The Humble Libertarian original

Over the weekend and into this week, I've been in the process of moving. I won't have Internet again 'til tomorrow (writing this on the fly in a public wifi spot. When the dust settles, content will flow again. In the meantime, this short story by Philip K. Dick was the basis for the Total Recall Films in 1990 and 2012. Enjoy: We Can Remember It For You Wholesale

By NASSER al-AWLAKI The New York Times SANA, Yemen — I LEARNED that my 16-year-old grandson, Abdulrahman — a United States citizen — had been killed by an American drone strike from news reports the morning after he died. The missile killed him, his teenage cousin and at least five other civilians on Oct. 14, 2011, while the boys were eating dinner at an open-air restaurant in southern Yemen. I visited the site later, once I was able to bear the pain of seeing where he sat in his final moments. Local residents told me his body was blown to pieces. They showed me the grave where they buried his remains. I stood over it, asking why my grandchild was dead. Nearly two years later, I still have no answers. The United States government has refused to explain why Abdulrahman was killed. It was not until May of this year that the Obama administration, in a supposed effort to be more transparent, publicly acknowledged what the world already knew — that it was responsible for his death.

An important video to watch: The Truth About George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin

Edward Snowden was nominated by a Swedish sociology professor for the Nobel Peace Prize: Russia Today - A Swedish sociology professor has nominated Edward Snowden for the Nobel Peace Prize. He says the NSA whistleblower could help “save the prize from the disrepute incurred by the hasty and ill-conceived decision” to give the 2009 award to Barack Obama. In his letter addressed to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Stefan Svallfors praised Snowden for his “heroic effort at great personal cost.” He stated that by revealing the existence and the scale of the US surveillance programs, Snowden showed “individuals can stand up for fundamental rights and freedoms.” ... But Kristian Berg Harpviken, senior researcher and deputy director at the International Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), told Interfax news agency that it is very unlikely that Snowden will become a Nobel Prize laureate. Harpviken said that all major deadlines have passed, meaning that Snowden will have very little

Here's a video I made: The battle for the mind of North America is being fought in the video arena. Help Ben Swann win that battle! Invest in Ben's Kickstarter here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/439668500/liberty-is-rising-truth-in-media-project-0 Ben's website: http://www.BenSwann.com Illustration by: http://www.meiskastarner.com/ Video and concept: http://www.humblelibertarian.com/ Voice-over: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videodrome Music: http://birthcontrolmusic.bandcamp.com/album/bcep2 ...no, I'm not saying 9-11 wasn't real. I'm saying the impact it had on most of you wasn't. I know you probably don't like that either.

Alana Goodman, the author of the Washington Free Beacon's hit piece against Rand Paul earlier this week ( my thoughts on it here ), favorably quoted a radical racist and terrorist leader in a 2008 article for the Massachusetts Daily Collegian. The piece, entitled "Bye George W. Bush, it's been Israel," was a letter of gushing praise for the outgoing Republican president. With the USA's own interests thrown in as an afterthought, Goodman clearly assesses George W. Bush's presidency as a glowing success for one reason: "In the past 60 years, no U.S. president has been a better friend to Israel. And for a country so desperately in need of friends, his assistance has been invaluable." Goodman's single most important criterion for the success of a US presidency is... how good it is for a single other country, not for the US. Not for the entire world. But the strangest part of a very strange article was near the end, where Goodman favorabl

Yes, wolves exist, but we shouldn't trust the boy who cries wolf with the responsibility of alerting us to the real ones. Yes, racists exist, but a racist these days is all too often really just a conservative winning an argument with a liberal. You've seen big government propagandists do it again and again. They will bend over backwards to assail defenders of liberty as racists on the basis of flimsy circumstantial evidence and rationally deficient arguments used to smear their targets by insinuation, false association, and outright fabrication. When the Tea Party was in full swing waving a million anti-tax signs across the nation, all too many of its critics jumped on any opportunity, no matter how ridiculous or outright fabricated, to cast the fiscal policy movement as a sinister bastion of racism. The NAACP passed a resolution in 2010 calling on the Tea Party to purge its ranks of racists or accept responsibility for them. The NAACP and its cheerleaders were heavy o

