The Humble Libertarian original

This would be hilarious were it not so utterly pathetic. When it comes to government spending, there are absolute no restraints. With the government running a $1.2 trillion deficit this fiscal year, $18 million is chump change. Taxpayers are the chumps. There are more stories like this than any news service can track...There is a federal website called www.recovery.gov. It tracks the money that Obama’s stimulus spent: over $750 billion. The Administration redesigned this site. It will cost money to run it. How much money? $18 million. Now, that’s a stimulus!..I went to www.Alexa.com. It ranks sites in terms of traffic. I typed in www.Recovery.gov. I learned that the site is ranked in the top 151,400 worldwide. It is ranked 65,500 in the USA. For comparison, Google is ranked #1. This site, www.TeaPartyEconomist.com, is ranked 83,200 worldwide and 15,500 in the USA. It has been online for about five months. It uses WordPress.org’s software, which is free. It uses a few plug-i...

There's been a big push in the US to get the FDA to label GMO foods; consumers may feel that they have a right to know precisely what they are eating but the government and Congress say NO, we don't have that right. In a display of utter arrogance, the FDA just erased from it's website a million signatures and comments on this issue. While the Food and Drug Administration has seemingly reached the limit for unbelievable behavior, the agency’s decisions continue to astound and appall consumers and health activists alike. In the agency’s latest decision, undoubtedly amazing thousands of individuals yet again, the FDA virtually erased 1 million signatures and comments on the ‘Just Label It’ campaign calling for the labeling of genetically modified foods. Read the rest here BlacklistedNews.com

Very disturbing story and video on how the cops abuse and harass citizens for no reason. Police State USA is definitely a reality that strikes with alarmingly frequency. Last December, filmmaker Terrance Huff and his friend Jon Seaton were returning to Ohio after attending a "Star Trek" convention in St. Louis. As they passed through a small town in Illinois, a police officer, Michael Reichert, pulled Huff's red PT Cruiser over to the side of the road, allegedly for an unsafe lane change. Over the next hour, Reichert interrogated the two men, employing a variety of police tactics civil rights attorneys say were aimed at tricking them into giving up their Fourth Amendment rights. Reichert conducted a sweep of Huff's car with a K-9 dog, then searched Huff's car by hand. Ultimately, he sent Huff and Seaton on their way with a warning. Earlier this month, Huff posted to YouTube audio and video footage of the stop taken from Reichert's dashboard camera. No ...

As Agenda 21 gets globally implemented and as more and more land is decreed off limits to human activities (living, farming etc.), it's created a flood of conservation refugees, folks who became homeless and landless when they were evicted in the name of environmentalism. Between 1900 and 1950 about 600 wilderness parks were created worldwide. 400 were added in the 1950s. Today there are 110,000 such parks. 12% of Earth’s land is now conservationist controlled. This is an area larger than Africa. This is an area equal to half of humanity’s farmland... The global tally of conservation refugees is somewhere between 5 and 20 million. Dowie estimates 10 million. One scholar estimates 14 million conservation refugees in Africa alone. The topic of conservation refugees has been assiduously neglected... Read the rest here JunkScience.com 

Ever wonder what fruits and vegetables are most likely to be doused in Dow Chemical and other undisclosed chemical pesticides, herbicides and fertilizer? Much of the produce that is sold today in supermarkets is supplied from farmers who practice conventional farming methods. In other words, the produce has been grown using chemical fertilizers as well as pesticides and herbicides. Many scientific studies suggest that the effects of synthetic pesticides can be detrimental to our health; one study suggests that the consumption of pesticides may lead to ADHD in children; in some other cases, exposure can lead to many forms of cancers, infertility problems and birth defects. Read the rest here GreenMedInfo.com

