One day after Barack Obama’s victory in 2008, the president-elect’s campaign team launched its official transition website. The administration “will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government,” they wrote.

A little more than four years have passed since that pitiful November—during half of which Bradley Manning has rotted in a handful of military facilities—and, boy, does the administration’s claim sound like a ridiculous joke.

Manning’s trial, which is expected to begin in June, was recently turned on its head by the residing military judge. Colonel Denise Lind ruled that Manning can no longer utilize the “whistleblower defense,” and it doesn’t take a legal scholar to understand this decision’s significance, especially when the US government’s charges against Manning include providing aid to the enemy. Lind’s ruling guarantees that the reason Manning communicated with WikiLeaks will remain struck from the public record; it’s her “official” way of ignoring information that is already widely available.

Anyone with an Internet connection can see why Manning did it. We have numerous chat logs detailing his conversations with hacker/informant Adrian Lamo. When asked about his “endgame” in passing along the classified files, Manning explained that he hoped they would spark “worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms.”

“[I] want people to see the truth,” he said, “because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.”

Far from an application to al-Qaeda, Manning’s act was a guide for the country’s evolution toward a more trustworthy and open government. If this is included in the public record, though, the courts look bad. Thus, in accordance with Lind’s ruling, Manning can only testify to his motives after he’s convicted (or enters a plea deal) to mitigate his sentence, putting the courts in a position to appear lenient and sympathetic.

Since Manning’s conversations with Lamo were relevant enough to justify his arrest in the first place, you’d assume that the chat logs’ contents in their entirety would be equally applicable to the case. That isn’t how it works. Intelligence-gathering is a one-way street in Washington, DC, and poking around the government’s business will do nothing but get you arrested. Spy on taxpayers, though, and maybe you’ll get a promotion.

After Congress reauthorized the FISA Amendments Act in December, which grants the NSA extensive eavesdropping power, the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed an FOIA lawsuit against the Department of Justice. Its goal was to review the extent to which the intelligence agency has conducted illegal surveillance against US citizens.

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The DOJ sent back 33 pages of white space and scattered hyphens: a complete redaction.

These bureaucrats must waste a lot of time crossing out transcripts because they responded similarly to the ACLU one week later. The organization requested classified FBI memos outlining exactly when the bureau’s agents—a notoriously deceitful bunch—are allowed to track US citizens via GPS technology. This issue dictated national headlines throughout last year’s United States v. Jones case in the Supreme Court. The FBI had attached a 24-hour GPS tracker to a nightclub owner’s vehicle after suspecting him of selling cocaine, and the memos in question constitute the DOJ’s official (and verbatim) interpretation of the Jones opinion, including how the department intended to continue day-to-day operations afterward.

One afternoon the ACLU opened its mailbox and found an answer: 100 pages of white paper seemingly dipped in black ink. No pen strikethroughs, no scattered hyphens, just blacked-out rectangles and an eerie reflection of stars in the night sky.

An empty package would have been more helpful. FOIA requests are called “requests” for a reason. When the bureaucrats from whom you’re requesting secret documents have absolute power in deciding what they do and don’t send, especially when their jobs may depend on you not having the information, what do you expect to happen? Ignoring their occasional cooperation to save face—and the potential for abuse by other nosy miscreants—the feds serve as judge, jury, and executioner. It isn’t the end of the world, though. The DOJ’s fierce black pen probably says more about the organization than any unredacted memo ever will.

In that sense, FOIA requests serve an important purpose, but not the one they’re intended to serve.

Luckily we can still count on some private companies to fight the good fight. Honorable businessmen, when contacted by Uncle Sam for help with spying on their customers, will tell their customers about the solicitation. Google and Twitter have been models for this type of rebellious nobility, going so far as to tell the whole world when they’re tapped in the shadows (even when they’ve complied).

Google, which published its biannual Transparency Report on January 23, noted that government requests for user data have increased by more than 70 percent since 2009, an average of about 119 requests per day in the latter half of 2012. Twitter released its own report the following Monday, tallying the daily receipt of about five information requests and 18 copyright notices throughout 2012.

Obama accepted one of his first anti-secrecy awards during a “closed, undisclosed meeting.” Had there been an audience, he would have been laughed off the stage.

Martin Luther King Jr.

The left’s wailing about gun control should have been over at least two weeks ago, but Alex Jones’s erratic interview with Piers Morgan provided enough fuel to keep the anti-gun flames stoked for many weeks into the future.

I recently chronicled the sporadic blame game that arose in Sandy Hook’s wake as well as the glorious backlash after a newspaper began publishing gun owners’ home addresses. Tracking the entire media debate, I didn’t see a single exchange perceived worse than Alex Jones’s.

But I didn’t see too many that were remarkably better, either. Even More Guns, Less Crime author John Lott, who has published very detailed work on firearms policy, seemed sorely underprepared during his CNN segment in December. His facts were spot-on, but his timid and scrappy presentation hindered their strength.

On Friday, CNN aired what came to be my favorite interview of all. “Gun Appreciation Day” chairman Larry Ward used the race card against its own fanatics. Co-panelist Maria Roach, a black woman, gave a sigh of contempt when Ward dared to speak of Martin Luther King, Jr., as an ally of the Second Amendment. She seemed unaware that King personally applied for a concealed-carry permit after his house was bombed in 1956. The government denied his application, so he hired armed guards for protection instead.

Ward explained:

I think Martin Luther King, Jr. would agree with me if he were alive today that if African Americans had been given the right to keep and bear arms from day one of the country’s founding, perhaps slavery might not have been a chapter in our history.

The New York Times published an op-ed lambasting Ward’s assertion without saying why. The Daily Beast also tried to critique the interview but ended up admitting that rebellions often failed because slaves were up against “their far better-armed masters.” In other words, the slaves’ guns were controlled. The sole objective of early gun prohibition was to ensure the slaves couldn’t fight back.

In 1644, more than a century before the Constitution’s ratification, Virginia introduced a law forbidding freed blacks from owning firearms. Throughout the next decade, uprisings weren’t commonplace—it’s difficult to revolt without guns—but they occasionally happened. So Virginian plantation owners lobbied the government to enact further restrictions on the slaves’ right to self-defense. In 1680, the state issued a new piece of legislation, “An act for preventing Negroes Insurrections,” to restrain blacks from purchasing any weapons that may have loosened their shackles:

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Whereas the frequent meeting of considerable numbers of negroe slaves under pretence of feasts and burialls is judged of dangerous consequence, it shall not be lawfull for any negroe or other slave to carry or arme himselfe with any club, staffe, gunn, sword or any other weapon of defence or offence.

This must be news to gun-control advocates. ThinkProgress, much like The Daily Beast, also cites the failure of slave uprisings as evidence against the power of guns. One reporter wondered why Nat Turner’s “armed revolt” still resulted in the execution of 56 blacks and the murder of 200 or so others. It’s because slaves were legally prohibited from owning guns in Virginia. The rebellion failed because the rebels were only “armed” so far as makeshift knives and dull axes constitute weapons.

