Texas GOP Vote

In case you haven’t seen this yet, here’s CNN’s Piers Morgan interviewing my friend Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America. Morgan behaves like a child, using the words “stupid” and “idiot” to refer to his guest, and Pratt keeps his cool. Morgan is totally outclassed, though that itself isn’t much of a feat, I suppose.   Read more »

French actor Gérard Depardieu elicited a barrage of criticism for leaving France and settling in Belgium on the grounds that he has had it with “redistribution” and “paying, in 2012, an 85 percent tax-rate on my income tax.”

Writes Forbes: “The actor was heavily criticized. The Prime Minister called him a ‘pathetic’ character; the minister of labor, Michel Sapin, said he went into ‘personal degeneration’; the minister of culture, Aurélie Filippetti, was ‘totally scandalized’; the minister of the relations with the parliament, Alain Vitalies, was ‘shocked’; and the head of the Socialist Party, Harlem Désir, was ‘saddened.’”   Read more »

I am thinking a lot about taxation in light of all this “fiscal cliff” talk. According to the late Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick in his 1974 book Anarchy, State, and Utopia, ”taking the earnings of n hours of labor” is not different from “forcing the person to work n hours for another’s purpose,” and therefore the taxation of earnings is “on a par with forced labor” and cannot be morally defended.   Read more »

Says Politico: “The American public overwhelmingly favors raising taxes on the rich as a way to pay down the deficit, while opposing a hike in the Medicare eligibility age or eliminating tax deductions, according to a poll released Wednesday.”

For Medicare and Social Security to remain solvent, the U.S. government would have to invest over $220 trillion right now, and get a roughly five percent rate of return. Medicare alone accounts

Walmart reported its best Black Friday ever (Black Thursday, really, since the sales started on Thanksgiving night), in spite of union-inspired strikes at a number of stores across the country. “We work hard, so we just want a decent wage,” said one participant.

Now please, I already know that Walmart trucks use government roads, etc. Not the point.   Read more »

A reader writes:

I have just been assigned a paper for American History at my college in which I must:

“1. Explain how checks and balances (Federal and State) provided for in the Constitution limit the government’s ability to respond to the impending climate crisis.

  Read more »

Congressman Ron Paul's final speech on the House floor before leaving Congress:

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State nullification is Thomas Jefferson’s idea, derived from the Richmond Ratification Convention of 1788, that the states must refuse to allow the enforcement of unconstitutional federal laws within their borders.

Here’s an overview of nullification.
Here are answers to common objections.
Here’s how the mainstream media treats nullification.

Someone on my Facebook page (which I hope you will ‘like’) asked about defending the electoral college: should he make the argument that electors will have more sober and impartial judgment than the fickle masses, etc.?

I wouldn’t. Given that the electors are nearly always party machine people, almost none of them will be independent minded, so the arguments the Framers of the Constitution

The Huffington Post recently published “11 Lies About the Federal Reserve.” These alleged lies are being told by Fed skeptics like me. HuffPo rushes to the aid of the Fed, with a column by a young fan of Paul Krugman. So much for “question authority.” It really is “shut up and obey” now.   Read more »