who didn't sign on board with the "Muslims-Are-Coming" Little Chicken mentality "complete wimps" and "crazy." Dondero leveled loads of insults, screams, and accusations against Harry on one of his last radio shows.<br /><br />Callers whom one can hear are the infamous http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif<a href="http://www.infowars.com">Alex Jones</a> and then-(and now former) National Chair of the Republican Liberty Caucus Bill Westmiller. Bill then pointed out that Eric dropped an email to the RLC list, urging the then-Bush administration to "drop a nuclear bomb on Mecca."<br /><br />Of course, Dondero accuses Harry of not being a libertarian because Harry would have responded by writing in one of his columns that the attacks were "a criminal act," yet later in the interview he says:<br /><br /><blockquote>Look, I don't want anybody to get the impression that, you know, uh, libertarians hold a single view on foreign policy. We are all in agreement - all libertarians - that we should get out of the United Nations and end foreign aid. I think, you know, we have massive disagreements on the War on Iraq and the responding to September 11th. Harry, I consider you a comrade in the libertarian movement. You and I should be concentrating on getting the Congress to stop foreign aid and getting us out of the United Nations. You know, if we have differences on this, perhaps we can put them aside.</blockquote><br /><br />What a complete hypocrite he is!<br /><br />*Note: Dondero claims to "care about the 3,000 people" who were massacred on 9/11, yet he didn't give a rip about them long before the September 11th attacks.<br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dxDNXB_n4L9hHLNQ0nGtCV3keLAq829oI9clM81jTt_vm01Gt4IfeWuP7w5HXGASMb4nT61IqFYcB7maXKtJQ' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe>Todd Andrew Barnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326847219909577374noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2966255816488656670.post-33085265715384749342011-12-12T10:59:00.000-08:002011-12-12T11:14:05.883-08:00My Response to Walter Block's Hit Piece Against Wendy McElroyFor the record, here's my <a href="http://www.facebook.com/todd.andrew.barnett/posts/10151042569595705">official Facebook status post on my wall</a> serving as a response to Walter Block's <a href="http://lewrockwell.cohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifm/block/block188.html">hit piece</a> <a href="http://letlibertyring.blogspot.com/2011/12/ron-paul-acolyte-walter-block-attacks.html">aimed solely</a> at libertarian/anarchist Wendy McElroy. The following is taken from my FB account in its unabridged entirety:<br /><br /><blockquote>As much as I like Ron Paul tactically and not politically (I'm not an official financial supporter, although I did contact the Paul campaign and offer to volunteer my time and services to help him tactically), I think LewRockwell.com blogger and writer Walter Block's attack on libertarian/anarchist feminist Wendy McElroy is completely unfounded and uncalled for.<br /><br />Wendy is right about Paul politically, but she's not the only person to have called Paul out on his anti-libertarian stands on a few issues such as abortion, immigration, religion, and antiwar if not authorized by the Constitution, and constitutional fetishism all on account of his status as a politician. (URL: http://www.wendymcelroy.com/news.php) I have called Ron out even though I have praised him during the debate (except for his "secure the border" rhetoric). I know Thomas L. Knapp has called him out in the past and still does to a certain extent. (URL: http://knappster.blogspot.com/2011/12/when-hes-right-hes-right.html) I know Stefan Molyneux has been critical of Paul in the past. I know Sheldon Richman criticized Paul over the old racist newsletter controversy that plagued the Paul campaign in 2007 and 2008, and he was completely spot-on regarding Paul allegedly being unaware of the letters (a claim which Richman didn't even buy at all). Even Jim Davidson has good reasons to oppose Paul's candidacy, simply because Paul supported a two-time bailout, prowar candidate named Lamar Smith over a libertarian Republican candidate who was more principled than Smith. Simply put I can't blame him for it.<br /><br />With that in mind, because Block measures a libertarian's credentials simply by whether he supports his favored political candidate (who happens to be Ron Paul) and not by his ideology, will he attack me? Tom? Stefan? Sheldon? Anyone who dares to have a brain against him and the renewed deification of Paul (which seems to be happening already)?<br /><br />I am so disappointed in Block that I truly question whether he is a libertarian nowadays or whether he's just a front for the GOP establishment, considering he no longer measures an individual's belief system solely on his ideology but rather whether he supports a candidate like Ron Paul. I totally resent and object to that game entirely.<br /><br />Now that Block is trying to stir up bullshit in the movement with his claims against Wendy (who hasn't written about Paul in over four years now) and with anyone who doesn't agree with Paul (even if they're not neocons or progressives), he's merely doing more damage to the cause of Liberty and not helping it. That's my objection right there. Who the hell does he think he is just by doing this? Wendy has been an ardent defender of liberty for years and has never wavered since. For Block to stoop to that level the same way neoconservative Republican Eric Dondero has done is shameful, putrid, and disgusting. I'm embarrassed to have any association with him. I'll be more embarrassed to be in the same room with him. It's one thing to attack progressives and neocons who want Ron's head on the issues that he's right on. It's wrong to attack fellow libertarians who criticize and call out Ron on the issues that he's wrong on. Not only does that say more about Block, but it makes him politically and ideologically fair game, IMHO.<br /><br />Not that I'm a fan of Kevin Carson or just his biggest fan, but he was right about the term "vulgar libertarian." Block fits that mold pretty damn well, and it shames me to say that.<br /><br />What on earth was he thinking when he wrote that? Is he trying to push anyone out of the movement for not supporting Ron Paul for legitimate reasons? Is he off his rocker or what? Can someone please explain that rationale to me? I merely ask, because I don't get it.</blockquote><br /><br />Whether you agree or disagree with critics of Ron Paul is not the point and even neither here nor there. The point is that Block is not only off-base for making this libelous and accusatory charge against her, but he's also wrong to begin with. I will follow this up with this post and any updates to this commentary as well as my previous commentary on the subject.Todd Andrew Barnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326847219909577374noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2966255816488656670.post-80705692596404732622011-12-12T10:10:00.001-08:002011-12-12T12:48:14.053-08:00Ron Paul Acolyte Walter Block Attacks Wendy McElroyI was disheartened to see <a href="http://www.lewrockwell.com">LewRockwell.com</a> <a href="http://www.lewrockwell.com/block/block-arch.html">columnist</a> and <a href="http://www.loyno.edu/">Loyola University</a> <a http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifhref="http://www.business.loyno.edu/faculty-staff/walter-block">Professor</a> <a href="mailto:wblock@loyno.edu">Walter Block</a>'s newly-launched tirade against renowned libertarian/anarchist <a href="http://www.ifeminist.com">individual feminist</a> <a href="http://www.wendymcelroy.com">Wendy McElroy</a> in his LRC piece today entitled "<a href="http://lewrockwell.com/block/block188.html">Is Wendy McElroy Still A Libertarian?: No; She Opposes the Ron Paul Candidacy</a>." (It's a shame that <a href="http://mises.org/daily/author/275/Llewellyn-H-Rockwell-Jr">Lew Rockwell</a> himself has even allowed this putrid, disgusting, preposterous, and outrageous filth to be housed and archived on his popular website, let alone its own server.)<br /><br />I encountered this putrid, disgusting, and outlandish drivel when fellow left-libertarian/agorist/voluntaryist <a href="http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1563050813">Edgardo Peregrino</a> posted this on his <a href="http://www.facebook.com">Facebook</a> wall a few hours ago.<br /><br />Edgardo posted the following with Block's article on his <a href="http://www.facebook.com/ajax/sharer/?s=99&appid=2309869772&p%5B0%5D=1563050813&p%5B1%5D=232173250189681">wall</a>, which caught my eye instantly:<br /><br /><blockquote>I hate to disappoint Dr. Block, but not everyone who opposes Ron Paul is a bloodthirsty neocon or progressive.</blockquote><br /><br />Since then his wall has been hit with a few comments which have been largely negative about Walter's hit piece:<br /><br /><blockquote>Caleb McGinn As brilliant as Walter Block is he sure writes some stupid shit sometimes. Lew Rockwell probably wrote it for him.<br /> 2 hours ago · Like · 1<br /> Edgardo Peregrino I'm a big fan of Dr. Block but sometimes I wonder what's going through his head when he writes shit like this.<br /> 2 hours ago · Like<br /> Bryan Tint What about Patrick Buchanan?<br /> 2 hours ago · Like<br /> Steve Lolyouwish Maybe not but they're certainly not helping.<br /> 2 hours ago · Like</blockquote><br /><br />Wendy <a href="http://www.wendymcelroy.com/news.php?extend.4414.1">has responded</a> to her old friend Block's knee-jerk hit piece on her website with the following post:<br /><br /><blockquote>Apparently the litmus test for being a libertarian is whether you support a particular political candidate or not. At least, that's the message of Walter Block's article today on LewRockwell.com: Is Wendy McElroy Still a Libertarian? No; She Opposes the Ron Paul Candidacy. The attack is odd...for a few reasons. Just one of them is that I have not written of Ron Paul for over four years now. Indeed, I am ignoring almost everyone's political campaigning from now 'til November for the sake of my digestion. Ah well. Clearly, and especially from the last paragraph, Walter is trying to bait me into some sort of exchange. Alas, Walter, old friend, I am not a puppet and I do not jump to the jerk of a string.<br /><br />UPDATE: My indefatigable husband just sent me a link from the past, a link to the 2007 blog post in which I responded to a similar article Walter wrote in a similar view years and years ago. I don't have anything to add. It is well-trodden territory.</blockquote><br /><br />(The article that Wendy wrote in response to Walter in a similar fashion some years ago over her August 1997 commentary titled "<a href="http://www.wendymcelroy.com/news.php?extend.946">Ron Paul or Antiwar.com?</a>" can be found <a href="http://www.wendymcelroy.com/news.php?extend.1268">here</a>. Her commentary on the same piece before Block responded at that point can also be traced to <a href="http://www.thebellforum.com/archive/index.php?t-14410.html&s=d04011a6dd48755f6fbd1338870a8646">here</a>.)<br /><br />I have responded to the entire affair on my Facebook wall in defense of McElroy, which I will post in a separate blog posting of my own. In another separate blog posting, I will be commenting on the entire matter, which will enable me to put my thoughts in correct order before I begin.<br /><br /><b>UPDATE (12-12-2011):</b> A Facebook user identified as "Eric Lau" wrote a scathing attack on Wendy McElroy on Edgardo's post in which Block attacks her for opposing his campaign (while apologizing for and defending Ron Paul) in a pathetic, snarky attempt to discredit her:<br /><br /><blockquote>Erik Lau What Wendy McElroy is writing about Ron Paul is ridiculous rant or outright lies. How can any libertarian accuse Ron Paul of not being a libertarian, but an enemy to freedom. She might really dislike most political action and especially from GOP but her factual opinion of Paul is savagely wrong - and that is very damaging.<br />about an hour ago · Like</blockquote>Todd Andrew Barnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326847219909577374noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2966255816488656670.post-80718569819909141292011-12-03T14:24:00.000-08:002011-12-03T15:17:08.946-08:00The Derailment of the Herman Cain TrainIt's official: the <a href="http://www.hermancain.com/home">Herman Cain Train</a> has been <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/us/politics/herman-cain-suspends-his-presidential-campaign.html">derailed</a> on the heels of a 13-year-old love affair with a woman (which he continues to deny completely). This also is in part due to a number of his supporters and donors dropping him over that ruckus and the sexual harassment allegations leveled against him (which he also continues to deny). This political train wreck can't be salvaged. Once it went off the railroad tracks, it couldn't be put back together again.<br /><br />It's over for him politically. However, I don't think he will be riding off into the sunset entirely. Now he's peddling his new online <a href="http://thecainsolutions.com/">political organization</a>, which he will most likely employ to shore up his leftover base and bring it over to his cause and serve as a financial and political platform to establish a steady stream of cash flow for him and his opportunistic disciples.<br /><br />This however does create some good news and some bad news for us on the freedom side:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Good News:</span> Ron Paul will gain more of the attention and spotlight with Cain out of the race. With Cain's supporters <a href="http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/03/cain-backers-look-to-gingrich-paul-in-n-h/">now looking at both Newt Gingrich</a> (who will probably get the bulk of the Cain support vote) and <a href="http://www.hermancainforums.com/index.php/topic,1824.0.html">Ron Paul</a>, a Paul backing would be stronger, more consistent, and more energized than Gingrich, considering that Newt is an ideological and political elephant in the presidential room.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Bad News:</span> Gingrich gets Cain's votes at the present moment, but that could and may well likely change in the weeks and months to come, perhaps prior to the Iowa caucus primaries. He may be the flavor of the month for now, but what about the long term? Chances are his campaign will fizzle out, and that will most likely happen, largely in part because of his past history of infidelity and peccadillos, and all that makes him gravely fair game. At least Ron Paul doesn't have such skeletons in his closet, but Gingrich certainly has them.<br /><br />Whatever happens, this may well be Ron Paul's light to shine in the days and weeks to come. At least Ron is ideologically principled and consistent, whereas Gingrich isn't. In the short term, Gingrich may be the top contender, but that will only heighten his political downfall - that is, if and ONLY if Ron Paul capitalizes on Cain's loss, brings Cain's supporters into his fold, and heads into 2012 with a strong shot at nabbing the GOP nomination crown.Todd Andrew Barnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326847219909577374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2966255816488656670.post-74398812979171314932011-12-03T02:46:00.000-08:002011-12-03T03:45:55.495-08:00The Republican Presidential Sideshow Freaks and Government SecurityLast week's nauseating, nonsensical, and pathetic <a href="http://www.mrctv.org/videos/cnnheritage-full-debate">GOP presidential debate</a> hosted by <a href="http://www.cnn.com/">CNN</a> and the neoconservative think tank <a href="http://www.heritage.org/">The Heritage Foundation</a> in Washington, D.C. is both an epitome and a disturbing reminder of the lunacy of the Republican sideshow freaks (except for Ron Paul as usual) who have consistently demonstrated their naivete to the American public at large. These reprobates - from Mitt Romney to Herman Cain - will never learn and acknowledge that an offensive, aggressive, and warlike foreign policy will proceed to put American lives in jeopardy until they trace the history of this interventionism from Jefferson's attack on the Barbary Pirates (rather than to pay bribes to them) to the present day evils committed in the Middle East. (Take the United States government's present incursions <a href="http://www.salon.com/2011/11/25/the_fruits_of_liberation/singleton/">here</a> for instance.)<br /><br />However, it goes without saying that the stentorian choruses of defending, protecting, worshiping, idolizing, and insulating the status quo are certainly over-the-top but not surprising. Ranging from preserving American foreign aid to Israel to "American exceptionalism" and "America leading the free world," they are nothing but contrivances to prop up pseudo images of the State's "benevolence," the self-deceit and vanities of the governmental players involved, and the State's self-appeasing, self-serving, and self-aggrandizing way of fashioning its own hubris under the guise of self-reassurance.<br /><br />All of these things are said to shroud "national security" (which is <a href="http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2008/tle455-20080210-06.html">government security</a>) from the American people. The Democrats are just as horrendous on this issue, because they see it as a part of the government's need to engage in humanitarianism abroad with the backing of the U.N., unlike the GOP that prefers to have Americans and the Pentagon declaring war against a foreign regime for "defending national security first" and then "humanitarianism second." (Even Rick Santorum shares the Democratic trait on that thinking alone, despite his tough talk on terrorists and terrorism.)<br /><br />Despite their minute differences on those issues, both major parties favor barbarism and welfare-warfare equality. With Republicans and Democrats like these (who are the heart of the tyrannical two-party system that expands, operates, and fuels the federal government), who needs enemies at all?Todd Andrew Barnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326847219909577374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2966255816488656670.post-28298828500751326202011-11-02T10:53:00.001-07:002011-11-02T11:01:52.035-07:00Food For ThoughtAre we all better off or worse off that we now know about the increasingly mounting yet substance-lacking (although scathing) reports about the sexual harassment charges pending against GOP presidential contender Herman Cain? Not that I'm defending Cain on any grounds due to his waffling and conflicting answers in response to the allegations and his incredible statements about his version of the accounts of the story (which is still in progress), but why is this any more or less significant than the politically-charged sex scandals of the past? (Anyone remember then-President Bill Clinton's affair with Ginnifer Flowers and Paula Jones' infamous sexual harassment suit against him?)Todd Andrew Barnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326847219909577374noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2966255816488656670.post-73420839819489768172011-09-29T00:53:00.000-07:002011-09-30T07:38:49.470-07:00The Conservative (and Libertarian) Love Affair with Maximum "Limited" Statism, Corporatism, and Constitutional FetishismWhenever I hear (some) "limited government" conservatives and (minarchist) libertarians utter phrases like "We must keep the U.S. federal government to its Constitutional size" and "Only Congress has the legal and just power to [do <span style="font-style:italic;">this</span>] or [do <span style="font-style:italic;">that</span>]" or "These new laws and regulations are an affront to and assault on free market capitalism" or "President [Insert name here] has signed into law a bill that clearly violates the Constitution," I feel a sudden chill rushing down my spine. And it's not a good feeling. None indeed whatsoever.<br /><br />The problem with this school of thought is that the individual who stands to defend this rhetoric bar none injects an enormous amount of political and ideological faith in a few areas under a blind guise of praxeological arguments. Not surprisingly, these aforementioned arguments are of the following: <br /><br /><ul><br /><li>That the United States of America as a quasi-governmental corporation must be governed by a blanket set of rules called a constitution and that these rules see the State as a pet to be tamed and put on a leash;</li><br /><li>That, unless the Constitution "authorizes" the State to partake in legal functions (such as granting Congress the power to "coin Money" and to "declare War" against a foreign power) as "America's Founders had originally intended and envisioned them," the President, the Senate, and the Congress "has no constitutional authority" to engage in these said functions if said rules expressly forbid them to do so;</li><br /><li>That the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, which states in part, "The powers not expressly delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people," is the law of the land and that Constitution "is only granted enumerated powers at the State level that the Constitution does not clearly spell out and define." Oh, and don't forget that they also say that Washington, D.C. "has no right to tell people and their States what they can and cannot do" because these issues (like taxes, economic regulations, immigration) pertain to "state sovereignty" and "states' rights."<br /><br />(Some of these so-called limited statist conservatives reach an impasse with their ideological and political paradigms because they cannot reconcile their love affair for the Constitution and their alleged pro-liberty ideologies with their corporate socialist and privileged philosophies, given that they express deference to the State while appearing to favor laissez-faire "free market" capitalism);</li><br /><li>That the U.S. Supreme Court was never meant to be an instrument of judicial activism (that is, the Court having legislative power from the bench on the whims of the judges on account of their personal and political views and interests) but rather a provider of a strict, restrictive interpretative federal power on interstate commerce and limited judicial power (as mandated by the 11th Amendment);</li><br /><li>That the State was meant to be "limited" in nature, and that it must be confined to the chains of the Constitution, as "America's Founders intended it to be";</li><br /><li>That the State is meant to be in place to have "federal powers few and defined," and that some functions of society (such as roads, the police, prisons, and the courts) must be socialized and not left in the hands of a free market;</li><br /><li>And so on and so on;</li><br /></ul><br /><br />What's equally troublesome is their easily-debunkable claim that free markets exist now (despite regulations by the State) and their corporatist/privileged safety net protection rackets are protected and carried out by state decree. Even Objectivists fall under this perturbing rubric all too well.