I recently saw a Facebook conversation about the July 4th video of the kid in Murfreesboro who was stopped by strangers with uniforms on. To my understanding, he was just peacefully going about his business, not acting suspicious, not causing a problem for anyone, but just lucklessly happened upon a checkpoint at which armed men in uniforms were canvassing anyone passing by. You can review the video here: Here's what I wrote in response to the conversation: I just read this entire thread. My thoughts might be a little different from everyone's thus far: I have 100% empathy for the kid being bullied in that video and 0% empathy for the bully. Though I do have to say I would recommend to anybody to be as deferential as possible in any police encounter for your own physical and legal protection. Not just to be nice as has been suggested above though. And not because it's no big deal to roll down your window because someone's a bully. I think bullying is a very

Like these folks. This is terrific:

No, not the victims, the rapists. Let's back up a second: "We're going to get familiar with your womanly parts." That's what Brandy Hamilton says Nathaniel Turner, a male police officer told her last year during a traffic stop when she and her friend were driving home from the beach. The officer found a small amount of marijuana in their car after stopping them for speeding and made them wait on the side of the road in their bikinis, without allowing them to put on their clothes, so Jennie Bui, a female officer could show up and perform a roadside cavity search. The traffic stop and the vaginal search were caught on the police cruiser's cameras. "She pretty much forced my legs open because I wouldn't even open my legs," Hamilton said. Her friend, Alexandria Ramble told her local news station, KXAN, "We were just assaulted in the worst way possible. We weren't asked could we be touched. It was just done to us. I'm just emba

This is an absolutely phenomenal interview between some sharp students at the University of Wisconsin and some pretty dim-witted NSA recruiters. Do yourself a favor and listen to this while following along on the written transcript at one of the students' blogs under the blog title, "The NSA Comes Recruiting." Can someone please fire David Gregory and give his job to Madiha Tahir, the journalism student that asked many of the questions and published the recording and transcript above?

From Wolfgang Gartner, Illmerica... Warning - graphic cartoon violence:

Two Brazoria County, TX women were pulled over for speeding. The cop did not give the women, who were in bikinis, a chance to put some clothes on before making them wait on the side of the highway for a female cop to show up and give them a body cavity search in the police cruiser on the side of the highway- because a small amount of marijuana was found in the car. Warning - graphic rape footage:

He doesn't mean any of it.

In response to this recent post and this recent comment , both regarding the state's role in protecting fetal humans (short version: the only thing I want the Washington regime to do to make the world a better place is go to hell), I've received the following comments asking me if I am an anarchist: Paul : Does this mean you've become a full out anarchist? March Hare : W. E. You have completely lost the plot here - unless you're going anarchist on us. There have been over 1 million abortions per year since 1973, if the role of government is to enforce the rights of people, and foetuses count as people, then it would be right and proper for the government to get seriously involved in [stopping] abortion. And, yes, forcing the rest of us to pay for said enforcement. Fortunately my own thoughts on the subject are not subject to anger with the current government and don't fall into the slippery slope fallacy (which isn't a fallacy!) that yours does about the

My mom was waiting on the other side of the TSA line with her camera ready, all excited about taking my picture on Uncle Sam's lap. Stupid. Sometimes she is so embarrassing. She made me step out of line and give her the jolly ranchers that fell out when the TSA officer made me empty my pockets. Those were my jolly ranchers. My friend Evan gave them to me at school. And I even traded him something that took me a whole hour to make with my other friends that we learned at camp. Then I had to go back through the security line twice! Like I'm a criminal or something. The mall Uncle Sam looked really fake this year. Half of his fake bushy eyebrow was coming off. I keep trying to tell everybody I'm too old for this, but I don't have the heart to tell my mom that I don't believe in Uncle Sam anymore. Plus I want the presents. My dad even told me if you don't believe in Uncle Sam, he won't visit and leave presents. I saw them wrapping one of the p

