The Everlasting Phelps

So the LP decided to nominate a conservative with no libertarian past and very few libertarian leanings.  Fine.

Now the sell-out has gone to a new stage.  They have turned their back on the First Amendment.  I got this email Friday (I’m still on the LP mailing lists):

Yesterday, I reported to former Congressman Barr that we’ve exhausted every avenue. I told him, “We’ve had calls placed to Pastor Warren from very powerful leaders from the left and the right, we sent in our personal request, and placed numerous phone calls that have not been returned. You are not going to be included.

“Our only option left is to threaten to file an temporary injunction as our attorneys believe they are in violation of the law.”

Bob responded by saying, “No, don’t threaten to do that . . . Just do it.”

As you read this, our attorneys are filing an injunction against Saddleback Church to include Bob Barr in their forum this Saturday.

You are the first to hear about this.

The complaint is based upon a violation of McCain/Feingold campaign finance legislation. While we’re no fans of that legislation, we don’t write the rules, we’re just forced to play by them. In this case, we’re using McCain/Feingold to our advantage.

You are goons.  The “Party of Principle” has decided to throw the First Amendment to the wind and try to force someone to, out of their own pocket, host someone else’s ideas.  “We’re just fighting fire with fire”, they say.  Well, that’s not what you are doing — you are attempting to use the color of law to violate the constitutionally guaranteed rights of another, and that makes you a goon.

So they lost.  This is the latest email:

That is because late Friday evening, U.S. District Court Judge David Carter denied our request to be included in the event.

His reasoning?  I’ll let Judge Carter explain in his own words:

“Plaintiffs will lose out on a fair amount of exposure and the opportunity to express their views in a popular forum. On the other hand, halting this event would deny the other candidates the opportunity to be heard and would deprive the public of an opportunity to see the candidates and hear their views.

“Forcing Saddleback to include another candidate at the last moment could cause serious logistical problems and take away from the presentations of other candidate. This might well disrupt the planned presentation.”
Judge Carter closed by saying:

Barr and Root “will have many other opportunities in the coming months to express their views and make their candidacy known.”
When I first read that report, I’ll admit I was a bit hot under the collar.  In response to the Judge Carter’s final comment, I angrily said to myself, “Name one!”

Listen, goon, if it was anyone else, libertarians all over would be cheering the decision.  But since it was your (conservative rather than libertarian anyways) ox being gored, now the first amendment can be damned.  The LP seems to have gone from being seen as clowns to actively beclowning themselves.  You can’t take what you claim is an unconstitutional law and then avail yourself of it to violate the rights of another and still call yourself the “Party of Principle”.  Just call yourselves Perot 2.0 and be done with it.

This is a great find to me. See, when I was a teenager and into my mid-twenties, I had a hard time sleeping on a schedule.  Before I found Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell, I would aimlessly click through channels, and sometimes, at about 3am, I would catch Professor Miller on PBS.  The problem is that it would be in the “Educational Programming” block that they played for schools to record, and I would never catch the start of it, so I never knew who he was or what the program was called.

But it was a hell of a lot of fun.  And now my morning is wasted.

Hat Tip: Classical Values

The cops handled this one correctly. This douche trespassed and was disobeying a lawful command.  (Yes, “stop eavesdropping on my interview” is a lawful command.)  No Tasers were deployed, and no charges were filed (since apparently, the doucebaggery ended there.)

I was a little distrubed at the old “videotaping is suspicious” canard, but that was mild.  The cop was really there on a trespass call, as the cop eventually admitted.  I think it was poor political-fu to send a quiet, non-disruptive guy out, but hey, everyone is allowed to do stupid things as long as they aren’t illegal.

There’s a $100,000 Reward being offered by the “non-partisan” Accountable America:

Accountable America is offering a $100,000 reward for information that is material to either a criminal conviction for committing a felony or a misdemeanor, or a final and unappealed judicial or administrative determination of civil liability that entails the imposition of fines or penalties of at least $10,000, for a violation of federal campaign finance, tax or other statutes or regulations by an organization that operates or purports to operate under Internal Revenue Code Sections 501(c)(4), 501(c)(6) or 527 and that primarily serves business or ideologically conservative interests.

I guess that with all the money they are spending on brownshirt intimidation attempts on Republican donors, they couldn’t afford to deal with the deluge of liberal interest group misconduct.

But remember, it is McCain’s people taking the “low-road”.

So the SpaceX III rocket went tango-uniform.  On board, amongst many other things, were James “Scotty” Doohan’s ashes.

The flight was carrying a trio of small satellites belonging to NASA and the DoD. Perhaps less seriously, but probably more newsworthy, the ashes of over 200 people were also on board, including a pair of rather well known astronauts, one actual, one fictional. They were Gordon Cooper, one of the original Mercury 7, and “Scotty” himself, James Doohan.

You know, having your ashes scattered by an exploding space vehicle is a pretty good alternative to having your remains sit in orbit for a couple of hundred years.  I’m just sayin’.

The definition of a tautology:

“We weren’t suggesting in any way he was using race as an issue,” Plouffe said of McCain, though he didn’t explain how Obama’s words could be taken any other way. He also declined to engage speculation that McCain was responding so forcefully to highlight Obama’s race.

“I really can’t speak to the McCain campaign’s motives,” he said.

A prominent Obama backer, Alabama Rep. Artur Davis, however, suggested an ulterior motive to McCain’s grievance.

“It’s ridiculous, it’s offensive and you have to wonder if there is a double motive for it,” he said, suggesting McCain was, in appearing to defend himself, trying to use race against Obama.

Okay, so now, if someone out of the blue says that you are about to get racist any second, and you get angry at that… it means that you are a racist? By all means, Obama campaign, full speed ahead. I’m sure that message will resonate with white Americans.

So if Fox News runs a banner that calls Barack Michelle’s baby’s daddy, then that is racist, but when Barack says “he’s got a funny name, you know, he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills” that has nothing to do with race? Riiiiight.