<br /><br />If those phrases are meant to be taken seriously, then I must ask those who employ them in political and ideological discourses this very paramount question: Why? Why must we care about "limited government" when the State is not some kind of a canine that can be put on a leash and trained to behave at his owner's command? Is it worth spewing those words, knowing how impossible it is to have a limited "minimized state" government because of its temptation to grow? This political opiate has taken on a life of its own. Even the Founders of whom some conservatives and minarchist libertarians have grown so fond had individually different ideas of what the role of government should be in civil society on its own merits. It's no secret that the "Founding Fathers" of the United States couldn't bring themselves to see eye-to-eye on how "small" the State should be. (The Articles of Confederation merely accomplished this [despite some of the problems that it had], but that document was thrown aside in favor of the current constitution.)<br /><br />If we are an astute judge of constitutional history, then it is obvious that the great constitutional experiment that the Founders established has not created a government "limited" within power and scope but a plutocratic-autocratic hybrid apparatus. In other words, the State has become both an instrument of unlimited power and a collusive partner with Big Business and Fortune 100 and 500 corporations that enjoy privileged advantages at the expense of the underclasses. This is where the "free market capitalism" angle comes in: a politico-economic system that is state capitalistic in nature but disguised as a pseudo "free market capitalistic" system exploiting the underclass and protecting privileged elitism by according the ruling class with tangible perks that are not available to the poor a.k.a. the ruled.<br /><br />And it doesn't help that a minor subset of libertarians, whether they fall under the minarchistic or, to a lesser degree, the anarchistic categories, have embraced this "vulgar libertarian" mindset, while forgetting that they condemn corporatism if it does not benefit them but, once it starts to work for them, they immediately embrace it. And some of their conservative allies who embrace the constitutional fetishism that the State is their enemy and that Wall Street and corporate America are enemies of true liberalism, a free market, and a peaceful civil society.<br /><br />Conservatives (even the Ron Paul ones) have done the same, albeit a much lesser degree than the others. If nothing, they are their own worst enemies, and yet they don't recognize that.<br /><br />The conservative and libertarian love affair with maximum "limited" statism, corporatism, and constitutional fetishism is enough for me to deliberately question the absolute integrity of these groups.Todd Andrew Barnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326847219909577374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2966255816488656670.post-82476871570415704602011-09-22T21:35:00.000-07:002011-09-22T22:06:12.698-07:00Ron Paul Wins The Fox News Debate PollAccording to <a href="http://www.foxnews.com">Fox News</a>' <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/09/22/who-won-debate/">"Who Won The Debate?" poll</a>, Ron Paul has won it, garnering 37.75% of the vote.<br /><br />This is what the following poll shows:<br /><br /><br /><br /><blockquote><br /><br /><h4>Who Won the Debate?</h4><br /><br />By You Decide<br />Published September 22, 2011<br /><br />Fox News and Google's Republican debate Thursday night in Orlando featured eight presidential candidates: Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Gary Johnson, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, Jon Huntsman, Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann. Who won the debate?<br /><br /><h4>Share your thoughts, answer our question then click "Leave a Comment."</h4><br /><br /><h3>Thank you for voting!</h3><br /><br />Mitt Romney 23.37% (9,021 votes)<br /> <br /> <br />Rick Perry 12.73% (4,914 votes)<br /> <br /> <br />Newt Gingrich 7.23% (2,792 votes)<br /> <br /> <br />Ron Paul 37.75% (14,573 votes)<br /> <br /> <br />Rick Santorum 1.47% (566 votes)<br /> <br /> <br />Gary Johnson 2.05% (790 votes)<br /> <br /> <br />Herman Cain 11.67% (4,507 votes)<br /> <br /> <br />Michele Bachmann 2.11% (816 votes)<br /> <br /> <br />Jon Huntsman 1.62% (627 votes)<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />Total Votes: 38,605</blockquote><br /><br /><br />At least this is a sigh of relief, given that tonight's debate was the most pathetic and most predictable one of all.Todd Andrew Barnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326847219909577374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2966255816488656670.post-69469230817723400442011-09-18T12:33:00.000-07:002011-09-18T13:41:16.674-07:00Bill Maher Takes A Potshot At Ron Paul<a href="http://www.hbo.com/billmaher">Real Time</a> talking head <a href="http://www.billmaher.com">Bill Maher</a>, with a panel of guests such as <a href="http://www.mullings.com">Mullings.com</a> publisher/founder and columnist, Republican strategist, and former Vice President <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Quayle">Dan Quayle</a> and Speaker of the House <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newt_Gingrich">Newt Gingrich</a> press secretary <a href="http://www.nndb.com/people/156/000102847/">Rich Galen</a>, <a href="http://www.eisenhowerinstitute.org/">The Eisenhower Institute</a>'s <a href="http://www.eisenhowerinstitute.org/experts/donahue.dot">Jennifer Donahue</a>, and Current TV host "<a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/">Countdown with Keith Olbermann</a>" (which used to be on MSNBC) <a href="http://current.com/shows/countdown/about">Keith Olbermann</a> (himself), took shots at Ron Paul, due to his answer to <a href="http://situationroom.blogs.cnn.com/tag/wolf-blitzer/?hpt=sr_bn10">Wolf Blitzer</a> (of "T<a href="http://situationroom.blogs.cnn.com/">he Situation Room</a>") over the health care issue at the <a href="http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/12/live-blog-of-cnns-first-ever-tea-party-republican-debate/">CNN/Tea Party GOP presidential debate</a> last week.<br /><br />The exchange that transpired and erupted into a national media ruckus <a href="http://tinyurl.com/3ks9j93">went like this</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>MR. BLITZER: Before I get to Michele Bachmann, I want to just -- you're a physician, Ron Paul. So, you're a doctor; you know something about this subject. Let me ask you this hypothetical question: A healthy, 30-year-old young man has a good job, makes a good living, but decides: You know what? I'm not going to spend 200 (dollars) or $300 a month for health insurance, because I'm healthy; I don't need it. But you know, something terrible happens; all of a sudden, he needs it. Who's going to pay for it, if he goes into a coma, for example? Who pays for that?<br /><br />REP. PAUL: Well, in a society -- in a society that you accept welfarism and socialism, he expects the government to take care of him.<br /><br />MR. BLITZER: Well, what do you want?<br /><br />REP. PAUL: But what he should do is whatever he wants to do, and assume responsibility for himself. My advice to him would have a major medical policy, but not before --<br /><br />MR. BLITZER: But he doesn't have that. He doesn't have it and he's -- and he needs -- he needs intensive care for six months. Who pays?<br /><br />REP. PAUL: That's what freedom is all about: taking your own risks. (Cheers, applause.) This whole idea that you have to prepare and take care of everybody -- (applause) --<br /><br />MR. BLITZER: But Congressman, are you saying that society should just let him die?<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah!<br /><br />REP. PAUL: No --<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah!<br /><br />AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes! (Applause.)<br /><br />REP. PAUL: I practiced medicine before we had Medicaid, in the early 1960s when I got out of medical school. I practiced at Santa<br /><br />Rosa Hospital in San Antonio. And the churches took care of them. We never turned anybody away from the hospitals. (Applause.)<br /><br />And we've given up on this whole concept that we might take care of ourselves and assume responsibility for ourselves, our neighbors, our friends; our churches would do it. This whole idea -- that's the reason the cost is so high. The cost is so high because we dump it on the government. It becomes a bureaucracy. It becomes special interests. It kowtows to the insurance companies, then the drug companies. Then on top of that, you have the inflation. The inflation devalues the dollar. We have lack of competition. There's no competition in medicine. Everybody's protected by licensing. We should actually legalize alternative health care, allow people to have -- practice what they want. (Cheers, applause.)</blockquote><br /><br />Incidentally, Maher neglected to mention the last set of statements that Paul made at the debate, which explained his position on the matter, and yet Maher tried to sandbag Paul by launching into a "Ron-Paul-wants-that-30-year-old-man-in-a-coma-to-die" tirade that was unbelievably laughable all the way. <br /><br />Maher's nonsense can be found <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIwhH7NNJKI">here</a>:<br /><br /><object width="415" height="241"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/aIwhH7NNJKI?version=3&hl=en_US&hd=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/aIwhH7NNJKI?version=3&hl=en_US&hd=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="415" height="241" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object><br /><br />(Maher's potshot actually takes place at time index 5:03 in the YouTube clip, just to showcase how obtuse and myopic this douchebag really is.)<br /><br />Maher and his panel, in a pathetically snarky yet par-for-the-course statist Leftist fashion, begin their attack by quoting Blitzer and Paul's statements during that moment in the debate. When Maher paraphrases, albeit in a twisted way, Ron's answer, Maher condescendingly screams out, "He's in a coma! How the fuck can he know what he wants to do?" Then Galen snarkily nods, "It narrows his choices!" Maher agrees, "It narrows his choices!"<br /><br />Oh please! Blitzer's hypothetical was ridiculous to say the least. One day a healthy 30-year-old man who chooses not to buy health insurance is somehow on life support the next day, and the hypothetical doesn't even allow wiggle room for what might have caused him to collapse in the first place? And Ron Paul's answer was outrageous, because he favors separating health care and State, whereas Maher and his cronies don't? Who's kidding whom here?<br /><br />It certainly tells me that Maher and his companions need to have their heads checked if they think they can respond with emotion without logic and critical thinking standing in the way of their collective judgment.Todd Andrew Barnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326847219909577374noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2966255816488656670.post-63121842577316904132011-09-16T13:18:00.000-07:002011-09-16T13:19:30.072-07:00The Three Economies of AmericaThere are undeniably and distinctly three separate yet existing economies in America. We have the State-regulated and not-very-productive economy which is run by Big Business as part of Corporate America and is in collusion with the State. We have a State-run non-productive political economy which is run by the U.S. federal government, the Congress, the Military Industrial Complex, and its political fat cats (lobbyists). And then there's the underground, highly-productive, highly-efficient productive REAL private (Agorist) economy which is run by individuals providing products and services to people. I choose the latter.Todd Andrew Barnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326847219909577374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2966255816488656670.post-41131012139052126852011-09-16T10:52:00.000-07:002011-09-16T11:52:21.202-07:00Obama's Precious Jobs ProgramPresident Obama came off seriously resolute when he told members of Congress to pass his jobs bill immediately. (A transcript of his political speech is provided <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/09/us/politics/09text-obama-jobs-speech.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Transcript%20of%20Obamas%20Jobs%20Address%20to%20Congress&st=cse">here</a>.) The move was a ploy to buy votes and shore up political support for his re-election campaign, which has already swung into full gear. But then nothing what he says ought to shock anyone. It doesn't for me, at least.<br /><br />Here are the videos of his speech before the entire body:<br /><br />Part 1<br /><object width="400" height="233"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/WWJtt1I3PCU?version=3&hl=en_US&hd=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/WWJtt1I3PCU?version=3&hl=en_US&hd=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="400" height="233" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object><br /><br />Part 2<br /><object width="400" height="233"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/pmojJZpoacc?version=3&hl=en_US&hd=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/pmojJZpoacc?version=3&hl=en_US&hd=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="400" height="233" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object><br /><br />and Part 3<br /><object width="400" height="233"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/iIACwPZC7Ik?version=3&hl=en_US&hd=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/iIACwPZC7Ik?version=3&hl=en_US&hd=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="400" height="233" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object><br /><br />And what is so special about his precious jobs program that he wants imposed upon the populace by federal edict? Nothing...that is, if you haven't drunk the statist Kool-Aid and bought into his pie-in-the-sky rhetoric that it will "create" jobs and "boost" the economy.<br /><br />Here's the warped logic of his plan: he claims that his purported $447 billion package will "grow the economy" if Congress acts to pass it "right away." (Notice that he echoed those words 18 times in a row.) But that's not all of it.<br /><br />According to him, the bill is laden with payroll "tax cuts" that will bring us out of the recession and boost the economy. (I put the pluralized term tax cuts in quotation marks because of the dubious, suspicious, and fallacious claim of his statements.) When one views cuts in payroll taxes, one sees that the cuts gut the Medicare and Social Security taxes that make up the FICA tax. However, one must recognize that those taxes fund both Medicare and Social Security. Both programs <a href="http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2011/05/medicare-social-security-obama-geithner-republicans/1">are running colossal deficits and creating cost overruns</a> that threaten their very existence. That simply means that they are generating less revenue than they require to issue their payouts to retirees (who are supposed to be the intended recipients of those funds). That also means that more of the funds that haven't been touched yet and are withheld in the Treasury will have to be cashed in at some point.<br /><br />The news gets worse than that. I should note that the Treasury is already plagued with a $1 trillion-plus deficit. That means more money will be extracted from the already-weakened, highly-regulated productive private sector to reimburse the Social Security and Medicare monies. That will be so unless the President chooses to radically alter the tax code to make up the lost difference. But it will not be so. The money will be coercively taken out of private capital markets in the economy and shifted right back into those sectors in the appearance of higher taxes under the guise of a payroll tax cut. In Obama's Bizarro World, that's expected to boost the economy.<br /><br />The plan unsurprisingly subsidizes small firms in the form of a doled-out $4,000 tax credit as a condition to hire more employees who have been out of work for six months or more than it would otherwise. This is giving employers an incentive not to hire workers because of the additional costs that this requirement would impose on businesses, considering this is not done in real demand but on political gimmicks and musical chairs. It sounds great to hire employees with this tax credit, but with other regulatory, tax, and other expenisve burdens imposed on businesses, this is, as I have stated before, just merely window dressing to shore up political votes for his re-election.<br /><br />This is the liberaltard logic to which we are all subjected. My head won't stop spinning right now.Todd Andrew Barnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326847219909577374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2966255816488656670.post-46622838291707696612011-09-11T15:16:00.001-07:002011-09-11T16:01:10.300-07:00Rep. Allen West (R-Florida): Right on Obama's Jobs Plan, Wrong on 9/11Florida Republican <a href="http://west.house.gov/">Congressman Allen West</a> appeared on Judge Andrew Napolitano's <a href="http://www.foxbusiness.com/on-air/freedom-watch/index.html">Freedom Watch</a> show on <a href="http://www.foxbusiness.com">Fox Business</a> this past Friday night to discuss the economic and financial impact on President Obama's jobs plan which he attempted to peddle to Congress on Thursday night. Of course, West condemns Obama's jobs plan (which he deserves good talking points for stating the obvious about the jobs bill on which the President wants Congress to vote), but then Napolitano shifts attention away from that topic and veers into the 9/11 remembrance issue (which is today, in fact).<br /><br />West responds with his comments (which starts exactly at 4:13 in the following YouTube <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KysMgcev1ro">video</a>.<br /><br /><iframe width="400" height="255" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/KysMgcev1ro?hd=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />West states, "9/11 is a historic event that we must never forget." A "historic event?" Who is he kidding? One assumes in a single breath that West is likening the 10-year-old attacks to a NASA space shuttle launch. What happened was a horrendous and atrocious tragedy that transpired ten years ago. Of course Americans are never going to "forget" what happened. That shouldn't be foolishly construed to signify that we must let it rule our lives or shape our way of life for eternity. Americans don't make a habit of recalling the brutal events that led up to and after the events of that fateful day on a daily basis. It's more or less a political talking point to fuel the War on Terror than to draw paramount lessons from a tragedy that was born out of the U.S. government's incessant interventionistic foreign and domestic policies that guided America on its imperial path for decades and after 9/11. Claims by the establishment that the federal takeover of the airports and every facet of American life has made the nation safer are apocryphal and dubious, given the unconstitutional and tyrannical abuses of the State's TSA and Homeland Security Department agents and officials. It's all a matter of public record. What will take for West and his cronies to see it?<br /><br />West then continues, "You know, in this year we're gonna celebrate the tenth anniversary of 9/11." Why would any American in his or her right mind would <span style="font-style:italic;">want to</span> "celebrate" such an awful atrocity that claimed the lives of 3,000 Americans who were killed in the crossfire because the terrorists responded to the repeated interventions of the U.S. federal government that have been the heart and soul of modern U.S. foreign policy for decades?<br /><br />If we really want to pay homage to the fallen men and women in the World Trade Center towers and the planes that went down in those areas, then there's only one thing to do: end our foreign policy of intervention and replace it with one of non-intervention, bring our troops home from Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan, and Libya, and spread the message of liberty and peace to those regions. End the sectarian violence, the coercion, and the corruption that have engulfed the people and their respective lands.<br /><br />It's too bad the GOP and its stalwarts including West can't see that.Todd Andrew Barnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326847219909577374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2966255816488656670.post-30086954206089195812011-09-10T08:26:00.000-07:002011-09-11T11:51:37.531-07:00The U.S. Postal Service Needs to GoAccording to Monday's <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/05/business/in-internet-age-postal-service-struggles-to-stay-solvent-and-relevant.html?scp=3&sq=Postal%20Service&st=cse">edition</a> as well as Tuesday's <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/07/business/white-house-to-propose-plan-to-help-postal-service.html?scp=2&sq=Postal%20Service&st=cse">edition</a> of the <i><a href="http://www.nytimes.com">New York Times</a></i>, the <a href="http://www.usps.com">U.S. Postal Service</a> is attempting to <a href="http://www.voanews.com/english/news/usa/US-Postal-Service-on-Brink-of-Default-129368168.html">avoid a default in its monthly $5.5 billion payment to</a> the <a href="http://www.treasury.gov/Pages/default.aspx">U.S. Treasury</a>. The long and short of it is this: the quasi-government agency is faced with some looming (yet very likely) possibilities resting squarely on its shoulders:<br /><br /><ul><br /><li>Yanking Saturday delivery for its residential and business recipients;</li><li>Closing down 3,700 offices nationwide;</li><br /><li>Consolidating other post offices;</li><br /><li>Laying off 270,000 of its <a href="http://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-facts/welcome.htm#H1">574,000 employees</a>;</li> and<br /><li>Altering retirement and health care benefits and programs that its dwindling employee base enjoys;</li><br /></ul><br /><br />According to the <i>Times</i> on Monday, the costs and reasons for the declining use of the Postal Service are simply the following: <br /><br /><blockquote>'Our situation is extremely serious,' the postmaster general, Patrick R. Donahoe, said in an interview. 'If Congress doesn’t act, we will default.'In recent weeks, Mr. Donahoe has been pushing a series of painful cost-cutting measures to erase the agency’s deficit, which will reach $9.2 billion this fiscal year. They include eliminating Saturday mail delivery, closing up to 3,700 postal locations and laying off 120,000 workers — nearly one-fifth of the agency’s work force — despite a no-layoffs clause in the unions’ contracts.The post office’s problems stem from one hard reality: it is being squeezed on both revenue and costs.As any computer user knows, the Internet revolution has led to people and businesses sending far less conventional mail.</blockquote><br /><br />The Obama administration unsurprisingly responded on Tuesday with the following:<br /><br /><blockquote>The Obama administration said on Tuesday that it would seek to save the deficit-plagued Postal Service from an embarrassing default by proposing to give it an extra three months to make a $5.5 billion payment due on Sept. 30 to finance retirees’ future health coverage.