I challenge anyone to find me a single illustration that depicts Nat Turner wielding a gun.

Neighboring states were so nervous about local slaves mimicking Turner’s example that they, too, started regulating the acquisition of firearms. Delaware soon required free blacks to obtain gun licenses, which they never received. Maryland banned gun ownership by blacks outright. Georgia didn’t even let them carry guns. Finally, Florida authorized white citizens to confiscate blacks’ guns and carry out disciplinary whippings without due process.

In light of all this, why do modern liberals continue to balk at claims such as Ward’s? Could it be that for the past many decades, the left has held such a dominating influence over minorities that it’s refusing to concede responsibility for gun control’s historical role as a tool of black oppression?

Claiming stake in a minority voter base is no reason to ignore original documents. Absolute freedom is the underdog’s only companion, no matter how often his or her enemies try to paint it as racist. Gun control has always been a slave owner’s favorite defense against rebellion.

And there is more than one kind of slavery.

Weeks after the Sandy Hook shooting, which was blamed on everything from Ke$ha to Mortal Kombat, most news outlets are still in panic mode. One newspaper, though, went “full retard.”

The Journal News of Lower Hudson sought to shame gun owners, specifically the ones who obtained their guns legally. So the newspaper published the personal details of every handgun permit holder in Westchester and Rockland Counties, complete with interactive Google Maps pinpointing their locations.

The piece opened with a fear-inducing account of a local woman who was shot in the back of her head in May. Ironically, her assailant owned two unregistered handguns that wouldn’t have been listed on the newspaper’s map. Dwight R. Worley, the story’s author, then interviewed a few antigun clowns from the neighborhood, including one man who voiced support of The Journal News‘s decision but requested anonymity.

The anonymous ball of confusion said that if he’d known his neighbors were gun owners, he wouldn’t have bought his house in the first place.

His neighbors declined to comment, but maybe they wouldn’t have bought their houses, either, if they’d known they were going to live next to such a sissy.

For gun owners such as 73-year-old Veronica Hash, who described her firearm as “the only thing that makes [her] feel relatively secure,” the attempt at shame is akin to the methods used against sexual predators. For individuals who don’t own guns, their absence on the map is a clear sign to criminals: This house is unprotected.

Unhappy about the map, a few pro-Second Amendment activists returned fire. “I don’t know whether the Journal‘s publisher Janet Hasson is a permit holder herself,” one man wrote, “but here’s how to find her to ask.” He then listed Hasson’s personal information—including her phone number and home address (with interior and exterior photographs)—and did the same thing to reporter Dwight Worley, visual editor Robert Rodriguez, and even Gannett CEO Gracia Martore.

Others chimed in with additional information, and one man created a new interactive map: “Where are the Journal News employees in your neighborhood?”

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The newspaper learned that shame is a knife that can cut both ways. Apparently staffers were so intimidated by the outrage that they changed their tune on gun control and hired armed guards for protection. Police officers who reviewed an allegedly threatening email sent to an editor found no cause for concern. Behind its wall of armed guards, the newspaper promised to move forward with a third release of permit data from the dangerous gun owners in Putnam County.

According to the county’s clerk, though, that’s too bad.

“There is the rule of law, and there is right and wrong and The Journal News is clearly wrong,” said one county clerk. “I could not live with myself if one Putnam pistol permit holder was put in harm’s way for the sole purpose of selling newspapers.”

So what remains for employees at The Journal News? Their personal details are plastered all over the Internet, a county clerk has given them the boot, and the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association is calling for a boycott of jittery advertisers—all due to an irrational compulsion to shame gun owners for protecting their homes.

Nothing makes me happier than to see these fools stumble. In effect, we’re shaming the gun-shame lobby. We’re pointing out their ridiculous contradictions and the dangerously shallow foundations on which they stand, and we’re doing it with a laugh.

For instance, only four days after a wide array of celebrities released a video urging voters to “demand a plan to end gun violence,” a hysterical mashup was posted online: “Demand Celebrities Go F*CK Themselves.” Its creator interspersed each actor’s antigun message with movie clips of the same actor firing bullets like there’s no tomorrow—Conan O’Brien shooting with Hunter S. Thompson, Jeremy Renner murdering FBI agents in The Town, etc.—portraying the Hollywood hypocrisy we all know and love.

That’s the gun lobby’s future. They played the media against itself. It was quick, playful, spontaneous, and effective.

Image of guns and ammo courtesy of Shutterstock

Family Guy

Nowadays the first step to take after a school shooting, far from mourning or otherwise feeling sorry for the families whose children were killed by a maniac, is calling for new and immediate restrictions on gun ownership.

The second step is insisting that there must be some external reason why this wonderful, loving 20-year-old would commit such an atrocious crime. He must have been driven to it by society’s unrealistic expectations, our culture of violence, or something else. Certainly it couldn’t be that Adam Lanza was the problem, that he fully understood what he was doing and didn’t care.

Many seem to believe otherwise, though. They act as if it’s our collective duty to find out exactly why everyone—with the exception of Adam Lanza—is responsible for the massacre so we may change our ways and become a model society of enlightened wimps. People and organizations are taking ridiculous lengths to ensure that they don’t offend anyone’s delicate sensibilities for the next few weeks.

Stories surfaced claiming that before Lanza stole his mother’s weaponry and shot her in the face several times, he unsuccessfully attempted to purchase his own rifle at Dick’s Sporting Goods. Store employees reportedly turned him away. This unconfirmed report was still enough to scare Dick’s executives into suspending the sale of modern sporting rifles nationwide as well as the sale of all guns at its store closest to Newtown.

Walmart also erased the Bushmaster AR-15, which Lanza used at the elementary school, from its website. (This didn’t stop the surge of gun sales, though; its remaining inventory was bought up in a matter of days.) And then the private-equity firm Cerberus decided to drop its ownership of the gun’s manufacturer, Freedom Group, citing the “national debate on gun control” as a catalyst. I hope the short-term appeasement of public opinion was worth the long-term financial losses Cerberus will incur from parting ways with the nation’s largest firearm manufacturer.

As if it wasn’t enough watching businessmen bend to the will of fools who wouldn’t have purchased their guns anyway, the spontaneously compassionate celebrities were next, apologizing every which way for the content of their entertainment. Radio stations stopped playing Ke$ha’s song “Die Young,” as if Lanza had been dragged into committing violence by lyrics about “young hunks taking shots.” The singer Tweeted:

I’m so so so sorry for anyone who has been effected [sic] by this tragedy.and I understand why my song is now inappropriate. words cannot express.

