The Humble Libertarian original

Trump was asking the Ukrainian President to be a whistleblower if he knew anything. Shouldn’t the Democrats support Donald Trump encouraging people to be whistleblowers?

By: Cassandra Fairbanks The Gateway Pundit

Someone I knew from knocking on doors for libertarian-leaning political candidates years ago challenged me on some of my recent thoughts about the #MeToo meme that was re-posted by millions this week. She wrote: "What is the actual problem of conflating the two, or just including the two as options, in a Facebook post though? As a practical matter, many women who are rape victims may not want to publicly say it but the fact that the meme had harassment as an option maybe allowed them to be freer with their experience. It's not like this is a Congressional law we're talking about where language needs to be precise and not vague... this is a meme." I wrote back: Sorry I wrote you a book. There's a lot to unpack here. So you're saying someone who might be too embarrassed, as sad as that is, to say they were raped, might feel emboldened to speak up about their experience to their group of friends under the cover of the meme's ambiguity? Wow. That ...

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 ...

Dr. Ron Paul, who served 12 terms in the US Congress and became famous when he ran on a libertarian platform for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, has been on a rampage this Spring, excoriating both President Trump and the Republican-held Congress on one issue after another. Carol Paul must be putting something in her husband's coffee, because the libertarian firebrand (who turns 82 this year) spent the month of April challenging the political establishment with the kind of gusto and pointed criticisms that gained him a devoted global following when he ran for president in 2008 and set two records for the most online donations in a single day to a political candidate in US history. Let The Shutdown Happen. Forever. On the latest government shutdown drama over appropriations, which has become more banal with each passing year since 1995, Ron Paul accused Congress members of using a dysfunctional policy-making process as an excuse for why Washington keeps spend...

Over the weekend : "A US government memo setting out strategies for preventing leaks of classified information, has been leaked to the media." via GIPHY Anyone in the libertarian movement still think these boneheads did 9-11? #GovtFail is a "situation normal" kind of thing, but it's usually pretty horrific, so it's nice when it's just too funny for words.

After playing an historic role in the 2016 US presidential election by publishing the Clinton campaign's internal emails, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has gone on a media blitz that started with a press conference Monday and a Reddit AMA interview Tuesday . In the Monday press conference, Assange stuck by his assertion that the source of the leaks did not originate from hacking by the Russian government, and went so far as to say that US intelligence reports to the contrary are politically motivated and "quite embarrassing to the reputations of the US intelligence services." On Reddit the following day, the Australian computer programmer and controversial journalist was grilled by commenters along the same lines in his AMA (Ask Me Anything) group interview. Read the rest at The Independent Voter Network .

Some words of sanity from Chris Hedges. The whole thing is a great read, but here's the paragraph that hit me hardest: "If we actually had a functioning judicial system and an independent press, Manning would have been a witness for the prosecution against the war criminals he helped expose. He would not have been headed, bound and shackled, to the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. His testimony would have ensured that those who waged illegal war, tortured, lied to the public, monitored our electronic communications and ordered the gunning down of unarmed civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen were sent to Fort Leavenworth’s cells. If we had a functioning judiciary the hundreds of rapes and murders Manning made public would be investigated. The officials and generals who lied to us when they said they did not keep a record of civilian dead would be held to account for the 109,032 “violent deaths” in Iraq, including those of 66,081 civilians. The pilots ...

"A military judge on Wednesday morning sentenced Army Pfc. Bradley Manning to 35 years in prison for leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks... According to the military, Manning is required to serve one-third of the sentence before he becomes eligible for parole... The decision was immediately condemned by the American Civil Liberties Union. “When a soldier who shared information with the press and public is punished far more harshly than others who tortured prisoners and killed civilians, something is seriously wrong with our justice system,” said Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project." Source: Washington Post Hat tip: Memeorandum Libertarian resources on Manning: The Truth About Bradley Manning [Video] by: Stefan Molyneux Manning's Apology Is A Forced Confession.. Obviously

Such a good listen: Great job by Stefan Molyneux .

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 ...

He doesn't mean any of it.

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...

[ 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...

Mashable reports : "Julian Assange is still under house arrest in Britain while he appeals extradition to Sweden, but that’s not stopping the audacious secret-spiller from planning his next move: running for a seat in the Australian Senate. Assange announced his run through Wikileaks, the leak-disseminating organization he founded. He’s still wanted in Sweden to answer accusations of sexual assault and rape, but according to Wikileaks, that doesn’t stop the Australian native from running for a senate seat in his home country." The Associated Press adds : “We have discovered that it is possible for Julian Assange to run for the Australian Senate while detained. Julian has decided to run,” WikiLeaks announced on Twitter. Assange has criticized Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s center-left government for not standing up for him against the potential threat of his extradition to the United States for prosecution over WikiLeaks’ release of hundreds of thousands ...

"Judge, isn't a soldier required to report a war crime?" That's what one protester, David Eberhardt of Baltimore, said out loud as a military judge adjourned a hearing to arraign Army Pfc. Bradley Manning in Ft. Meade, Maryland last week for allegedly leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks . It was the only outburst during the proceedings. The judge didn't respond. Yes, David, reporting overt war crimes being committed and covered up under the pretense of "classification" and "national security" is a moral and patriotic duty to one's country-- especially when they include actions that were putting our own troops on the ground at risk. The American people have a right to know what their government is doing in their name and with their tax dollars. If they understood, maybe more of them would have started questioning the wars and endless nation building a long time ago. That's why Manning is an American hero . I was pleased to l...

It was October of 2009 near the end of President Obama’s first year in the White House. The Tea Party was at its zenith, raging across America in full swing in opposition to Washington’s Wall Street bailouts, the trillion dollar stimulus package from earlier that year, Obama’s health care plan, a lagging economy, and a 10-percent unemployment rate. The previous month, one million Tea Party activists swarmed Washington DC to make their voices heard ( yes, one million , probably more! ). Obama was under close scrutiny and facing strong criticism (some of it warranted, some of it maybe a little far-fetched) for every liberty he took, from his ritzy Valentine’s Day vacation with Michelle Obama, to his occasional indulgence of a cigarette, to his golf game. So of course, we all remember the fallout over Obama’s lavish, star-studded, Alice in Wonderland-themed Halloween party that October, right? No? That’s because the White House was awfully shy about publicizing the details o...

Bush 2.0: 100 Ways Barack Obama Is Just Like George W. Bush The election of President Obama was in no small part, a referendum on the administration of George W. Bush, and his victory was interpreted as a sound rebuke to eight years of open ended warfare, a vast and growing police state, the destruction of civil liberties, disregard for the Constitution, unchecked executive power, lies and broken promises, hypocrisy and arrogance, a lack of transparency in government, out-of-control federal spending, fever-pitch fearmongering, rampant corruption, and some really stupid gaffes. But what have we gotten instead? More of the same. A LOT more of the same. In fact, every negative aspect of the Bush Administration has come back with a vengeance in the presidency of Barack H. Obama. Everything the American people detested so strongly about Bush has not only characterized the presidency of his successor, it's gotten much worse. Don't believe me? The following is a list of 100 ways...