<br /><br />Patrick Donahoe, the postmaster general, speaking before the Senate. His office has proposed alleviating its fiscal problems by taking back an estimated $50 billion in pension overpayments.Speaking at a Senate hearing, John Berry, director of the federal Office of Personnel Management, also said the administration would soon put forward a plan to stabilize the postal service, which faces a deficit of nearly $10 billion this fiscal year and had warned that it could run out of money entirely this winter.<br /><br />'We must act quickly to prevent a Postal Service collapse,' said Senator Joseph Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, who is chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which held the Tuesday hearing on the Postal Service’s financial crisis.<br /><br />Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe testified that even with a three-month reprieve on the $5.5 billion payment, the post office was likely to run out of cash and face a shutdown next July or August unless Congress passed legislation that provided a long-term solution for the ailing agency.<br /><br />To help erase the postal service’s deficit, Mr. Donahoe has proposed several painful and controversial steps, among them, eliminating Saturday delivery, closing up to 3,700 postal locations and laying off 120,000 workers — despite union contracts with strict limits on layoffs.'<br /><br />The Postal Service is on the brink of default,' Mr. Donahoe testified. 'The Postal Service requires radical change to its business model if is to remain viable in the future.'<br /><br />Mr. Berry said the Obama administration would push for legislation to allow a three-month delay in the $5.5 billion payment. But he stopped short of endorsing a far-reaching proposal, backed by the postal service, to allow the agency to claw back more than $50 billion that two independent actuaries have said the post office has overpaid into a major federal pension plan. Postal Service officials say such a move would go far to alleviate the agency’s financial problems.<br /><br />Mr. Berry said the administration was studying the proposal, but not endorsing or opposing it at this point.</blockquote><br /><br />For the longest time the agency has engulfed itself in an economic, financial, and political quagmire. Although it is in some ways configured like a private business, it <span style="font-style:italic;">is not</span> functioning like one, and it certainly is not one. The prices of its stamps, envelopes, packages, and other services proceed to spike on an annual basis with no end in sight. New Jersey-based Rutger University's very own <a href="http://www.dailytargum.com/">The Daily Targum</a> <a href="http://www.dailytargum.com/opinions/usps-must-take-steps-to-save-itself-1.2621018">scribed in an op-ed that the agency's labor costs</a> "make up 80 percent of the USPS's operating costs" and that its own mail inventory "is so small these days the USPS cannot keep paying as many employees as much money as it currently does." (Bear in mind that the paper is crying havoc over the complete shut-down of the agency, saying that "it is still something we don't want to see." Why? Because, according to the Targum, "The USPS is a valuable federal service.")<br /><br />The Targum also opposes "privatization" of the institution for the following reason:<br /><br /><blockquote>[T]he increased privatization of traditionally government-provided services is a frightening thought for too many reasons to list here, and, therefore, we'd rather not have to rely on private companies for all of our mail needs.</blockquote><br /><br />This refrain is all too common from the minds of "privatization" (preferably, marketization) opponents. They believe that a federal post office must be maintained, and that Congress must rescue the agency and save its workforce from the impending forces of layoffs as forced upon by real, natural market forces working against the federal establishment, their concession that the agency is unable to remunerate its employee base as much as it used to due to the excessively low demand for its services notwithstanding. What the paper fails to figure into account is the <a href="http://wishididntknow.com/2011/08/11/postal-service-proposes-cutting-120000-jobs-pulling-out-of-health-care-plan/">health care and pension costs that are drying up the funds</a> for the agency, which are mandated by the labor unions in their existing contracts. The unions as well as Congress have made it virtually (almost) impossible for the agency to craft its health care and retirement benefits plans, simply due to the political and protectionistic nature of these parties. Oh, and let's not forget that the USPS is protected by congressional edict from free market competition with any company that wants to jump into the game and offers consumers a better value and service that the USPS has failed to accomplished at its given, ongoing rate. This means that the organization is a legally-protected, government-approved, and government-imposed monopoly on the delivery of first-class mail and standard mail (once known simply as third-class mail). No other firm can legally challenge the USPS and provide more efficient products and services to customers because of the government cementing the Offices as the only legitimate provider of delivered U.S. and international first-class and standard mail; thus, Congress merely restricts access to mailboxes by the USPS. Other private mail firms are legally prohibited by law allowed to drop off deliveries to mailboxes.<br /><br />The reason for this is that the prices charged by the USPS are universally uniform across the board throughout the States, irrespective of where its customers live. And the old congressional law that sustains the enterprise's monopoly on these services ensures that package deliveries are set at a uniform price based on the weight and volume of the contents within them, especially when it is cheaper than <a href="http://www.fedex.com">Fed-Ex</a> or <a href="http://www.ups.com">United Parcel Service</a> (UPS).<br /><br />The Constitution's own Article 1, Section 8 stipulates that Congress is accorded with the power "to establish Post Offices and post Roads." But just because the Constitution allows the government to get involved doesn't mean that the State <span style="font-style:italic;">should get</span> involved, and that it should be granted an exclusive monopoly over mail service.<br /><br />But how did the Postal Service become powerful? Throughout the 19th century, just shortly before the passage of the Postal Act of 1863, mail was dispersed from city to city where a post office would pick up the volumes, or an independent contractor handled the delivery. Then came the Postal Code of 1872, which put into place a local monopoly on mail delivery by outlawing private carriers. At one point these carriers numbered to 147 and pioneered some innovative services. For instance, they introduced postage stamps just before the Postal Service got into that business.<br /><br />Before 1971, postal service was provided by the U.S. Post Office Department, which centrally planned the agency by fixing prices of its products and services and determined which managers would be charge. The agency was the biggest recipient of globs of congressional subsidies and an annual appropriations budget as set by the governing body. By the time the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970 was passed and signed into law, the Department was shut down and reallocated into what has become the USPS today, thus making it a quasi-public independent agency separated from the Executive Branch and structured to be a self-financing agency whose own existence and its operations depend upon the sales of its postage, mail products, and other services. According to federal law, it must cover its costs, and request the U.S. Treasury to lend funds to it (which is supposed to be limited to approximately $3 billion annually in bailout subsidies to its coffers and allow for a total debt ceiling of $15 billion).<br /><br />What makes this firm so different from real private firms is that it carries privileges that other companies are not allowed to possess. For instance, it is not subjected to vehicle licensing requirements, and it pays no sales and property taxes. As <a href="http://www.cato.org/people/tad-dehaven">Tad DeHaven</a> of the <a href="http://www.cato.org">CATO Institute</a> noted a year ago:<br /><br /><blockquote>It doesn’t have to pay parking tickets, and it has eminent domain powers. It pays to itself the income taxes that it would owe if it were a private business.</blockquote><br /><br />Understand this point for once: the USPS is more or less a wing of the U.S. federal government. The Postmaster General and a Board of Governors, along with some federal control and oversight by the Postal Regulatory Commission are unaccountable to the taxpayers and the American public at-large. The federal mail delivery organization in itself neither has any incentive to innovate, nor reduce its internal and external <a href="http://economics.fundamentalfinance.com/micro_costs.php">fixed and varied costs</a>, nor enhance customer service and other areas in the name of efficiency, nor establish other ways to keep it financially and economically solvent. <br /><br />And this claim that private companies are not capable of providing our needs is nonsense. A private mail service enterprise could provide physical delivery of mail at a much faster and cheaper rate than the USPS does and provide postage, packaging, and a variety of options and services for clientele that would be far superior in terms of innovation and quality than the USPS does. However, in the grandest scheme of things, the Internet and smart phone technologies have provided innovative means of electronic communications for customers by ISP and mobile phone carriers at a fraction of the costs that rival the high, exploding costs of the USPS, thus making physical mail delivery a relic of American history.<br /><br />While DeHaven and other similar critics urge for the privatization (or marketization) of the organization, I dispute that notion. I call for the abolition of the firm and allow an unfettered free market to prop up and flourish, providing more quality and more pioneering products and services to consumers globally at the lowest price. This signifies an end of the U.S. Post Office, an idea whose time has ultimately come.Todd Andrew Barnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326847219909577374noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2966255816488656670.post-10226723253165661572011-03-03T05:20:00.001-08:002011-03-03T21:35:22.283-08:00The Conservatives' Opposition to Obama's Rejection of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Party_%28United_States%29">Republican</a> <a href="http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/texas-republican-seeks-step-and-defend-d">support</a> for the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) reached an all-time low this past week when conservative Republican favorite <a href="http://paul.house.gov/">Congressman Ron Paul</a> (in many circles of the Liberty movement), Newt Gingrich, and many others stated their outright objections to President Obama's <a href="http://blogs.babble.com/famecrawler/2011/02/23/obama-administration-deems-defense-of-marriage-act-unconstitutional/">ardent abandonment of the law by viewing it as "unconstitutional</a>." (Ironically, it was former Georgia Republican Congressman <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Barr">Bob Barr</a> who later ran for President on the Libertarian Party ticket <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/law/gay_marriage/act.html">originally drafted, supported, and lobbied for the passage of the law in 1996</a>, which was a clear-cut bipartisan compromise between the duopoly parties and would be signed into law by then-President Clinton. He now claims to <a href="http://judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/testimony.cfm?id=1234&wit_id=2874">oppose</a> the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Marriage_Amendment">Federal Marriage Amendment</a> and <a href="http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/ny08_nadler/DOMA20090915.html">endorses</a> a bill oddly dubbed as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respect_for_Marriage_Act">Respect for Marriage Act</a> which, if passed and signed into law, would repeal DOMA, but for now I'll cautiously take his word for it.)<br /><br />It makes one in the left-libertarian camp cringe to say that Barr, if he is indeed sincere about his opposition to the law that he himself created and pushed in the mid-1990s, is more libertarian than Paul on this issue, and one would not be required to make that statement lightly. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder issued a public declaration, <a href="http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/constitution/6452-president-orders-government-to-stop-defending-marriage-law">stating</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>Much of the legal landscape has changed in the 15 years since Congress passed DOMA. The Supreme Court has ruled that laws criminalizing homosexual conduct are unconstitutional. Congress has repealed the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. Several lower courts have ruled DOMA itself to be unconstitutional.</blockquote><br /><br />Holder <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2011-02-24-RWsamesex23_ST_N.htm">continues</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>But while both the wisdom and the legality of DOMA will continue to be the subject of extensive litigation and public debate, this administration will no longer assert its constitutionality in court.</blockquote><br /><br />Obama's White House Press Secretary Jay Carney vouched for Holder and came to his defense by going on public record, noting:<br /><br /><blockquote>The Administration will not defend the Defense of Marriage Act in the 2nd Circuit. [T]he President directed the attorney general not to defend because of the decision that it is not constitutional.</blockquote><br /><br />Ron Paul, in a par-for-the-course yet still disappointing fashion, <a href="http://theiowarepublican.com/home/2011/02/24/ron-paul-condemns-obama%E2%80%99s-decision-to-abandon-doma/">aimed his missiles primarily at Holder and even at Obama with this press release</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>The Defense of Marriage Act was enacted in 1996 to stop Big Government in Washington from re-defining marriage and forcing its definition on the States. Like the majority of Iowans, I believe that marriage is between one man and one woman and must be protected.<br /><br />I supported the Defense of Marriage Act, which used Congress’ constitutional authority to define what other states have to recognize under the Full Faith and Credit Clause, to ensure that no state would be forced to recognize a same sex marriage license issued in another state. I have also cosponsored the Marriage Protection Act, which would remove challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act from the jurisdiction of the federal courts.<br /><br />The people of Iowa overwhelmingly supported, both houses of the Legislature passed, and the Governor signed into law the Iowa Defense Of Marriage Act in 1998. Iowans then valiantly recalled three activist Judges who spurned the will of the people by over-turning the state’s law.<br /><br />Today’s announcement that the Obama Administration will abandon its obligation to enforce DOMA is truly disappointing and shows a profound lack of respect for the Constitution and the Rule of Law. President Obama has just unconstitutionally said that Iowa should have to allow San Francisco and New York City decide its marriage laws. That position is unacceptable.<br /><br />The Administration’s dereliction throws the door wide open for special interests to abuse Federal power and attempt to force Iowa to recognize non-traditional marriage. Upcoming battles are looming just over the horizon.<br /><br />I will stand with the people of Iowa, against Unconstitutional federal power grabs, and will fight to protect each state’s right not to be forced to recognize a same sex marriage against the will of its people. If I were a member of the Iowa legislature, I would do all I could to oppose any attempt by rogue judges to impose a new definition of marriage on the people of my state.<br /></blockquote><br /><br />Former House Speaker and frequent <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/">Fox News</a> guest, and conservative author and commentator <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newt_Gingrich">Newt Gingrich</a><b>*</b> leveled his attacks on the Obama administration with this <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/critics-slam-obama-doma-decision-newt-gingrich-calls/story?id=12992207">following smear</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>The president is replacing the rule of law with the rule of Obama. The president swore an oath on the Bible to ensure that the laws be faithfully executed, not to decide which laws are and which are not constitutional</blockquote><br /><br />(<b>*Note:</b> It is entirely unsurprising, typical, and pathetic to hear this from a conservative hypocrite whose staunch defense for "traditional marriage" and "traditional family values" is undermined by his wreck of a marital life. How? It's much simpler than you think. He <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=2937633">divorced his first wife</a> for a woman whom <a href="http://www.esquire.com/print-this/newt-gingrich-0910?page=all">he married and later divorced as well</a> after he was caught <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17527506/">having an affair</a> with a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callista_Gingrich">congressional staffer</a> at the height of his involvement in the Republican witch hunt against Bill Clinton during the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewinsky_scandal">Monica Lewinsky scandal</a>. He even didn't want to be viewed as a hypocrite then, but he doesn't get a free pass on that deal. He didn't then, and he still doesn't now.)<br /><br />House Judiciary Committee Chairman <a href="http://lamarsmith.house.gov/">Congressman Lamar Smith</a>, whom <a href="http://www.jackbloodforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=2&p=143511">Ron Paul ubiquitously supported in early 2010</a> which proved that <a href="http://letlibertyring.blogspot.com/2010/01/ron-paul-caught-selling-out-liberty.html">he sold out the Liberty movement for doing so</a>, shared similar sentiments with his rank-and-file Republicans via this nasty comment:<br /><br /><blockquote>[T]he politicization of the Justice Department -- when the personal views of the president override the government's duty to defend the law of the land</blockquote><br /><br />All of these right-wing talking points made by the above-mentioned usual suspects are indicative of the politically-charged, homophobic-laced statist Republican agenda<br />that serves to kowtow to the special interests of the loopy conservative (religious and secular) establishment and its cohorts. These clods who monopolize on the cultural and public moralities upon which the Right and its voter and member bases<br />depend possess this aberrational, detestable notion that any state-approved sanction of, support for, and codification of same-sex marriage at the federal and/or state level is tantamount to domestic federal intervention in the private affairs <br /><br /><h4><span style="font-weight:bold;">The Social Conservatives' Culture War Employed to Undermine Same-sex Marriage</span></h4><br /><br />At the forefront of the scrutiny of Obama's decision to jettison DOMA is the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_conservativism">social conservatives</a> who have waged a long-standing <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_War">culture war</a> with the Left because in response to the rise, popularity, and dominance of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterculture_of_the_1960s">counterculture of the 1960s</a>. Former Arkansas Governor <a href="http://www.mikehuckabee.com/">Mike Huckabee</a>, who appeared on <a href="http://www.judgenap.com/">Judge Andrew Napolitano</a>'s <a href="http://freedomwatchonfox.com/">FreedomWatch</a> on <a href="http://www.foxbusiness.com">Fox Business</a> on February 25 and has been a very staunch populist social conservative on items like "traditional marriage" and "traditional family values," took great steps to fight the culture war to undermine Obama's rejection of DOMA when he <a href="http://video.foxbusiness.com/#/v/4557975/fmr-gov-mike-huckabee-on-same-sex-marriage/?playlist_id=158146">took potshots at Obama's legal decision</a> by declaring it "legally wrong, but more importantly, he was politically wrong, and [Obama] was morally wrong." Then he added, "He was wrong on every front."<br /><br />Interestingly enough, Huckabee stressed:<br /><br /><blockquote>[I]nterestingly, Chapter one of my book talks about why issues like marriage and family matter. Uh, the very first chapter is that the very most basic form of government is the family. This is where we first experience government at its most local level. It's not the city, the state, the federal government. It's mother and father raising children; that is government.</blockquote><br /><br />Then, when asked whether families can be non-traditional and what business the government has in the institution of marriage, the former government rejoins:<br /><br /><blockquote>Well, here's the question: what is marriage? Marriage is a man and a woman. That's what it is historically. That's what it is legally. If we change the definition to accommodate a man and a man or a woman and a woman, then why can't we accommodate a man and two women or a woman and three men?</blockquote><br /><br />When Napolitano points out that marriage is a legal contract between two individuals and that the State has no business to interfere with it, Huckabee then claims:<br /><br /><blockquote>The business of government is to ensure that we have a stable society, because we have a $300 billion a year dad deficit in this country. That's in Chapter one. I talk about the fact that this is an economic issue. As a libertarian, Judge, you've got to love the fact that we're spending a lot of money to pick up the pieces 'cause fathers don't do their duty.</blockquote><br /><br />This exchange between him and Napolitano is endemic of the social conservative paradigm that has infested the Republican Party and its core base. It is ample evidence showing that the culture war between the social conservatives and the pro-same sex marriage legalization camp is running primarily based on populist politics and antiquated religious dogma cloaked in theocratic rhetoric, and the rush to defend the definition of marriage is greater than the public at large believes. This is also evidenced by the strawman argument levied against pro-gay marriage advocates that opposite-sex marriages are a product of the conservatives' Christian God and "6,000 years of recorded human history," as Huckabee ludicrously suggests. <br /><br />Has Huckabee studied human history at all? Is he aware of the fact that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_VIII_of_England">King Henry VIII</a> and other kings (even emperors) have been in opposite-sex marriages, all the while choosing and retaining <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_VIII_of_England#Mistresses">mistresses</a> for their strict sexual, political, and royal pleasures? Is he also aware that the Vatican (a.k.a. the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_See">Holy See</a>) has often in its recorded history condoned the actions of despotic rulers for engaging and indulging in fornication with, lust for, and lustful control of women who were nothing but second-class sexual property in their eyes? For over 6,000 years, "traditional" marriage has never existed at all, given that, within the last 60 years, it has been nothing but a religiously-charged political, cultural, and social contrivance propagated by the conservative wing of the Republican Party.