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The National Rifle Association, which has arguably done more to eviscerate gun rights than to protect them, came to Ke$ha’s defense…somewhat. The organization issued a statement undermining the view that violent music inspired the school shooting. What we really need to blame, it explained, are video games such as Mortal Kombat, where human beings and cyborg ninjas fight to the death in the middle of magically complex realms.

Chief executive officer Wayne LaPierre took special note of a game called Kindergarten Killer. The 10-year-old Flash game depicts a rogue janitor who takes up arms against angry cartoon children who shoot back.

“How come my research staff can find it, and all of yours couldn’t?” he asked an intensely confused audience. “I mean, we have blood-soaked films out there…aired like propaganda loops on Splatterdays and every single day.”

He was right about Splatterdays. At least the movie and television industries thought so. They, too, started doing some spring cleaning of their own.

Networks combed through scripts for Law & Order and American Dad and pulled episodes that mentioned schools, shootings, or any variant of the two. Family Guy aired repeats. Evidently the FX network didn’t get the memo about American Horror Story, which is still available on Netflix and features a school shooting as a major plot motif.

I watched the first season last week and have so far felt no inclination to involve myself in mass murder.

It is unfortunate that in a futile search for the external trigger of Adam Lanza’s murder spree, some people are willing to accept curtailing freedom of expression as collateral damage. Obscene or not, as Hustler founder Larry Flynt had to prove in court, this is a freedom without exceptions.

Every hollow self-correction we make in response to this shooting is a passive admission of guilt. We couldn’t have done anything differently, and we shouldn’t.

This massacre was no one’s doing but Adam Lanza’s.

Immigrants in the early 20th century celebrated US citizenship. The threat of illness, death, and separation from their wives and children failed to deter these Europeans who fled their home countries for the promise of a better future.

To them, the United States was a safe, free haven distant from the brutal tyrants and collectivist academics across the Atlantic. My ancestors knew that Ellis Island was the beginning of everything they’d ever wanted. Angelo LaSorsa put one foot on the ground and realized immediately that he had, as H. L. Mencken was to put it, “won a small precarious territory from the great mob of his inferiors.” And he flourished. He saw New York as innocent ground, not yet soiled by the likes of Wilson and the latter Roosevelt.

Unfortunately the Statue of Liberty’s invitation—its call for “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses”—transformed into a national pastime. The tired remained in bed. The poor stayed in poverty. The huddled masses continued huddling. And the country deteriorated. The population forgot its past. It began to believe that this newfound freedom was merely an idle state to be enjoyed instead of something to be vigilantly defended.

Laziness turned into a symptom, and welfare was the government’s solution. It was assumed that the wealthy businessman’s earnings could mitigate stagnation’s effects, which it did for a while. But enough time passed. Enough heads took a good look around.

The elites are finally admitting this country ain’t what it used to be.

Singer-songwriter Denise Rich ruffled the government’s feathers Monday when news outlets noticed she’d renounced her US citizenship months earlier in an apparent move to evade taxation on her hefty estate. Rich’s spokeswoman insists the relocation is about wanting to live near her family in Austria. The fact that she plans to reside in London even though her new citizenship is in Austria—which conveniently offers tax breaks to citizens who spend half the year abroad—says otherwise.

Good riddance to the entire situation. A famous Democrat is leaving the country, which leaves the government with less tax revenue. I couldn’t be happier from a philosophical standpoint. But now we have one less successful person doing their thing in the economy.

Eduardo Saverin is the most notable tax expatriate this year. The Facebook cofounder renounced his US citizenship after learning that his earnings on the company’s IPO would be taxed upwards of $67 million. Since Singapore has no capital gains tax, Saverin moved. Now he gets to keep everything he earned. Saverin now seems interested only in Brazilian start-ups looking to get involved in the Asian market, so American companies can forget about any extra investment opportunities his wealth would have provided to them.

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This was bad news for American entrepreneurs, but we saw no apologies from DC’s parasitic bureaucrats. Instead of loosening the tax collector’s death grip around our only source of economic growth, maggots such as Senator Chuck Schumer decided it’d be best to prevent wealthy expatriates from ever returning to the country.

Acts of personal sovereignty such as Rich’s and Saverin’s threaten government officials because they imply that individuals will move as they wish. It suggests that successful businessmen really will leave the farm when they’re pushed around for too long.

In ways, Americans are even starting to self-secede. In Charles Murray’s newest book, Coming Apart. Murray explains how American communities are increasingly isolated from one another. The modern economy’s dependence on creativity began separating concrete doers from abstract thinkers in ways it had never done before. Creative minds didn’t want to live around people who slowed them down, and thus they relocated to new habitats where others were less likely to dictate their actions. Murray summarizes:

…they didn’t just separate themselves from the poor. They separated themselves from just about everyone who isn’t as rich and well educated as they are.

Is this not a cultural renouncement of citizenship?

Murray views this pattern negatively, but I feel an immense sense of happiness about what’s happening. It’s reassuring that the America where people cared about whom they associated with is still vital, living in the backdrop of our psyches yet remaining quiet and in constant watch for the egalitarian police.

It tells me that people will do everything they can to avoid unnecessary barriers on the path to success, and whether that’s renouncing your citizenship or moving to a neighborhood filled with people like you, nothing is so frustrating as being grouped together with a bunch of bumbling fools who insist you’re all brethren.

On Monday, Iranians mourned the anniversary of a civilian airliner that a US missile shot down in 1988. The strike killed all 290 people aboard. This is the event that led George H. W. Bush to say, “I’ll never apologize for the United States of America. Ever. I don’t care what the facts are.” The Iranian government reportedly received $130 million in a compensation settlement, but considering our historically strained relationship, Iranians are still shouting things like “Down with the US!”

Newt Gingrich decided to accidentally commemorate the anniversary last week by speaking for the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), a designated terrorist organization. The US military had recruited the group in the past to infiltrate Iran and report on its nuclear facilities. The MEK is also known to maintain mysteriously ample funding despite its placement on various global terrorist lists.

But as American politicians such as Gingrich continue referring to these people as part of a “massive, worldwide movement for liberty in Iran,” it’s no wonder so many people overseas are beginning to hate us.

Hillary Clinton’s threats about Assad’s ousting won’t help. Diplomatic solutions will turn into a bloody feud, and innocent Syrians will be filled with American bullets in the name of freeing them for democracy. Blowback is real, and it’s getting worse.

An opinion piece published in The New York Times on June 13th was written by a brave 23-year-old living in Yemen’s capital. It confirms everything most of us have already realized: Killing innocent people with bomb shrapnel is bad for business, especially if “business” is keeping the country out of terrorist groups’ crosshairs.

Ibrahim Mothana, the column’s author, quotes a Yemeni lawyer who told the Obama Administration in May that drone strikes are only fueling anti-American militance in Yemen.

Michael Scheuer, former chief of the CIA’s bin Laden unit, has often discussed Middle Eastern resentment of America, and Osama bin Laden reportedly recommended that people read Scheuer’s Imperial Hubris to understand Islamic militancy.

