[Updated at 5:02 pm]

I was surprised but pleased to see Drudge link to noted Libertarian Penn Jillete’s EPIC rant on the war on drugs and particularly Obama’s disgusting hypocrisy thereto, embedded below. This issue is where I, and many others, part ways with the GOP and the rather large Drug Warrior segment of the Tea Party. The very principle of prohibition is contrary to basic notions of self-ownership and liberty, see, e.g., Lincoln quote below. If the GOP had any brains, much less principled commitment to freedom, it would have a come to Jesus moment and plant the Gadsden flag on this issue, where it rightly belongs. But who am I kidding, tepid social conservatives such as Rubio, Christie, Daniels, and Jindal are the future of the party, while Gary Johnson, Mike Lee, Justin Amash, Rand Paul, and Ron Paul are dismissed to the children’s table where their antiquated notions of individual liberty, adherence to the Constitution, and Washingtonian (beware of foreign entanglements) foreign policy cannot harm the GOP’s stakeholders.

Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.

-Abraham Lincoln (1809-65) U.S. President. Speech, 18 Dec. 1840, to Illinois House of Representatives

I call an animal, a species, an individual corrupt, when it loses its instincts, when it prefers what is injurious to it.

David Boaz’s article here. Blurb below from Boaz’s facebook page:

Congratulations to the president for getting on the right side of this generation’s civil rights struggle. He can be an important leader for equality under the law.

But of course, this announcement does raise questions. Was he telling the truth to voters in 2008 when he said, “I believe that marriage is between a man and woman and I am not in favor of gay marriage” and when he told voters in 2004 that “My religious faith dictates marriage is between a man and a woman, gay marriage is not a civil right”? Or when he told voters in 1996, “I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages”? Has he been wrestling with a conflict between his religious faith and his belief in the Constitution, or just with conflicting political pressures?

Rhetorical question, imo.

Nevertheless, he’s in the right place now. And he says he’s been “evolving,” so we know he sees his new position as the evolved one. Good for him.

[Updated at 5:04 pm] And here’s Chris Barron (GOProud), via Reason, weighing in on Obama’s sudden evolution:

GOProud’s Chris Barron reacts to Barack Obama’s late and somewhat tepid support for marriage equality:

“It is good to see that after intense political pressure that President Obama has finally come around to the Dick Cheney position onmarriage equality. I am sure, however, the President’s newly discovered support for marriage is cold comfort to the gay couples in North Carolina.  The President waited until after North Carolina passed a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.”

“This is hardly a profile in courage by President Obama.  For years now, President Obama has tried his hardest to have it both ways on this issue.

“The real kudos here goes to LGBT activists and their allies who finally forced the President into yielding on this issue.”

Zing.

The answer is to return to first principles. The government should protect us from force and fraud and then leave us alone. It must recognize that our freedoms come from our humanity, that our souls are immortal, that it is merely a temporary institution based on fear and force. It cannot spend more than it takes in. It cannot kill except in actual self defense and it cannot take our property and give it away. Freedom is the ability to obey your own conscience and free will. Government is fear and force telling you what to do.

Run your eye back over the list of martyrs, lay and clerical: nine tenths stood accused of nothing worse than the truth.

May Day:

Lei Day:

http://edge.ebaumsworld.com/2011/06/81577677/soocer-ko.gif

You won't see this in the UFC

Source. More Radical Islam here.

‎”The principle that the majority have a right to rule the minority, practically resolves all government into a mere contest between two bodies of men, as to which of them shall be masters, and which of them slaves.” — Lysander Spooner

I commented on Spooner here:

Lysander Spooner (bio here) was a 19th century entreprenuer, scholar, radical abolitionist, and principled believer in natural law and liberty. He is the personification of DuelingBarstools’ tagline “brains, heart, and balls, for individual freedom.” But frankly, DuelingBarstools couldn’t carry Spooner’s fountain pen.

“Call it what you want—capitalism, free enterprise, laissez faire or whatever—but a system that upholds property rights and otherwise allows free people to be themselves is remarkable precisely because it’s NOT a “system” per se. No deluded, pretentious planners devise or direct it. It’s no Rube Goldberg contraption of mandates and decrees. It’s simply what happens when you leave peaceful people alone. They produce more and satisfy human wants to a far greater extent than empty nanny-state promises could ever hope to deliver.”

Reposted in its entirety due to Awesomeness (Via Politico):

It’s striking to me how the liberals and Democrats on this panel are bending over backward to defend the president’s strikingly inaccurate statement. Why not just say “yep, he made a mistake this time”? Or do like the conservatives did the other day on the gay marriage question and just not send in a comment?

Everyone who observes the Supreme Court – every constitutional law professor, every reader of newspapers – knows that it’s just nonsense to say that it would be ”an unprecedented, extraordinary step” to ”overturn a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.” We all make mistakes. Let’s give the president a pass on a flight of off-the-cuff rhetoric that went awry. But the people defending this claim a day later don’t get that pass.