Ron Paul really got stiffed at the North Dakota GOP Convention that selected the delegates to the national convention. The results of the ND Caucus (straw poll) were as follows: Santorum 39.7%, Ron Paul 28.1%, Romney 23.7% and Gingrich 8.5%. So how did the delegates end up being divided at the ND State Convention? Romney got 60% of the delegates.  Ron Paul only got a few. ...on caucus night, Rick Santorum cleaned the state up by a significant margin with Ron Paul taking second and Mitt Romney taking third. But it didn’t seem that anyone remembered that when picking the state’s delegates, because I’m told that despite finishing third in statewide voting, Mitt Romney was allotted 60% of the delegates. Rick Santorum got the second most delegates, and Ron Paul was given just a couple. Not surprisingly, Santorum and Paul supporters aren’t happy.. Read the rest here SayAnythingBlog.com 

The U.S. may be certifiably insane but why do foreign nations continue to cooperate with the CIA and military? In many ways American couldn't possibly have grown into the menacing monster that we have become without the support and approval of other nations. The folks in foreign nations must rise up against their governments and demand that they and toss the U.S. military and CIA out of their nations. For years, the notion that Poland could allow the CIA to operate a secret prison in a remote lake region was treated as a crackpot idea by the country's politicians, journalists and the public. A heated political debate this week reveals how dramatically the narrative has changed. In a string of revelations and political statements, Polish leaders have come closer than ever to acknowledging that the United States ran a secret interrogation facility for terror suspects in 2002 and 2003 in the Eastern European country. Some officials recall the fear that prevailed after t...

Some may perceive this to just be a misplaced "Tinfoil Tuesday" piece of paranoia but in case you haven't noticed, we are increasingly, (and almost covertly) becoming a police-state in the U.S. If you disagree, please be my guest to continue watching American Idol and being content with willful ignorance. Wes and I discussed on last night's episode , the influence of libertarian art and how we're steadily entering an Orwellian world of totalitarianism; but I don't believe we even foresaw how quickly this is occurring. Thoughtcriminals beware, a dystopia may be coming to a town near you. On Monday, April 2, the leaders of the United States, Mexico, and Canada will meet at what is billed as the North American Leaders Summit. Here is the agenda, as posted on the website of the White House. 'On April 2, 2012, President Obama will host Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada and President Felipe Calderon of Mexico for the North American Leaders' Summit ...

Fear is the mothers milk of government because keeping folks in a state of perpetual fear is strategy that works and compels folks to sacrifice their liberty. When folks start to recognize that they've been duped, government will just launch another false flag attack to reignite the fear that causes folks to go begging to the government "protect me, I'll submit to whatever you want". The UK Telegraph is reporting that "Al-Qaeda fighters have returned to Afghanistan and will use the country as a base to launch September 11-style attacks on Western cities." This gem has been launched – like a lead balloon – by the American ambassador to Kabul, Ryan Crocker. The Afghan war is simply not going well for the US and NATO and the rhetoric seems increasingly self-serving. The idea, apparently, at the State Department is that support for the war can be increased by reminding Americans they're at risk. But after a decade of war and a trillion dollars in mi...

Is the U.S. government attempting to blast America back to the Stone Age? With the country focused on this week’s high drama at the Supreme Court, President Obama’s EPA quietly released long-delayed regulations to apply global warming rules never authorized by Congress to new coal-fired power plants. That Obama’s EPA would release a rule to destroy coal-fired electricity while the president gives stump speeches about an “all of the above” energy policy is an insult to the American people. This rule will effectively block any new coal-fired power plants from being built in America, and a second round of related rules – expected after the election, of course – will shut down existing coal-fired power plants. The result will be steeply higher electricity prices, lost jobs, and lower standards of living. Remarkably, this is all done in the name of global warming, but even EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson admits it will have no discernible impact on global temperatures. Obama’s EPA is...

The emerging underground economy is a survival ticket that enables folks to operate independent of the government and avoid its plundering noose. The government understands this and seeks to abolish all currency and make every possible transaction traceable. Timothy Geithner, the Secretary of the Treasury, wants to get rid of paper money. He says it’s part of a cost-cutting measure. Nonsense. It’s part of the government’s attempt to track our purchases. Its a plan to get rid of the underground economy, where people buy what they want, sell what they want, and leave no digital trail. The government cannot control the cash markets. It wants to tax them. But paper money resists taxation. Read the rest here The Tea Party Economist 

