United Liberty

Here is a look at prison populations around the world according to the latest issue of The Economist. Only communist China, the scourge of many right-winged Americans, holds a candle to the US where numbers are concerned. I guess that means the US drug war is working. Somehow.

Portugal is the new Amsterdam. And the Taliban is still more liberal in its drug policy than the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Yesterday was the 110th anniversary of the birth of Friedrich Hayek, the Nobel Prize winning economist and author of The Road to Serfdom and Constitution of Liberty.

Here is a great quote from this great man:

Upon reading about the teenage kid stripped of due process because of the PATRIOT Act, talk show host Jeff Scott writes, “This is the first time I’ve heard of it being abused.” Not to pick on Jeff, but this isn’t the first time abuse has been reported.

In 2007, FBI Director Robert Mueller admitted to abuses of the PATRIOT Act. In fact, there were more than 1,000 instances of the FBI misusing the law, according to the Washington Post (emphasis mine):

Even though my most recent article for the conservative magazine Parcbench could understandably lead you to think otherwise, I am not a fan of abstinence campaigns. Abstinence campaigns are more obsessed with saving it for marriage, a legal contract that has little to do with love (I know people that have had decade long relationships without getting married and others that got married and then divorced months later), as opposed to the person who makes you feel comfortable. This was greatly satirized in an episode of King of the Hill in which Luanne marries a guy she just met because her and the guy really want to sleep together.

“God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all and always well-informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had thirteen States independent for eleven years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each State. What country before ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon, and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

Chrysler will not pay the $7+ billion it owes to taxpayers:

Chrysler LLC will not repay U.S. taxpayers more than $7 billion in bailout money it received earlier this year and as part of its bankruptcy filing.

This revelation was buried within Chrysler’s bankruptcy filings last week and confirmed by the Obama administration Tuesday. The filings included a list of business assumptions from one of the company’s key financial advisors in the bankruptcy case.

Some of the main assumptions listed by Robert Manzo of Capstone Advisory Group were that the Treasury would forgive a $4 billion bridge loan given to Chrysler in the closing days of the Bush administration, a $300 million fee on that loan, and the $3.2 billion in financing approved last week by the Obama administration to fund Chrysler’s operations during bankruptcy.

The Democratic Party takes black voters and gay voters for granted, just as the Republican Party takes pro-lifers, religious voters and gun owners for granted. We’ve already seen this with Democratic silencing of the D.C. voucher program, which benefitted low income black students (many of whom were big supporters of Obama during the election). Now, with D.C. voting to accept gay marriages, it’s time to see if the Democrats are willing to crap on another loyal voting bloc:

Here’s a great editorial from Investor’s Business Daily about the healthcare proposal put forward by Barack Obama and Democrats doesn’t live the rhetoric and how it will eventually wind up killing private health insurance (which is the goal for Democrats):

[T]he argument that Medicare’s administrative costs are 2% is one of the biggest scams out there.

Public figures for Medicare’s administrative costs count only what it takes to print reimbursement checks. Normal operating costs — rent, management, health insurance, taxes, capital to start a business and new equipment — which private insurers must include in their administrative costs, are counted elsewhere in the federal budget.

The Obama Administration may seek disbarment of some lawyers that served under George W. Bush: