Thanks to the underlying homophobia evidenced by the likes of Bob Barr and Wayne Root (both of whom conveniently believe that States have rights when it comes to policies like same-sex marriage), the Libertarian Party is missing its opportunity to pick up the undying loyalty of one of the most activist segments of the electorate: the LGBQT community. As Waldo puts it: Waldo admits: he got suckered by the Traditional Democratic Party Approach to gay rights: do the dinners, promise the moon, and kick the can down the road to the election cycle that, like Godot, never comes. We hang one simply because indifference is better than the active hate the GOP would be pursuing if they were in power.Time to, as Pam Spaulding says, cut off the gayTM. Waldo then goes on to cite Americablog's well-documented list of nearly forty Obama administration slights and broken promises to the gay community, including such winners as Asking a religious right activist who claims to have been “cured” o...

From Small Govt Times : WASHINGTON — America’s third largest party challenged House and Senate Democrats Monday to fully commit to the equal justice for gay and lesbian Americans by rejecting a proposed hate crimes law and repealing the Defense of Marriage Act and the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy barring military service by “out” gays and lesbians. “Libertarians are the only party committed to equal justice under the law, whether it is protection from violence, marriage equality or the ability of a qualified person to serve in the military,” said Cat Sumner, Libertarian National Committee gay and lesbian policy advisor. “So-called ‘hate crimes’ bills further divide America by creating different classes of victims for the same crime. Instead of dividing the gay and straight communities, we should be treating everyone equally.” “This so-called ‘hate crimes’ bill is just an attempt by Democrat opponents of marriage equality to hold on to gay and lesbian support without actu...

Another indication that libertarian thought-- real libertarian though as opposed to the faux libertarianism of birther Republicans--is starting to worry our liberal and progressive friends: they are paying attention to us. I've already highlighted the series on Libertarians that Dana Garrett has promised at Delaware Watch, but this next one is too funny to miss. jason at Delawareliberal now has a post up: Everybody is a Libertarian All of a Sudden: What a bunch of Johnny Come Latelys losers. Where the eff were you Libertarians when George Bush was blowing up shit will nilly, establishing the department of homeland security, saying illegal wire taps were great, getting rid of habeas corpus, adding billions to the national debt, and trying to legislate morality? You have your panties in a knot over every little thing Obama does because, “holy shit the slippery slope is gonna git-cha!” (paraphrase) But Bush, bought the country a ticket to Libertarian Hell and set up a tea party t...

... has nothing to do with being thus far unaware of Bush administration policies on domestic surveillance or any failure of the MSM to cover this issue . Yes, there are new details emerging, but we knew--we pretty much ALL knew--this was going on. As much as I cavil about the national Libertarian Party, it was the only political party that really made this a significant issue during the 2008 elections. Again and again . The ACLU has been pointing this out--in detail and along with other homeland security outrages--for years. We knew. As a friend of mine said about two months ago, "There has been no greater stain on the reputation of American in modern memory than the fact that we torture." Torture, surveillance, constitutional abuse. And yet there continues to be surprise [now growing louder, I will admit], among our liberal and progressive friends that the Obama administration would rather leave this all in the past, and is reluctant to name a special prosecutor. How cou...

The problem of credibility at the national Libertarian Party continue, this time with an LP blog post on government-run health care that tells the story of how Great Britain's nationalized healthcare system refused to test poor Katie Brickell for cervical cancer (even though it ran in her family), and then let her die because of taking too long to start treatment. The blog post goes on to explain that this is exactly the kind of system that President Obama wants to institute in the US. Only tiny little problem: none of it is true. As Susan Hogarth notes at IPR , Katie had no family history of cancer, could have gotten the test, and delayed her own treatment to harvest fertilized eggs for in-vitro. Moreover, the language imputed to the Obama administration is highly inaccurate. Here's the moral of the story; if want to criticize the government, get your facts right.

Read this: The LP's press release advocating a government crack-down on the borders to stop the swine flu epidemic. As one commenter put it: Holy crap. So much for the LP being “Republican-Lite” - they’re now aiming for “More Republican Than Thou”. Ironically, I appear to have written my own response to this knee-jerk, fear-oriented view of immigration in the first two weeks of this blog's existence. Since my traffic then was about 25 people ... a week ... I suspect few of you have ever seen it. I called it Immigration, dough-nuts, and the eucharist: my conundrum , and I'm going to repost the bulk of it in rebuttal to the hostile nativism being promulgated by the faux libertarians at national: At church I often end up sitting across from some very nice people who work in the Wilmington area as house cleaners, landscapers, or construction workers. They are Hispanic, and many if not most of them are either—choose your politically identifying label—illegal immigrants or un...