<br /><br />While it is true that many men throughout the modern ages have married women for the sacrosanct need to produce and rear children and create families, patriarchs and even Biblical prophets in ancient times (such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul">Saul</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon">Solomon</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David">David</a>, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham">Abraham</a> according to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Testament">Old Testament</a> of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Bible">Holy Bible</a>) had practiced polygamy, which is the practice of men marrying multiple wives simulanteously. (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyandry">Polyandry</a> on the other hand, which was practiced more exclusively in parts of China, northern parts of India, and by various nomadic Tibetans in Nepali, is the practice of women marrying multiple husbands simultaneously.) Even today's social conservative establishment would view these practices outside the norm, despite the fact that polygamy was extremely common in earlier Christian times. How can Huckabee reconcile "traditional marriage" and "traditional family values" in the conservative tradition with his religion that evolved from an earlier form of Christianity that permitted these customary practices? Has he failed to see that his Bible has referenced polygamy that was once considered to be an element of Christianity in Biblical times, or does he disavow that fact? Either way, his ignorance of an old custom that was part of his faith is evidence of his ilk's passive misguided ideal, and the fact that his lack of knowledge on the subject is solid cannot be challenged, even if it is addressed. The notion that "traditional marriage" has been part of humanity from time immemorial is ludicrous, as historical evidence indicates the opposite.<br /><br />The religious propaganda coupled with political zealotry of this camp knows no bounds. The culture war that has been issued to undermine -- and perhaps demolish -- same-sex marriage has been unleashed.<br /><br /><h4>Joanne Pedersen, Edith Windsor, and Gerald V. Passaro II: The People Behind The Obama Justice Department's Decision</h4> <br /><br />At the heart of the Obama Justice Department decision <a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2011/02/edie_and_jerry_the_real_people.html">involved two gay individuals who filed lawsuits in New York and Connecticut</a>. This comes after the Obama DOJ review two cases - <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedersen_v._O.P.M.">Pedersen v. OPM</a></span> and <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windsor_v._United_States">Windsor v. United States</a></span>.<br /><br />Joanne Pedersen, the chief plaintiff in the Pedersen v. OPM case according to <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/us/09marriage.html?_r=1">the New York Times</a></span>, objects to the DOMA law being applied against her when she applied for medical benefits for her married partner Ann Meitzen via the Office of Personnel and Management agency. She was denied again, which is not unusual in her case. She and Meitzen have filed a lawsuit against the federal government for discriminating against her on the grounds of her marriage (which is legal under Connecticut law) being not legal at the federal level thanks to DOMA. According to <span style="font-style:italic;">the Times</span>:<br /><br /><blockquote>To Ms. Pedersen, the question is one of justice. She and Ms. Meitzen, who married in 2008, have been together in Connecticut for 12 years. Ms. Meitzen, a social worker, has had health problems, and Ms. Pedersen, a civilian retiree from the Department of Naval Intelligence, tried to enroll her spouse in the federal employee health benefits program — a move that would save them hundreds of dollars a month.<br /><br />Both women had been married before, to men, and have grown children. The fact that the law values one of their marriages over another is a source of consternation, Ms. Pedersen said.<br /><br />'If we were heterosexual, we wouldn’t be talking today, because we would have the benefits,' Ms. Pedersen said. 'I would just like the federal government to recognize our marriage as just as real as everybody else’s.'</blockquote><br /><br />Maggie Gallagher, the Chairwoman of the <a href="http://www.nationformarriage.org/">National Organization for Marriage</a> (a social conservative special interest group which opposes same-sex marriage), told <span style="font-style:italic;">the Times</span> that legal challenges to DOMA in the courts are indicative of gay rights advocates who "continue to push a primarily court-based strategy of, in our view, inventing rights that neither the founders nor the majority of Americans can recognize in our Constitution."<br /><br />Edith Windsor, another plaintiff and a widow of her lesbian spouse Thea C. Spyer, filed her suit with the legal firm <a href="http://www.paulweiss.com/">Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, & Garrison</a> in league with the <a href="http://www.aclu.org">American Civil Liberties Union</a> on the grounds that, if the law <a href="http://www.law.com/jsp/nylj/PubArticleNY.jsp?id=1202483113125&">allowing opposite-sex married couples to file for exemption on their estate tax had been equally applied to her as a same-sex married woman</a>, her filing of her spouse's estate taxes estimated to be about $350,000 would be zero. Asserting "disparate treatment," she's challenging the constitutionality of DOMA, as it defines "marriage" as "a legal union between one man and one woman" and "spouse" as "a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife." Imagine the social conservative reaction to those suits.<br /><br />The Obama DOJ issued a <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com">Washington Post</a></span> op-ed in November 2010 which was <a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2011/02/edie_and_jerry_the_real_people.html">reprinted</a> in its editorial board, a statement on these two cases, which states the entire following:<br /><br /><blockquote>Edith Windsor and Thea Spyer were together for 44 years and legally married since 2007. They lived in New York, which recognizes same-sex marriage. But none of that mattered when Spyer died at 77 in 2009 after a decades-long struggle with multiple sclerosis.<br /><br />Windsor, now 81, was treated like a stranger to Spyer because of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which recognizes only marriages between one man and one woman. She was forced to pay $350,000 in federal inheritance taxes.<br /><br />Gerald V. Passaro II and Thomas M. Buckholz had been a couple for 13 years when they were married in 2008 in Connecticut, which legally blesses such relationships. Buckholz had worked for 20 years for Bayer Corp., which extends certain benefits to domestic partners; he was also vested in the company's pension plan. But when he died in 2009, Passaro was denied benefits for surviving spouses. Because federal law governs the pension plan, DOMA applies.<br /><br />This month, Windsor filed a lawsuit in New York challenging the constitutionality of DOMA. Passaro is one of the plaintiffs in a separate lawsuit in Connecticut. Their experiences demonstrate the injustice of this law. DOMA was created for the purposes of 'defending and nurturing the institution of traditional heterosexual marriage,' 'defending traditional notions of morality' and "protecting state sovereignty and democratic self-governance" -- dubious goals, at best.<br /><br />How does the denigration of committed same-sex relationships strengthen opposite-sex unions? How could it be moral to pile hardship upon grief by forcing surviving spouses to deal with financial strains others are shielded from? How is federalism bolstered when states are prevented from applying policy and legal preferences in defining marriage, long considered the states' domain?<br /><br />This year, a Massachusetts judge ruled that DOMA violated the equal-protection rights of same-sex married couples. Windsor and Passaro offer convincing arguments for why the jurists overseeing their respective cases should reach the same result.<br /><br />Plaintiffs nationwide will probably try to chip away at DOMA's indefensible foundations. And the Supreme Court may yet have a chance to weigh in. But justice would best and most gratifyingly be served if Congress simply repealed the law, once and for all.</blockquote><br /><br /><h4>Why The Social Conservatives in the GOP Are Wrong</h4><br /><br />The social conservatives in the GOP are wrong to relegate gay couples who want to legally marry to second-class citizenry for all sorts of reasons, political and otherwise. One reason is that this is a human liberty issue <span style="font-style:italic;">all the way</span>. Human liberty is neither some pie-in-the-sky concept nor abstraction; it's about how one chooses to live one's own life, and what relationships in which one wishes to engage. As long as one harms <span style="font-style:italic;">no one else</span>, that's all that matters. As oversimplified as that idea may be, it is nothing but the correct one. We are talking about gay and lesbian couples who are routinely denied legal, normal, and mutual benefits of marriage that are afforded to married heterosexual couples - benefits entailing hospital visitation, custody of children, medical-making decisions for incapacitated partners (such as power-of-attorney choices and so on), next of kin matters, and more. Social rightists can be as glib, callous, and condescending as they want to be on the subject, but this is certainly a pressing concern. If one gay couple's liberty isn't protected, then all couples -- even the common law married ones -- will find that their liberties are subject to the whims of the vile State. That's not freedom; that's slavery nonetheless.<br /><br />Another reason is that the State should not be involved in the sphere of the institution. No argument there. However, in the interim, until that goal is successfully achieved, the State in its current set-up should be evenhanded in its decisions regarding the issuance of marital licenses to couples who seek to unite in wedded bliss. Social rightists say that state-protected heterosexual marriages must be protected, because they are the foundation of a stable and functioning society. How foolish they are! The State has seriously undermined freedom of association, the family, and marriage by involving itself in those three key matters. (How conservatives believe that the State's meddling in the institution of matrimony is the savior of the modern family is perplexing, but that's Rightist "logic" for you.) Interracial marriages were once outlawed at the state level once until the Supreme Court intervened by ruling in 1967 that such laws violate the <a href="http://topics.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv">Fourteenth Amendment</a>'s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia#Decision">Equal Protection clause</a> in Section 1, which reads:<br /><br /><blockquote>All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.</blockquote><br /><br />Whether conservatives like it or not, the Fourteenth Amendment exists. By refusing to accord the same rights to homosexual couples the legal right to unite in wedlock, they are violating the tenet and spirit of that amendment. No <span style="font-style:italic;">i</span>fs, <span style="font-style:italic;">but</span>s, or <span style="font-style:italic;">what</span>s about it! (If they want to throw a conniption over it, they can check out the old <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia">Loving v. Virginia</a> case and come to their own conclusions about it. Otherwise, they need to get over it once and for all.)<br /><br />Another reason they are wrong on this matter is that marriage is set up for reasons other than procreation. Yes, social conservatives do believe that marriage is <span style="font-style:italic;">only</span> for procreation, and they have nothing to back up this claim whatsoever. If there were a kernel of truth in that talking point, then infertile and childless couples would be barred from entering in these contractual agreements in the first place. Couples marry for all sorts of reasons not relating to child rearing: economic security, emotional support and love, and so on. (<a href="http://letlibertyring.blogspot.com/2010/08/sghorwitz@stlawu.edu">Stephen Horwitz</a>, <a href="http://www.thefreemanonline.org/">The Freeman</a>'s contributing editor, <a href="http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/capitalism-and-the-family/">wrote an outstanding column which chronicles this point</a>.)<br /><br />Moreover, the welfare state plays a role in the problem as well. Huckabee is right to say that there is a "dad deficit" in the heterosexual family unit today, but he is echoing words that many conservatives in the past have expressed. (Even former <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Quayle">Vice President Dan Quayle</a> <a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,975627,00.html">said in public regarding the title character of the old hit CBS TV show Murphy Brown having a child out of wedlock</a> in 1992.)<br /><br />However, the reason the "dad deficit" exists because of the welfare state, not because of purported looming threat of gay marriage. Huckabee may be against single parenthood (like Quayle was), but he is merely politicking for his own amusement. That said, other divorced conservatives and single conservative parents are unlikely to support Huckabee, given that the GOP would be making a huge mistake in this endeavor. (Perhaps such a view on that would alienate their constituency that are made up of broken-up, dysfunctional divorced families, as <a href="http://www.cato.org">CATO</a>'s own <a href="http://www.cato.org/people/david-boaz">David Boaz</a> <a href="http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=4545">once suggested</a>, but that's a lame cop-out if there ever is one.)<br /><br />Finally, DOMA supercedes the states' authority to decide what laws can and will be enacted in their own jurisdictions. Conservatives, who claim to be "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_constructionism">strict constructionists</a>" (meaning that the federal courts, including the Supreme Court, must be constrained to what they perceive to be their ideal interpretation of the Constitution), believe that the federal law must be protected because it grants states the power to legislate bills favoring heterosexual marriages. But the law merely undermines states from deciding what the definition of marriage should and/or should not be. (Not that the states should decide what that definition is, because such definitions provide excessive amounts of wiggle room.) Besides, in the absence of the law, it is not as if the states can't write their own bills and decide what that definition is. State constitutions have been amended by voter referendum in nearly every state to reflect the definition as "one man and one woman" anyway. Have social conservatives totally forgotten about that, or are they just plainly lazy?<br /><br />Considering gay marriage as a legal option is a much more appealing alternative to failing heterosexual unions, it cannot be overstated that <a href="http://www.essortment.com/not-married-53149.html">one out of two heterosexual marriages are ending in divorce</a>, and <a href="http://www.ketknbc.com/news/with-divorce-rates-climbing-is-getting-married-earlier-age-solution">the rates are climbing</a>. Part of that is due to the reality that heterosexuals<a href="http://igfculturewatch.com/2010/11/19/straight-people-responsible-for-decline-in-marriage/"> are widely perceived to be the reason for the decline of straight marriage, Stephen H. Miller argues</a>. The <a href="http://pewresearch.org/">Pew Research Center</a>'s <a href="http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2010/11/18/study-marriage-could-become-optional-obsolete/">new study even validates this further</a>, stating that one out of four Americans believe that heterosexual marriage is becoming an extinct species of its own.<br /><br />Obama has done the right thing: rejecting DOMA and pave the way for individuals (primarily gays and lesbians) to legally marry. Conservatives, if they really care about the modern-day American family as they purport, should sit this out and let things play out the way they have been. Otherwise, they'd be committing political suicide, and that alone could cost them re-elections for 2012.<br /><br />Not only that, it's the <span style="font-style:italic;">only</span> right thing to do. Nothing more and nothing less.Todd Andrew Barnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326847219909577374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2966255816488656670.post-27179088546154978872010-12-07T23:34:00.001-08:002010-12-08T00:03:48.627-08:00Wal-Mart Becomes Part of the Department of Homeland Insecurity<a href="http://www.walmart.com/">Wal-Mart</a>'s <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40552073/ns/us_news-security/">decision to ally itself with the State</a> - i.e. the Department of Homeland Insecurity -- "to report suspicious activity in the stores or the parking lots" is another reason to call for the abolition of corporatism -- the unholy alliance between corporations and the State, especially, in this case, on the War on Terror.<br /><br />Sadly, about 588 stores in 27 states will adopt the program in the form of "security announcements," although only 200 stores will willingly embrace this new measure in 24 hours.<br /><br />According to MSNBC:<br /><br /><blockquote>A short video featuring Napolitano will appear on TV screens at select checkout lanes, asking Wal-Mart shoppers to contact local law enforcement to report suspicious activity.</blockquote><br /><br />The company claims that the employees won't be "receiving any special training" to carry out the functions of the program. But it appears that the managers will work with local law enforcement to deal with the threat of "suspicious activity" itself that arises on the company's grounds, whether inside the stores or the parklots.<br /><br />Wal-Mart spokesman Dan Fogleman, when asked about this plan, stated:<br /><br /><blockquote>'We work with local law enforcement all the time,' Fogleman said. 'If someone needs help, we will certainly assist. If someone asks us to call police, we will call police.' </blockquote><br /><br />Here's the DHS video <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Czoww2l1xdw">announcing the agency's partnership with the low-cost retailer</a>, as evidenced by DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano's statist comments on the matter:<br /><br /><object width="350" height="221"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Czoww2l1xdw?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Czoww2l1xdw?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="350" height="221"></embed></object>Todd Andrew Barnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326847219909577374noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2966255816488656670.post-59322558472030801772010-12-05T07:22:00.000-08:002010-12-05T13:28:56.957-08:00The Smearing of Ron Paul Over The WikiLeaks Matter<a href="http://www.cnn.com">CNN</a> talking head <a href="http://johnkingusa.blogs.cnn.com/">John King</a> and his panelists <a href="http://www.redstate.com/">RedState.com</a>'s <a href="http://www.redstate.com/users/erick/">conservative managing editor</a>, <a href="http://www.erickerickson.org/blog/">blogger</a>, and pundit <a href="http://www.peachpundit.com/about/">Erick Erickson</a> (who joined King's show as a CNN political contributor this year, by the way) and the network's liberal political contributor and <a href="http://www.creators.com/opinion/roland-martin.html">syndicated columnist</a> <a href="http://www.rolandsmartin.com/">Roland Martin</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QV_Q8WFB9Bw">smeared</a> <a href="http://www.house.gov/paul">Ron Paul</a> over for his support for <a href="http://www.wikileaks.ch">WikiLeaks</a>. Paul <a href="http://twitter.com/RepRonPaul/statuses/10716266021003264">tweeted his comments</a> on the WikiLeaks matter, stating:<br /><br /><blockquote>Re: Wikileaks- In a free society, we are supposed to know the truth. In a society where truth becomes treason, we are in big trouble.<br />7:25 AM Dec 3rd via web<br />Retweeted by 100+ people </blockquote><br /><br />Here's the video of the slam against Paul by the state-worshiping shills on King's show:<br /><br /><object width="350" height="221"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/QV_Q8WFB9Bw?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/QV_Q8WFB9Bw?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="350" height="221"></embed></object><br /><br />Listen to Erickson as he calls Paul a "nut" for sticking up for free speech and the truth. He also quips: "I believe [Paul] actually starred in a cartoon a while back as Marvin the Martian."<br /><br />While you're at it, listen to Martin who sneers at Paul with these glib and slimy comments: "You know what? Being a native Texan, it's little hard somtimes for me to realize that Ron Paul is also a Texan." <br /><br />Martin then grumbles:<br /><br /><blockquote>I mean, what's the...? First of all, first of all...but here's the whole, here's the whole deal for, for, for Ron Paul. The members of the House on Intelligence Committee....they learn about things that are secret, and we don't know about. So, what is he, what is he saying? They should talk about those things? Come on, Congressman! </blockquote><br /><br />When King points out that, in reference to Paul and his supporters as well as everyone in the Liberty movement, "a lot of people who watch, who tweet, who follow, who email" what the two panelists (dingbats, as I call them!) say on TV will result in the network's inbox getting "higher and higher," Erickson says that he would have to change his phone number, while Martin says, "If you email me, I will email you back. So you go right ahead."<br /><br />Memo to Martin: We'll be sure to do just that.<br /><br />The height of hubris, vanity, and the self-aggrandizing and self-serving mindset from these apologists is just mind-numbing and putrid but not a surprise to all of us in the movement.<br /><br />Good job, Ron Paul! More kudos to him! Hisses to the statists who want to destroy WL at all costs.Todd Andrew Barnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326847219909577374noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2966255816488656670.post-25514278791142080542010-12-04T10:52:00.000-08:002010-12-04T11:47:33.862-08:00To Boycott or Not to Boycott Amazon<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_4JIUGIqvFOI/TPqXWuADRxI/AAAAAAAAAWU/nv5LwgSGfAE/s1600/amazon_crave.