James Madison wrote that judges would be “an impenetrable bulwark against every assumption of power in the legislative or executive.” Starting with Marbury v. Madison in 1803, the Supreme Court declared that it could exercise that power by striking down laws passed by Congress. Since then, as Jeffrey H. Anderson pointed out in the Weekly Standard, the Court has struck down all or parts of a law passed by Congress in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), Myers v. U.S. (1926), Schechter Poultry Corporation v. U.S. (1935), Bolling v. Sharpe (1954), U.S. v. Lopez (1995), Clinton v. City of New York (1998), U.S. v. Morrison (2000), and Boumediene v. Bush (2008), and more than 100 other cases. It also strikes down laws passed by democratically elected state legislatures, in cases such as Brown v. Board, Baker v. Carr, Roe v. Wade, and Lawrence v. Texas.

And of course the president also exaggerates when he hails “a law that was passed by a strong majority.” PPACA passed on a narrow party-line vote in both houses of Congress. That’s the law; you only need a majority, and you’re not required to get supporters from both parties. But a vote of 219 to 212 is hardly a “strong majority.”

I say the president is a politician running for re-election who got carried away with his rhetoric. But what’s the excuse for law professors and other informed writers a day later who defend his wildly inaccurate claims?

Caution: Reading the following article reminds that humanitarian arguments for military intervention in Syria demand action in North Korea. For many political reasons, however, North Koreans should expect no such help. Conversely if and when military intervention occurs in Syria, as Libya before it, it will be due to politics, not humanity.

How One Man Escaped From a North Korean Prison Camp. Brief excerpt–seriously you should read the whole thing:

His name is now Shin Dong-hyuk. His overall physical health is excellent. His body, though, is a roadmap of the hardships of growing up in a labour camp that the North Korean government insists does not exist. Stunted by malnutrition, he is short and slight – 5ft 6in and about 120lb (8.5 stone). His arms are bowed from childhood labour. His lower back and buttocks are covered with scars. His ankles are disfigured by shackles. His right middle finger is missing. His shins are mutilated by burns from the fence that failed to keep him inside Camp 14.

North Korea is the worst place in the world. When I’m rich I’ll organize and fund a private spy network (a la Isis) whose sole mission is to undermine the North Korean Communist Regime.

I’ve commented on North Korea a few times before:

The Prickdom of North Korea:

Libya, Foreign Policy & Such:

2. The Lesson the U.S. is Teaching the World in Libya: If you don’t want to be Qaddafied GET NUKES! You don’t hear a lot of International support for a coalition to effect a no-fly zone turned missile and aerial attack in nuclear armed North Korea, which commits atrocities against its own people as a manner of course that would make Qaddafi blush. By contrast, Qaddafi gave his nukes up and received a missile barrage and bombing sorties for his efforts. (Worse, French sorties – oh the indignity !)

And here’s why Mixed Martial Arts is far more than a sport:

“Since there is no such entity as ‘the public,’ since the public is merely a number of individuals, the idea that ‘the public interest’ supersedes private interests and rights can have but one meaning: that the interests and rights of some individuals take precedence over the interests and rights of others.” – Ayn Rand

Found this picture on the Bastiate Institute’s facebook page. I make the depressing prediction that one day the federal government will claim the authority to regulate and tax sunlight under the Commerce Clause, arguing the aggregate effect of individuals and their property receiving Sunlight substantially affects interstate commerce and therefore warrants federal control.

1. Constitutional Government
2. Individual Enterprise
3. Economy in Public Expenditures
4. Reduction and Reform of Taxation
5. Opposition to Aggressive War

<iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/4ufkFEU2kjw” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>

Read about this brave man here.

Via Peter Kim of Paralegal.net:

Created by: Paralegal.net

I usually define freedom as economic, civil and political liberty. Eric Hoffer’s definition is deeper:

‎”Freedom means freedom from forces and circumstances which would turn man into a thing, which would impose on man the passivity and predictability of matter. By this test, absolute power is the manifestation most inimical to human uniqueness. Absolute power wants to turn people into malleable clay.”

I hadn’t heard of Eric Hoffer until I came across the above quote on Lawrence Reed’s facebook page. More Hoffer quotes below.

“The monstrous evils of the twentieth century have shown us that the greediest money grubbers are gentle doves compared with money-hating wolves like Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, who in less than three decades killed or maimed nearly a hundred million men, women, and children and brought untold suffering to a large portion of mankind.”

“When grubbing for necessities man is still an animal. He becomes uniquely human when he reaches out for the superfluous and extravagant.”

“A society that refuses to strive for superfluities is likely to end up lacking in necessities.”

“Man is a luxury loving animal. Take away play, fancies, and luxuries, and you will turn man into a dull, sluggish creature, barely energetic enough to obtain a bare subsistence. A society becomes stagnant when its people are too rational or too serious to be tempted by baubles.”

“The central task of education is to implant a will and facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together.”

“The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its antihumanity.”

“The only index by which to judge a government or a way of life is by the quality of the people it acts upon. No matter how noble the objectives of a government, if it blurs decency and kindness, cheapens human life, and breeds ill will and suspicion- it is an evil government.”