WOW! Reject globaloney and stand accused of being mentally ill - in fact, so mentally ill that such a sickness is the equivalent of promoting racism and slavery. Scepticism regarding the need for immediate and massive action against carbon emissions is a sickness of societies and individuals which needs to be "treated", according to an Oregon-based professor of "sociology and environmental studies". Professor Kari Norgaard compares the struggle against climate scepticism to that against racism and slavery in the US South. Read the rest here The Register 

As the irrelevant primary beauty contests continue, the real battle for delegates begins. Everybody will be cutting deals to weaken their opponents. Keeping front runner Romney from getting closer to 1144 is the goal. Mitt Romney won the straw poll at Washington’s precinct caucuses March 3, but the fight over who will claim the state’s 43 delegates to the Republican national convention is ongoing. The latest twist: Rick Santorum’s campaign is teaming up with Ron Paul supporters in an effort to deny Romney delegates, apparently at the direction of Santorum himself. The strategy has alarmed some top GOP officials who fear it will crack party unity and lead to a nasty scene at the state convention in a couple months. It has also angered some grassroots Santorum supporters. In an email to Santorum supporters Thursday, state volunteer coordinator Graden Neal laid out the plan: “Last night, the Washington State Rick Santorum leadership had a conference call with a special guest, ...

Rand Paul fighting corporate welfare! “So I would say we have to ask some questions. Should we be dispensing loans based on political favoritism? Should it matter if you’re a big contributor to the President? Should that matter getting a loan? Now I think that ought to be illegal, if it’s not immoral, it ought to be—it is immoral, it ought to be illegal.” – Rand Paul Read the rest here AgainstCronyCapitalism.org 

Since 9/11 the cost of the War on Terror has been estimated at $4 trillion by one blogger analyst. The cost of the global war on terror since the attacks of 9/11? Almost $4 trillion. That’s almost half of what the U.S. has added in debt since 2001...The chronic exaggeration of U.S. national security threats also extends to the security of individual Americans. Since 9/11, a total of 238 American citizens have died from terrorist attacks, or an average of 29 per year. To put that in some perspective, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the average American is as likely to be crushed to death by televisions or furniture as they are to be killed by a terrorist. A recent study from Duke University found that, since 9/11, eleven Muslim Americans were involved in active terrorist plots in the United States, which killed thirty-three Americans. Over that same time period, there have been nearly 150,000 murders and over 300,000 suicides....o should we declare war on p...

Hilarious. Europe is swimming with powerful public sector unions. In Italy the government is attempting a privatization reform in the healthcare industry by allowing the licensing of 5,000 new private sector pharmacies. But the public sector pharmacists are screaming, they don't want competition so they are going to withhold Viagra in a nation where the drug is very popular. Hospital pharmacists are threatening to cut Italians off from their Viagra unless the government amends its plans to reform professions that have high entry barriers...One group protested Thursday outside Parliament under the banner "No Viagra, No Party."...Hospital pharmacists, part of Italy's public health care system, say Premier Mario Monti's economic liberalization plan is unfair because it gives private pharmacists preference for new licenses. The reform calls for opening 5,000 new pharmacies. Read the rest here CBC News 

The government routinely interferes with our right to control our own bodies. The forced vaccination of babies/children has resulted in a dramatic rise in autism and in some state it's the law that children cannot attend school without proof of various vaccinations. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of children in the United States with autism has risen by 78 percent over the past decade. It is now estimated that 1 out of every 88 children in the United States has some form of autism disorder. Our schools are absolutely packed with "special needs" children and millions of parents are desperately trying to figure out why so many kids are having such severe developmental problems. Strangely, most autistic children start out perfectly normal. Most of them develop just fine for the first year or two and then something dramatic happens. So what could that possibly be? Well, there is a secret that you are not supposed to know. ...

