I've had an on-again, off-again conversation going with George Donnelly about a Libertarian Contract with America, and I've seen Libertarians in North Carolina proposing a Liberty Agenda, but it seems to me that we're never going to come to grips with the Leviathan that both wings of the Demopublicans have created until we start building some structural barriers back into the process. So here I'm going to propose, more as a starting point for discussion than a finished product, that a lot more effective work within the states could be done by supporting specific Constitutional Amendments designed to limit the power of government. I already tried one a few days ago regarding Executive Orders and Signing Statements, and the exercise got me thinking about these. I'm sure others could improve on these, and I'm equally sure that critics can find ways in which some of these might actually (unintentionally) increase the power of the State. But I like the concept, so ...

As a Political Theory/American Government major at Georgetown University I took numerous courses from my mentor, Professor George Carey. Carey is a brilliant mind and one of a few if not the only conservative-leaning professors at the University. Freshman year (fall '89) I somehow lucked into being randomly assigned to his American Government intro course. Carey is no ideologue but a conservative in the intellectual, libertarian, constitutionalist, and federalist senses. I owe him more than any other teacher I have ever known. He is one of the foremost authorities on the Federalist Papers and wrote a companion book called The Federalist: Design for a Constitutional Republic. Anyway, in Fall '94 I was in Carey's colloquium Theories of Judicial Interpretation. One day he announced that an upcoming meeting would be in a different room with a surprise special guest. He had said it over several classes but I had forgotten about the special guest when the day arrived. In wa...

There are some things in this life I find very easy to believe, like the sky is blue because of light reflected off the water from the ocean, that cats like to eat fish, that my car when it does not get enough oil will not drive as well as it could or that Nixon liked to count Jews at the Bureau of Labor Statistics . It is not even hard to believe that Mick Huckabee said of Jesus that, "HE CAME TO ME IN A VISION AT THE HOAGIE HUT, AND SAID THAT IF HE HAD, LOOKED LIKE ME, HE COULDN'T HAVE FIT ON THE CROSS, AND THERE NEVER, WOULDA' BEEN CHRISTIANITY." Even though this is clearly satire. Or that the God Elohim is living on another planet and wants me to become a god and populate the solar system like Joe Smith said he would . There are some things I find harder to believe, like that George W. Bush enjoyed blowing up frogs with firecrackers as a young boy . Which, if true, it only confirms every long suspected fear of every self-respecting but misguided liberal . And mor...

. . . . and this time it's the public school system in Safford AZ, where a pre-pubescent middle school girl was forced by administrators to strip to her skivvies and then shake her breasts and pelvis to see if. . . a gun (no, that's not it). . . . a knife (no, not that, either). . . . but maybe some heroin (nope). . . . crack or even powdered coke (uh-uh). . . . or just a doobie (not even). . . . but (oh, yeah, now I remember) a single prescription 400mg Ibuprofen. Maybe they just should have water boarded the little (honors student) tramp. Thanks for this one, Becky .

Over at Delawareliberal they've declared it game, set, and match on the Constitution with the release of the Yoo memo on torture (excuse me, I mean "the not-polite questioning of human garbage that deserves to die"). . . . Kind of makes me wonder how they missed. . . . The institution of Soviet-style internal passports with the Real ID Act . The American Empire's massive empire of hundreds of military bases spanning the planet . Police in Boston and Washington DC conducting warrantless searches to confiscate legally owned property from citizens who are not even suspected of any crime . The TSA Gestapo forcing a woman to remove her nipple rings with a pair of pliers for their vicarious entertainment, followed by a bureaucratic pronouncement that they had followed policy in doing so . The continuing 4th Amendment violations in the so-called War on Drugs that have been occurring for more than thirty years . A mother arrested because she has, in the opinion of a police ...

...at least until this guy comes around. Ben Olken who studies graft, corruption and the politics of assassination is one of the most gifted young economists discusses why politics and graft go together like bricks and mortar for some societies. We are no exception, where throughout the 19 th century Jacksonian democracy encouraged a type of nepotistic graft, as well as a type of oligarchy. This was perfectly represented by the infamous William "Boss" Tweed . I think much of what we are seeing today is the same old oligarchy reassert itself to in their own words, "correct the excesses of democracy" which instead of translating into promoting constitutional liberty , as it should have, has translated into reasserting oligarchic control to dominate your life with restrictive orders, laws and rules. Oh joy. "I'm the law around here see...." I cannot emphasize enough how important it is for you to watch this last link.....

Sometimes when you want to comment on a major story of the day, it's difficult to figure out what to say that's any more important than the thousands and thousands of posts floating out there on the Net. I mean, I'm a Libertarian, which practically requires me to have "cold, dead hands" tattooed on my forearm, doesn't it? In truth I do believe that not only does the 2nd Amendment assert the right of individuals to own firearms, but also signifies the inalienable right of American citizens to make the determination (with due appreciation for the consequences) to employ deadly force in self-defense. Yawn. So what? Not like this was news to anyone, right? Let's try a different approach, and assume for a moment that the DC gun ban had been passed by a majority vote of the citizens. How would that change things? Can a community actually vote to restrict or even a constitutional right within its borders? This is actually a more interesting question than it ...