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 350px; height: 300px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_4JIUGIqvFOI/TPqXWuADRxI/AAAAAAAAAWU/nv5LwgSGfAE/s400/amazon_crave.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5546912307621349138" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/">Amazon.com</a>'s <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/02/world/02amazon.html">most recent call to leave</a> <a href="http://www.wikileaks.ch">WikiLeaks</a> in the dark is no doubt a paramount disappointment to libertarians, anarchists, anarcho-capitalists, left-libertarians, agorists, laissez-farists, and lovers of liberty of all stripes who have done business with the online retailer in the past. I certainly have done business with Amazon, buying books from them in the past. Their selection of products and services, no doubt, have been optimal and still proceed to remain that way on the front of the company's website. And yes, admittedly so, they do have low prices, and they do provide a supply of goods and services for the masses at large.<br /><br />Putting those points aside, Amazon has undoubtedly put itself in a very volatile and very precarious situation. After the company gave WikiLeaks the boot, a number of libertarians objected to Amazon's response to the State's threats toward it. In response to Amazon's decision, libertarians like <a href="http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=514861455">Eric Garris</a> (the head of <a href="http://www.antiwar.com">Antiwar.com</a>) called for a boycott of Amazon for its wrongheaded immediate choice. On a blog post entitled "<a href="http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2010/12/01/boycott-amazon-com/">Boycott Amazon</a>" (which is posted here in its entirety) dated December 1, Garris writes:<br /><br /><blockquote>Earlier today, Amazon.com took down the cloud servers that were being used by WikiLeaks to serve their site. One of the products Amazon sells is space on their cloud servers at a very competitive rate. Thousands of websites, including WikiLeaks, use their service.<br /><br />Amazon.com gave no notice to WikiLeaks. Normally, in an ethical and legal business relationship, notice is given when contracts are terminated to allow for smooth transition. In fact, if WikiLeaks had chosen to terminate the contract with Amazon, they would have been required to give 30 days notice.<br /><br />Amazon.com gave no such notice, they just unplugged the servers. As a result, WikiLeaks was down for several hours today.<br /><br />Why did they do this? Amazon.com got a call from Senator Joe Lieberman who threatened to start a boycott. Other officials reportedly leaned on Amazon. I can understand Amazon’s fear of the government, but that is no excuse to unethically target a customer without notice.<br /><br />In the past year, Antiwar.com has received about $10,000 from Amazon.com for referrals on the sale of books and merchandise. We cannot continue to profit from or deal with Amazon.com. We are removing the Amazon ads and book widgets from our website, and urge other supporters of WikiLeaks to join the boycott.</blockquote><br /><br />Garris is spot-on. Amazon epically failed to furnish a written notice to WikiLeaks, as it would need to do to any customers who purchases a service from the firm. Usually, a company would have to provide to its customers a cancellation notice in writing of its service, whether the customer asked to cancel the service or not. In this case, Amazon, given that it entered into a legally-binding contract with WikiLeaks, neglected to do just that. Although Lieberman threatened to launch a boycott of Amazon (including a federal inquiry into the company's well-established rapport with WikiLeaks), it does not justify and rationalize the business's politically-coerced decision to sever its ties with WL without notice. This is an unethical business practice that should be frowned upon, and it is disheartening, disappointing, and troubling that numerous libertarians are automatically ganging up on those libertarians for excoriating the retailer's immoral and unethical business practice, especially when the company made the risky choice to enter in a formal agreement with WL in the first place.<br /><br />On Antiwar.com's site, <a href="http://www.ellsberg.net/">Daniel Ellsberg</a>, the famed U.S. military official who leaked out <a href="http://www.upi.com/Audio/Year_in_Review/Events-of-1971/The-Pentagon-Papers/12295509436546-7/">the Pentagon Papers</a> which documented the U.S. federal government's lies about the reason why the United States went to war with Vietnam and the time line of events that led to the build-up of the war, wasted no time jumping onto the Antiwar.com Blog and, in a blog post entitled "<a href="http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2010/12/02/daniel-ellsberg-says-boycott-amazon/">Daniel Ellsberg Says Boycott Amazon</a>," writes an open letter to Amazon's Customer Service:<br /><br /><blockquote><b>Open letter to Amazon.com Customer Service:</b><br /><br />December 2, 2010<br /><br />I’m disgusted by Amazon’s cowardice and servility in abruptly terminating today its hosting of the Wikileaks website, in the face of threats from Senator Joe Lieberman and other Congressional right-wingers. I want no further association with any company that encourages legislative and executive officials to aspire to China’s control of information and deterrence of whistle-blowing.<br /><br />For the last several years, I’ve been spending over $100 a month on new and used books from Amazon. That’s over. I ask Amazon to terminate immediately my membership in Amazon Prime and my Amazon credit card and account, to delete my contact and credit information from their files and to send me no more notices.<br /><br />I understand that many other regular customers feel as I do and are responding the same way. Good: the broader and more immediate the boycott, the better. I hope that these others encourage their contact lists to do likewise and to let Amazon know exactly why they’re shifting their business. I’ve asked friends today to suggest alternatives, and I’ll be exploring service from Powell’s Books, Half-Price Books, Biblio and others.<br /><br />So far Amazon has spared itself the further embarrassment of trying to explain its action openly. This would be a good time for Amazon insiders who know and perhaps can document the political pressures that were brought to bear–and the details of the hasty kowtowing by their bosses–to leak that information. They can send it to Wikileaks (now on servers outside the US), to mainstream journalists or bloggers, or perhaps to sites like antiwar.com that have now appropriately ended their book-purchasing association with Amazon.<br /><br />Yours (no longer),<br />Daniel Ellsberg</blockquote><br /><br />Ellsberg is fundamentally spot-on here. Amazon's actions are "cowardly" and laden with "servility," simply because it didn't remotely bother to stand up to the State and its thugs, never minding the fact that Lieberman and his goons didn't promise not to go after them legally and intended to act on and carry out their threats simply by asking the company the business relationship that it had with WikiLeaks. The fact that it threw WL under the bus by simply ending its business agreement with a much-hated news organization in the manner it pursued and failed to provide WL an explanation as to why their site was being pulled is an indication that it panicked too easily and that it neither gave WL a chance to pull their files off the company's servers nor a choice to end its relationship with Amazon and act accordingly after the fact. Yes, there are those who will wave the pro-Amazon flag, saying once and for all that the firm was in a tough predicament, and it was forced to choose between having its business taken down by the State or walking away from a business deal it had made with a customer. Certainly they are free to make that point, and Amazon certainly reserves the right to accept or reject doing business with any customer and treat its customers accordingly in any way it sees fit. That said, that talking point shouldn't be construed to mean or tacitly insinuate that Amazon was IN the right for rejecting to do business with an organization like WikiLeaks. There is in reality no middle ground in this context or any other context known in existence.<br /><br />(By the way, it should be known that <a href="http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/71953.html">Lew Rockwell</a>, <a href="http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/71884.html">Michael S. Rozoff</a>, <a href="http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/71974.html">Stephan Kinsella</a>, <a href="http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/71981.html">David Kramer</a>, <a href="http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/72017.html">Butler Shaffer</a>, and other Rockwellers at the <a href="http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog">Lew Rockwell Blog</a> are foolishly siding with Amazon's decision on the issue, even while they tacitly mock those who are permanently refusing to do business with the retailer.)<br /><br />On December 1, the British newspaper <span style="font-weight:bold;"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/01/wikileaks-website-cables-servers-amazon">The Guardian</a><span style="font-style:italic;"></span></span> reported this in part:<br /><br /><blockquote>The US struck its first blow against WikiLeaks after Amazon.com pulled the plug on hosting the whistleblowing website in reaction to heavy political pressure.<br /><br />The company announced it was cutting WikiLeaks off yesterday only 24 hours after being contacted by the staff of Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate's committee on homeland security.<br /><br />WikiLeaks expressed disappointment with Amazon, and insisted it was a breach of freedom of speech as enshrined in the US constitution's first amendment. The organisation, in a message sent via Twitter, said if Amazon was "so uncomfortable with the first amendment, they should get out of the business of selling books."<br /><br />While freedom of speech is a sensitive issue in the US, scope for a full-blown row is limited, given that Democrats and Republicans will largely applaud Amazon's move. Previously a fully fledged Democrat, Lieberman won re-election to the Senate in 2006 as an independent; his status is that of an independent, albeit with continued close associations with the Democratic party's Senate contingent.<br /><br />The question is whether he was acting on his own or pressed to do so by the Obama administration, and how much pressure was applied to Amazon.</blockquote><br /><br />Skip Oliva <a href="http://blog.mises.org/14838/a-public-service-message/">wrote in response in part</a> on <a href="http://www.mises.org">the Ludwig von Mises Institute website</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>In response, I’ve seen a few libertarians who are now calling for their own boycott of Amazon — 'I won’t be shopping there this holiday season,' etc. — to protest the company’s capitulation. I’m sorry, but that’s childish and stupid. First of all, you’re adopting the very tactics the state used against Amazon. Second, what you’re basically saying is that you’re going to let statists like Joe Lieberman decide where you will and won’t shop. That’s asinine. Third, it’s one thing to boycott a firm that actively colludes with the state or, say, lobbies for political favors; Amazon was a victim here, not a belligerent.</blockquote><br /><br />My response to Oliva is pure and simple. Who is he to tell these libertarians (who are <span style="font-style:italic;">very</span> likely the left-libertarian types) whether they can refuse to shop or refuse to not shop at Amazon? He calls the decision "childish and stupid." Ok, Mr. Oliva, where were you when the Bush administration directed the hands of the <a href="http://www.nsa.gov">National Security Agency (NSA</a>) to <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm">strong-arm telecommunication carriers like AT&T Corp., Verizon, and BellSouth into handing over private customer call data to these thugs</a> as part of its wiretapping program, all in the name to monitor domestic calls by <a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2006/5/12/three_major_telecom_companies_help_us">instituting an international and domestic call database program</a> despite their promises to the contrary? <br /><br />Did you object to those phone carriers willingness to assist the Bush administration in that wiretapping scheme by boycotting their services or did you call anyone in the Liberty movement "childish and stupid" for voluntarily refusing to do business with them because those poor carriers were just "victims" of the State's strong-arming? More to the point, have you forgotten that telephone carrier <a href="http://www.qwest.com/">Quest Communications</a> refused to join in on the spying of Americans, resulting in <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20080618192552/http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/tech/article/0,2777,DRMN_23910_4692718,00.html">the company being the lone holdout in joining in the scheme despite the NSA threatening the powers-that-be at the firm that they would cancel their government contracts with them</a> (which led to many libertarians and civil libertarians praising them for their wise decision)? They didn't cave in, despite the threats and calls made to them by the State, and they protected their clients' privacy. What do you say to that?<br /><br />The only ultimate price Quest paid was that its <a href="http://www.9news.com/rss/article.aspx?storyid=113703#">former CEO Joseph Nacchio was convicted on 19 counts of violating insider trading laws in 2007</a>, which resulted in him being incarcerated in 2009 for six years. Why? Because his employees and he <a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/story/qwest-ex-ceo-says-feds-punished-firm-over-spy-program-report">refused to kowtow to the demands of the statists who wanted his customer call records</a>. Was Quest wrong to not cave in to the demands of the State? The company paid a steep price for this, but to him and his team it was well worth the risk. Were you cheering him on for opposing the mandate, knowing full well that he was risking the loss of his company, or did you think he was "childish and stupid" for doing what he felt was the right thing?<br /><br />I don't know about you, but the answer is this: Nacchio did the right thing. The government would have gone after Quest anyway EVEN IF it cooperated, simply by auditing its tax records, its books, and what not. As a corporation, a company is under the direct thumb of the State. It's under a huge microscope. You and I know this to be true. If one digit in its SEC filings is off, the armed goons of the State can pursue the firm, and we both know this. When you incorporate your firm by inserting into the clutches of the State (making it an arm of the creature), you create an unholy alliance with the State. Once your firm goes public, it has access to the State's guarantees, privileges, special regulatory and tax breaks, and subsidies that it otherwise wouldn't have if it were still a privately-held enterprise. After all, corporations are not <a href="http://home.epix.net/~hhlindner/Writings/Corporations.html">a free market specimen but rather a spawn of the State</a>, contrary to what libertarians like <a href="http://blog.mises.org/4269/in-defense-of-the-corporation/">Stephan Kinsella</a>, <a href="http://blog.mises.org/10631/defending-corporations-block-and-huebert/">Walter Block, J.H. Huebert</a>, and <a href="http://mises.org/daily/2816">Brad Edmonds</a> of LvMI assert.<br /><br />Of course, Oliva also erroneously asserts this Neanderthalic point, which should be construed as an insult to left-libertarians and the entire movement in its entirety:<br /><br /><blockquote>First of all, you’re adopting the very tactics the state used against Amazon.</blockquote><br /><br />Sorry, but that's just flat-out wrong. What the State employed against Amazon was the threat of violence if it didn't cooperate. What the left-libertarians did (and are still doing) is voluntary, non-violent against Amazon. Simply put, we choose not to do business with Amazon.<br /><br />And, please, drop the hypocrisy here. Your side of the pro-Liberty aisle boycotts companies <span style="font-style:italic;">all the time in private</span> for all sorts of reasons: you didn't like the service, you didn't like how the business was treating its customers and employees, you didn't like the tone and attitude of the managers, you didn't like the quality, prices, and appearance of the products, the location of the particular company, the limited selection of products and services, the unethical business practices, etc. Whatever the personal reasons you have and why you didn't like the company, you stopped shopping there. Whether you see it or not, you sent messages to those companies that you weren't happy with the customer service, the products, the attitudes of the employees and the service they provided you, and so on. It's called freedom of association. We consumers choose which companies to do business with and which ones we don't want to do business with, and we're a fickle bunch. No one in an authoritarian manner tells us where we can and cannot shop. We all have our own reasons for doing what we do, rightly or wrongly.<br /><br />And, let's make ourselves crystal clear: the State is still going after Amazon, despite the company's cooperation with Lieberman and his goons. Here's a case in point from a sentence in Lieberman's statement to the press:<br /><br /><blockquote>I will be <span style="font-weight:bold;">asking Amazon about the extent of its relationship with Wikileaks<span style="font-style:italic;"></span></span> and what it and other web service providers <span style="font-weight:bold;">will do in the future to ensure that their services are not used<span style="font-style:italic;"></span></span> to distribute stolen, classified information.' <span style="font-weight:bold;">[Emphasis added.]</span></blockquote><br /><br />Did Lieberman say he would back off from pursuing Amazon after it pulled WikiLeaks' account? No, it didn't. He said that he would be asking -- meaning he would vehemently pursue a criminal investigation against Amazon in a governmental and legal fashion -- Amazon what its relationship with WikiLeaks was. That means the State will be investigating Amazon and having its armed cronies meeting with and interrogating the powers-that-be at the Amazon offices, demanding to know why it had established a rapport with WikiLeaks in the first place. If you think the State will back off now, then you're either deluded or naive or both.<br /><br />Here's the third point Oliva makes:<br /><br /><blockquote>Second, what you’re basically saying is that you’re going to let statists like Joe Lieberman decide where you will and won’t shop.</blockquote><br /><br />Again, wrong. We're telling Joe Lieberman and Amazon that we're not doing business with a company and the thuggish State that can dictate to us who we can and cannot support and what organizations we can and cannot financially and politically support. By supporting Amazon, we would be essentially saying that what Amazon did was ethically right and supporting the company would be an automatic endorsement of what Lieberman and Amazon did by default. Oliva can spin this any way he wants, but he doesn't get to speak for everyone in the movement, dictate to the left-libertarians and other opponents of Amazon's actions what they are allowed to and not allowed to do, and so on.<br /><br />Who is he to tell those libertarians who they can do and not do business with? It's none of his business anyway. What does he care if they refuse to cater to Amazon again? There are other firms from which individuals can purchase products and services that are comparable to what Amazon sells. Granted, they are not as well known as Amazon, but so what? There's <a href="http://www.overstock.com">Overstock.com</a>, which sells the same products and similar services like Amazon. The real free market is on the Web, and there are plenty of alternatives to Amazon to choose from. One must know where to find them if they want the best deals, and more often than those other firms offer better deals than Amazon.<br /><br /><blockquote>Third, it’s one thing to boycott a firm that actively colludes with the state or, say, lobbies for political favors; Amazon was a victim here, not a belligerent.</blockquote><br /><br />It is true that Amazon didn't "actively collude with the State or lobby for political favors," but that's not the point, Skip, and you very well know it. Amazon made its choice, and it was the wrong one indeed. Now it will have to live with the consequences of its decision, whether the firm likes it or not. You, the Rockwellers and other libertarians who want to condemn our side for opposing Amazon's actions keep saying that Amazon "was a victim here." That statement alone is nothing but intellectually dishonest pabulum. Amazon was not a "victim" here. It is disappointing to see libertarians in that camp playing the victim card on Amazon's behalf, politically speaking. The real victim here is WikiLeaks, because it was never contacted by Amazon with a statement, saying that it longer wanted its customer's business in the first place. How do I figure? Let me explain.<br /><br />Amazon knew fully well what WikiLeaks was and what kind of a business deal it was getting into from the beginning. The company knew (or at least had to have known) for months that WikiLeaks was depised and wanted by the American Empire for releasing the classified videos and documents on its website. After all, the website had been and still continues to be a source of much great controversy, even months after being a topic of widely-held public discussion. <br /><br />Are you telling me that the powers-that-be at Amazon didn't know what they were walking into the second they inked the deal with WikiLeaks to host its website onto the firm's own servers? Are you also telling me that they didn't somehow know that they were taking a huge risk for having WikiLeaks in their system and that they were inviting the federal government to come after them, which the State in fact did? If anything, they set themselves up for that likelihood in the first place. Perhaps they didn't think it through before they inked the deal with WL, but it was a risky business to which they agreed. It's not as if they weren't aware of the potential risks and probability of their decision to have WL as a customer. And, despite all that, they ended up probed by the State. They invited the investigation and threats of the State the second the word got out. Perhaps they didn't mean for it to happen, but that's irrelevant. (I'm not really buying that argument anyway, but I'm certain someone is bound to be making it, so it's fair to use it in a theoretical sense.)<br /><br />Amazon was faced with a choice: either fight for its customer WikiLeaks, tell the State to stick it, fight for its survival, and still be persecuted by the State's goons, or drop its client, fight for its survival, and still be persecuted by the State and its goons. It was going to lose either way. It was presented with a "damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't" scenario. If I were Amazon and I had to pick one of those items on the menu, I'd choose "damned-if-you-don't." I'd still lose, I'd still be persecuted by Amazon, but at least I tried to fight back, even if the odds were stacked against me. At least I would have preserved my dignity as a company, even if it were an uphill battle for me.