Warning: this video is *extremely* graphic and disturbing. Hawthorne, CA Police Officer Shoots Dog: InfoWars reports : "The 130-pound, 3-year-old Rottweiler named Max was shot to death after he escaped through a window in a parked car and ran over to his master, Leon Rosby, who was being arrested for filming the scene on his phone." Hat tip: Daily Paul . The comments on the YouTube page were overwhelmingly critical of the police overreaction. Here are some examples: for the last time since so many dummies seem to exist here: ALL THEY HAD TO DO WAS TELL THE OWNER TO TAKE CARE OF IT. he wasn't resisting, he would have wanted his dog safe, so all they could have done is stopped cuffing him for 15 seconds, let him secure his dog and calm it down... and then they could have continued their pointless arrest. easy. nobody hurt. isn't that the logical normal thing to do if a dog is "threatening" you? to tell it's owner to take care of it? I hope

Not Mos Eisley...

Because global warming: Anyone else feel like he's being a jerk?

[ WIKILEAKS ] Statement from Edward Snowden in Moscow Monday July 1, 21:40 UTC One week ago I left Hong Kong after it became clear that my freedom and safety were under threat for revealing the truth. My continued liberty has been owed to the efforts of friends new and old, family, and others who I have never met and probably never will. I trusted them with my life and they returned that trust with a faith in me for which I will always be thankful. On Thursday, President Obama declared before the world that he would not permit any diplomatic "wheeling and dealing" over my case. Yet now it is being reported that after promising not to do so, the President ordered his Vice President to pressure the leaders of nations from which I have requested protection to deny my asylum petitions. This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile. These are the old, bad tools of political aggression. Their purpose is to fright

In response to some recent comments on my popular libertarian essay about abortion , it's time for me to mention that my views have shifted. I would argue that for the purpose of discussing law and public policy, the critically relevant issue is not the nature of the fetus as I have argued before, but the nature of the state. Let's come up with a libertarian consensus on abortion that even if a human fetus is a living human being entitled to self-ownership and non-aggression, and even if to abort a human fetus is to murder a human being, that we still don't want to pass a law against it in a monopoly legislature, appoint a standing army of career policethugs, and try to enforce that law with money we take from people against their will and under threat of violence-- because if all that isn't bad enough to begin with, even if protecting human fetuses was the only thing this government did, before long it would end up doing a hundred other unrelated things that make us

To show just how creepy and invasive the NSA's spying is, German Green party politician Malte Spitz sued to have a German telecom giant hand over six months of his phone data, which he made available to a German newspaper, Zeit Online. Zeit then put together a presentation showing just what the NSA is watching when it watches your use of your phone. Hit play on the chilling presentation and you'll see a little target begin to move around a map of Germany as Spitz's GPS data is relayed and stored. You'll see a little phone icon appear next to the target every time he makes a phone call. A little box below the map displays the date and time of day as they tick by. To the right of the map, every time a new day begins, an overview of Spitz's metadata appears with the number of incoming and outgoing phone calls, the total time spent on the phone, the number of incoming and outgoing SMS text messages, and the duration of phone connection to the Internet. It will someti

The shocking science about the long-term effects of corporal punishment, essential viewing for every parent! As you watch, remember that the statistical harm that spanking causes children as outlined in this video presentation apply to the kind of spanking that many in our society do not consider problematic: defined as an open-handed striking of a child's butt or extremities that is intended not to cause any physical injury. So this isn't about people beating their kids and leaving welts. Even pretty light-handed spanking is an extremely risky parenting practice. I'll let the facts speak for themselves: For further investigation, here is the source material used for the presentation above: http://board.freedomainradio.com/forums/t/32072.aspx