Civilian deaths are a key component of al-Qaeda’s recruiting process, and if the US government wants to help the organization find people willing to blow themselves up in the middle of dirt-covered streets, I recommend they continue drone strikes. The kind of collateral damage that pushes law-abiding citizens toward extremism has become less of an accident and more of a policy. The Obama Administration changed the rules of engagement in April when it began openly launching drone attacks with little to no knowledge of the people targeted. When you don’t know whom you’re shooting at, it’s unlikely you’ll actually hit a “bad guy.”

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This is why the unmanned and careless missions are increasingly unpopular throughout the world. According to a recent Pew Research Center poll, the US, Britain, and India are the only three polled countries where less than half of the population disapproves of drone strikes. Go figure.

The discrepancy between Western and Middle Eastern opinions is one between statistics and firsthand experience. Pakistanis and Yemenis see these dead bodies constantly. They see the families and children splattered on the ground. As far as the American media is concerned, though, these people are not civilians but terrorists with close ties to al-Qaeda.

This isn’t an accident. Obama’s policies are fomenting radicalism abroad, not only undermining our way of life but provoking an extremist hydra with many more heads.

Those found dead are also presumed guilty. Thus their deaths were not in vain as far as any news outlet is concerned. American soldiers realize this is happening more than anyone else, and it’s literally killing them. Unfortunately these unseen deaths do not happen on the battlefield.

These are the domestic effects of foreign war.

Some soldiers are just beginning to leave their bases while others ask people to refrain from thanking them for their service. Yet endless cluster bombs and constant gunfire are so detrimental to these young individuals’ health, many decide the easiest path to tranquility is suicide.

As of early June, we’re up to one military suicide a day. This epidemic’s solution isn’t better veteran services, as neoconservatives insist; the solution is to stop deploying soldiers in the first place. Not only will the families of current soldiers be happier, but future soldiers’ families will be happy that their children will never need to leave.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock

About two months ago I mentioned my disappointment that Raleigh, NC lacked Southern culture, only to be informed in the comment section that true sweet-tea-drinking Southerners don’t even consider the city to be part of the South. The longer I stay in this godforsaken place the better I understand why real Southerners share the sentiment.

Last week I couldn’t take a single step without hearing a television pundit cry about rampant racism in North Carolina. One would almost assume the Black Panthers and Aryan Brotherhood were fighting in the streets immediately outside the UNC campus. Turns out the only thing that happened is that businessman Todd Chriscoe didn’t let a black guy eat at his sports bar, a phenomenon I refer to as “private property, get over it.”

The guy who was kicked out of the bar is Jonathan Wall, a 21-year-old student with plans to attend graduate school next fall at Harvard University, the esteemed institution that hosts an “Understanding Obama” reading group. Among Wall’s other accomplishments is a stint at the NAACP’s Atlanta branch.

Wall insisted after sparking the initial stir, “I’m not trying to cause trouble….But I can’t just sit back.” He continued not trying to cause trouble by giving numerous interviews to popular news outlets and plastering his story all over the Internet. Then came a press conference followed with other people claiming to have been kicked out of the bar for racial reasons. One man described his experience as “not physical,” but he somehow knew the owner was racist due to “the way they treated me.” Another man spoke out about how the establishment treats blacks like “second-hand patrons” even though “it’s subtle.”

If I were to hear these nonspecific explanations alone, I’d say the discomfort they felt had more to do with race-centric paranoia than anything else, but the evidence piling up suggests that the bar owner really doesn’t like black people. Local news station WRAL did one of their hyperbolic investigations eleven years ago at another one of his businesses which frequently turned away black couples and allowed white ones to enter.

Let’s assume that Chriscoe openly discriminates on a racial basis.

Who cares?

Raleigh’s residents seem perplexed about how someone can voluntarily discriminate and still maintain a successful business.

If Wall’s account is true, Chriscoe does sound like a jackass. Wall says that he was forced into a headlock as he waited for friends so they could leave together, which would be a ridiculous way for a bar owner to act (with or without racist intentions). Then again, these stories are verified by the Internet only, and it will be interesting to see whether Chriscoe releases security footage from the night in question.

Yet why is no one critiquing comments made by Wall’s supporters? A quick peek at Wall’s Facebook page and you’ll see a smug commenter who wrote, “[It’s] good I wasn’t with you that night or I would’ve gotten locked up for showing them the nigga they wanted to see.…” Wall joyously “liked” the comment.

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These statements hardly parallel the evolved, civil, and progressive values those on the left pretend to cherish. Now there’s a rally planned for Saturday afternoon. Various idiots will march in a circle, protesting the bar owner and insisting that “there is NO PLACE FOR RACISM in the city of Raleigh.” And then what happens?

Should the Raleigh Police Department stampede into the bar like a micro-Waco? Should they search for evidence of racism and then shut the bar down through government force when they find no portraits of Malcolm X hanging above the bathroom stalls?

It’s sickening that Raleigh’s residents refuse to acknowledge even the simplest aspect of private property. Let’s be clear: No one has a right to enter Chriscoe’s business in the first place. If he asks you to leave, then leave. Whether it’s because you’re black, because you’re wearing stupid sandals, or for no reason at all, what the owner says goes.

Our problem today is that people are beginning to think of businesses as public goods. Any action opposing this collectivist illusion is ultimately followed with lawsuits.

The obscene disappearance of male space (e.g., social clubs, barbershops) is linked to businessmen’s fear of being prosecuted for providing an environment to customers who want to spend time with others like them. One of the most notable examples is McSorley’s Old Ale House in the East Village, an Irish tavern whose motto used to be “Good Ale, Raw Onions and No Ladies” until the feminist maggots forcibly opened its doors to women in 1970.

Walter Block explains it best in Defending the Undefendable:

Was their right to choose being violated? No. What they experienced was what a man experiences when a woman rejects his sexual advances. The woman who refuses to date a man is not guilty of violating his rights—for his rights do not include a relationship with her….[And] women’s rights do not include drinking with people who do not wish to drink with them.

Would Wall oppose an enterprise catering to an all-black customer base?

Unfortunately the government won’t stop enforcing this madness until entrepreneurs take a stand and say, “No.” Passive aggression works in the short term but will not outlast the progressives’ incessant barges into our lives. Will this civil disobedience ever happen? We may not know until it does. One thing is certain: The longer politicians force people together, the harder people will push against the grain. And the harder they push, the harder this delicate society will crash on the ground into pieces.

The Tea Party emerged about a year after I first got interested in libertarian politics, and I was proud to see people protesting against taxation and supporting individual freedom. They seemed committed to a vision of how to return our country to its roots. Slowly, though, the issues became less pronounced. The movement became little more than a roasting of all things Obama—ACORN, Van Jones, etc.—with no evident purpose beyond producing nifty Republican campaign tactics.