<br /><br /><a href="http://knappster.blogspot.com">KN@PPSTER</a>'s <a href="http://www.facebook.com/thomaslknapp">Tom Knapp</a> incidentally <a href="http://knappster.blogspot.com/2010/12/taking-amazon-at-their-word.html">isn't buying into Amazon's story</a> over the WikiLeaks affair in the form of a statement to the press as reported by <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703377504575651321402763304.html">The Wall Street Journal</a></span>. What is Amazon claiming? It's undeniably pathetic, amusing, theatrical, and illogical at the same time:<br /><br /><blockquote>Amazon.com Inc. Inc. says it stopped hosting WikiLeaks from its Web servers this week because the controversial group violated its terms of service.<br /><br />It was 'inaccurate' to claim that pressure from the U.S. government or large-scale attacks by hackers caused the company to discontinue its service of WikiLeaks, said Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener in a statement.<br /><br />Responding to pressure from members of Congress, Amazon stopped hosting WikiLeaks on its servers Wednesday. Geoff Fowler explains to Stacey Delo why Amazon was hosting the sensitive documents and whether Amazon will see a backlash for pulling them.<br /><br />Earlier in the week, WikiLeaks had turned to Amazon's Web services after its servers in Sweden were hit by computer attacks. On Tuesday, staff from Sen. Joe Lieberman's office said they contacted Amazon to ask why the Seattle-based company was providing Web hosting services to the group, which recently released a trove of sensitive U.S. State Department documents.<br /><br />Amazon said its decision was based on the fact that WikiLeaks broke its rules. Amazon, which rents Web infrastructure on a self-service basis, 'does not pre-screen its customers' but does reserve the right to discontinue service if its terms aren't followed, said Mr. Herdener.<br /><br />WikiLeaks 'doesn't own or otherwise control all the rights to this classified content,' one of the stipulations of Amazon's contractual terms, he said.<br /><br />Mr. Herdener said that Amazon's terms of service also require that content 'will not cause injury to any person or entity.' Yet he said 'it is not credible that the extraordinary volume of 250,000 classified documents that WikiLeaks is publishing could have been carefully redacted in such a way as to ensure that they weren't putting innocent people in jeopardy.'</blockquote><br /><br />First, Amazon's claim is false, because the State DID go after it. Putting the entire onus on WikiLeaks by saying that it had violated its terms of service agreement because WL as an organization had in its possession declassified government files that were protected by IP laws (which is not true) and saying that media group did not "have a right" to those files are just utterly ludicrous. Why did Amazon approve of WL's account if that were true? Oh wait, Amazon says that it doesn't pre-screen its prospective clients before it approves them. Well, that's its fault, not WikiLeaks'. Amazon staff members could have reviewed WikiLeak's application before approving them if that were the case, but they didn't. It is highly unfair to blame WikiLeaks for that, not to mention extremely retarded.<br /><br />(Thankfully, Knapp, who had <a href="http://knappster.blogspot.com/2010/12/please-dont-feed-amazon.html">originally awaited an explanation from the firm</a>, made his temporary boycott permanent. Kudos to him for doing that.) <br /><br />Even Wendy McElroy's husband Brad objected to Amazon's decision, saying that it was a bad call on the company's part, <a href="http://www.wendymcelroy.com/news.php?extend.3652">urging everyone to boycott it </a> and <a href="http://news.antiwar.com/2010/12/01/amazon-ousts-wikileaks-at-officials-behest/">announcing that he would be joining it as well</a>.<br /><br />Here's Amazon's <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/message/65348/">lying, deceptive denial</a> of the State coercing it to remove WikiLeaks from its servers:<br /><br /><blockquote>There have been reports that a government inquiry prompted us not to serve WikiLeaks any longer. That is inaccurate.<br /><br />There have also been reports that it was prompted by massive DDOS attacks. That too is inaccurate. There were indeed large-scale DDOS attacks, but they were successfully defended against.<br /><br />Amazon Web Services (AWS) rents computer infrastructure on a self-service basis. AWS does not pre-screen its customers, but it does have terms of service that must be followed. WikiLeaks was not following them. There were several parts they were violating. For example, our terms of service state that 'you represent and warrant that you own or otherwise control all of the rights to the content… that use of the content you supply does not violate this policy and will not cause injury to any person or entity.' It’s clear that WikiLeaks doesn’t own or otherwise control all the rights to this classified content. Further, it is not credible that the extraordinary volume of 250,000 classified documents that WikiLeaks is publishing could have been carefully redacted in such a way as to ensure that they weren’t putting innocent people in jeopardy. Human rights organizations have in fact written to WikiLeaks asking them to exercise caution and not release the names or identities of human rights defenders who might be persecuted by their governments.<br /><br />We’ve been running AWS for over four years and have hundreds of thousands of customers storing all kinds of data on AWS. Some of this data is controversial, and that’s perfectly fine. But, when companies or people go about securing and storing large quantities of data that isn’t rightfully theirs, and publishing this data without ensuring it won’t injure others, it’s a violation of our terms of service, and folks need to go operate elsewhere.<br /><br />We look forward to continuing to serve our AWS customers and are excited about several new things we have coming your way in the next few months.<br /><br />— Amazon Web Services</blockquote><br /><br />Yeah, right, Amazon. Uh huh. Sure. (More will be explored in another blog post at a later time.)<br /><br />Even Brad isn't swallowing Amazon's line of reasoning <a href="http://www.wendymcelroy.com/news.php?extend.3657">here</a>.<br /><br />All in all, it is up to the individual to decide whether he or she should continue to do business with Amazon.com. No one -- not even Wendy McElroy, her husband Brad, Tom Knapp, and/or I -- can force one to not purchase goods and services from Amazon or purchase anything from any other alternative out there. One must make the decisions based on how much he or she values Amazon's service despite all this evidence against the company. But I do strongly urge people to think about it before they even consider buying from Amazon, whether they are first-time customers or returning customers.<br /><br />No one says that Amazon doesn't have the right to terminate its relationship with its customers any way it wishes; it does. Again, that doesn't by default translate into meaning that it's made the right choice.Todd Andrew Barnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326847219909577374noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2966255816488656670.post-81171654192807286522010-12-03T08:11:00.000-08:002010-12-03T12:49:57.540-08:00WikiLeaks Looks to Swedish ISP BahnHof to Host Its Site After More Denial-of-Service, Political, and Ideological Attacks<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks">WikiLeaks</a>, which was <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/02/world/02amazon.html">recently dropped</a> by <a href="http://www.amazon.com">Amazon.com</a> after <a href="http://lieberman.senate.gov/">Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT)</a> called the online retailer's offices with tacit threats and demands to know the exact rapport of the "terrorist organization" and <a href="http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Press.MajorityNews&ContentRecord_id=a39d69a6-5056-8059-769f-d4cc4703403f">issued a press release stating that the government would be pursuing Amazon</a> <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/01/amazon/">even as it had severed its ties to the group</a>, has been <a href="http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/wikileaksorg-blank-dns-host-abandons-site/">switched to a Swedish server last night</a>. (<span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="www.nytimes.com">The New York Times</a></span> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/04/world/europe/04domain.html?_r=2">provides more coverage on this</a> as well.)<br /><br />After a reported "denial-of-service" attacks and a series of political and ideological attacks aimed at the stateless group, the website's DNS host <a href="http://www.everydns.com">EveryDNS.com</a> kicked the site off of its servers by killing its domain last night, thereby enabling WikiLeaks to post an <a href="http://twitter.com/wikileaks/statuses/10567274838622208#">update tweet</a> on its <a href="http://www.twitter.com">Twitter</a> <a href="http://twitter.com/wikileaks">page</a>, in which it states:<br /><br /><blockquote>WikiLeaks,org domain killed by US everydns.net after claimed mass attacks KEEP US STRONG https://donations.datacell.com/<br />about 11 hours ago via web<br />Retweeted by 100+ people </blockquote><br /><br />(By the way, the French government, <a href="http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/wikileaksorg-blank-dns-host-abandons-site/">in a letter dispatched to Reuters</a>, is looking to coerce French ISP hosts from hosting WL, considering the organization had its site hosted partially by French enterprise <a href="http://www.ovh.com/fr/index.xml">OVH</a>.)<br /><br />Because of these attacks, <a href="http://www.wikileaks.ch">WikiLeaks</a> is now up and running again via Swedish internet service provider (ISP) <a href="http://www.bahnhof.se/">Bahnhof</a> that employs the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet">Internet</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_code">country code</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-level_domain">top-level domain</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.ch">.ch</a>, which enables WL to host it on their servers. thus making it very complicated for the U.S. federal government to attack the site because of the fact that it's no longer being hosted on any server on American soil. (When a Web surfer goes to the site, the URL will show up as <a href="http://213.251.145.96/">http://213.251.145.96/</a>. That number in the URL is actually the website's actual assigned IP address that serve as a cyber "telephone number" to WL's DNS host and its servers, allowing the Web surfer to access the organziation's site. (The IP addy is mainly represented by the hostname of the site, which is, in this case, www.wikileaks.ch.)<br /><br />Perhaps the statists in the U.S. federal government haven't figured out (or perhaps they have!) that WL is now <a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2010/12/wikileaks-bahnhof-amazon.html">operating its site via an ISP that operates out of a former bomb shelter</a> - an ultra-secure location - in Sweden's <a href="http://www.bahnhof.se/pionen/gallery/">Pionen White Mountains</a>. How they are going to shut the website down after having moved to its server there is beyond me. But one thing is certain: WL isn't going away.<br /><br />Not now and not in the forseeable future.<br /><br />Here's a <a href="http://www.youtube.com">YouTube</a> of Jon Karlung, CEO of BahnHof, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn8pz1HLYp8">describing the construction of the facility</a> as "the heart of civil defense of Sweden":<br /><br /><object width="450" height="362"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/wn8pz1HLYp8?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/wn8pz1HLYp8?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="450" height="362"></embed></object><br /><br />[H/T to the <a href="http://www.latimes.com">L.A. Times</a> for providing the YouTube video.]Todd Andrew Barnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326847219909577374noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2966255816488656670.post-272362780065807362010-12-01T02:27:00.000-08:002010-12-02T05:38:00.011-08:00The State's Impending Assault on Julian Assange and WikiLeaks<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_4JIUGIqvFOI/TPeJ94P5kgI/AAAAAAAAAWM/7nzPVljcqk8/s1600/JulianAssange.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_4JIUGIqvFOI/TPeJ94P5kgI/AAAAAAAAAWM/7nzPVljcqk8/s400/JulianAssange.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5546053162294153730" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://wikileaks.org/">WikiLeaks</a>, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks">renown international news media organization of ill repute for its role in declassifying the American Empire's top secret government documents and videos</a> of the Empire's Wars with Iraq and Afghanistan that were clandestinely hidden from the American public, is once again in the cross-hairs of the vile State and its hawkish shills on both sides of the ideological and political aisles. Statist conservatives and liberals are by and large outraged at the organization for its <a href="http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=401583&version=1&template_id=57&parent_id=56">latest release of a set of ten documents unveiling more than 250,000 diplomatic cables</a>.<br /><br />It is no secret that WikiLeaks is the most reviled, the most despised, the most defamed, and the most uproarious entity by the United States government. The organization is known not only to the U.S., but also to the entire world. Why? Simply because it has the gall to open and disclose files, videos, and other documented evidence of criminal wrongdoing by the American Empire that many libertarians, anarchists, anarcho-capitalists, minarchists, constitutionalists, voluntaryists, left-libertarians, agorists, and other free agents in the libertarian movement have known about for years. Interestingly enough, other governments of many other nations have remained silent on their sentiments over the hubbub, yet that was to be expected nonetheless. To paraphrase <a href="http://www.salon.com">Salon.com</a> blogger <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/">Glenn Greenwald</a> (who made this a vital point in his post yesterday), this shows that <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/11/30/wikileaks/index.html">no other organization has generated this much fury, rage, and contempt for an entity as much as the organization's nasty, diabolical critics have</a>. It goes further than that. Groups that expose clandestine evidence of the United States partaking in criminal wrongdoing are more despised than those in power who commit vile and diabolical war criminal acts utilize secrecy as a formidable weapon to preserve, shield, protect, defend, and guard their supreme legitimacy.<br /><br />The statist conservatives are fired up over the release of these documents, which they claim should have remained clandestine and left alone. These thugs are now calling for the murder of WikiLeaks head honcho <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange">Julian Assange</a> without any criminal charges pending against him, due process, an arraignment, and a fair trial. Former Alaska Governor <a href="http://www.facebook.com/sarahpalin">Sarah Palin</a> lashed out at him by turning to her <a href="http://www.twitter.com">Twitter</a> <a href="http://twitter.com/SarahPalinUSA">page</a>, <a href="http://twitter.com/SarahPalinUSA/status/9251635779866625">caterwauling</a> in part:<br /><br /><blockquote>Inexplicable: I recently won in court to stop my book "America by Heart" from being leaked,but US Govt can't stop Wikileaks' treasonous act?<br />6:25 AM Nov 29th via Twitter for BlackBerry® Retweeted by 100+ people</blockquote><br /><br />Then she writes a <a href="http://www.facebook.com">Facebook</a> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/notes/sarah-palin/serious-questions-about-the-obama-administrations-incompetence-in-the-wikileaks-/465212788434">note</a> titled "Serious Questions about the Obama Administration's Incompetence in the Wikileaks Fiasco," in which she whines in part:<br /><br /><blockquote>[Assange's] past posting of classified documents revealed the identity of more than 100 Afghan sources to the Taliban. Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders?</blockquote><br /><br />It's quite convenient for Palin to libel, smear, and lie about Assange with this following statement:<br /><br /><blockquote>He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands.</blockquote><br /><br />(Interestingly enough, the Pentagon responded to that claim, rejecting it because <a href="http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/11/28/104404/officials-may-be-overstating-the.html">it is simply untrue</a>. Perhaps someone should send Palin a memo about that.)<br /><br /><a href="http://www.townhall.com">Townhall.com</a> statist conservative columnist <a href="http://townhall.com/columnists/JohnHawkins">John Hawkins</a> published a column yesterday morning entitled "5 Reasons The CIA Should Have Already Killed Julian Assange," in which he enumerated 5 reasons why <a href="http://townhall.com/columnists/JohnHawkins/2010/11/30/5_reasons_the_cia_should_have_already_killed_julian_assange/page/full/">the CIA should have already taken out Assange</a> in broad daylight. Other statist conservative critics such as <a href="http://www.nysun.com/editorials/wikileaks-and-the-war/87121/">Seth Lipsky</a> (whose column was <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/10/what-would-lincoln-have-done-about-julian-assange/65382/">posted by Jeffrey Goldberg</a>) [who also <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/10/on-treason-and-julian-assange/65437/">accused the WikiLeaks founder of "treason" illiterally</a>]), <a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2010/08/wikileaks_and_drone_strikes.html">Mark Thiessen</a>, <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/11/28/2010-11-28_media_unveils_classified_documents_via_wikileaks_website_in_explosive_release_of.html">Congressman Pete King</a>, <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com">National Review</a>'s <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/10/29/goldberg">Jonah Goldberg</a>, and yesterday's <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704584804575644490285411052.html">Wall Street Journal</a></span> branded Assange as a "traitor" and should be assassinated without a trial or due process of law.<br /><br />Speaking of Goldberg (who asserts that he opposes fascism), he <a href="http://sheldonfreeassociation.blogspot.com/2010/11/jonah-goldberg-and-julian-assange.html">inquired more than two weeks ago</a> as to why <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/ct-oped-1029-goldberg-20101029,0,5734943.story">Assange wasn't killed in the first place</a>. In case anyone didn't catch it the first time around, he asked again:<br /><br /><blockquote>Why wasn't Assange garroted in his hotel room years ago?</blockquote><br /><br />It gets worse. Today former Arkansas Mike Huckabee <a href="http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/huckabee-wants-leaker-executed/?utm_source=Raw+Story+Daily+Update&utm_campaign=2af227c786-Dec112_1_2010&utm_medium=email">has urged for the execution of Assange</a>, further stating that the release of the embassy documents has placed "American lives at risk." According to <a href="http://www.rawstory.com">RawStory.com</a>, Huckabee states in part:<br /><br /><blockquote>'Whoever in our government leaked that information is guilty of treason,' Huckabee said. 'I think anything less than execution is too kind a penalty.'</blockquote><br /><br />Additionally, he asserts:<br /><br /><blockquote>They’ve put relationships that will take decades to rebuild at risk, and they knew full well that they were handling sensitive documents, they were entrusted and anyone who had access to that level of information was not only a person who understood what their rules were, but they also signed under oath a commitment that they would not violate it. They did.</blockquote><br /><br />Furthermore, he opines:<br /><br /><blockquote>'And I believe they have committed treason against this country, and any lives they endanger, they’re personally responsible for and the blood is on their hands,' he added.</blockquote><br /><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Flanagan_%28political_scientist%29">Tom Flanagan</a>, a political scientist who is a former adviser to <a href="http://www.pm.gc.ca/">Canadian Prime Minister Steven Harper</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqtIafdoH_g&feature=player_embedded">even called for Assange's murder</a> on CBC News Network, which prompted a shocked and dumbfounded reply from the anchor of the show that was heard as saying, "Tom, that's pretty harsh stuff! Just for the record, that's pretty harsh stuff!"<br /><br />Here's a YouTube of Flannigan's remarks, which have been regarded as a "<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2010/dec/01/wikileaks-us-embassy-cables-live-updates">shockingly flippant</a>" <a href="http://looncanada.com/2010/11/30/top-advisor-to-stephen-harper-calls-for-fatwa-against-wikileaks-director-julian-assange/">fatwa against Assange</a> that aired on Canadian television yesterday at 8:38 a.m.:<br /><br /><object width="450" height="278"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/bqtIafdoH_g?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/bqtIafdoH_g?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="450" height="278"></embed></object><br /><br />Interestingly enough, Flannigan <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/politics/story/2010/12/01/flanagan-wikileaks-assange.html">recanted his statement</a> hours later:<br /><br /><blockquote>'I regret that I made a glib comment about a serious issue,' Flanagan said Tuesday in a statement to CBC News. 'If Mr. Assange is arrested on the recently announced Interpol warrant, I hope [he] receives a fair trial and due process of law.'</blockquote><br /><br />A "glib comment," huh? Really, Mr. Flannigan? That's a pathetic excuse, considering you just called for violence against a peaceful individual who believes in honest transparency from not only the U.S. government but all governments throughout the world. Perhaps you should have thought of that before you made that outrageously disgusting statement on the Canadian airwaves. That statement alone, while not covered by the First Amendment in the U.S. because he made the comments on Canadian TV in his native homeland (where there is no First Amendment-protected right to free speech), is tantamount to using free speech as an excuse to incite violence against a human being who has not committed violence against other individuals in any way.