On Thursday, the LP used a suggestion for its “Daily Poll” on the LP Web site. The question stayed up over the weekend, and quickly became one of the most responded to questions in recent memory. I thought the results were quite interesting, given the large response, but also more importantly, how diametric the results were. I do not wish to add commentary to the results, but simply wish to post the results for those who many not have had a chance to see them.

What type of LP presidential candidate do you want? (408 votes)

A “purist” - 30 (7%)

A long established Libertarian activist - 22 (5%)

Someone who can communicate our basic message to voters outside our party - 356 (87%)

From US Libertarian Party

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

My wife, during a business trip to Arizona, once sat in an aircraft next to the guy who now owns Southfork ranch, the place that achieved legendary status in the hit TV soap Dallas. Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch have this rather whimsical piece on how the show, despite portraying most people in business as either predatory villains (JR Ewing), or often losers (ie, anyone up against JR), was effective in inadvertently demonstrating the sheer,…

From Samizdata.net

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

I recommend this short illustrated talk given by an American academic who taught at Beijing University and who went with his family on a trip to North Korea. Here is part of what he says: This is a woman that was directing traffic with great resolve and military precision outside the front door of our hotel. We watched her for at least ten minutes, as she moved and rotated with complete control of her little…

From Samizdata.net

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

I am not certain whom I should pity the most: the Intelligent Design advocates of Homo Sapiens or the future Scientists of the next technological species on our planet. Much of what we know of the past is built on the fossil record and most of the rest upon the exponentially increasing DNA databases of fully sequenced life forms. For us it is an easy matter, in a relative manner of speaking, to follow characteristics…

From Samizdata.net

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

From time to time you hear a familiar tale about how X has not bought a TV license because X does not have a television, but about how the TV license people are nevertheless harassing X mercilessly. X tells them repeatedly that he has no TV, but it makes no difference, and a sum of money way in excess of the license fee being unjustly demanded is consumed in fatuous bureaucratic intimidation. Why don't they…

From Samizdata.net

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

Drew Carey is back with his latest Reason.tv installment, this time he takes on the food police in Los Angeles:

Amid the hustle and bustle of downtown Los Angeles, there exists another world, an underground world of illicit trade in—not drugs or sex—but bacon-wrapped hot dogs. Street vendors may sell you an illegal bacon dog, but […]

From The Liberty Papers

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

Actor Wesley Snipes, previously convicted on three misdemeanor charges of failing to file income taxes, has been sentenced to three years by a Federal Judge:
OCALA, Fla. — A federal judge on Thursday sentenced the actor Wesley Snipes to three years in prison for willfully failing to file tax returns.
Mr. Snipes, who was convicted in February, […]

From The Liberty Papers

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

A state legislator in Tennessee opens a new front in the drunk driving wars:
Defense attorneys would be banned from advertising their expertise with drunken driving cases under a bill advancing in the Senate.
Sen. Rosalind Kurita, a Clarksville Democrat, successfully added the provision to a bill that would create an online registry of repeat DUI offenders […]

From The Liberty Papers

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

Back in November 2006, a man named Sean Bell was killed on the evening of his bachelor party in some kind of confrontation with the NYPD:
 Officers shot three men who had just left a bachelor party held at a Queens strip club early Saturday morning, leaving the groom dead on the day of his wedding, […]

From The Liberty Papers

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

A change in employment has meant that I suddenly have three weeks leisure on my hands, and as a consequence I have decided to address my terrible inadequacies as a traveller by making my first trip to South America. I shall thus be arriving in Buenos Aires late tomorrow evening, and the plan is to be in Argentina for three weeks. This has come suddenly. My plans involve the city of Buenos Aires, some time…

From Samizdata.net

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom