The Humble Libertarian original

By: Wes Messamore The Humble Libertarian

My latest Op Ed, an Open Letter to The Russians who interfered in our election. Thanks for doing our own media's job for them! Dear Shadowy Russian Conspirators (whoever you are), I know we don’t really know for a fact at all that you were the ones who leaked the contents of Hillary Clinton’s private email server, hacked DNC emails, and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s email account to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. That as Glenn Greenwald meticulously detailed at The Intercept in December, all we have at this point are some wild claims initiated by the Washington Post and echoed in the New York Times that “are based exclusively on the unverified assertions of anonymous officials, who in turn are disseminating their own claims about what the CIA purportedly believes, all based on evidence that remains completely secret.” So I’m writing this open letter to you as if these claims about you are true, even though we hardly have any smoking guns yet. Because ...

The unbound delegate count is one mostly ignored by the mainstream media, especially relative to its coverage of the "beauty contest" results of non-binding straw polls in caucus and primary states. In addition to not being covered very well despite its importance to the process (and would could turn out to be its central importance to the process this election cycle), this matter of the unbound delegate count is frankly kind of confusing. No worries. In this Reality Check with Ben Swann , Ben spotlights these unbound delegates and breaks the issue down with a simple explanation so that viewers can finally understand it. Real, solid journalism at its finest: Wes Messamore , Editor in Chief, T H L Articles | Author's Page

So I voted today. They gave me a sticker and everything. I ended up just going with Rick Santorum in the end (see what I did there?) because I still just have so many awesome jokes left, I don't want this Republican primary to end with Santorum falling out and us never hearing his name again for the rest of our lives. I think it's going to take at least four years before I get Santorum completely out of my system. And late night comedy, SNL, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, good gracious-- the freaking Colbert Report?? Those are going to be so unbelievably funny for four years. When the Titanic sunk, the band kept on playing. Noble of them, really. While this ship sinks, the comedians are going to keep on cracking jokes. It'll be beautiful. And before I get that one inevitable commenter writing: "YOU SEEL OUT!! I KNEW IT! YOU CALL YOURSELF A LIBERTARIAN AND YOU VOTED FOR SANTORUM??? OMG OMG OMG," let me just stress that the paragraph above was all tongue-in-chee...

'Voters will see these “pre-endorsements” for what they are and resent the party hierarchy’s attempt to dictate results to them. Instead of helping the candidates that they endorse so early on, the parties will only hurt their chances. Pre-endorsements will become a liability to establishment picks and be used against them by their grassroots opponents. It isn’t about left vs. right anymore.  It’s about the establishment vs. you, and more and more voters are starting to really believe that.' Read the entire article at IVN.us . Wes Messamore , Editor in Chief, T H L Articles | Author's Page

This is something we need to start taking more and more seriously. Looks like South Carolina's Attorney General is : COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - South Carolina's attorney general has notified the U.S. Justice Department of potential voter fraud. Attorney General Alan Wilson sent details of an analysis by the Department of Motor Vehicles to U.S. Attorney Bill Nettles. In a letter dated Thursday, Wilson says the analysis found 953 ballots cast by voters listed as dead. In 71 percent of those cases, ballots were cast between two months and 76 months after the people died. That means they "voted" up to 6 1/3 years after their death. The letter doesn't say in which elections the ballots were cast. The analysis came out of research for the state's new voter identification law. The U.S. Justice Department denied clearance of that law. Wilson told Nettles he asked the State Law Enforcement Division to investigate. Wes Messamore , Editor in Chief, T H L Art...

New Op-Ed By: Wes Messamore Mitt Romney has done well for himself in early Republican Primary contests this year, but what he doesn't want you to know is that if Wall Street had a primary, Mitt Romney would win that too. His top three contributors this election cycle are Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse Group, and Morgan Stanley. In addition to these three, four more of Mitt Romney's top ten contributors are also "too-big-to-fail" banks and giant international financial corporations, including: HIG capital at #4, Barclays at #5,  Bank of America at #7, and JPMorgan Chase & Co at #10. Of the remaining three of Mitt Romney's top ten donors, two are major international law firms that consult and litigate for big finance: Kirkland & Ellis and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Sullivan & Cromwell is another major law firm that heads up Romney's biggest supporters, clocking in at #14 on his list of top donors and followed by even more big Wall Street banks, with ...