<br /><br />The reason these vile, despicable jackbooted thugs want Assange dead is clear: the WikiLeaks leader had the gall to release the State's own documents to the public, as he and many advocates of Liberty believe the public has the right to know what vital information the files contain. That data pertains to the U.S. government's illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the diplomatic discussions between various embassies around the world, and the truth about the various actions of the State which the government wants to conceal from the American people. Tyrants like Jonah Goldberg, Lipsky, Flannigan, Palin, King, Huckabee, Jeffrey Goldberg, Mark Theissen, John Hawkins, and many others on that side of the aisle will do whatever it takes to get rid of Assange, Private First Class Bradley Manning (who gave Julian the 260,000 embassy cables documents and the <a href="http://www.collateralmurder.com/">Collateral Murder</a> a.k.a. the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P_DqT7BGXc&feature=player_embedded">Granai airstrikes</a> videos), and any one who stands in their way to protect "national security," <a href="http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/586511/national_security_is_government_security.html?cat=9">which is really the State's security</a>.<br /><br />Here are the Collateral Murder and Granai airstrikes videos:<br /><br /><object width="450" height="362"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/is9sxRfU-ik?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/is9sxRfU-ik?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="450" height="362"></embed></object><br /><br /><object width="450" height="362"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/4P_DqT7BGXc?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/4P_DqT7BGXc?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="450" height="362"></embed></object><br /><br />The other group of people who want Assange and WikiLeaks on the chopping block is the statist progressives, who are the angriest and most incensed of the bunch. For instance, <a href="http://www.state.gov/secretary/">Hillary Clinton</a>, who according to the WikiLeaks documents has been allegedly <a href="http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/cable/2009/07/09STATE80163.html">engaging in espionage against the United Nations</a>, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11882092">calls</a> the cables release:<br /><br /><blockquote>[A]n attack on the international community, the alliances and partnerships, the conventions and negotiations that safeguard global security and advance economic prosperity.</blockquote><br /><br />It gets uglier between Assange and Clinton. Assange <a href="http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2033771,00.html">called for Clinton's resignation</a>, which alarmed White House press secretary Robert Gibbs who vehemently called it "<a href="http://www.politico.com/politico44/perm/1210/julian_who_11b7e794-de0b-4d71-9227-dd5274b761a5.html">absurd</a>." It's apparent that the statists are becoming exceedingly desperate that they have <a href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2013559944_wiki01.html">shut down public access to the files</a> stored in the State Department's computers, which have resulted in cutting WikiLeaks off from the U.S. government's servers. In response, WikiLeaks was forced to rent <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704679204575647152417805496.html?mod=googlenews_wsj">Amazon.com's computer servers so that its website could resume operations at once</a>. Why? Because the U.S. government launched attacks on the stateless-supporting organization's website, effectively rendering it neutralized. This is the Empire's massive attack on free speech yet, although this wasn't the first time that has transpired.<br /><br />To make matters worse, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/02/world/europe/02assange.html?_r=1&ref=world">Interpol has called for the arrest of Assange to face allegations of rape charges</a> brought by two Swedish women. According to <span style="font-style:italic;">The New York Times</span>:<br /><br /><blockquote>The accusations were first made against Mr. Assange after he traveled to Sweden in mid-August and had brief relationships with two Swedish women.<br /><br />According to accounts they gave to the police and friends, each had consensual sexual encounters with Mr. Assange that became nonconsensual. One said that Mr. Assange ignored her appeals to stop after a condom broke. The other said that she and Mr. Assange had begun a sexual encounter using a condom, but that Mr. Assange did not comply with her appeals to stop when it was no longer in use.</blockquote><br /><br />The charges certainly are serious but are rather dubious at the same time. It seems very convenient for these two women to charge him with rape on the heels of the cables release <span style="font-style:italic;">if</span> these two women <span style="font-style:italic;">actually</span> exist, and <span style="font-style:italic;">if</span> these incidents <span style="font-style:italic;">really</span> happened the way they described it. Assange himself denies the accusations, which is fathomable given the odd timing of the release of the charges pending against him and that his relationships with the women were, according to him, consensual. Even former Australian intelligence official and current independent member of the Australian Parliament Andrew Wilkie <a href="http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/8173913/assange-rape-charge-could-be-a-set-up-wilkie">doesn't buy into the charges, theorizing that they "could definitely be a set-up</a>."<br /><br />Currently, <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-01/wikileaks-founder-lurks-beyond-grip-of-u-s-law-commentary-by-ann-woolner.html">the Obama administration wants to prosecute him for espionage</a> under the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espionage_Act_of_1917">Espionage Act of 1917</a>, due to the fact that <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20024080-38.html">he can't be tried for "treason," because he's not an American citizen</a>. Extradition may be difficult as Assange's whereabouts are primarily unknown, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/01/police-seek-julian-assange-rape-claims">even though speculation has it that he is living somewhere in the UK</a>.<br /><br />Even if the Department of Justice wants him on a governmental silver platter, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6B00F020101201">prosecuting him on the grounds of espionage alone will be extremely difficult</a>. Greenwald <a href="http://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/9684582362251264">notes on his Twitter that MSNBC commentator Chuck Todd is correct</a> on this:<br /><br /><blockquote>He's right: RT @emptywheel "To his credit, @ChuckTodd noted that any prosecution of Assange would justify prosecution of Woodward, too."</blockquote><br /><br />The idea that the State has a "right" to privacy is laughable. After all, the attempt to take out WL is not about protecting the lives of all Americans. It's about protecting the life of the State from any political elephants or eggs it always has on its face.<br /><br />But more importantly, it sends a disturbing message to us all: "You can't make some omelets without cracking a few governmental eggs." Can the statists stop it? They could, but it will be so unlikely, given that they hardly ever care what happens in the final analysis and the ends always justifies the means. That should never be discounted for any reason.<br /><br />No matter how you slice and dice it, this is the state's impending assault on Julian Assange and his stateless organization known simply as WikiLeaks. Obama, the Democrats, and the Republicans are for the outright crucifixion and persecution of Assange, WikiLeaks, and all who have been and are a part of it must be called on it at any time whatsoever.<br /><br />The future of human liberty largely depends on it.<br /><br /><b>Update:</b> <a href="http://www.amazon.com">Amazon.com</a>, which picked up WikiLeaks yesterday after <a href="http://www.state.gov/">the State Department</a> shut down its entire mainframe thereby cutting the stateless-supporting organization from continuing to hack into its server and retrieve more classified and videos from the system, has decided <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/02/world/02amazon.html">to drop WikiLeaks from its rent-a-server system</a>, because it caved in to political pressure from the U.S. federal government. According to <span style="font-style:italic;">The New York Times</span>:<br /><br /><blockquote>The move to drop WikiLeaks came shortly after members of the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee pressed the company to explain its relationship with WikiLeaks. The site WikiLeaks had previously been using went down for several hours after an Internet attack over the weekend, prompting the group to switch over to an Amazon host site, which rents out bandwidth and other services.</blockquote><br /><br />Apparently, dark forces within the government has begun to direct its attack on the company. It appears that Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) <a href="http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Press.MajorityNews&ContentRecord_id=a39d69a6-5056-8059-769f-d4cc4703403f">issued a statement to the press, in which he is taking legal and political action against Amazon for its rapport with the organization</a>. He decrees in the following:<br /><br /><blockquote>WASHINGTON – Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, ID-Conn., Wednesday issued the following statement after Amazon.com decided to terminate its relationship with Wikileaks. After reading press reports that Amazon was hosting the Wikileaks website, Committee staff contacted Amazon Tuesday for an explanation. <br /><br /> 'This morning Amazon informed my staff that it has ceased to host the Wikileaks website. I wish that Amazon had taken this action earlier based on Wikileaks' previous publication of classified material. The company’s decision to cut off Wikileaks now is the right decision and <span style="font-weight:bold;"><span style="font-style:italic;">should set the standard for other companies Wikileaks is using to distribute its illegally seized material</span></span>. <span style="font-weight:bold;">[Emphasis added.]</span> <span style="font-weight:bold;"><span style="font-style:italic;">I call on any other company or organization that is hosting Wikileaks to immediately terminate its relationship with them.</span></span> <span style="font-weight:bold;">[More emphasis added.]</span> Wikileaks’ illegal, outrageous, and reckless acts have compromised our national security and put lives at risk around the world. No responsible company – whether American or foreign – should assist Wikileaks in its efforts to disseminate these stolen materials. I will be asking Amazon about the extent of its relationship with Wikileaks and what it and other web service providers will do in the future to ensure that their services are not used to distribute stolen, classified information.'</blockquote><br /><br />In other words, Joe Lieberman is the reason why Amazon backed off on its support for WikiLeaks out of fear of governmental reprisal from the statists in power. Amazon didn't want to take the potential legal and political risks that would more than likely arise in the fall-out, and it more than likely didn't want to be legally charged with "aiding and betting a 'terrorist' organization," so it took the easy way out and give in to the state, without considering that the First Amendment protects them and WikiLeaks on constitutional grounds.<br /><br />But still, it doesn't excuse Amazon's decision to drop WikiLeaks, even if the State would have gone after them or anyone who supported the news organization in any form. To retreat from supporting, assisting, and helping the group when the U.S. government and the entire world are at a critical juncture is a sign that Amazon is nothing but a whore for the State, not to mention a coward. As WikiLeaks said about Amazon's call to remove the organization's account on their servers on its Twitter <a href="http://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/10073870316863488">page</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>If Amazon are so uncomfortable with the first amendment, they should get out of the business of selling books.</blockquote><br /><br />Hear, hear WikiLeaks! You won't get an argument from me on that standpoint alone!<br /><br /><b>Update II:</b> WL has now <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/26095/">returned to its original Swedish host Banhof</a>.Todd Andrew Barnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326847219909577374noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2966255816488656670.post-33616281810926678372010-11-28T16:10:00.000-08:002010-11-28T17:35:24.221-08:00The Nation's Katrina Vanden Heuvel Issues Mediocre Apology to John Tyner<a href="http://www.thenation.com"><span style="font-style:italic;">The Nation</span></a> editor <a href="http://www.thenation.com/authors/katrina-vanden-heuvel">Katrina Vanden Huevel</a> <a href="http://www.thenation.com/blog/156700/apology-john-tyner">issues a mediocre apology</a> to freedom-loving hero <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/John-Tyner/170358979654930">John Tyner</a> for its <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/156647/tsastroturf-washington-lobbyists-and-koch-funded-libertarians-behind-tsa-scandal">direct hatchet/smear job targeting him</a>. The reason I say it's "mediocre" because her apology does not extend to her rag's attack on renown occasional <a href="http://www.freetalklive.com">Free Talk Live</a> co-host and <a href="http://www.freekeene.com">FreeKeene.com</a> blogger <a href="http://www.facebook.com/smegmclain">Meg McLain</a>, who <a href="http://letlibertyring.blogspot.com/2010/11/free-talk-lives-meg-mclain-versus-yasha.html">yesterday issued a very much-justified counter-assault</a> on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/yasha.levine">Yasha Levine</a> and <a href="http://exiledonline.com/vanity-fair-profiles-the-exile/">Mark Ames</a> (the hack journalists responsible for their notorious and odious smear job that was in part aimed at her but mostly at Tyner).<br /><br />Her apology would be more meaningful if it were also directed at Meg McLain, because Levine and Ames smeared her by tacitly and simply portraying her as part of an Astroturf operation that was a central thesis of <span style="font-style:italic;">The Nation</span> hatchet job/hit piece. Her apology would be even more meaningful to <a href="http://www.libertyontour.com">LibertyOnTour.com</a>'s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/peteeyre">Pete Eyre</a>, who was also a target in the article. Lumped in with McLain as purportedly being on the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_family">Koch brothers</a>' payroll, the piece in part nastily writes about Eyre in the following context:<br /><br /><blockquote>One of the libertarians that McLain met with, Peter Eyre, has spent much of the past five years on a variety of Koch payrolls: as an intern at the Koch-founded Cato Institute, a "Koch Fellow" at the Drug Policy Alliance and nearly three years as director for the Koch-funded Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University, home also to the Koch-funded Mercatus Center.</blockquote><br /><br />Eyre has since <a href="http://peteeyre.com/2010/11/28/ames/">issued an outstanding "take-no-prisoners" rebuttal</a> against the shoddy smear job.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/georgedonnelly">George Donnelly</a>, a co-founder of <a href="http://wewontfly.com/">WeWontFly.com</a> (as well as a good friend of mine), was also a target, although he was merely mentioned in one paragraph. He was unfairly lumped in with McLain in the following excerpt:<br /><br /><blockquote>George Donnelly, a libertarian colleague of McLain's who writes that he "loves" her traveling libertarian friends in Florida and "<a href="http://georgedonnelly.com/libertarian/how-not-to-do-illegal-liberty-activism">learned a lot</a>" from them, also happens to be one of two men behind the WeWontFly.com, one of the main websites pushing the "National Opt-Out Day" movement. The domain was registered on November 3, 2010, five days before McLain's fake airport incident. Donnelly <a href="http://freekeene.com/2010/11/12/help-get-meg-home-to-nh/">provided McLain with the funds</a> to return back to her libertarian commune in Keene, New Hampshire, after the (fake) incident.</blockquote><br /><br />Donnelly has <a href="http://georgedonnelly.com/asides/i-am-not-a-kochtopus">leveled a brilliant attack on the rag</a> with a blog piece, castigating them for tacitly framing him as a "Kochtopus."<br /><br />Nonetheless, here is Heuvel's substandard apology in its entirety:<br /><br /><blockquote>At TheNation.com we make it a point to practice fearless, bold, timely journalism that raises critical issues ignored by the mainstream press. On very rare occasions that ambition leads to mistakes, and when it does, we're committed to acknowledging them and setting the record straight. Unfortunately, a recent article by Mark Ames and Yasha Levine, "<a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/156647/tsastroturf-washington-lobbyists-and-koch-funded-libertarians-behind-tsa-scandal">TSAstroturf: The Washington Lobbyists and Koch-Funded Libertarians Behind the TSA Scandal</a>," was one such moment.<br /> <br /><br />As Glenn Greenwald of Salon quickly pointed out (and as other writers echoed), the article wrongly suggested that John Tyner, the libertarian citizen-activist who coined the "don't touch my junk" protest against the TSA's security procedures, might be linked to an Astroturf operation. Ames' and Levine's article didn't directly call Tyner a plant, and they didn't say that he was funded by the Koch brothers. Nonetheless, their article gave that impression--by placing Tyner in the article's lead and by using a generally disparaging tone to refer to him. The article also used innuendo to cast doubt on Tyner's motives, and when Tyner denied any connections to lobbyists and to Koch-funded organizations in an interview, we printed his denial--but we didn't press hard enough to get clarity on his actions and intentions. We should have stopped and done just that, and if Tyner's story checked out, we should have removed him from the piece.<br /><br />We have published a <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/156679/response-glenn-greenwald">reply by Ames and Levine</a> that acknowledges some of these problems, but as editor of The Nation, I also want to apologize to John Tyner. The Nation hasn't been--and never will be--in the business of muffling citizen protest.<br /><br />We are, however, committed to bold reporting and to airing intelligent debates even--or especially--when they challenge our preconceptions and make our readers uncomfortable.<br /><br />Citizens from across the political spectrum are right to call out the TSA's invasive procedures and the threat to civil liberties they represent. We have long opposed, and exposed, the continuing encroachments of the national security state, though we also think that those who applauded each sacrifice of liberty for security under the Bush administration should expect to be regarded with skepticism if the presence of a Democrat in the White House suddenly prompts libertarian concerns. As John Tyner pointed out, this issue "isn't Republican and it isn't Democratic." It is also simply a fact that the backlash against TSA procedures has led to calls for racial profiling and for the privatization of the agency.<br /><br />I believe the furor over the TSA scans warrants further reporting and analysis. We do, however, pledge to do it with the care and integrity that marks The Nation's best journalistic traditions.</blockquote><br /><br />Now, if she would kindly extend her apology to Tyner to McLain, Eyre, and Donnelly, then my fellow lovers of Liberty and I would be doing the happy dance. But we won't be holding our breath. Until then, her apology is second-rate at best.Todd Andrew Barnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326847219909577374noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2966255816488656670.post-44072886086469801872010-11-28T00:34:00.001-08:002010-11-28T22:23:38.990-08:00Free Talk Live's Meg McLain Versus Yasha Levine and Mark Ames of The NationOccasional <a href="http://www.freetalklive.com">Free Talk Live</a> co-host and <a href="http://www.freekeene.com">FreeKeene.com</a> blogger <a href="http://www.facebook.com/smegmclain">Meg McLain</a>, who was recently smeared (along with another hero <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/John-Tyner/170358979654930">John Tyner</a>) by <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://www.thenation.com">The Nation</a></span> (specifically the rag's writers <a href="http://www.facebook.com/yasha.levine">Yasha Levine</a> and <a href="http://exiledonline.com/vanity-fair-profiles-the-exile/">Mark Ames</a>) in a piece entitled "<a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/156647/tsastroturf-washington-lobbyists-and-koch-funded-libertarians-behind-tsa-scandal">TSAstroturf: The Washington Lobbyists and Koch-Funded Libertarians Behind the TSA Scandal</a>," <a href="http://www.facebook.com/#!/note.php?note_id=10150096054551115&comments¬if_t=note_reply">has authored a response to the statist liberal clods</a> behind their invective-laced hit piece. <br /><br />Incidentally, on November 24 (exactly on <a href="http://www.optoutday.com/">National Opt-Out Day</a>), <span style="font-style:italic;">The Nation</span>'s top blogger <a href="http://www.thenation.com/blogs/jeremy-scahill">Jeremy Scahill</a> <a href="http://twitter.com/jeremyscahill/status/7512074246688768">lambasted the writers for engineering this pathetic-joke-of-a-smear via a tweet</a> on his <a href="http://www.twitter.com">Twitter</a> <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/jeremyscahill">page</a>,in which he writes:<br /><br /><blockquote>The article my magazine, The Nation, published about John Tyner is a shameful smear.</blockquote><br /><br />(More to the point, these ludicrous, irresponsible, and unfair acts of name-calling, libeling, and smearing show how partisan and political Ames and Levine really are and are endemic of the so-called journalists' ulterior motives.)<br /><br />(Thankfully, <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/">Glenn Greenwald</a> of <a href="http://www.salon.com">Salon.com</a> <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/11/24/tyner/index.html">authored a blog post to chime in</a> on the uncalled-for smearing of McLain, Tyner, and the vile authors' libelous, pernicious, and baseless smears aimed at other libertarians in the movement over the TSA hubbub. Levine and Ames <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/156679/response-glenn-greenwald">followed up with a response to Greenwald's piece</a>, in which they claim that they didn't intend to smear Tyner, which is a baldfaced lie. Greenwald rebuts their rebuttal perfectly in <span style="font-weight:bold;"><u>Update III</u></span> of his blog post, exposing their hateful, spiteful, and malicious lies, ill-intentions, and partisan biases all the way.)<br /><br />Nonetheless, here's Meg's wonderfully-drafted response to <span style="font-style:italic;">The Nation</span> regarding their hit piece targeting her in part.