I have to wonder if Libertarian Party chair Bill Redpath isn't smarting enough from criticisms that his recent press releases in the wake of the Angela Keaton debacle were shown to be profoundly unconcerned with American imperialism abroad. Little else explains the new LP release quoting Redpath about President-elect Barack Obama and Afghanistan. Here's Redpath: "What we hoped to see with the incoming Obama administration were plans for a total withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq," says William Redpath, national chairman of the Libertarian Party. "Instead, we're seeing the same missteps of the Bush administration that have kept our troops in the Middle East since 2001." ... "Shifting troops from one front to another is not 'bringing them home,' as Democrats promised to do in 2006," says Redpath. "Obama is pursuing a hawkish foreign policy that should worry any advocates of non-intervention. He'll keep us in that region f...

Damn that Angela Keaton, anyway! Not only has she gotten the LNC's panties in a twist, and led to a suspension notice that (among other things) suggests on one count that she be thrown out for being impolite on a telephone call to which there was no third witness.... Not only has the possibility of having to face down a self-admitted cougar in a halter top gotten them so hot and bothered that they apparently went out and consulted Registered Parliamentarians to insure that they could boot her off the committee for just about any old cause they dreamed up.... But no, over on Last Free Voice you can kibbitz as the LP's own Registered Parliamentarian and head honcho of the Libertarian National Congressional Committee [which, strangely enough, never seems to donate to Libertarian congressional candidates], M Carling split hairs in divination style for the amusement of the povertarian masses. You can almost feel like Archie Goodwin, entering the sanctum sanctorum of Nero Wolfe ...

... they actually vote for this Orwellian discipline of Angela Keaton . Read it and find inside the repudiation of virtually everything the Libertarian Party purports to stand for. This is not actually about Angela. This is about the ongoing bastardization of the Libertarian Party into a Republican "Lite" alternative. Bob Barr, Russ Verney, Richard Viguerie, Bill Redpath, Bob Sullentrop and others plan nothing less than purchase personal power and electoral success through the sell-out of Libertarian stances on personal freedom in order to placate social conservatives who think they are Libertarians because they hate taxes. It's not about Angela--I'll say it again. It's about you, and whether you will be sheep or stand up for what you purport to believe in.

Suppose there were a Libertarian National Committee so fearful of its own membership that it couldn't take criticism, satire, and even disdain from its own members? Suppose there were a Libertarian National Committee so enamored with clouds of secrecy that to reveal the nature of its deliberations or the foibles of the participants represented original sin? Suppose there were a Libertarian National Committee so politically correct and devoid of character that its membership hid behind speech codes modeled on those created by the Federal government to suppress political thought. Suppose there were a Libertarian National Committee so gutless that it had to ask for permission from the grandson of Robert (as in Robert's Rules of Order) for permission to exorcise the witch queen who looked down her nose at them in a naughty T-shirt. Suppose there were a Libertarian National Committee so hypocritical that it would support a presidential nominee whose PAC donated money to the politica...

The Libertarian National Committee is soliciting self-nominations to serve on the Platform Committee. Given the way in which the LP has treated individuals--both Radicals and Reformers--who stepped forward for this duty in the past, I'm surprised that there are still sufficient free-market masochists available to accept this dubious honor. But if you're game, here's the official set of requirements: The Libertarian National Committee is looking to appoint ten people to serve on the Platform Committee in preparation for the 2010 Libertarian National Convention. Committee members will be expected to expend an appreciable amount of their time in the months leading up to the Convention; and due to the anticipated amount of work, they will be expected to incur considerable travel costs, at personal expense , for meetings prior to the Convention, in addition to attendance at the Libertarian National Convention in 2010. So that members of the Libertarian National Committee can det...

In order to determine the total Libertarian vote nationwide, I went state by state through the currently available results (about 98-99% at the moment) and looked for the highest vote total in any one of four categories--President, Governor, Senator, or combined Congressional races. This led to the following accumulation of data [which I am sure can be refined and corrected] Alabama—Barr 4,983/no other LP vote Alaska—Barr 1,090/Senate 1,606 Arizona—Barr 10,394/ Congressional 49,341 Arkansas—Barr 4,704/no other LP candidates California—Barr 50,006// Congressional 165,720 [11.5% of national LP vote] Colorado—Barr 9,398/Charles Jay 525/Congressional 11,276 Connecticut—Barr not on ballot/Congressional 1,815 Delaware—Barr 1,108/Congressional 3,583 DC—not on ballot Florida—Barr 16,587/Charles Jay 774/no other LP candidates Georgia—Barr 28,420/Senatorial 126,238 [8.8% of national LP vote] Hawaii—Barr 1,226/Congressional 10,247 Idaho—Barr 7,112/Gubernatorial 9,938 Illinois—Barr 19,061/Senatori...

... that jason over at Delawareliberal keeps imputing to us regarding eight years of Dubya shredding the US Constitution, bloating the budget, and engaging in imperialistic foreign wars: As Steve moans and winges for the next 8 years I’ll laugh my ass off recalling the utter silence created by high mineded “Libertarians” during Bush’s term. OK jason, the current LP archive for press releases only goes back into 2007, but let's see what we find: September 25, 2007: The Libertarian Party rejects President Bush's claims that the "Protect America Act" needs to be made permanent, citing that the bill fails to live up to its name and only limits American civil liberties. The controversial Act that was passed by Congress last August altered the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and legalized the Bush administration's warrantless wiretap program, which many civil liberties organizations had strongly protested.... Here's part of the note of condolence t...