It's fascinating to me that the party establishment is willing to admit that electronic voting machines could be compromised at all. This news is a perfect example of why elections should be conducted with paper ballots, and not via computer: IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) -- Taking seriously an apparent threat from a notorious collective of computer hackers, the Iowa Republican Party is boosting the security of the electronic systems it will use in two weeks to count the first votes of the 2012 presidential campaign. Investigators don't know if the threat is authentic, but it has nonetheless led the state party to confront a worst-case scenario. Their fear: an Iowa caucus marred by hackers who corrupt the database used to gather votes and crash the website used to inform the public about results that can shape the campaign for the White House. "With the eyes of the media on the state, the last thing we want to do is have a situation where there is trouble with the reporting ...

I reported Saturday that Donald Trump would be moderating a GOP debate later this month and that Ron Paul announced he'd be skipping the farce . Looks like Ron Paul is once again vindicated by the actions of other GOP leaders who are imitating and following him . I am entirely pleased to report that even Karl Rove can't stomach the idea of Donald Trump's wildly inappropriate attempt to be a GOP kingmaker, an attempt that is turning the entire process into an even bigger circus than it already is. The Hill reports : Veteran GOP strategist Karl Rove said Monday that the head of the Republican National Committee (RNC) should step in to "discourage" presidential candidates from attending the upcoming debate moderated by Donald Trump. "Here's a guy who is saying, 'I'm going to endorse one of you,' " Rove said, criticizing the choice on "Fox & Friends." "More importantly, what the heck are the Republican candidates d...

From my most recent CAIVN article: In all fairness, critics of the Robert Court's First Amendment decisions don't seem to base their opposition on judicial philosophy and interpretation of the law as written. For them, the issue is not whether a law violates the Constitution's prohibition on abridgements of free speech, but whether they happen to like the outcome of the free exercise of a particular kind of speech. Note that their objections to the court's recent rulings are rooted in the negative results they perceive as stemming from speech they don't like, whether it's political speech or video games that they find obscene. Read the entire article here. Wes Messamore , Editor in Chief, T H L Articles | Author's Page

Is George Soros trying to "stack" U.S. courts with judges favorable to his political agenda in order to circumvent legislatures and democracy by writing law from the bench? That's what critics are saying , who charge that George Soros has spent $45 million through his Open Society Institute fund in a systematic "campaign to reshape the judiciary." As a blogger at Left Coast Rebel recently noted , "progressive" and Democratic groups and politicians love using the scaaary Koch Brothers and all their corporate money as a bogeyman to raise funds from their constituents and supporters. He provided quotes from fundraising emails all from this past week alone that used the Koch Brothers as a political foil to rile up donors. In just one week, donors got emails from Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY), and Democratic strategist James Carville asking for donations to combat all that dirt...

Dave Nalle reports for the Republican Liberty Caucus : Early indications are that in states where Republicans face redistricting losses the priorities of the establishment lawmakers in those states and the interests of the people of the states who brought the party gains in the last election are drastically out of sync and as they redistrict, party leaders seem poised to do a lot of harm to their relationship with the grassroots activists who are becoming increasingly necessary if they want to keep winning elections. Early indications are that the inclination of state party leaders is to solve tough redistricting challenges by sacrificing newly elected candidates favored by the grassroots in order to strengthen the positions of establishment incumbents who are not nearly as popular with grassroots voters. The superficial benefits of this strategy for the party elite may quickly be outweighed by the backlash from activists who are not pleased with the way the Republican Party is run...

From my most recent CAIVN column: 'Million dollar online fundraisers are now a common feature of Ron Paul's presidential ambitions. This is the second million dollar day that Ron Paul has had in the last two months, and during his 2008 bid, he raised over four million in one day and another six million in a single day just a month later. What makes Ron Paul's most recent "money bomb" especially interesting is that his campaign styled it as a battle between Ron Paul's limited government conservatism and frontrunner Mitt Romney's record of growing the entitlement state. The official name for the fundraiser was "The Revolution vs. RomneyCare: Round One." This is the first major attack by one candidate on another's record so far in the 2012 Republican presidential primary, and subtitling it "Round One" indicates that the Paul campaign isn't finished taking Mitt Romney to task for his signature legislative accomplishment as govern...

