People Are Siding With Former Michigan Inmate-Turned-Mother Being Hounded by the State

Yesterday's report of a 53-year-old mother named Susan LeFevre (who assumed an identity as Marie Walsh) living in Santee, California who was arrested for fleeing the State of Michigan 32 years ago after having served time in the state for a year on a 20-year sentence for allegedly dealing heroin has been an outrage. It is an outrage because this woman has never aggressed against any individual, never committed theft, and never committed destruction of another individual's property.

The Saginaw-Area News noted the following:

LeFevre said she agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy and violation of drug laws in hopes of winning leniency, but received the maximum sentence of 10 to 20years.

Of course, since the reporting of this story, the public has increasingly swarmed to LeFevre's side, except that not everyone is sympathetic to her.

According to a piece in the Detroit Free Press:

If Susan Lefevre has managed to stay out of trouble in the 32 years since her escape from a women's prison in Northville Township, that's proof she is rehabilitated and she should be freed, according to many Free Press readers who contacted the paper via e-mail, telephone or posted their views on freep.com.

'I just can't believe Michigan's going after her,' said John Paul, 58, of Plymouth. 'This woman has rehabilitated herself and saved the taxpayers money.'

Lefevre, 53, was sentenced to serve 10 to 20 years in prison in February 1975 after being convicted of conspiracy to violate drug laws and violation of drug laws. She escaped a year later.

According to the U.S. Marshals Service, Lefevre had been living what appeared to be a law-abiding life under the name Marie Walsh as a married mother of three in California.

Subhash Kapur, 60, of Bloomfield Hills said he was so upset by the Lefevre story that he wrote a letter to Gov. Jennifer Granholm asking that Lefevre be pardoned.

'I was just very, very disturbed about it,' he said. 'I never wrote a letter to anybody, but this really bothered me.'

While I am pleased that many of the people who followed up on the story urged Governor Granholm to pardon Susan LeFevre, it is still distressing that the collectivistic, vile, and heartless scumbags who happen to be the state law enforcement officials and bureaucrats want to lock this woman away for 20 years of her life, taking away the life that she has made for herself and her family. If she had remained in that hellhole they call the Detroit House of Corrections, she would have not lived through it because of its well-known violent, gang-populated prison environment.

This isn't done to show that she "made a horrible mistake" or show that she "committed a horrible, evil crime." This is all done to make an example of a woman, just to send a message to all of us that we all must be herded like cattle so that the state can rule over us anytime, any day of the week.

That's what this evil is all about.

Ron Paul: 'Still Running'

By the way, CNN's Wolf Blitzer points out that Ron's new book A Revolution: A Manifesto is "already a major bestseller."

Border Patrol Agents Allow Some "Illegal Immigrants" Go....Again

The Border Patrol goons are allowing some "illegal immigrants" a.k.a. independent migrants go...again, thanks to a loophole in the federal government's War on Immigration.

Here's an excerpt of the USA Today piece on this story:

EL PASO — Josefa Gonzalez Loya has sneaked across the Mexican border at least 128 times in the past eight years. And each time, the Border Patrol has been nice enough to give her a lift home.

Gonzalez and a group of other women and children — all Indians from the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca — have no interest in staying in the United States. All they want to do is panhandle outside El Paso businesses, using the children as lures.

At the end of a productive day, they wait for the Border Patrol to come pick them up and drive them back to the border.

Little dramas like this play out day after day, accounting for thousands of arrests but hardly any prosecutions in the past several years.

The Oaxacan immigrants fall under a loophole that gives border agents discretion to keep some adults and children together and out of jail.

'They do qualify for jail and prosecution,' Border Patrol spokesman Ramiro Cordero said. 'However, we've got to look at the humanitarian factor first if we are going to have to separate the family.'

Fed to Ban Certain Credit Card Practices

The Fed is pushing for new government regulations on the credit card industry, regulations that would ban specific practices of the companies.

Here's a snippet of what the Washington Post piece on the ban:

If they are instituted, they would constitute the most significant crackdown on the credit card industry in decades. The rules would, among other things, specify when card issuers can increase interest rates on existing balances, ban finance charges on balances that have been repaid, and prohibit late fees on customers who were not given a reasonable amount of time to pay.

Consumers have long complained about such practices. The Fed responded last year with a proposal, still under consideration, to require card companies to improve disclosure forms.