Rick Santorum aka Frothy aka Sanitorium the Sanctimonious continues to make a spash even if it isn't likely that he can win the GOP nomination. If anything, his success show the considerable power of the so-called theocon-neocon faction within the GOP. Santorum is cleaning up with religious conservatives, has won the South and parts of the Mid-west and he's got more victories ahead. Of course, this doesn't bode well for the liberty activists within the party as Santorum's professed preference for immense government powers, statism and aggressive foreign interventionism directly conflict with the Constitution and limited federal powers. If he remains in the race, Santorum will end up with the third or fourth most states ever won by a failed presidential candidate.Santorum has already won 11 state contests (counting the Missouri primary), and is poised to win many more should he stay in the race over the next 2+ months. In fact, Santorum's primary and caucus...

Is there really such a thing as emerging technology for a viable and cost effective alternative energy source to replace fossil fuels? Resource depletion, climate change and rising oil prices have led to large investments in renewable energy and new fossil fuel extraction techniques. However despite the positive headlines on solar, wind, and shale, all of these sectors are beset with problems that add to our uncertain energy future. We appear to be decades away from finding a renewable source that will help us avoid the impending energy crisis. Yet amongst this bleak outlook a relatively unknown Italian inventor could be about to spark an energy revolution? Andrea Rossi appears to have produced the first working “cold” fusion device, or low energy nuclear reaction (LENR), with his Energy Catalyser (E-Cat) machine; a technology previously declared impossible by the scientific community. The E-Cat machine could provide almost limitless, clean, cheap energy and could prove to be...

What's going on with shale natural gas? Derived from a controversial process known as fracking, it's 4 time more expensive to produce. Well this boom didn’t take long to go boom. The politicians and mega-corp CEOs like Aubrey McClendon promised riches and hundreds of thousands of jobs for the poor people in rural Pennsylvania. We didn’t need to tax them or put any safety regulations on their fracking. Natural gas is selling for $2.17 per MMBtu this morning. It costs approximately $8 per MMBtu to extract shale gas through fracking. Hmm. What do you think is going to happen? How about bankruptcies, writeoffs, massive losses, no new jobs, no new riches, and contaminated pools of fracking solution left behind for the fine people of rural PA...The “Penn State Report” as it came to be known, established the gas industry’s compact with the state. It created a shell within which the industry would not be taxed heavily and not taxed at all on the gas it extracted. In return, th...

Interesting viewpoint - lotteries are nothing more than a tax on the poor. At least the 'lotto tax' is a  voluntary tax. Now that the Mega Millions Jackpot has just hit a record $640 million, people, mostly those in the lower and middle classes, are coming out in droves and buying lottery tickets with hopes of striking it rich. After all, with $640 million one can even afford a few shares of Apple stock. Naturally, we wish the lucky winner all the (non-diluted) best. There is, however, a small problem here when one steps back from the Sino Forest trees. As ConvergEx' Nicholas Colas explains, "Lotteries essentially target and encourage lower-income individuals into a cycle that directly prevents them from improving their financial status and leverages their desire to escape poverty. Yes, that’s a bit harsh, and yes, people have the right to make their own decisions. Even bad ones...Lower-income demographics spend a much greater portion of their annual earnings ...

At least Spike Lee felt bad about his hothead Zimmerman tweet that threatened the safety of an elderly couple and he has agreed to a financial settlement. An elderly couple has reached a settlement with Spike Lee after the pair said they had to leave their Florida home after the director help spread a Twitter posting listing their address as that of the man who shot an unarmed teen. ... “He was really kind,” Elaine McClain said. “And when he called us, you could just tell he really felt bad about it. And it was just a slip, and I just know that he really, really has been concerned.” Sounds like that ended reasonably well. All I have to say about it is that Twitter is a dangerous thing. It’s so easy to fire off things in the heat of the moment that you will later come to regret in a big way. Blogging is risky for the same reason (this I know!), but boy, Twitter is toxic for hotheads... Read the rest here The American Conservative 

Sanctions are evil and only hurt the people living in the sanctioned nation by depriving them of necessary goods, medicines and the essentials of life. Sanctions kill. But the worst of Obama's policy is his commitment to sanction other nations who refuse to sanction Iran. The US doesn't care if global oil prices soar; heck, Obama's transportation czar said he wanted folks out of their cars and forced into public transportation. In any event, sanctioning our allies as well as the enemy du jure constitutes aggression on steroids and the ultimate in bullying. President Barack Obama said Friday he was plowing ahead with potential sanctions against countries that keep buying oil from Iran, including allies of the United States.. administration officials said that Obama is ready to slap sanctions on U.S. partners and that his action on Friday was another signal. Read the rest here The Washington Post 

