I believe in personal freedom. I am the sole owner of my body, mind and spirit.

I will not be numbered, indexed, monitored or cataloged.

I have an eternal responsibility to my own soul to break all bonds ever forged upon me by force. I will repudiate and remove from my life all links in any chain of authoritarian ownership or control.

I believe in freedom for others. I will never initiate any act of force or fraud against another.

To be fully human and fully moral we must be free to dream, strive, explore, experiment, think, travel, believe, speak, risk, fail, succeed, defend ourselves, make choices, accept responsibility, and grow. Always to grow.

I will reach for the future. The only barrier I will permit to stand between my soul and the stars is time.

From the Agitator:

George Will urges the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down an Illinois law that may be the next step in post-bailout, post-Kelo America: direct transfer of the profits of successful industries to the accounts of those that are failing. The Illinois law attempts to prop up the state’s sagging horse racing industry by requiring the state’s four most profitable casinos to simply hand over 3 percent of gross receipts to Illinois’ horse racing tracks. The bill was recently upheld by the state’s supreme court.

More here.

And the slide towards a new socialism continues.

From Cato @ Liberty:

As Tad DeHaven mentioned the other day, CNN reported recently that business owners and residents on Hawaii’s Kauai island got together and made repairs to a state park — in eight days — that the state had said would cost $4 million and might not get done for months. Businesses were losing money since people couldn’t visit the park, so they decided to take matters into their own hands.

More here.

This is just one more example of individuals doing things better, cheaper and more efficiently than government.

From the group’s press release:

Thousand Oaks, CA — A national caucus of Republican activists has urged GOP legislators to stand firm against the “Paulson Bailout” of a corrupt financial regulatory system. “This proposal is a government takeover of the entire U.S. economy,” says Republican Liberty Caucus Chairman William Westmiller, “whose only purpose is to rescue those who made risky bets on bad mortgages.”

The Caucus [www.RLC.org] opposes any taxpayer payoff to rescue those who made bad investments in any sector of the economy. “The problem is not a lack of government control,” says Westmiller, “but rather the decades of market distortions imposed by Congress through subsidies, mandates, guarantees, andconstraints on free-enterprise mortgage offerings.”

The Paulson proposal grants the Secretary of the Treasury total control over all mortgage-related financial instruments, nearly a trillion-dollars in discretionary funds, and the power to nationalize or deputize every financial institution in the nation. “This isn’t a rescue plan,” says Westmiller, “it is an economic police state.”

(Special thanks to United Liberty for the story.)

The financial crisis that we're dealing with was caused by the government and their stooges.
This is why we are where we are today.


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* video embed updated 10/02/2008

*In no way, shape, or form does the Professor Politico Show endorse any of the presidential candidates (only because we haven't found one to endorse yet) or their views.

From Jacob Sullum @ Reason's Hit & Run blog:

Yesterday the Washington Supreme Court ruled that the state's smoking ban applies to private clubs as well as businesses open to the general public. Washington's Clean Indoor Air Act, passed in 1985, exempts "private facilities which are occasionally open to the public except upon the occasions when [they are] open to the public." An initiative approved by voters in 2005 broadened the ban to cover "places of employment." American Legion Post 149 in Bremerton challenged the Kitsap County Board of Health's attempt to stop its members from smoking at the post home, where all seven employees are relatives of members and all but one smoke, arguing that the exemption for private facilities remained in force. A five-judge majority of the state Supreme Court disagreed. Four judges dissented, with one of them, Richard Sanders, concluding

that if the majority's interpretation of the law is correct, the law is unconstitutional:

I would hold the Act does not apply to the Post Home as a private facility. Alternatively, if the Post Home's status as a private facility does not limit the Act's application, I would hold the Act is void for vagueness; unduly interferes with the Post Home's right of intimate association; violates the Post Home's substantive due process rights absent actual proof of a real and substantial relation between secondhand smoke and workplace dangers; and violates equal protection by distinguishing between two classes of business without reasonable grounds.

Just more government control to keep the sheep in line.
Read more here.

That would be the day the Democrats and Republicans turned their backs on the Constitution of the United States.
From Reason Online's article on the subject:

We must, and we shall, set the tide running again in the cause of freedom. And this party, with its every action, every word, every breath, and every heartbeat, has but a single resolve, and that is freedom.
Barry Goldwater, accepting the 1964 Republican presidential nomination

This year's Republican National Convention had a different theme for each day. Monday was "Serving a Cause Greater than Self." Tuesday was "Service," Wednesday was "Reform," and Thursday was "Peace."

So what was missing? Only what used to be held up as the central ideal of the party. The heirs of Goldwater couldn't spare a day for freedom.

Neither could the Democrats. Their daily topics this year were "One Nation," "Renewing America's Promise," and "Securing America's Future." The party proclaimed "an agenda that emphasizes the security of our nation, strong economic growth, affordable health care for all Americans, retirement security, honest government, and civil rights." Expanding and upholding individual liberty? Not so much.

Forty-four years after Goldwater's declaration, it's clear that collectivism, not individualism, is the reigning creed of Republicans as well as Democrats. Individuals are not valuable and precious in their own right but as a means for those in power to achieve their grand ambitions.

You will scour the presidential nominees' acceptance speeches in vain for any hint that your life is rightfully your own, to be lived in accordance with your beliefs and desires and no one else's. The Founding Fathers set out to protect "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," but Barack Obama has a different idea.

The "essence of America's promise," he declared in Denver, is "individual responsibility and mutual responsibility"—rather than, say, individual freedom and mutual respect for rights. The "promise of America," he said, is "the fundamental belief that I am my brother's keeper; I am my sister's keeper."

In reality, that fundamental belief is what you might call the promise of socialism. What has set this country apart since its inception is not the notion of obligations but the notion of rights.

"All previous systems had regarded man as a sacrificial means to the ends of others, and society as an end in itself," wrote the novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand. "The United States regarded man as an end in himself, and society as a means to the peaceful, orderly, voluntary co-existence of individuals."