Wait a second here! Didn't the Federal Reserve, with the passage of laws such as the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the Truth in Lending Act, and the Fair Credit Billing Act, help usher in the credit card industry with its expansionist pool of credit in the economy? Weren't these regulations supposed to control what credit card companies can charge via interest rates, the waiting period of consumers submitting in their credit card payments, etc.? Didn't the credit card consumers read the fine print before they signed up with the firms?

These companies are a creation of the Fed and have nothing to do with the free market. The Fed and the card companies have been in collusion for years as far as what the card companies can do with regards to charging their customers, boosting the interest rates (which are tacked onto the Fed's subprime rate) to high levels (partly because of federal intervention in the credit and housing markets and partly because of credit risks, not to mention bad decision making between the credit card companies and the credit cardholders).

These new regulations will do more harm than good, simply because they will encourage more credit risks consumers who lag behind on their payments to become more irresponsible with their spending and payment habits and unfairly penalize consumers with excellent credit.

As one paragraph in the Washington Post piece correctly noted:

Edward L. Yingling, president and chief executive of the American Bankers Association, said the rules would restrict the ability of card companies to charge interest rates that reflect the risks of different customers, thus forcing them to raise rates on everyone, even those with good credit.

If anything, why doesn't the government get out of the money-printing and credit card business and allow private decisions be handled more effectively between the customers and the card companies? Wouldn't that be far more worth it than a bunch of never-ending regulations that are designed to fix the old regulations that failed? After all, won't the new regulations end up failing too in the long term as well?

My Endorsement of Mary Ruwart Posted on Her Campaign Website

My official endorsement of LP presidential candidate Mary Ruwart is now posted on her campaign site. I sent it in to the campaign late last night, and lo and behold -- it was featured on the site here and here.

Here's what the endorsement says on the site:

Mary Ruwart's the best choice for the LP presidential nomination. She's very honest, extremely consistent, and immensely principled. She's the libertarian Hillary Clinton, except she supports freedom completely, whereas Hillary doesn't. Equally important, her book Healing Our World In An Age of Aggression has inspired my ideas and views on human liberty. I wish there were more people like her. Honestly.

Todd Andrew Barnett, Talk Show Host of Liberty Cap Talk Live on NowLive.com, Online Columnist, and Creator of the Let Liberty Ring Blog

Free Talk Live's Ian Bernard Responds to His Collectivistic LP Sycophants

Ian Bernard, the main host of Free Talk Live on the Genesis Communications Network, shrugs off the criticisms aimed at him for his recent decision to revoke his life membership with the LP. He even announced his revocation of his membership on the show on Monday.

The time index for the announcement on his show is at 19:50. Here's the link to Monday's show.

On the criticisms fired at him, he said that he went to read the Third Party Watch blog and noticed a good portion of the comments attacking him. I'm paraphrasing here, but he said: "I'm sorry, but I'm trying to live my life. How am I hurting the Party by leaving it?"

He also pointed out that there are political organizations in New Hampshire that are advancing liberty far more than the LP has (groups like the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance, for one). After all, Ian has pointed out that the LP has been battling over bylaws and platform points at its own meetings, which he believed were terribly boring. I can't say I blame him.

The Free State Project and the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance have done more for liberty in our lifetime than the Libertarian Party ever will in its 30-year history.

At least Ian mentioned the New Hampshire Libertarian Party, which does its occasional gun raffles (Mark Edge, his co-host, has said he's participated in it).

UPDATE:You can hear Ian's comments on the criticisms aimed at him beginning at 46:37 of the show from last night.

NJ Considers "Sin Tax" on Fast Food

Busybodies in the New Jersey legislature are pondering over a proposal to enact a "sin tax" on fast food, because the state's hospitals are allegedly bleeding funds.

New Jersey Democratic Governor John Corzine said that the tax "could be an option to help struggling hospitals." Corzine called the idea "a constructive suggestion." Yeah, right. Translation: needed government control.

A spokesman for Corzine went on record with the New Jersey press with the following:

'The governor is open to reasonable solutions to help solve our financing problems, but there are no plans for any fast food tax.'

One Republican state legislator, Sen. Richard Codey, likens it to "a tax on the poor." I couldn't agree more.