Here are the Tea Party’s eight worst political mistakes:

1. Michele Bachmann. She claimed to have read Ludwig von Mises (and therefore should still understand his theories on easy credit) while maintaining a fierce campaign against Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but then it came to light that she had profited from federally subsidized housing loans that these organizations backed. Then it was revealed that she’d worked for the IRS. She excused this job as the best way for a warrior to “know your enemy,” Sun Tzu-style. Her hypocrisy was unbearable.

2. Herman Cain. The Tea Party hated the Federal Reserve, which taxes us indirectly by devaluing the US dollar to less than $0.05 of its 1913 value. Not only did Cain have a stint as chairman at the central bank’s Kansas City branch, he insisted that anyone who supports a Reserve audit doesn’t understand what the Fed does. A few months later we finally understood: It provides banks with under-reported bailouts worth $16 trillion. Since his 9-9-9 plan would have severely increased the cost of living for many people, he would have almost been the Tea Party’s evil enemy if Occupy Wall Street hadn’t filled that role.

3. Rick Perry. Forcing girls in sixth grade to get vaccinated sounds like one of Dr. Mengele’s wet dreams. Perry turned it into a Texas state social policy. He also had extensive financial ties with the pharmaceutical giant producing the vaccines. Weren’t objections to government-corporate partnerships (e.g., TARP) essential to the Tea Party?

4. Rick Santorum. At first the Tea Party rightly rejected this religious nut. Then they began flocking to him like sheep. In February the Pew Research Center showed 42% of Tea Party Republican voters favoring his campaign, even though Santorum found their attempts to refashion the Republican Party 100% unfavorable. In 2005 he told NPR the idea that politicians “should keep our taxes down and keep our regulation low and [not] get involved in the bedroom” wasn’t traditional conservatism.

5. Newt Gingrich. Newt’s liberal laundry list is infinite. When 100 Tea Party leaders from 25 different states planned to announce support for Gingrich in January, they seemed unaware of his voting record. In the 1990s he supported the death penalty to enforce drug prohibition. He was then paid around $600,000 to lobby for ethanol. He also earned about $1.6-$1.8 million when he worked at Freddie Mac. A year ago he stated that “all of us have a responsibility to help pay for healthcare.”

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6. Marco Rubio. Rubio is turning into a major war hawk. He claimed last year that he had no interest in being VP, but he made a speech at the Brookings Institution in April which David Weigel referred to as an “audition.” One month later he made a similar speech at the Council on Foreign Relations promoting foreign aid as a way of leveraging other countries. This ignores both (1) the existence of blowback in international affairs and (2) Thomas Jefferson’s warning: “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations—entangling alliances with none.”

7. CISPA. If there’s one way to piss off the younger generations, it’s by advocating that the government curb Internet freedom. Yet over 70 percent of the House Tea Party Caucus supported CISPA. I explained at the Daily Caller how CISPA had zero to do with intelligence operations and everything to do with intellectual property. Trying to control something one doesn’t understand is a sure way of swiftly ending one’s political career.

8. Rand Paul. Rand was the only spinal column holding up the Tea Party—and then he endorsed Romney for president. Mitt—the regulation-friendly, war-prone corporatist—getting an endorsement from Rand Paul was a swift punch straight to the gut. A few people have defended his decision on the grounds that it’ll help his standing with establishment Republicans, but I fail to see how it’ll be possible to keep this up for the next four years without compromising actual principles.

Punching myself in the face would feel better than watching these bobbleheads nod back and forth acknowledging our country’s battle cries for small government while they raise their fists in solidarity for statism. Endorsing such laughable candidates has destroyed this once-powerful movement’s credibility. Every unconstitutional vote that Tea Party politicians cast cannot be undone by speeches that quote the Founding Fathers. The short-term goal of getting elected cannot outweigh the importance of constitutional consistency. Ron Paul is a living example of what kind of career can be built when a person sticks to their principles. Why not follow suit?

Photo of Tea Party rally courtesy of Shutterstock

Tuesday was World Environment Day. I loathe the environment.

The United Nations has been stoking the flames of Earth worship since the early 1970s, when global cooling was all the rage. This year’s theme is “Green Economy: Does it include you?” My answer is a resounding “NO.” The greenies’ question is less of a pleasantry and more of a threat: If your business doesn’t conform to the green agenda, you’ll face a heavy fine.

Despite the veneer of compassion, environmentalists are often power-hungry statist egalitarians. They are “watermelons”—green on the outside and red on the inside.

EPA official Al Armendariz was caught on camera advising the government to “make examples” out of the energy companies that weren’t abjectly compliant with the agency’s strict regulations:

The Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean. They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw and they would crucify them. And then you know that town was really easy to manage for the next few years….And, companies that are smart see that, they don’t want to play that game, and they decide at that point that it’s time to clean up.

This sentiment ignores the fact that although the Romans were masters at conquering lands, they also created beautiful and industrial cities on top of them. Roman rulers supported deforestation to provide for a growing and prosperous society. The EPA isn’t like ancient Rome at all; most likely it would have been pummeled by Rome.

Rabid environmentalists use the “boiling frog” method these days. Instead of outright banning important sectors such as oil refinement, greenies make it illegal to partake in smaller transactions so that we don’t get too mad too quickly.

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For example, the Los Angeles City Council apparently sees plastic grocery bags as a threat to the government-owned Los Angeles River’s sanctity. Far larger intrusions into the economy include a 90 percent increase in electricity costs in exchange for a world temperature reduction of a mere .2˚ Celsius by the end of the century.

Despite popular belief, not even American Indians were environmentally friendly. Chief Seattle’s famous “Man Belongs to the Earth” speech is a fabrication written by some screenwriter named Ted Perry. Tom Woods explains in 33 Questions how the Indians recklessly killed entire animal populations as well as cut and burned down entire forests for farmland without regard for the ecological consequences. Some of the fires spread “for weeks at a time over several hundred thousand square miles,” most not stopping until the rain smothered the flames.

The only appropriate excuse for conservation is that it’s economically sound. The market is necessarily a promoter of clean environments because its core principle is private property. An entrepreneur would treat a privately owned Los Angeles River just as he would treat his own privately owned swimming pool. Considering the river’s potential for profit, he may treat it even better. In that sense, all free market capitalists are also free market environmentalists.

There are still countless political roadblocks that prevent simple solutions. If there wasn’t a monopoly on trash pickup in my city, maybe a company would pay me to pick up and keep my recycled items. To advance the rare breed of humanity-friendly, economy-boosting, realistic environmentalism, I think that’s a perfect place to start.

Despite liberal whining about car pollution, automobiles were a solution to the poisoned atmosphere resulting from primitive travel methods. The horse-and-buggy days tainted our air with the foul scent of horse manure before businessmen came into the picture. So yes, the Earth is a little smoggier than it was in the last two centuries, but it also no longer smells like horseshit.