The relationship between war and liberty may never be put more succinctly than Randolph Bourne's timeless quote, "War is the health of the state." For anyone concerned with the preservation of individual liberty, the state must always be viewed as a mortal enemy. As Mises put it, "government is the negation of liberty." What too many fail to understand however, particularly on the right is that war is not merely an aberration of government, it is the culmination of its very ethos: violent aggression. As it is the health of the state, it is likewise the eventual death of a free society. Should we choose to ignore this, we do so at our own peril. A free society is impossible under an empire. Even the most just war you can imagine is a disaster for liberty and prosperity, as Ludwig von Mises pointed out. An unjust war amounts to murder, mayhem, and mass destruction. And a perpetual state of war guarantees that liberty will never be achieved. James Madison said it...

Obamacare is two things 1. it's a whopper of a new tax and 2. it's a backdoor single payer system designed to force everyone into government healthcare by abolishing private health care. President Barack Obama’s signature health-care legislation, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), was sold to the public with the explicit promise that “if you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan.” ...These promises were not made lightly. Their chief function was to defuse the public opposition that had sunk the previous attempt at comprehensive health reform during the Clinton administration...Despite the president’s promise that “you can keep your own insurance,” key PPACA provisions are calculated to undermine the long-term viability of the private insurance market, by making existing coverage unaffordable or unavailable at any price. Indeed, while individuals may technically be allowed to keep their plans, that protection exists in name only. Read ...

What's really happening here is a bailout of bondholders. If folks don't pay their mortgages, they default, the bondholders can't get paid and might sue for fraud. Many if not most of mortgage backed securities sold were loaded with junk loans (walking defaults) despite having AAA ratings that elevate a security to nearly risk-free. Not satisfied with wasting close to $200 billion of taxpayer dollars bailing out holders of Fannie and Freddie Bonds (notably PIMCO and China), Geithner is back at it with another proposal sure to cost US taxpayers plenty if adopted. The proposal this time is for taxpayers to pick up 63% of the cost of mortgage principal reductions. Read the rest here Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis 

NDAA is a civil liberties night and while Obama issued a directive saying that it wouldn't apply to Americans, that hardly negates the draconian aspects of the law which can be enforced so long as it exists. Late last year Senate Armed Services Chairman senior member John McCain (R.-Ariz.) and Carl Levin (D-Mich) crafted a National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) addendum that outraged Americans and put the president on the spot. The bill, in part, called for allowing the indefinite detention of Americans with no due process whatsoever. After Obama capitulated and signed the bill into law January 1, we identified the additions everyone was freaking out about: Section 1021 of the NDAA allows the U.S. military to indefinitely detain, without due process, any person engaged in "hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners ... without trial until the end of hostilities." Section 1022 expressly states that the military will imprison anyone who is a...

Surprise, surprise! All that 'free' healthcare won't be so free after all. In fact, it will be very expensive and come with a whopper of a tax increase.  Oddly, the Republicans are finally reading a bill that they supported and attempted to pass in the 1990's. Senate Republican staffers continue to look though the 2010 health care reform law to see what’s in it, and their latest discovery is a massive $17 trillion funding gap. “The more we learn about the bill, the more we learn it is even more unaffordable than was suspected,” said Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the Republican’s budget chief in the Senate. “The bill has to be removed from the books because we don’t have the money,” he said. The hidden shortfall between new spending and new taxes was revealed just after Supreme Court justices grilled the law’s supporters about its compliance with the Constitution’s limits on government activity. If the court doesn’t strike down the law, it will force taxpayers fin...