<span style="font-weight:bold;">*</span> (While there are some grammatical errors in the piece, and she didn't proofread it, that's not a major concern to me, as she brilliantly gets her message across to her readers about her experiences with the TSA [which I will include in a follow-up blog post about the TSA] and sets the record straight on the accusations that have for nearly a month sullied her good name.)<br /><br /><blockquote><span style="font-weight:bold;">My Response to The Nation's TSA Articles</span><br /><br />by Meg McLain<br /><br />I was appalled at the absolute strait out lies The Nation found the balls to print about me, and I thought I would finally sit down and respond, both publicly and to the writers/editors at this abysmally written rag.<br /><br />As there are now 2 articles (one making bold face lies about me, and another confirming their position on those lies); I have decided to start this response with a line-by-line deconstruction of the section that mentions me in the 2nd article. This pretty much sums up their stance in the first article, so I can give the broader answers here.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">The Nation: "We also documented the story of the first “victim” of the TSA—a libertarian named Meg McLain"</span></span><br /><br />First line, first lie. I am not a libertarian. I do not claim to be a libertarian. At no point during any interview did I say I was a libertarian. I find party politics of any kind to be repugnant, and 'libertarians' are a political party. I consider myself to be a sovereign human being who interacts with people on a voluntary and consensual basis. Politics have nothing to do with me, and I want nothing to do with them.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><span style="font-style:italic;">The Nation: "—who was found to have lied about being sexually molested by TSA agents."</span></span><br /><br />I never stated, insinuated, claimed, or even came close to accusing the TSA of sexually molesting me. The whole reason I was kicked out of the Florida airport was because I was uncomfortable with the new "enhanced pat-downs", and I attempted to ask some questions to see if we could come to a compromise that would show I wasn't a threat but not require me to endure something I was personally not ok with. After asking the questions, the TSA blew things out of proportion, and assumed I had refused the pat down, so I was eventually escorted out for not completing screening. Moreover (and to the great embarrassment of this magazine's crap 'journalists') the TSA never claimed I lied about them sexually molesting me. Because I never said they did. <br /><br />After my incident became public, the TSA posted up two security videos from my encounter with the TSA. They never outright said my story was untruthful; however, they insinuated it by saying something to the effect of "We'll let you [the viewer] decide what happened." The only problem is these two videos do not cover the entire encounter. The portion missing includes a few of the events I had spoken about on the radio that were never captured in the two videos posted (both from cameras angled away from that area). Nothing I said was a lie; however, much of what I said was misquoted, distorted, or even made up by the media.<br /><br />I attempted to make a clarification after I listened to my original interview (which I had done less than an hour after the incident occurred). This was not to "cover up a lie", but rather to explain that when I said "nobody else was taken through the advanced screening" or sometime like that, I was trying to convey that nobody else was brought into the secondary screening area I was in. This was not an admission of lying, this was an attempt to clear up something that I misspoke on and could have worded differently to be better understood. But because I was telling the truth, the TSA and police couldn't even say I was lying when asked point blank. All they said was, "We cannot confirm or deny anything". It was purely an attempt on someone's part to sway the discussion of my incident from the real issue at hand to whether or not my story was even real. It was. And if you're going to take two videos without timecodes or full coverage of the incident as evidence of a "lie", at least have the intelligence to figure out the lie I'm accused of making.<br /><br />*I would also like to add that the entire description of my version of what happened is so appalling misquoted, and so far off from what I actually said that I'm really wondering if the "journalist" even bothered to listen to the audio, or if he just read things and made it up himself. I also find it comical that the author was too stupid to realize he based the claim that nobody screamed "Opt Out" by referencing a video with no sound. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><span style="font-style:italic;">The Nation: "Before Tyner, McLain was being heralded by the same right-wing PR network, particularly Matt Drudge and Koch-funded libertarians, who later promoted Tyner to fame and who last year led the PR drive promoting the Tea Party movement. McLain’s ties to the Koch brothers are well-documented in our piece—and Greenwald, for reasons unclear, studiously avoids rebutting any of our evidence."</span></span><br /><br />I have no idea who any of these people are, with the exception of John Tyner, whom I first discovered and met online well after both our incidents occurred.<br /><br />Now here are some additional quotes from The Nation's original article that give more detailed lies to it's readers.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><span style="font-style:italic;">The Nation: "McLain is an occasional co-host of a libertarian radio show out of a libertarian quasi-commune located in Keene, New Hampshire."</span></span><br /><br />I do not believe Free Talk Live is a libertarian radio show. It is the show a friend of mine hosts, and I enjoy the discussions and subject matter, so I sit in as a co-host from time to time. I have no idea where this quasi-commune thing came from. I live in a damn house with a roommate and a dog. Since when is that a commune? Because I have a roommate? Because once in a while we share our food? Really? Thats just flat out stupid writing intended to be offensive for no reason, and with no basis.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><span style="font-weight:bold;">The Nation: "As reported in theWashington City Paper, the libertarian "Free Keene" movement where McLain makes her home is yet another libertarian project tied to the billionaire Koch brothers, the prime backers of the Tea Party campaign, through the Koch-funded Mercatus Center at George Mason University."<span style="font-style:italic;"></span></span></span><br /><br />How exactly is Free Keene tied to these guys I've never heard of? Does it go any further than 'the Koch brothers have mentioned it once'? If they do have some financial ties with Free Keene, I would like to know, cause I am poor as crap and don't make a dime off that website.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><span style="font-style:italic;">The Nation: "By her own account, McLain was down in Florida visiting a pair of traveling libertarians who were spreading the word of libertarianism in what they billed as "Liberty On Tour," funded at least partly by Koch-backed organizations like "Students for Liberty."</span><br /></span><br /> <br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><span style="font-style:italic;">The Nation: "George Donnelly, a libertarian colleague of McLain's who writes that he "loves" her traveling libertarian friends in Florida and "learned a lot" from them, also happens to be one of two men behind the WeWontFly.com, one of the main websites pushing the "National Opt-Out Day" movement. The domain was registered on November 3, 2010, five days before McLain's fake airport incident. Donnelly provided McLain with the funds to return back to her libertarian commune in Keene, New Hampshire, after the (fake) incident."</span><br /></span><br /> <br />You know why I was in Florida? The trip was an f-ing birthday gift from my mother, so I could visit a boy I had a crush on. I was going to see a boy I liked. Thats it. And it actually didn't work out that well for me in the end, in case you'd like to rub some salt in that wound too. <br /><br />Before I had booked the trip, I checked on the TSA's website to determine which airports had body scanners, and Ft. Lauderdale was not listed. I had actually gone to the airport assuming I had done my due diligence to ensure I wouldn't have to encounter one of these machines. When I was chosen for the body scanner, I honestly had no intention of not going through screening; however, I WAS very nervous and uncomfortable with both the options the TSA were giving me, so I attempted to ask a few questions to remedy my discomfort. What happen as a result of those questions was not only unintended, it was downright frightening. <br /><br />I didn't even know if the friends I was visiting were still in the area, and I could have easily gotten stuck sitting outside the airport with no money, and nowhere to go. I was lucky enough to get ahold of them, and they rescued me from the horrible incident. I was asked to call in to Free Talk Live shortly after and tell the story of what had just happened to me, so I did. I never expected it to be put in the media spotlight, as I didn't think it was that big of a story. <br /><br />It wasn't until the next day that I even "met" (online only) George Donnelly, who had heard me on FTL the night before, and made the audio into a video for his website. While I didn't mind him doing that, I didn't want the attention of the media (The Nation's article is a glaring example of why entering the public eye is a horrible idea). I did the first few interviews simply as a way to raise funds so I could get back home, by promoting a chip-in that many people were kind enough to donate to. However, after the media started, I began getting thousands of emails. While many of them were less that friendly, much more of them were from victims of TSA abuses writing to tell me about their experiences and offer their moral support. It was these hundreds of heart breaking responses that made me continue responding to media after raising the money to get home. These people were hurting, and they had no voice to express that. I didn't want to be that for them, but I had to do something. If nothing else, shed light on the issue. I was fully aware that it meant more long hours, headaches, and enduring more of the most hurtful and mean things ever said to and about me.<br /><br />This whole thing was never an intention. I never sought out fame over a situation I never wanted to be in to begin with. I haven't gained anything from it. And I sure as hell was never asked to do it, or offered payment for it. I have had weeks of stress, hate mail, heartbreak, and a massive loss in productivity, which has taken a financial toll on me. I marvel that The Nation would be so brazen and heartless to make up an entire story about a nice young girl from a little town in Oregon, and turn her into some key player of a domestic terrorism conspiracy, which now puts me at risk for any number of horrific consequences including government investigations, personal attacks, and other such nightmares. All this without making one effort to contact me to confirm the facts. <br /><br />So all I have left to say to The Nation Magazine is:<br /><br />Your journalistic integrity is an embarrassment, and you should be ashamed.</blockquote><br /><br />[<span style="font-weight:bold;">*Note:</span> Thanks is given to Meg for allowing me to reprint her piece on my blog.]Todd Andrew Barnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326847219909577374noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2966255816488656670.post-10677657002651450292010-11-26T22:06:00.000-08:002010-11-26T22:11:21.099-08:00ABC's The View and Whoopie Goldberg Brand George Donnelly and James Babb of WeWontFly.com "Terrorists"Renown statist liberal <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood">Hollywood</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whoopi_Goldberg">actress</a> and <a href="http://theview.abc.go.com/">The View</a> co-host <a href="http://theview.abc.go.com/staff/whoopi-goldberg/bio">Whoopie Goldberg</a>, along with her statist cohorts statist liberal "journalist" <a href="http://theview.abc.go.com/staff/barbara-walters/bio">Barbara Walters</a>, statist conservative Republican dingbat <a href="http://theview.abc.go.com/staff/elisabeth-hasselbeck/bio">Elisabeth Hasselbeck</a>, and statist liberals <a href="http://theview.abc.go.com/staff/sherri-shepherd/bio">Sherri Shepherd</a> and <a href="http://theview.abc.go.com/staff/joy-behar/bio">Joy Behar</a> on the air, branded <a href="http://www.wewontfly.com">WeWontFly.com</a> founders <a href="http://www.facebook.com/george.donnelly">George Donnelly</a> and <a href="http://www.facebook.com/george.donnelly">James Babb</a> "terrorists" for simply pushing <a href="http://www.optoutday.com/">National Opt-Out Day</a>, which was a huge success on November 24 (a day before Thanksgiving).<br /><br />Just for the record, Goldberg thinks that NOD is, to her, "an act of terrorism." Hasselbeck mentions George and Jim's names on the air, inquiring why their names are not on the terrorist watchlist. Behar says they should be on the list. Even <a href="http://www.house.gov/paul">Ron Paul</a> was mentioned on the show, and they seriously took issue with Ron's opposition to the TSA's pedophiliac and sexually assault-inducing "security." I assume they think he is "a terrorist" too now?<br /><br />What about the <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/WN/thanksgiving-nightmare-travelers/story?id=12225779">94%</a> (originally reported as <a href="http://wewontfly.com/record-92-of-travelers-choose-to-not-fly">92%</a>) of the public at large who opted-out of flying a day before Thanksgiving? I suppose they're all terrorists too, right? That's right. If you don't submit to being molested, raped, groped, and manhandled by the State, you must be a domestic terrorist.<br /><br />Whoopi and her pathetic thugs on the show -- including her mindless, zombie-like viewing audience who eats up the show in droves -- might as well label me a terrorist for simply refusing to fly because I don't want my nude pics of my corpulent body showing up on the Internet or saved on file or being fondled by a grotesque-looking TSA agent who would definitely get off on it.<br /><br />In any event, here's the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEYhGyLCZko">video clip of Goldberg and The View hosts' comments</a> that was put on Donnelly's <a href="http://www.youtube.com">YouTube</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/georgedonnelly">channel</a>:<br /><br /><object width="500" height="306"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/eEYhGyLCZko?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/eEYhGyLCZko?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="500" height="306"></embed></object>Todd Andrew Barnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326847219909577374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2966255816488656670.post-38616397749730134122010-11-21T16:16:00.001-08:002010-11-21T18:04:03.335-08:00R.I.P. David F. Nolan (1943-2010)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_4JIUGIqvFOI/TOnBIpYeZ1I/AAAAAAAAAWE/7ZSJ_VimxFs/s1600/David_Nolan.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 250px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_4JIUGIqvFOI/TOnBIpYeZ1I/AAAAAAAAAWE/7ZSJ_VimxFs/s400/David_Nolan.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5542173170747729746" /></a><br /><br />I was shocked and horrified to hear of the sudden demise of Libertarian Party founder <a href="http://www.facebook.com/dfnolan?ref=ts">David F. Nolan</a>, who passed away last night of "unknown causes," as reported by LP activist and medical marijuana advocate <a href="http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=620261954">Steve Kubby</a>, after having heard about it and confirmed it from Nolan's wife Elizabeth, on his Facebook wall. (Italian pro-Liberty activist <a href="http://www.facebook.com/dfnolan?ref=ts#!/Fusari.Luca">Luca Fusari</a> was the one who had heard about it and told me on Facebook but wasn't it was true or a joke. It is sadly true, as I have confirmed it from <a href="http://www.facebook.com/dfnolan?ref=ts#!/lidia.seebeck">Lidia Seebeck</a> and Kubby themselves.) <a href="http://www.facebook.com/thomaslknapp">Tom Knapp</a> has reported on <a href="http://www.independentpoliticalreport.com/2010/11/david-f-nolan-1943-2010/">IPR</a> and <a href="http://networkedblogs.com/aRidk">KN@PPSTER</a> it as well.<br /><br />Here's what Kubby wrote on his Facebook wall about an hour ago:<br /><br /><blockquote>Steve Kubby DAVID NOLAN R.I.P. - Libertarian Party Founder David F. Nolan died last night of unknown causes. I just spoke to Elizabeth Nolan who confirmed David's passing.</blockquote><br /><br />According to David Euchner (who also spoke with Elizabeth) on his FB wall:<br /><br /><blockquote>David Euchner<br />I just got off the phone with Elizabeth. David was feeling ill from valley fever and was driving to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription - a neighbor found him slumped over the wheel about a block from the house, off the road. He never re...gained consciousness.<br /><br />We usually go out for dinner and a beer for our birthdays this week, so this was not the news I was expecting when I saw his phone number appear.See More<br />15 minutes ago · Like</blockquote><br /><br />Nolan was an <a href="http://www.blogtalkradio.com/libertycaptalklive/2009/09/19/Episode-7-A-51-Minute-Interview-with-David-F-Nolan-The-912-DC-March-Drug-War-Insanity-Etc">interview guest in Episode 7</a> of <a href="http://www.blogtalkradio.com/libertycaptalklive">Liberty Cap Talk Live</a> with former panelist <a href="http://www.facebook.com/Typokitty?ref=ts">Jakki Smith</a>, pro-Liberty friend and panelist <a href="http://www.facebook.com/notifications.php#/profile.php?id=724367310&ref=ts">Virginia Tuckey</a>, <a href="http://www.bostontea.us">Boston Tea Party</a> member and former California BTP Chairman <a href="http://www.facebook.com/missjoy?ref=search&sid=848745704.2776195080..1">Joy Waymire</a>, and long-time libertarian movement activist <a href="http://geocities.com/freedonnow/">Donald Meinshausen</a> and my co-host Jim Landrith, Jr. on the show, which aired on September 8, 2009 on <a href="http://www.blogtalkradio.com">BlogTalkRadio.com</a>. He was on for a 51-minute interview on the show, which was a great interview that he had given because the panel, my co-host, and I asked him some great questions about the state of the LP, the race for LP Chair between Mark Hinkle and Wayne Allyn Root, and so on. Sadly, it remains as one of the last few interviews he gave before his untimely death. To me it's one of my favorite interviews of all time.<br /><br />According to Kubby, Nolan was being treated for early stages of prostate cancer<b>*</b>, as he was getting his lab and other medical tests, blood checked regularly, etc. Unfortunately, until more facts are discovered after an autopsy is done on him, the cause of his death will remain unknown. What's worse is that, according to Kubby and a couple of people with whom I spoke on the phone, Nolan's birthday is coming up this Tuesday.<br /><br />I can only imagine how his wife and family must be feeling right now. I wish them my condolences.<br /><br />I had the pleasure to know Dave a bit. I confess that I didn't know him THAT well, but he was for better or worse the most influential person not only to the activists in the LP and the libertarian movement, but also to me. He was the one who helped shaped my ideas and thinking as an ideological purist not only in the LP but also in the movement. He's had a profound impact on my life, for which I will never, ever be ungrateful.<br /><br />Soon there will be a tribute to Nolan by the members of both the Party and the movement. <br /><br />Dave, we love you and miss you. You are our light and our inspiration in our movement, which is still not a huge movement at all. But you contributed to the pavement of its evolution and its growth, which will be handed over to generations for posterity.<br /><br />You will be missed. Wherever you are, I hope you are at peace.<br /><br /><b>*Note:</b> Paulie Cannoli told me he died of pancreatic cancer, but I'll take Kubby's word at this point.<br /><br />[<b>Update:</b> Here's the video player for Dave's appearance on my show, dated October 8, 2009:]<br /><br /><img style="visibility:hidden;width:0px;height:0px;" border=0 width=0 height=0 src="http://counters.gigya.com/wildfire/IMP/CXNID=2000002.0NXC/bT*xJmx*PTEyOTAzODc4OTkxNDYmcHQ9MTI5MDM4NzkwMzI4NyZwPTQ1MDk3MiZkPUhvc3RJRCUzYSUyMDE4NjMmZz*yJm89MTc*/ZGE5NmJjNmIyNDU1OWExMDJlNDIwMWExNGRjNWImb2Y9MA==.gif" /><object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.adobe.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0" name="btr" width="300" height="266" id="btr"><param name="movie" value="http://www.blogtalkradio.com/btrplayer.swf?file=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eblogtalkradio%2Ecom%2Fplaylist%2Easpx%3Fshow%5Fid%3D662246&autostart=true&bufferlength=5&volume=80&borderweight=1&bordercolor=#999999&backgroundcolor=#FFFFFF&dashboardcolor=#0098CB&textcolor=#F0F0F0&detailscolor=#FFFFFF&playlistcolor=#999999&playlisthovercolor=#333333&cornerradius=10&callback=http://www.blogtalkradio.com/FlashPlayerCallback.aspx?referrer_url=/show.aspx&C1=7&C2=6042973&C3=31&C4=&C5=&C6=&hostname=LibertyCapTalkLive&hosturl=http://www.blogtalkradio.com/libertycaptalklive" /><param name="quality" value="high" /><param name="wmode" value="transparent" /><param name="menu" value="false" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><embed src="http://www.blogtalkradio.com/btrplayer.swf?file=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eblogtalkradio%2Ecom%2Fplaylist%2Easpx%3Fshow%5Fid%3D662246&autostart=true&bufferlength=5&volume=80&borderweight=1&bordercolor=#999999&backgroundcolor=#FFFFFF&dashboardcolor=#0098CB&textcolor=#F0F0F0&detailscolor=#FFFFFF&playlistcolor=#999999&playlisthovercolor=#333333&cornerradius=10&callback=http://www.blogtalkradio.com/FlashPlayerCallback.aspx?referrer_url=/show.aspx&C1=7&C2=6042973&C3=31&C4=&C5=&C6=&hostname=LibertyCapTalkLive&hosturl=http://www.blogtalkradio.com/libertycaptalklive" width="300" height="266" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" menu="false" allowScriptAccess="always" name="btr" FlashVars="gig_lt=1290387899146&gig_pt=1290387903287&gig_g=2"></embed> <param name="FlashVars" value="gig_lt=1290387899146&gig_pt=1290387903287&gig_g=2" /></object><div style="font-size: 10px;text-align: center; width:300px;">Listen to <a href="http://www.blogtalkradio.com/">internet radio</a> with <a href="http://www.blogtalkradio.com/libertycaptalklive">LibertyCapTalkLive</a> on Blog Talk Radio</div><br /><br />[<b>Update II:</b> I forgot to mention that Dave was 66 at the time of his death. This Tuesday he would have been 67 years old. Still, what a young age to die in this day and age.]<br /><br />[<b>Update III:</b> I also forgot to mention that Dave was the creator of the <a href="http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz">Nolan Chart</a>, which is used by The Advocates for Self-Government. Again, thanks Dave!]Todd Andrew Barnetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326847219909577374noreply@blogger.com0