Last week three activists associated with the Occupy movement were arrested and accused of plotting an attack to protest the NATO summit. The group allegedly stockpiled Molotov cocktails and planned to burn down Barack Obama’s campaign headquarters and Rahm Emanuel’s house among other buildings.

Some of the accused’s supporters say these weren’t Molotov cocktails, they were “beer-making equipment.” I have no idea what beer-making equipment looks like. My beer-making equipment is a little money and a trip to the nearest convenience store.

Attorney Michael Deutsch has accused Chicago police officers of planting evidence and entrapping the men. If the trio is found to have been manufacturing Molotov cocktails to hurt others, being encouraged by undercover police officers doesn’t excuse them.

Yet this phenomenon of government agents aggressively egging on violent ideas is an increasingly frequent tactic used to turn useful idiots into national headlines.

These three men bear a striking resemblance to the aptly named “Five Stooges of Cleveland.” We’ll never know whether the two equally unkempt groups—both labeled as “self-described anarchists”—would have been able to commit these crimes on their own because the government supported them each step of the way.

Rick Perlstein wrote a fantastic piece in Rolling Stone last week detailing how the feds pushed forward the Cleveland group’s plan to blow up the Brecksville Bridge on May Day. Perlstein points out that one of the arrestees, Connor Stevens, told his sister that he felt “very pressured” by someone in the group. That someone was an FBI informant.

Perlstein says the informant encouraged the group to destruct a huge bridge while the other protesters were considering smaller locations. The would-be criminal masterminds began getting some information from an online version of the notoriously unreliable Anarchist Cookbook, the author of which now openly regrets its publication.

When the informant realized these people were idiots and wouldn’t be able to build an explosive device to save (or extinguish) their own lives, he casually mentioned that he knew a C-4 dealer (in reality an undercover officer). The group was arrested after attempting to ignite their fake (and federally supplied) weapons.

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There is a huge difference between everyday sting operations—in which officers merely provide known criminals with the opportunity to commit a crime—and months-long infiltration efforts that groom normal outcasts into dangerous ones.

The same thing is happening in the foreign-policy arena.

A 19-year-old Somali-American tried to detonate a car bomb at a Portland-based Christmas ceremony in November of 2010. It’s evident that the teenager was interested in committing acts of terror. But the FBI provided him “with months of encouragement, support, and money.”

In January of 2011, a 26-year-old American named Rezwan Ferdaus allegedly told undercover officers that he wanted to fill “small drone airplanes” with explosives and guide them into the Capitol and the Pentagon via GPS. The man acquired F-86 Sabre remote-controlled aircraft using money the federal government had given him. The FBI also gave him fake C-4, AK-47 rifles, and hand grenades.

Similar stories keep unfolding, and each time we’re expected to greet government agencies as heroes. In psychology, people who create these desperate situations for the sole purpose of saving the day are afflicted with “hero syndrome.” Maybe all the government needs is an official diagnosis.

The individuals running the FBI are corrupt but intelligent. They’re drumming up new business to maintain relevancy. War is a huge money-making machine. No one profits from it as much as the government, and no one loses as much in life and in wealth as the average American citizen.

Nothing is a better salesman than fear, not even sex. Sex can sell cigarettes and fast cars, but it cannot sell a war.

And without war, what use would we have for government?

George Clooney and Barack Obama

Hollywood’s making a funny new documentary featuring a handful of half-asleep champagne socialists who worship a charismatic government leader and then empty their wallets for his reelection campaign. You can watch the documentary as it’s being made on your nearest television screen.

The most recent scene involves Democratic loyalist George Clooney, who hosted a May 10th fundraising dinner that netted $15 million for Barack Obama’s campaign. Guests who consisted of other Hollywood luminaries paid $40,000 per plate—beating out Will Ferrell’s measly $35,800-per-plate fundraising dinner—to hear the president talk about his money-fueled revelation about gay marriage last week.

Two months ago Clooney and his father were arrested outside of the Sudanese Embassy in Washington, DC. I’m unsure why government corruption in Third World countries still makes the news, but Clooney took time throughout this protest-turned-photo-shoot to thank Obama for his personal commitment. Their relationship goes back to Clooney’s presence in the original photograph used for the 2008 election cycle’s famous HOPE poster.

Whereas Clooney makes these strange, post-platonic advances while out in the spotlight, director/producer Davis Guggenheim worships the Obama Administration from the other side of the camera. Guggenheim—whose credits include the conveniently untruthful An Inconvenient Truth—created a 17-minute documentary the Obama campaign released in March to detail the president’s immense achievements. The campaign continued its big-spending streak by paying an astounding $345,000 to produce the documentary, or a little over $20,000 per minute.

Many other Hollywood celebrities such as Kevin Bacon and Antonio Banderas have stepped forward to support Obama but don’t seem to understand exactly why. Banderas is still stained by his creepy 2008 ad where Obama campaign slogans are interspersed with screenshots of missiles, floods, and distressed polar bears. He referred to his recent experience meeting the president as a “fairy tale.”

Matt Damon says Obama has “rolled over to Wall Street” but says he still plans on voting for him in November. Damon seems knowledgeable, but his obscene partisanship prevents him from developing sane political beliefs that don’t conform to typical left-wing economic theories. At least Elle Macpherson admits she’s a socialist. I admire her openness, but that doesn’t mean she’s not a jackass.

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Thankfully, not everyone follows the herd. Actor Vince Vaughn phoned Texas Congressman Ron Paul last year merely to ask for textbook suggestions. He’d been introduced to the academic side of the “End the Fed” debate and wanted to further his understanding of how the Federal Reserve dampens our economy.

Comedian Jon Lovitz is a rare gem in Hollywood who refuses to obsess over Obama, referring to the president as a “fucking asshole” a few weeks ago when Democrats were busy complaining that the wealthy weren’t paying their fair share in taxes for bureaucratic crap.

But people such as Lovitz and Vaughn will always be exceptions because the presidency is a cult of personality, and Hollywood is forever focused on personality rather than ideas. And voters, many of whom get their political ideas straight from Hollywood, admire presidents who do things because hyperactive politicians are the ones who end up in the history books. Since voters are weaned on these history books by no choice of their own, this cycle is a never-ending plague on our republic. When was the last time you heard a public-school lesson claiming that Warren Harding ended a severe depression after World War I by making sure the government did less than usual, namely through drastic budget and tax cuts?

It’s difficult to glorify presidents whose political ideals involve leaving people alone as often as they possibly can, and that’s why the political right will never have Hollywood on its side. But the world’s businessmen back the free market, and when everything comes crumbling down they’ll be the only ones left standing. America needs a little less of the statist millionaire George Clooney and a few extra doses of the libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel.

I’m living in North Carolina right now. When I first moved here, I thought I’d see people hanging out on their front porches, drinking whiskey with a splash of sweet tea, holding double-barrel shotguns close to their hearts, and proudly waving Rebel flags. I assumed the Southern girls would have that “girl next door” look but would feel no shame in clawing out their enemies’ eyes.

Sadly, I have seen nothing of the sort.

Yesteryear’s states’-rights, secession-prone freedom fighters have been replaced by watered-down tools who attach anti-smoking stickers to their Prius windows and vote Democrat.

These days you can hardly mention the Confederacy without the maggots crawling all over you. The public schools’ modern version of American history focuses on slavery’s continued existence during the Civil War and ignores the federal government’s aggression before the battles began. They’re creating a generation burdened with “white guilt.”

Luckily there is still a strong group of people who question whether it was necessary to kill over 600,000 Americans to abolish slavery, something plenty of other countries managed to do without such carnage. One such individual is Texanna Edwards, a senior at Tennessee’s Gibson County High School who made headlines last week for wearing a prom dress resembling the Confederate battle flag and then getting turned away by school bureaucrats who insisted the dress was too offensive.

If she’d worn an image of Che Guevara—much like how Johnny Depp and Carlos Santana do with impunity—she probably would have danced the night away without incident.

It leaves you assuming that public schools do not allow the celebration of any mainstream culture for fear that minorities might feel isolated.

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Two years ago, administrators at California’s Live Oak High School were perfectly OK with students waving Mexican flags around the campus on Cinco de Mayo, but when five students arrived at school wearing American flag shirts, they were promptly told to take them off or risk suspension. One of the students in question explained, “They said we could wear it on any other day, but [Cinco de Mayo] is sensitive to Mexican-Americans because it’s supposed to be their holiday so we were not allowed to wear it.”

Ironically, Cinco de Mayo is a celebration of Mexico’s victory against the French military in 1862. Napoleon III controlled France at the time and had been supplying the Confederacy’s soldiers with the weapons and money they needed to secede, so Mexico’s victory was the end of one of the Confederacy’s most important relationships.

Heaven forbid I wear a Thomas Jefferson shirt during Black History Month next year and a liberal judge uses legal precedent to ban me from McDonald’s.

To leftists, only minorities have rights. Culture is only to be celebrated if you’re a minority; otherwise it’s plain racism. This is why the government and its willing enablers suspend students for waving American flags, remove teenage girls dressed in Southern-designed prom dresses, and conceal religious symbols at Catholic universities.

It is almost as if Abraham Lincoln is giving us the finger from the grave.

Martha Plimpton

Lee Aronsohn co-created Two and a Half Men. Lee Aronsohn executive-produced The Big Bang Theory. Last week, Lee Aronsohn pissed off the feminist community.

Taking the third point into consideration—not that it’s a difficult mission to accomplish—I can forgive him for the first two choices.

Aronsohn recently joked about the many new female-centric comedies on television and contrasted them with his own male-centric sitcom:

Enough, ladies. I get it. You have periods…But we’re approaching peak vagina on television, the point of labia saturation.

We’re centering the show on two very damaged men. What makes men damaged? Sorry, it’s women. I never got my heart broken by a man.

At first the statement disappointed me, too, but only because it was 8:30 in the morning and I didn’t want to hear the word “labia” while I was eating eggs and bacon. I laughed a little and went on with my day.

But then Martha Plimpton, star of the comedy series Raising Hope, blew a gasket. She Tweeted to Aronsohn:

Um, are you f#*king kidding me?

Others followed suit, asking Aronsohn to issue an official apology for his “offhand” and “misogynistic” remarks.

Aronsohn acknowledged their petty shaming attempts with a quick apology:

Yes, yes - it was a stupid joke. I’m sorry.

Clearly these people had never seen episodes from Aronsohn’s show before. It’s about a drunken jingle-writer whose interest in women starts and ends in their pants—how much can you expect from the minds behind it? Asking the creator of Two and a Half Men to stop being sexist is like asking The Real Housewives to stop being retarded.

The main question I had afterward was why people are getting so pissed off about what one individual said. John Derbyshire’s piece for Taki’s Magazine produced similar effects this week (though Derbyshire’s words are much more extreme than Aronsohn’s).

It’s like these critics had never before heard such things. I agree that Derbyshire sounds insane, but I took everything as an impulsive and unserious rant—specifically the hyperlink which directed us to the video of a black man calling for all whites to be exterminated.

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Many writers who mentioned the incident in their own columns went no further than calling it irrelevant. The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote:

Let’s not overthink this: John Derbyshire is a racist. Declaring such does not require an act of mind-reading, it requires an act of Derbyshire-reading.

The Huffington Post’s Radley Balko wrote along similar lines:

The Internet has apparently discovered that John Derbyshire doesn’t like black people. Up next: Shock that Stormfront isn’t a weather site.

These quick commentaries were refreshing breaks from panicked warnings that Derbyshire’s words single-handedly doomed America to a future worse than the Jim Crow South.

Has our country reached the point where any blotch of impurity found in the lake of free speech will drive the population into national outrage? The left wing so strongly glorifies political correctness that it has become the new virgin bridelike ideal.

I enjoy getting on a website that has the nerve to offend someone, somewhere. Here I can read about how Gavin McInnes thought marriage would be “like having a live-in sex slave” and how he increases the chance of achieving this dream with well-timed foot massages and false acts of sincerity. Few websites would print these words for fear of being labeled misogynistic (or, in Derbyshire’s case, racist).

For this reason, Taki’s Magazine is such a nice contrast from today’s polished and squeaky-clean newspapers. Maybe being brought up by an Old Right family left a permanent imprint in my heart that makes me attracted to these kinds of websites, the ones still talking about things which only used to be discussed in yesterday’s barbershop.

Anton LaVey wrote about the importance of these old traditions in such an increasingly sterile and timid world:

As he grows older and styles change more, he will cling to the substance of his joy by retreating into social circles where he might reminisce of what once made him happy. In this way he maintains his vitality, albeit vicariously. With his cronies he will talk of the “good old days”—days replete with the sights so dear to him, now so sadly changed. His pals and the elderly girls who abound in the old compound share his nostalgia, and their clothing is out of style. Out of style! How fortunate for the inmates of senior citizens’ centers that they can maintain at least some semblance of the “good old days,” if only on their backs. Little do they realize that this very out-datedness is keeping them alive.

People outside of the Taki’s Magazine circle may continue to think everyone who visits the site is a bigot waiting for the day when the government stops enforcing discrimination laws, but readers here already understand that words belong to the individuals who speak them.

Zooey Deschanel

My friends became humanitarians this week. They shared a 30-minute video with me on Facebook and Tweeted about a Ugandan war criminal after seeing Zooey Deschanel do the same thing, so I guess that makes it legitimate.

These are the same kind of people who put an end to child abuse after they changed their profile pictures to cartoon characters in 2010. I’m really proud of everyone.