Rather than pushing for a "sin tax," these evil collectivists need to leave these people alone and the legislature as well. That even goes for all the state legislatures and Congress as well. We don't need these people controlling our lives 24/7.

These statist actions prove my point: government is a bane, not a boon, in our lives. We need a real free market once and for all.

Michigan Man Arrested for Inadvertently Giving Alcoholic Beverage to His Seven-Year-Old Son

An Ann Arbor man, who took his 7-year-old son to see a Detroit Tigers game in Comerica Park in downtown Detroit, was questioned by a security guard. Why? Because the father inadvertently purchased a $7 Mike's Hard Lemonade bottle at a concession stand for his son who sipped it.

It wasn't until at the top of the ninth inning that the dad was stopped by the guard. The guard then went on to grab the bottle from the man at the same time the dad was trying to look at the bottle and the boy was taken away to the park's medical clinic. Within two days, the kid was taken into custody by the state and, within a week after he was arrested for purchasing the drink for his son, the father was allowed to move back into his home.

Although the boy was feeling ill and the state officials believed that the boy's nausea was caused by the drink (which actually contains 5 percent of alcohol in it), a blood test later revealed that there was no trace of alcohol in the boy's system.

Here's an excerpt of the article that will get everyone's blood boiling:

DETROIT (AP) — A son's thirst and a father's oversight at the ballpark turned an otherwise fun outing into an ordeal for one family.

Christopher Ratte of Ann Arbor recently took his 7-year-old son, Leo, to a Detroit Tigers game and stopped at a Comerica Park concession stand to buy him some lemonade. But it wasn't until the top of the ninth inning, when a security guard asked the University of Michigan classical archaeology professor about the bottle in his son's hand, that Ratte learned what puts the hard in Mike's Hard Lemonade.

'I'd never drunk it, never purchased it, never heard of it,' Christopher Ratte told Detroit Free Press columnist Brian Dickerson for a story published Monday.

Ratte said he told the guard he had no idea that the $7 lemonade contained alcohol. But when he tried to look at the bottle, the security guard snatched it — and his son was taken to a ballpark's medical clinic. The mistake three weeks ago began a two-day stay for Leo in state custody and nearly a week before his father would be able to move back into his home.

Leo was taken by ambulance to Detroit's Children Hospital because clinic officials said he reported feeling a little nauseated after drinking about 12 ounces of the drink with a 5 percent alcohol content. But a blood sample taken at the hospital detected no trace of it.

Ratte said the workers from the state's Child Protective Services unit told him that day the intervention was unnecessary but they were just following orders.

Child protection officials cannot by law discuss a specific investigation. But Mike Patterson, Child and Family Services director for the Wayne County district that includes Comerica Park, said his agency's discretion is limited once police obtain a court order to remove a child from the home.

The boy will most likely be traumatized after being separated from his father, who merely committed an innocent mistake which led to this monstruous mess.

Chrysler's Bob Nardelli: 'High Gas Prices Are Needed to Sell Fuel-Efficient Cars'

Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli went on record today with the Detroit Free Press, saying that Clinton and McCain's push to suspend the 18.4 cents federal excise gasoline tax is wrongheaded. Why? Because, as Nardelli, in a misguided fashion, believes, high energy prices are needed to sell fuel-efficient cars.

The Free Press interview began with and reported the following:

Automotive industry leaders have begun to speak out firmly against a proposal, being promoted by senators John McCain and Hillary Clinton, to suspend the 18.4 cents a gallon federal excise tax on gasoline.

The U.S. presidential hopefuls say it will ease the financial pain for Americans paying nearly $4 a gallon for regular gas, on top of an economy ravaged by a housing and credit crisis, and mounting food prices.

But Chrysler LLC CEO Bob Nardelli, AutoNation CEO Mike Jackson and others say that the nation needs the high gas prices to encourage consumers to buy more fuel-efficient vehicles — which the federal government has mandated automakers build — as well as make other decisions that are responsible for the world at large.

'You have to have alignment,' Jim Press, the former Toyota Motor Corp. executive who now serves as a Chrysler president and vice chairman, said during a meeting this morning among Chrysler’s top leaders and Free Press writers and editors.

A day earlier, Jackson, the nation’s largest dealer with 321 dealerships and a longtime critic of the nation’s deficient energy policy, told the Free Press that suspending the gas tax demonstrated 'zero intellectual honesty' and gave Americans 'confusing signals' about energy consumption.