I am extremely humbled and excited to announce that I will be interviewing one of the most, if not the most influential man in this era of U.S. politics-- Congressman Ron Paul! I daresay this is the most exciting and rewarding milestone yet in my short career as an independent journalist and libertarian blogger. The interview will be part of my two-hour segment in the all-day radio marathon Sunday to promote Ron Paul's June 5th Moneybomb. You can listen to my interview with Ron Paul and my three other guests (bestselling author Bruce Fein, AntiWar.com editor Scott Horton, and grassroots activist and campaign consultant Bill Greene) by visiting LegalizeGoldAndSilver.com starting at 5pm Eastern this Sunday, June 5th. Ron Paul will be on at 6pm Eastern. If you want to catch our other awesome hosts and their distinguished guests, tune in even earlier and listen all day! We'll keep you updated on the moneybomb donation totals as they skyrocket throughout the day. You absolutel...

ABC News reports : The United States Department of Justice has green-lighted the prosecution of former presidential candidate John Edwards for alleged violations of campaign laws while he tried to cover up an extra-marital affair, ABC News has learned. A source close to the case said Edwards is aware that the government intends to seek an indictment and that the former senator from North Carolina is now considering his limited options. He could accept a plea bargain with prosecutors or face a potentially costly trial. Edwards has been the focus of a lengthy federal investigation focusing on hundreds of thousands of dollars allegedly provided by two wealthy supporters. The government will contend those were illegal donations that ultimately went to support and seclude his mistress, Rielle Hunter. Hat tip: Memeorandum . Just stop and consider that John Edwards could have been Vice President of the United States. If anything were to happen to John Kerry in that alternate universe...

Last Thursday I was interviewed by the American Conservative Union following Donald Trump and Rand Paul's speeches. During his speech Trump lambasted Ron Paul as "unelectable", an ironic thing for a television personality who has never won an election of any sort to say. His remarks provoked a room full of loud and angry responses; mine caught the attention of the ACU camera man. Eric Sharp , Regular Columnist, T H L Articles Author's Page

The Libertarian party of Canada offers the one of the most comprehensive yet eloquent approaches to the philosophy of liberty. Yet, they are not widely recognized even as a legitimate minor party. Why, in a parliamentary system where smaller parties can have degrees of electoral success, has the LPC not become a major player? For those who don't know, The New Democratic Party is the (more) socialistic party of Canada. They are too radical to achieve an electoral majority, but they steal enough votes from the Liberal Party that the Liberal Party has to compromise with them. What will it take for the LPC to be to the Tories, what the NDP is to the Liberal Party? Eric Sharp , Regular Columnist, T H L Articles | Author's Page

Democracy is actually hard to get behind, if you think about it. It's an idea. And post-institution, no longer a super-effective rallying cry. "It's your duty to vote." "People suck. Politicians suck." "Yeah, you're right." In fact, now that democracy has evolved into the tyranny of the majority, I often find myself wallowing in pity against it. For democracy only works with a super well-informed populace. One that helps to limit dictatorial overreach, not assist in it. After all, it's hard to stay united behind something that could lead to any of the full spectrum of political outcomes. But if we could get behind something homogeneous? If we could unite under one banner? If we could rally behind an unchanging cause? Might that be freedom? By: Eric Olsen , Regular Columnist Articles | Author's Page | Website

It would seem that term limits are getting a hearing in 2010. Among the tenets of the 1994 Republican Revolution was support for term limits- many of the GOP challengers promising to serve no more than three terms and retire. Most Republicans didn’t keep the promise, although it was one promise Mark Sanford could keep. The theme might be picking up steam again as Rand Paul won his primary election on a platform of term limits and no earmarks. The antithesis? At ninety-two years old, the longest serving member of the U.S. Senate and reportedly the “King of Pork,” Robert Byrd’s death is a reminder about the soundness of term limits and how even in as anti-Establishment an atmosphere as 2010, any meaningful change in Washington D.C. is little more than an exercise in futility unless something deeply changes in the American soul. Accompanying the obligatorily fawning obituaries of Robert Byrd, longest-serving senator, reformed Klansman, and constitutional scholar, was admiration for hi...

"America is sitting on $13 trillion of debt. The Great Recession is going on its third year, and the same old partisan bickering is deeply polarizing our nation. The time has come for Californians and Americans at large to reform a broken system and plot a new course. It's time to launch a revolution and register as an Independent." Read all 50 reasons at CAIVN . W. E. Messamore , Editor in Chief Articles | Author's Page