This is Generation TMI. We give away too much information in conversations, and we take in too much from what we see and hear each day. It’s a little difficult to filter every piece of news that slithers into my brain, which is why I’ll be a lifelong cynic. It’s not because I want to spend the rest of my days at bars quoting Bukowski’s prose; it’s because I want to live my life as one of the few people to whom others look for truth.

Invisible Children, Inc. is a nonprofit organization perhaps best known for its documentary about the forced enlistment of child soldiers by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda. Some jackass named Joseph Kony is in charge of the guerrilla group, and the hatred that’s currently a-brewin’ for these vicious clowns is well-deserved. If it’s true they massacre villages and sell girls into sexual slavery, I would love nothing more than to watch these people run through the streets on fire.

Then again, maybe I’ve watched too many Saw movies—you know, “Those that don’t appreciate life do not deserve life”—or maybe I dream a little too often of Dexter Morgan living next door.

Either way, I’m able to lower my testosterone levels long enough to remember that the main goal should not be a reenactment of Eli Roth’s nightmares featuring Kony as the helpless victim. The main goal is to help these children escape a monster that has for too long ruined lives.

How do we go about helping these people achieve peace and freedom? Or what should we not do?

Invisible Children bragged about its continued efforts in lobbying the US government to interfere with Kony’s actions, which eventually resulted in Obama sending 100 troops into Uganda to train the country’s army.

But the sudden mass outbreak of anti-Kony fever recalls Bush-era rhetoric. (“Either you are with the Ugandan military or you’re with the LRA!”) There is a cultish feel to this train of thought. But I’m not “with” either organization. Choosing one evil over the other does not make you sophisticated, nor does it make you any more virtuous than undecided onlookers.

Michael Deibert wrote a fantastic piece for the Huffington Post where he explains the origins of the Ugandan government’s power:

Kony is a grotesque war criminal, to be sure, but the Ugandan government currently in power also came to power through the use of kadogo  (child soldiers) and fought alongside militias employing child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo, something that Invisible Children seems willfully ignorant of.

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Most importantly, says Deibert, the Lord’s Resistance Army is no longer in Uganda, and it hasn’t been for at least six years.

The Ugandan government under Yoweri Museveni is no better now. It has been using the classic door-in-the-face technique to crush basic liberties under the guise of civil progress.

In early February, Uganda’s parliament revived an anti-gay bill that promised death sentences to those engaging in homosexual behaviors. A new version of the bill dropped references to the death penalty for “serial offenders,” but there are still mandatory prison sentences for homosexuals. More likely than not, this is all the Ugandan government wanted in the first place—a false display of willingness to negotiate.

Human Rights Watch depicts further corruption within Ugandan police forces:

…officers routinely use unlawful force during arrests, including beating suspects, using torture during interrogations to extract confessions, and the alleged extrajudicial killings of at least six individuals in 2010 alone.

And this is whom Invisible Children wants the US government to train? Are they also proud that for the past two years, the Obama Administration has waived almost every penalty against foreign governments using child soldiers to give them more of our tax money in military aid?

US military training often goes awry. Six years ago we trained Guatemalan soldiers to fight against the LRA. Kony’s group, according to David Axe at Wired, “wiped out the entire eight-man commando force and beheaded their commander.” We also trained Osama bin Laden to fight against the Soviet Union, which was then deemed the greater of two evils.

We see how that turned out.

Despite how mismanaged Invisible Children’s funds may be, it’s good that they’ve helped build schools, but the organization should be ashamed that it promotes firepower to solve these complex conflicts. Charity and guns don’t mix.

Ron Paul

While interviewing Ron Paul a few days ago, CNN’s chief political analyst Gloria Borger avoided discussing his policies and instead dredged up the already exhausted newsletter scandal.

On multiple occasions, Paul has stated that he: (1) doesn’t know who the author was, (2) takes full responsibility for the newsletters being published under his name, and (3) denounces their content. Yet Gloria wouldn’t let up with her antics.

“Goodbye,” Paul said, then calmly walked away. Although initial news reports gave the impression that Borger’s badgering caused him to stomp out of the interview, this wasn’t the case.

Sean Hannity and other right-leaning pundits have asked Paul equally stupid questions over the years, so it isn’t only left-wing news outlets.

One of Paul’s most popular stances is his strong rejection of the War on Drugs, which had been a non-issue until he came into the mix. Substance prohibition in American history has frequently been entwined with anti-minority ideology. In the early 1900s, marijuana was denounced as a drug that polluted the white race and turned Mexicans into murderous lunatics. The same thing was carried out against Chinese immigrants and blacks through anti-opium and anti-cocaine legislation, respectively.

Anti-drug laws still disproportionately affect minorities. A 2009 Human Rights Watch study concluded that “an estimated 67 percent of convicted felony drug defendants are sentenced to jail or prison.” Relative to population, “blacks are 10.1 times more likely than whites to be sent to prison for drug offenses.”

The Root, a black-oriented website, referred to ending drug prohibition as the “most meaningfully pro-black policy today.” The NAACP accepts this thesis and passed a resolution earlier this year to end the War on Drugs.

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Nelson Linder, president of the Austin NAACP, speaks favorably of Ron Paul’s campaign, especially his foreign-policy stance. Which other candidate expresses stricter antiwar sentiments than Ron Paul? The Texan congressman has consistently opposed US imperialism from the beginning of his career—there’s a book detailing these speeches. He even went where few politicians would in supporting WikiLeaks.

If he was racist, why would he continue to speak out against the outrageous number of civilian deaths resulting from these wars in the Middle East? And why is he one of the only candidates who sternly opposes the TSA’s racial profiling here at home?

Capital punishment disproportionately affects blacks. After the practice was reinstated in 1976—it had been suspended for four years due to the Furman v. Georgia ruling—University of Iowa law professor David C. Baldus published a study on the pre-suspension environment. He discovered in examining over 2,000 homicide cases in Georgia that capital punishment was more often applied to black defendants, especially when the victim was white.

The ACLU concurs. “If you’re rich, you get away with it. If you’re poor and you’re from the inner city, you’re more likely to be prosecuted and convicted,” Paul has stated. Ron Paul disagrees with capital punishment for that very reason.

The current president has extended these policies, as well as the Middle East wars, without much protest from the standard news outlets. He overrides state laws to enforce the harmful drug war. And he set a record on the border front, deporting nearly 400,000 illegal immigrants in the last fiscal year.

Nowhere on Ron Paul’s campaign website does the word “deport” exist. In fact, one of his immigration reforms includes streamlining the entry process for foreigners.

Assuming Paul gets the GOP nod, we’ll be left with a choice between the candidate who takes $500 from a racist and uses it to stop the wars or the one who takes millions from big banks and uses it to escalate them.

Obama apologists can feel free to hold up that race card when the debates get tougher, but libertarians can hold it up longer.