Biden calls for a global minimum tax. Governments oppose tax competition because it greatly benefits low tax nations who aren't spending themselves into bankruptcy. Biden's logic is deeply flawed. Yes, capital is parking its butt in low tax nations but that's because the US has embarked on a policy to chase capital offshore. Congress has literally legislated low tax treatment for corporations who earn their profits offshore while taxing profits earned on US soil at higher rates. This has not only been going on for decades, it has resulted in decimating domestic manufacturing. Capital flows according to the laws of financial gravity and will always seek the most capital friendly abodes. "For years, American manufacturers have faced one of the highest tax rates in the world. We want to reduce that by over 20%. We want to drop the rate, particularly, for high-tech manufacturers like you, Mr. President, even further than the 20%," Vice President Joe Bide...

Are the Dems attempting to fire up more violence in the streets? The Congress Critter who wore a hoodie on the floor of the House of Representatives and was praised by Pelosi for his courage appears to have inspired violence in his own district. Former Black Panther Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL) made quite a fuss when he donned a "hoodie" during a speech in the U.S. House of Representatives until he was escorted out. At the time, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) "applauded his courage" for doing so. Meanwhile, back home in Rush's district, two men wearing hooded sweatshirts, or "hoodies," were the shooters in an incident that left one dead and five injured. In fact, during a span of six-hours Thursday night, 13 people were shot, leaving two dead in Chicago. It would seem it takes more courage to simply walk down the street in Rush's district than it does to wear a hooded sweatshirt in the House of Representatives by way of a stunt in a bizarre ...

A War on Cash? Under cover of its multiplicity of fabricated wars on drugs, terror, tax evasion, and organized crime, the US government has long been waging a hidden war on cash. One symptom of the war is that the largest denomination of US currency is the $100 note, whose ever-eroding purchasing power is far below the purchasing power of the €500 note. US currency used to be issued in denominations running up to $10,000 (including also $500; $1,000; $5,000 notes). There was even a $100,000 note issued for transactions among Federal Reserve banks. The United States stopped printing large denomination notes in 1945 and officially discontinued their issuance in 1969, when the Fed began removing them from circulation. Since then the largest currency note available to the general public has a face value of $100. But since 1969, the inflationary monetary policy of the Fed has caused the US dollar to depreciate by over 80 percent, so that a $100 note in 2010 possessed a purchasing powe...

The Man of Hope and Change failed to deliver. Obama is no different than Bush - just another wholly owned subsidiary of the military industrial complex, banksters and corporatist special interests. When you look back at Barack Obama’s 7-point victory over John McCain in 2008, think of a four-legged stool. Obama needed each leg to support his candidacy. One leg was independent voters (29 percent of the vote); they chose Obama over McCain by 8 percentage points, 52 percent to 44 percent. The second leg was young voters, ages 18-29 (18 percent of vote); they broke for Obama by 34 percentage points, 66 percent to 32 percent. The third leg was Latinos (9 percent); they favored Obama by 36 points, 67 percent to 31 percent. And, finally, African-Americans (18 percent) backed Obama by 91 percentage points, 95 percent to 4 percent....Let’s focus for now on just one leg of the stool, the young voters. Visit any college campus today, and you are likely to sense a lack of passion and energ...

While the Republican base demands a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between one man and one woman, the probability of passing such legislation is about zero. The probability that such an amendment would be ratified by 75% of the states is even more remote. It's just not going to happen, not now and not ever. Government at all levels just needs to get out of the marriage business and marriage should be nothing more than a private contract between consenting adults because natural rights include freedom of association and the right to contract. Just a few years ago, House Republicans were trying to etch their opposition of gay marriage into the Constitution. Now? They’re almost silent. It’s been one of the swiftest shifts in ideology and strategy for Republicans, as they’ve come nearly full circle on same-sex politics. What was once a front-and-center issue for rank-and-file Republicans — the subject of many hotly worded House and Senate floor speeches ...

