Liberty Pile - Libertarian News

All the Libertarian news you can use for the week of February 27th, 2009!

I apologize for the lack of updates last week. I was out of town with literally no Internet access for three days. It was great!

Monday was the 5th anniversary of Samuel Edward Konkin III's death. He wrote New Libertarian Manifesto and was a major proponent of Agorism. That is, effective change by withdrawing your consent from the State with black or grey market activities. KoPubCo recently released An Agorist Primer in hardcover format. RIP

Obama's recovery.gov didn't seem to want search engines indexing their content. Last week, it was discovered that the site was using a robots.txt file to block search indexing. CNET broke the story and within three hours, the web team silently pulled the robots.txt file, allowing full indexing. Transparency in Government eh?

Obama's recently proposed $3.55 Trillion (yes, Trillion) begs to increase taxes a full $1 Trillion. Yes, Trillion with a T. Mostly among the Wall-Street Types and Multinational corporations. That'll stimulate 'em!

With the Government taking a 36% stake in Citi Group this week, we can all breath a sigh of relief. Remember, 1/3 nationalization of the largest bank in the US is still not full nationalization! I don't know about you, but that makes me feel a lot better.

For those concerned with the Second Amendment (everyone), "Supreme Court's First Post-Heller Gun Case Decided, In Favor of Gun Possession Prohibitions" is the headline coming from reason.com. On Wednesday, regarding the recent case in which the court upheld wide reading of regulation prohibiting anyone convicted of a domestic violence charge from owning firearms. From Brian Doherty: "And that decision will ensure that more people remain legally prohibited from owning guns, with the Second Amendment not applicable."

I know these times are tough for everyone, but if you can find it in your pocket to throw a few bucks towards a good cause, The Center for a Stateless Society has started their Spring fundraising drive. They've hit 29% of their goal and the fundraiser ends on March 31st. They're doing great work over there, so please kick down a couple dollars if you have the means.

The big news making the rounds in the Libertarian blogosphere this week was California's proposed tax on Marijuana to raise funds. As you may or may not know, California's budget is a disaster and they are scrambling to make cuts and raise revenue (e.g. taxes and fees). Nick from the Bureaucrash.com Blog wrote a great piece on the subject.

You've heard about Obama's Iraq troop withdrawal from Iraq by 2010 plan, right?? Well, did you also know about his 17,000+ troop increase going into Afghanistan plan? Extract troops from one location to re-deploy in another. so, where's the draw down? It's all just a numbers game with these sick individuals.

Groups around the US are staging a Tea Party today in protest of the bailout and "stimulus" packages coming from Washington. In particular, the DC protest is gaining momentum.

To conclude this week, I'll leave you with a story from Wisconsin, where a group of police officers bullied a photographer and deleted pictures being taken of the cops.

This is just priceless: The officer ignorantly told him that he had the right to take photos unless the person being arrested did not want their photos taken.

Yours in Liberty