While I'm for relieving American drivers of regressive gasoline taxes (I'm more for repealing the gasoline taxes, but that's another story for another day), I think "suspending" the federal gasoline tax is just a shell game. How about repealing the government's involvement in the energy sector as well as the entire private sector? How about repealing all sorts of taxes, regulations, and unconstitutional spending that have helped kill this economy?

As for Nardelli, he's opposed to suspending this gas tax because it subsidizes the production, distribution, and sale of the "fuel-efficient" vehicles that are not as popular to the American public as they are made out to be. After all, since most Americans are not buying "fuel efficient" cars, what does that say to Nardelli and his precious "fuel efficient" automotive line (which happens to be hybrids, which are a rip-off anyway)?

The marriage between the automotive companies and state is a bizarre one, and it's one that needs a divorce sooner rather than later.

D.C. Madam Offs Herself in Florida

Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the infamous "D.C. Madam" who was tried and then convicted two weeks ago of her up-scale illegal prostitution business, has reportedly committed suicide in a coastal town in the State of Florida.

It's interesting to note that Palfrey eerily predicted that she would "be suicided" on the Alex Jones Show, which proves, once and for all, that she meant business when she said she would kill herself.

It's not a surprise that she would do this, especially within a year later after being sentenced to approximately 55 years for operating a government-alleged prostitution ring.

The idea that the state MUST make prostitution illegal, especially when the transactions between the two parties happen to be voluntary and beneficial to them, is preposterous to the Nth degree. There are no victims when these transactions occur, so where's the crime? Therefore, laws prohibiting prostitution should be repealed.

Ron Paul's A Revolution: A Manifesto Is #1 on Amazon.com

Ron Paul's new book A Revolution: A Manifesto, the much-touted, long-awaited book for Paul supporters which is a bible of human liberty (advocating economic and personal liberties and an end to our foreign policy of interventionism), is now #1 on Amazon.com.

I ordered my copy from the site and went with one-day shipping and I got it yesterday. I've been salivating at reading it, so I've finally gotten it and I am immensely enjoying it.

I'll provide a review of the book sometime this weekend.

Mary Ruwart Responds to False, Libelous Accusations of Being Pro-Child Porn Against Her

Mary Ruwart, according to her website today, issued an address regarding the false, libelous statements of advocating child pornography made against her at the Indiana Libertarian Party Convention in Indianapolis on April 26.

According to Third Party Watch and Dr. Ruwart's campaign site, the Mary Ruwart for President Committee released the following statement:

Dr. Mary Ruwart reiterated her position on child pornography during a two-part Presidential Candidate Forum at the Indiana Libertarian State Convention April 26. Each candidate was given one minute to respond to each question. Candidates also had three minutes for a closing statement at either the afternoon or evening session.

'Children forced to participate in sexual acts have the same rights and recourse as any rape victim,' Dr. Ruwart said in response to a question on child pornography during the afternoon session. 'We can, and should, prosecute their oppressors.

'But bans on child pornography are like bans on drugs and prostitution. They don’t work. They only make a bad situation worse. We’ve driven the child pornography market underground, where profits soar and criminals abound. That’s why thousands of children are kidnapped each year and forced into sexual slavery.

'In states where prostitution has been banned, prostitutes have no recourse if they are exploited or abused. In Nevada, where prostitution is legal, exploitation and abuse are limited.

'We can limit abuse of children in the child pornography trade by ending its prohibition. We can’t end child pornography any more than we can end prostitution, gambling, or drug use. Utopia is not an option, but liberty does make a bad situation a bit better.'

Because time for answering the question was so brief, Dr. Ruwart did not elaborate on how predators would be prosecuted without legislation specifying age of consent. In other discussion, she explained to delegates that courts were likely to consider that pre-pubescent children had been coerced, since desire would be absent. The burden of proof would be on the pornography producer or older sex partner to show that coercion, e.g. rape, had not occurred.

With older teens, the burden of proof would likely be to show that coercion had occurred. A number of 17 and 18 year old teens have been convicted of statutory rape and labeled as a sex offenders for having relations with slightly younger females, even if they lived with them or later married. 'Some teens are quite capable of choosing a mate. Why punish them for life because they are mature for their age?' she asked.