In this seventh full episode of the back-from-the-dead Wes Messamore show , Wes Messamore and Drew Martin interview Pasha Roberts, a libertarian with a degree from MIT in financial engineering and a passion for animation. In addition to discussing the intersection of art and liberty, Wes and Drew will be interviewing Pasha about his upcoming 3D animated thriller romance movie: Silver Circle . Show runs from 5 - 7pm Central today (Friday, March 30), streaming live to your computer! Visit this page to tune in or to catch the archived podcast afterward if you miss the live show. We will be taking your calls ! Call in number is: (646) 716-4214. If you missed Wednesday's incredible and inspiring interview with Judy Morris, you can listen to the archived podcast of it here ! Wes Messamore , Editor in Chief, T H L Articles | Author's Page

The Divine Nine will meet today to start the decision making process that will decide the fate of Obamacare. While the rest of us have to wait until June, the justices of the Supreme Court will know the likely outcome of the historic health care case by the time they go home this weekend. After months of anticipation, thousands of pages of briefs and more than six hours of arguments, the justices will vote on the fate of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul in under an hour Friday morning. They will meet in a wood-paneled conference room on the court's main floor. No one else will be present. In the weeks after this meeting, individual votes can change. Even who wins can change, as the justices read each other's draft opinions and dissents. But Friday's vote, which each justice probably will record and many will keep for posterity, will be followed soon after by the assignment of a single justice to write a majority opinion, or in a case this complex, pe...

To reboot the economy American needs to abolish the corporate tax. Besides, there is no such thing as a corporate tax and a corporate tax is just an indirect consumer tax that drives up the cost of goods and services. Come Sunday, America finally has something to crow about in its economic war with China and Japan: It will have the highest jobs-killing corporate tax rate in the industrialized world. No, it’s not an April Fool’s joke. When Japan officially slashes its rate to 36.8 percent Sunday, America’s will be tops at 39.2 percent. President Obama has proposed a rate of 28 percent, but Republicans charge that it comes with $350 billion in new, off-setting taxes. The GOP is pushing for a cut to 25 percent, but the election year is getting in the way of any deal. The Business Roundtable has been pushing for a clean cut in corporate tax rates, claiming it would spur job growth and industrial reinvestment. They even cite a recent move by England to cut their tax rates from 28 ...

Watch the video below and comment in the threads to say whether you think Santorum almost said the N word and then quickly caught himself. Honestly, I think it's just a really, really funny coincidence as he stumbled over his words: Wes Messamore , Editor in Chief, T H L Articles | Author's Page

You would think Americans would have learned to heed Peter Schiff's advice at this point. After his staggering and controversial, (but accurate) predictions regarding the housing bubble, why would anyone ignore what this guy has to say? The opinion molders in D.C. may still balk at his warnings, but I think the increasing police-state and government intervention in the marketplace makes it clear the establishment is well aware of what is coming. Peter Schiff, the divisive investor and commentator that predicted the subprime/real-estate bubble, is forecasting a U.S. dollar and bond crisis over the next couple of years. Schiff blames intervened bond markets, where rates are artificially and excessively low, and expects the coming crisis to blow the 2008-9 financial crisis out of the water. There is little doubt that the Federal Reserve, with Chairman Ben Bernanke at the helm, is holding markets by the hand. Bernanke, himself a divisive figure, has done all he can to push inter...

By: Carl Wicklander “This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.” Thus spoke President Obama to outgoing Russian president Dimitri Medvedev near a hot mic. Predictably, all the usual suspects have struck a feigned, outraged pose when they overheard that a politician planned to do something political. The last Republican presidential candidate compared Putin’s Russia to the Soviet Union of Lenin and Stalin. The probable Republican presidential nominee regarded Russia as America’s #1 geopolitical foe . And Newt Gingrich classified Obama himself as “destructive of American interests.” But the hot mic incident was the unlikely spring board for a highly coveted endorsement . Yet it also tells us a lot about the endorser. Freshman Florida senator Marco Rubio has played his cards close to the vest throughout the primary process. When it came time for Florida’s primary on January 31, there had been three contests and three different winners. Rubio’s ...

The GOP is going to get so crushed in the general election if anybody but Ron Paul is the nominee. I'm so looking forward to it! A new CNN/Opinion Research poll finds President Obama with a double-digit lead over Mitt Romney, 54% to 43%. Said pollster Keating Holland: "President Obama currently wins majority support among groups that have been problematic for him in the past, including men, older voters, and suburbanites. He has a solid lead among independents as well." Obama's approval rating has also inched over the 50% mark for the first time since last May... Read the rest here Political Wire