I was worrying about how to build an effective freedom-based political party on the ashes of the Libertarian Party. I should have know that with Wayne Allyn Root on the case, I needn't have worried. Independent Political Report cites Root's interview with the NYT: The Libertarians have been a debate society since 1971. No one ever thought about winning. And then I came along. … Bob Barr and I are going to get a million to three million votes this year. In 2012 I expect to duplicate Ross Perot’s number of 19 million. In 2016 I expect to be a credible third-party candidate, and in 2020 I plan to win. Remember that Alec Baldwin used to say he'd go to Canada if Dubya won the election? I making sure my visa hasn't expired in 2020.

Or how else would you interpret the fact that the LNC finally managed to vote for a resolution against US involvement in Afghanistan, but couldn't get the staff to publish it ? And while you're at it, please note that the leadership element of the Party of Principle refuses to follow its own rules about transparency and accountability. Here's a thought: everybody currently sitting on the LNC who has an ounce of personal integrity (yes, I'm talking about you, Mary Ruwart, Michael Jingozian, Jim Lark, Angela Keaton) needs simply to resign , depriving the organization of any remnants of respectability , while in the meantime.... ...the rest of us start thinking about a new strategy for the Libertarian movement [including ballot access], so that we're ready with an alternative when this house of cards comes crashing down.

So Ron Paul convened a press event to showcase third party candidates, including the Constitution Party's Chuck Baldwin, the Green Party's Cynthia McKinney, Independent Ralph Nader, and the Libertarian Party's Bob Barr.... Only Bob Barr decided not to show up, leading to the usual feeding frenzy among Libertarians of all persuasions, which earned the name snubgate among the blogs critical of the Barr/Root ticket. The most passionate among them began circulating a petition for Barr to be removed from the Libertarian ticket, and demanding that at least one LNC member stand up and offer a motion to remove Barr from the ticket.... For the high crime of insulting Ron Paul?? Then there were the competing motions at the LNC--that proposed by Aaron Starr which criticized Paul for not endorsing Barr and another to be offered by either Mary Ruwart or Rachel Hawkbridge to apologize to Dr No. You can follow the unfolding drama at either Last Free Voice or Independent Political Repo...

Well, it makes as much sense as the last LNC meeting or Bob Barr choosing to use September 11 to praise the Bush administration. Somewhere (over at Libertarian Republican , if you must know), Eric Dondero is chortling over this, asserting that Barr's endorsement of Dubya's reaction to 9/11 is evidence that the LP has finally gone mainstream . Simultaneously, Barr campaign mangler Russ ["Where the hell did Angela Keaton put all Ross Perot's old charts"] Verney can be found quoted over at Last Free Voice extolling Barr's incredible leadership, which amounts [if you actually read the post] to Verney congratulating Barr for showing leadership by following his campaign mangler's orders. You can also read comments there from the new petition circulating to remove Bob Barr as the LP Presidential candidate. Who'd have thunk that Angela Keaton had the time to do all that after she finished being a sexual predator at the LNC?

Exactly why Ron Paul, who scored over a million votes in the GOP primary season, should agree to play second fiddle to Bob Barr--who has yet to raise a dollar for each person who voted for Paul--is unclear to me. But you can read the actual letter here . Let me get this straight: Angela Keaton supposedly live-blogs about the charges against her in Executive Session of the LNC and she must be branded, tortured, and expelled. Bob Barr illegally attempts to replace his legally nominated VP candidate (who admittedly is a homophobic, racist nut) in favor of a man who is not a member of his own political party, and we're supposed to rally behind him? I sense the genius of that great parliamentarian M Carling behind this masterpiece of strategy.

The reason's simple: it's a lot easier just to go to the Bob Barr campaign site. Third Party Watch just managed to go past one of the most contentious Libertarian National Committee meetings of the recent past... ...without even noting that it occurred. Obviously, that was Angela Keaton's fault, too.

While it is fun to speculate which mommy issues M Carling might be laboring under or what went so wrong in Aaron Starr’s potty training, this is about whether we are part of the libertarian movement or merely an adjunct to the GOP death machine. Announcing that I work for Antiwar is like Jolie and Pitt announcing they are fucking. Both pretentious and obvious. New staff piece of ass, Casey. Dark, young and easy prey for a cougar like myself. Donny Ferguson is here as well. I felt him up once when I was drunk. Reform Caucus people are so uptight. The Admiral keeps staying hello. Must be the dress. Tomorrow, BTP tank top and thong…no I’ll be wearing pants. Funny, I always thought the Libertarian movement was about less government and more personal freedom, not the rule-mongering and petty jackassery occurring at the LNC, where people like to pretend their making decisions about a party that controls millions of votes and billions of dollars. Just goes to show you how wrong you can be. Ne...