'Coercion with children coming into puberty (junior high school students) are more likely to be considered on a case-by-case basis by the courts,' Dr. Ruwart explained. 'Junior high students often have consensual sex, even though society frowns upon it.

'Doing away with age-of-consent laws means that fewer teens will be unjustly convicted and sentenced to a life with a 'sex offender' label,' Ruwart told her listeners. 'Liberty protects our children, both from coercion and injustice.'

In his answer to the same question, Wayne Allyn Root's campaign manager claimed Dr. Ruwart said 'pedophilia is OK' in her book 'Short Answers to Tough Questions.' Mark Schreiber said he paid $100 to have the book shipped overnight to him and that it contained that phrase and the words 'a contract exists.'

He also repeated the call, posted on Mr. Root's website, for Dr. Ruwart to withdraw from the presidential race.

Dr. Ruwart then used the three minutes she was planning to reserve for the evening session to answer this false accusation. She pointed to copies of 'Short Answers' and invited convention attendees to read page 43 to prove to themselves those phrases do not appear.

'I've been very disappointed in my dear colleague, Mr. Root, who just last week, at the Washington LP presidential forum publicly declared that I would be his preferred vice presidential running mate should he prevail in Denver,' she told Indiana Libertarians. 'Yet, when he found something objectionable in my writings, he did not call or write for further explanation, he simply condemned me.

'This is particularly disheartening because Mr. Root himself was accused of misrepresenting the facts in the Ohio Libertarian Convention forum. He came to me and asked me not to condemn him as a liar until I heard his side of the story. I told him -- even before hearing his side -- that it had never crossed my mind to think him guilty of any impropriety.

'I'm sorry that he did not give me the same consideration he wanted for himself.

'Mr. Root owes me no apology. He simply made a mistake, the kind of mistake neophytes make when they are new to the Party and new to Libertarian campaigns.

'This is why, when choosing your presidential nominee, I suggest you choose someone experienced in libertarian campaigns. This is why, when choosing your presidential nominee, remember this person will be looked to as a leader for years to come.

'Do you want a leader who condemns without consideration? Do you want a leader who will perpetuate the in-fighting that has crippled the LP for so long, or someone who can unify diverse factions and encourage them to pull as a team?

'We are selecting more than a presidential nominee in May; we are choosing the person whose example we want to follow. Choose wisely for you are choosing the Libertarian Party's future.'

I hope Root is paying attention to this release, considering that his attacks have galvanized Libertarians to give a great deal of support to Ruwart and helped many purists to put him in their political crosshairs.

If anything, Root's juvenile attacks on Ruwart and his half-baked denial of calling for her to drop out of the race will only serve to destroy his campaign and not help him.

Wayne Allyn Root Denies Calling for Mary Ruwart to Drop Out of LP Race

Libertarian Party presidential hopeful Wayne Allyn Root denies that he called for fellow party presidential contender Mary Ruwart to exit the LP presidential race over her alleged "I'm-for-child-porn" answer to one of the questions posited to her in her Short Answers to the Tough Questions book.

In his response to the charge of attacking a fellow LP presidential candidate, Root, in his own defense, replied:

Root wanted to clear the record on one thing: He did not demand that Mary Ruwart exit the race after some people dug up an apparent defense of child porn from one of her books. 'I was 10,000 feet in the air,' Root explains, 'on my way to the New York Libertarian convention. We were asked for a response and my campaign manager made incredibly bone-headed mistake.' So, Root isn't asking Ruwart to quit the race. He just wants to defeat her.

Of course, this is also the same Root who believes LP presidential contender Bob Barr is "too scared to debate me." Really? If that's the case, Wayne, with whom are you "too scared" to debate?

As for his cockameemie rejoinder to the charge regarding his swipe at Ruwart, he must be a moron if he had no idea his manager was going to make an "incredibly bone-headed mistake." If that's the case, prove it, Root.

If it's true, why hasn't he fired his campaign manager Mark Schreiber who echoed the same call to Mary?

What a loser, not to mention a hypocrite.

Let Us Welcome Stephan Kinsella to Let Liberty Ring

Stephan Kinsella is our new blogger on the site here. I added him to the blog as he would provide excellent pro-liberty insights on the state's excessive abuses of power. His insights on intellectual property rights (which is a subject that happens to be his area of expertise) will be a valuable tool to everyone on the blog here.

Congrats on your blog!

Welcome to the 21st Century, Todd!