... have little to do with charged political rhetoric, but resids rather in who should be taking responsibility for not having him in jail or a mental facility a long time ago. Arrested in 1996, after a traffic stop based on his sovereignty license plate caused police to look in his trunk and find ... explosives. The DA was pretty explicit : Roeder had associated with the Freeman movement - a right-wing, anti-government group - causing then Shawnee County assistant district attorney James Brown to label Roeder a "substantial threat to public safety." "This defendant has chosen to exempt himself from our laws," Brown said during the August 1996 sentencing hearing. "He doesn't recognize your authority." Unfortunately, the officer who stopped Roeder apparently did not follow the rules: an Appeals Court over-turned his sentence based on an illegal search. Roeder did time again for parole violation [refusing to pay his taxes]. He visited the man in priso...

I'm not sure if this is (a) comic relief; (b) an attempt to deflect; or (c) an attempt by the Huckabee "we hate Libertarians" faction of the Lawn Jockey Caucus of the GOP to equate Libertarians with political violence, but it's in the Western Standard.CA : Prominent abortion provider murdered (suspected killer may be a libertarian.) ... It appears that Roeder is also a tax protestor, linked to the Montana Freemen, a group that -- if not exactly libertarian -- espouses libertarian-like views about individual sovereignty and the illegitimacy of government. This may come up over the next few days. Now it is important to note that the AP story which the author cites tying Roeder to the Montana Freeman makes no mention whatever of Libertarianism, as opposed to what the sentence might lead you to believe. Here it is, in its entirety: TOPEKA, Kan. - A man identified by the FBI as a member of the anti-government Freemen group was arrested yesterday after deputies found what ...

In the wake of the slaying of Dr. George Tiller in Wichita KS , Delawaredem takes this opportunity to write: I have just ordered a gallon of water for Steve Newton to use to wash down his foot. See, we were right. There are right wing extremists who are so pro-life that they will kill to make their point. They are terrorists and deserve to be treated as such. I first have to admit that I didn't get to wash down his foot , unless DD is suggesting either (a) some bizarre Catholic rite of contrition I've never experienced; or that (b) he wants me to be more hygenic before I put it in my mouth. Here's a simple response, that should not be difficult for him to comprehend: kiss my ass [and I'm not washing it first]. This is a wonderfully cynical example of Delawaredem's faux outrage, designed to score political debating points and (as always) to stifle political discourse that makes him uncomfortable. The game that DD and company love to play is this: conflate all po...

One of the stupider criticisms of Bob Barr as Libertarian presidential nominee has revolved around comments that his evolution into a Libertarian cannot be trusted because he's a hypocrite on abortion. Far be it from me to quail at criticizing Barr for intellectual or moral consistency, as regular readers know, but this one's really not fair game. The whole issue arose during the Clinton impeachment, when Hustler publisher Larry Flynt cast his net far and wide to document the sexual indiscretions of Republicans. Given that Barr was then a prime mover and shaker in the House team that tried Bubba in the Senate, Flynt was thrilled to find this dirt : Barr was one of 13 House Republicans chosen to act as prosecutors in Clinton's Senate trial. Barr, Flynt's investigators found, was guilty of king-size hypocrisy: An outspoken foe of abortion, the Georgia lawmaker had acquiesced to his then-wife having an abortion in 1983. And he had invoked a legal privilege during his 19...

Yesterday, P ennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell opportunistically used the tragic death of Police Sergeant Stephen Liczbinski to call for a return to the so-called assault weapons ban that expired in 2004. (Never mind that the Chinese weapon that actually killed Stephen Liczbinski was imported before the ban and therefore would have been legal.) There's no reason to be surprised at Fast Eddie being opportunistic, but it does give me the opportunity to point out that neither Republicans nor Democrats have any scruples whatsoever about coining misleading phrases to con voters into accepting (and even supporting) a point of view that has no basis in fact or reality . This weapons ban, for example, as accurately reported by USA Today , was a ban on "the manufacture and sale of 19 semiautomatic assault weapons." These weapons are most commonly referred to as assault-style weapons . But what the American public misses is that the key word is not assault , it's semi-automat...

Cara has a difficult post up at The Curvature that deals with a lot of my worst dilemmas as a Libertarian--and, I think, finds her grappling with similar issues as a feminist. When you believe in freedom of choice, then you also have to believe in the freedom to make bad choices. The posts discuss a proposed Arizona law allowing the State to detain and involuntarily hospitalize pregnant methamphetamine addicts. Last week, reader Jessica sent me a link to a story about new legislation being considered in her state that would forcibly imprison pregnant women suspected of being addicted to methamphetamine, sending them to drug treatment facilities against their will. The Arizona bill is, of course, designed to protect fetuses, not women.... Indeed: the state has a specific role to protect people from harm, so long as the person isn’t a pregnant woman being harmed by the government who thinks that pregnancy gives them total control over her body. The bill would expand the child abuse stat...

With a more sombre look on her face, the Girl in Short Shorts posts on Planned Parenthood & Black Genocide . I won't excerpt it because you need to read the entire unbelievable article. {giving you time to leave and return} Maybe the problem is that Margaret Sanger is a liberal feminist icon.

What will a longer-and-longer long-shot candidate for his party's presidential nomination do to pander to enough conservative voters to keep himself in the game (at least in his own tiny mind)? Mike Huckabee is supporting a Colorado constitutional amendment to declare that fertilized eggs are human beings . “This proposed constitutional amendment will define a person as a human being from the moment life begins at conception,” Huckabee said in a statement backing the Colorado Human Life Amendment. “With this amendment, Colorado has an opportunity to send a clear message that every human life has value. “Passing this amendment will mean the people of Colorado will protect the sanctity of life from conception until natural death occurs.” Among other things, this amendment would effectively make in-vitro fertilization illegal in Colorado. The way that IVF generally works is that a woman undergoes a cycle on fertility drugs and produces between 8-15 eggs. The clinic takes sperm from ...

To begin with: I support abortion rights. I refuse to equivocate any more and call myself Pro-Choice . I also refuse to give up my gut-wrenching objection to abortion as a practice. But I believe that a woman's right to control her own body trumps the State's so-called right to intrude therein. So given that I'm a bundle of contradictions, this one's tough. New York Governor Elliot Spitzer is lobbying hard to have the Empire State legislature pass a law declaring abortion a "fundamental right." Opponents--which in NY State always includes a high percentage of my fellow Catholics--believe that this bill is aimed at creating a slippery slope , at whose bottom they will find religious hospitals required to perform abortions. Not so, respond the bill's supporters. So here's the controversy: Church officials say the act goes much further. Among their concerns is a provision that expands the field of people who may legally perform abortions. The legisl...