On the TV show The View, Rosie O'donneld said some negative things about
Donald Trump. Does the 1st amendment of the US constitution give her
the right to say those things? Apparently, if somebody is rich, they
can trump this right for everybody else. In response to Rosie O'donneld's comments, Mr. Trump called her a loser and threatened to
sue. Wait a minute, he threatened to sue Rosie O'donneld because of negative comments. It works both ways. Shouldn't he be sued for calling her a loser? I guess the last name Trump fits Donald perfectly. He takes rights for himself and trumps them for everybody else. If this is the only way Donald Trump can live he is the real loser regardless of how much money he has.

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how big government affects lives

I'm guessing that the reason a lot of people couldn't care less about
politics is because they think that politicians have no effect on their
lives. I have a personal story that shows that those people are dead
wrong. My uncle has a severe head injury that prevents him from taking
care of himself. As a result my parents hired somebody to help take care
of him. Evidently, this person didn't know anything about taxes. While
she was working, she didn't pay the IRS what she owed out of her pay
check. However, the IRS never went after her. Instead, they are
expecting my parents to pay $1600 that they don't even owe.
Unfortunately, my parents don't have enough money for lawyers to fight the
government, so they will probably end up paying it even though they are
not the ones that owe the money. There is two ways we can solve this type
of problem. One is to simplify the tax code. This would alleviate some
misunderstandings about how much people owe and who owes what in taxes.
Another thing we can do is decrease the size of government. The less
government programs there are, the less the average person would have to
pay in taxes. Oh, you want to take away government programs away from
poor people, you might be thinking. A lot of government programs don't
help poor people. However, it would help if they could keep more of their
hard earned money.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2006 18:02:09 -0500
From: Libertarian Party <info@lp.org>
To:xxx@xxx
Subject: LP Celebrates 35 Years!

Dear Libertarian,

Happy Birthday!

35 years ago today, the Libertarian Party was officially formed and the first big "L" Libertarians came to be.

Throughout our three and a half decades, we've had our ups and downs but have accomplished a great deal for our nation. To highlight our accomplishments and to provide background on our origins, we've put together a ten minute video that was first shown at our national convention this past summer. Go to http://www.lp.org/35th.shtml for the video.

In between your holiday shopping, please take a few minutes and watch the video. Also be sure to share it with many of your friends and family.

After watching the video, take a minute to reflect about what it means to be a member of the Libertarian Party. What are our responsibilities as a party and what are your responsibilities as a member?

You'll notice throughout this mini-documentary that there is a clear and underlying theme goes hand-in-hand with our mission statement:

"To move public policy in a libertarian direction by building a political party that elects Libertarians to public office."

That's right . . . we're a political party. Together, our job is to create and build the foundation that allows qualified Libertarian candidates the opportunity to run for, and win elections.

Let me be clear in saying that the above is a difficult and hard-fought task that takes the support and cooperation between the national LP, state LP's, local LP's and each individual member of the LP.

By far the most important gear in our political machine is you, the individual supporter of our party. Without the help of individuals like you, nothing at all is possible.

Libertarians provide their support in many different ways. Some volunteer at the national, state or local level. Others choose to take the bold step of running for public office as one of our candidates.

Many more choose to do what they can by making financial donations to the LP.

Without the financial help of tens of thousands of donors over the years, the LP would not have survived for over three decades. More than likely, we wouldn't have ever made it off of the ground.

Our political party is not much different than any small business. The main difference is that our product is something less tangible, it's the hope that our work will one day bring about greater freedom in our nation.

Without question, I believe our work has already advanced freedom in many different ways. Over the years, our state and local parties have fought off tax increases and the further erosion of individual liberty. As importantly, each election cycle, more American voters are awakened to the opportunity of a principled alternative to the Republicans and Democrats. Each year, this awakening grows as does our influence to move public policy in a libertarian direction.

As we close 2006, we have already set our sights on 2008 (while being sure not to overlook the important elections that will take place in 2007).

To make the most impact in the coming year, and especially during the presidential election cycle in '08, we have to be flawless and determined in 2007.

As part of our approved budget for 2007, we need to raise over $1.9 million. This includes $250k for ballot access, $150k for the Ballot Base and GOTV efforts along with significant funds for outreach and prospecting to attract countless new members.

This budget alone reflects a positive change in the LP. We are solidly focused on moving forward with our mission statement.

We're also on much better standing to accomplish this work than in the recent past.

At the beginning of this year, we entered 2006 on rough financial ground. I literally lost sleep on many nights worrying about our immediate future. But thanks to our donors, we not only survived 2006, we were able to thrive.

Today, it is possible to close the books on the year, leaving our financial hardship behind us while looking forward to gains in 2007.

While we started 2006 with nearly $150K in debt, grasping at survival, we were able to reduce spending while increasing our performance throughout the year. Today, we carry only $36,764 in payables.

As we head into 2007, just as you may have helped us throughout the year, I ask that you show your support for us again and let us get a jumpstart on the New Year by making a significant financial contribution today.

This message has been sent to the 39,000 members of our e-mail list. Typically, 20% open and read these messages leaving only 7,800 to respond. If you're reading this now, you're one of those 7,800 people.

I ask that you help the LP make further progress by donating a gift of $150, $75, $100, or $25 today. To donate online, go to http://www.lp.org/members/contribute.shtml.

As the holiday season is always tough for the LP, we need your help to close the year on a positive note. Also, what better way to celebrate the 35th birthday of the LP then by sending a "birthday donation" our way?

Once again, thank you for everything that you do. I mean that sincerely. I am honored to serve as your executive director as I am humbled daily by the generosity, intelligence and passion of Libertarians. If America could see our party from my eyes, I have no doubt that we would live in a prosperous, free, peaceful and Libertarian nation.

Best Regards,

Shane Cory
Executive Director
Libertarian National Committee

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Paid for by the Libertarian National Committee -- 2600 Virginia Ave, N.W. Suite 200, Washington D.C. 20037
Content not authorized by any candidate or candidate committee

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The following article is posted from another blog. Due to the nature of the story, some government officials might try to find a way to shut the blog down to keep it from getting out. It will be harder for this story to just go away if the information is in more than one place. Here it goes.
How far will the government go to prosecute its so-called War on Drugs? It will look the other way while one of its informants commits multiple murders. Then it will try to cover up its own complicity.
A few months ago I was privileged to speak with several whistleblowers from the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, which calls for protection from retaliation for national security government employees who report waste, fraud, abuse and other misconduct. I’ve covered many of their stories here in the past, but one of them sounded so outrageous, and got more complex the more I looked into it, that I finally just put it on the to-do list and vowed to come back to it later.
So this story is long overdue, and for that, I apologize.
Sandalio Gonzalez worked for the Drug Enforcement Administration for 32 years before he retired in January of 2005. As Special Agent in Charge of the El Paso, Texas Field Division, Gonzalez was working in cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement on the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes drug cartel in Ciudad Juárez, just across the Rio Grande. The government had managed to get an informant, Guillermo Ramirez Peyro, also known as Lalo, recruited into the organization. But Lalo, it seems, was playing both sides. When he was arrested for smuggling marijuana in 2003, DEA dropped him as an informant, but ICE kept him on.
From here, the story takes a bizarre turn: A month later, Lalo “supervised” the August 2003 murder of Mexican lawyer Fernando Reyes in a house in east Juárez which would come to be known as the House of Death. But ICE kept using him as an informant, with approval from the highest levels of the U.S. government.
And they kept using him, even after he killed at least a dozen people, including El Paso resident Luis Padilla, in an apparent case of mistaken identity.
“There were at least 15 people that were killed that could have been stopped at the very beginning,” Gonzalez said. “Every indication is that they were allowed to occur in furtherance of a case, of a criminal case.”
Gonzalez alleges that ICE kept the informant on, and didn’t arrest his boss, Heriberto Santillan, because ICE and the U.S. Attorney, John Sutton, wanted to continue building their case against him. But DEA had said, prior to any of the murders, that there was already enough evidence against Santillan and he should be taken down. Later, Sutton would drop all of the murder charges in a plea bargain.
Gonzalez found out the informant was still active when an undercover DEA agent in Juárez barely escaped with his life when the cartel went looking for him to kill him. He wrote a letter (PDF) to his counterpart in ICE expressing his “frustration and outrage at the mishandling of the [Santillan] investigation that has resulted in the unnecessary loss of human life in the Republic of Mexico, and endangered the lives of [DEA agents] and their immediate families [in Juárez].”
And that’s when the retaliation began.
“DEA top management threatened me that if I didn’t retire, they would give me a bad evaluation,” Gonzalez said. He refused, and did indeed get a downgraded performance evaluation, so he filed a complaint with the Merit Systems Protection Board.
“I had enough to where I was granted a hearing in my case where I had the right to question all these officials. Before that happened, they went ahead and settled the case.” Gonzalez retired, and immediately filed an employment discrimination lawsuit in federal court. His case is now being heard in federal court in Miami, Fla.
Lalo is now in federal detention facing deportation despite being granted asylum, a decision the government successfully appealed. “Now that they have no use for this guy, they’re trying to send him to his death, almost certain death,” Gonzalez said.
“When we have officials of both the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security willing to cover up multiple murders in order to protect political careers, I think we’ve reached the lowest end of the totem pole.”
Bill Conroy of Narco News has been covering this story virtually from the beginning, having written dozens of articles and obtained hundreds of pages of government documents under the Freedom of Information Act which tend to support Gonzalez’ allegations of employment discrimination and government coverup of one of its own informants participating in drug smuggling and murder. I highly recommend checking out his coverage to learn more about this case.
(Hat tip: Glenn Greenwald)

An appellate court in Washington D.C. is deciding whether an anti-gun law is constitutional. According to the Associated Press, one of the judges in the case asked if the "privilege" of having guns was necessary since there are no longer militias. First of all, if you take one look at amendment II of the US constitution, you can see that owning guns is not a privilege. It is a right. It says "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. Obviously, this amendment was meant to support militias, but notice what it says after the coma. "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." I don't see how anybody who knows the constitution can not think that the second amendment gives Americans the right to bear arms. I predict that if the Washington D.C. law is upheld, other states will be encouraged to make their own anti-gun laws. What will you gun owners do if you were no longer allowed to own guns. Do you think criminals obey anti-gun laws? no. Anti-gun laws don't keep guns out of criminals hands. They just keep everybody else from being able to protect themselves.

Are you thinking of voting for Hillary Clinton in 2008? You might want to think twice. First of all, she supports the failing war in Iraq. Secondly, it seems that she doesn't keep promises. Last june, a group called CODEPINk wanted to protest the war at the Take Back America conference. The keynote speaker at the conference this year was Senator Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton didn't want the group to protest, so there were negotiations in which a deal was made that the group could pass out flyers. However, when it came time for the speech, security guards didn't allow the group to pass out the flyers. Whatever happened to the 1st amendment of the US Constitution?
Click for the full story. You may think, well I'm not going to vote for a republican. My answer to that is you don't have to. Consider voting for a Libertarian named George Phillies. To find out more about George Phillies, click here. To find out if you're a Libertarian, take the world's smallest political quiz here
Click here if you scored libertarian.

Today, New York City's board of health banned most trans fats from restaurants. There is nothing wrong with this is there? Afterall, people need to lose weight and it's not like the food will taste much different, so this is a good thing right? No! First of all, who is the government to tell people what they can and can eat? Can't Americans take some responsibility for their health or has our society come to a point where the government needs to be our parents? Secondly, America is not a communist country and restaurants are private businesses. Therefore, no government agency should be able to tell these businesses what products they can and can't sell.
Click here for the story from the New York Times.

Did the FBI discriminate against a counterterrorism expert because of his ethnicity? According to Homeland Stupidity, they did. Instead, the FBI has been using so-called terrorism experts that don't know Arabic or the difference between the different sects of Islam.
Click here for the full story.

I go to the University of South Florida. Since the beginning of this semester, this Christian guy has been trying to convert me to Christianity. At the beginning of the semester, I told him that I used to be a Christian, but I don't go to church any more because there are things that I strongly disagree with. I thought he would leave me alone after that, but no! Evidently, I'm his project for the semester. Whenever he sees me, he wants me to stop and say prayers. In order to be polite and open minded, I've been letting him say his prayers. However, after his recent hokis pokis, I'm starting to get really annoyed. This weekend, he came to my table and started talking about how the bible says that Jesus healed people's eye sight by putting his hands on their eyes and he wanted to try this with me. Admittedly, I was a little bit curious if something would actually happen, so I didn't try to stop him. Obviously, there wasn't any change in my sight, so when I left the cafateria, I was angry and embarrassed. I was embarrassed for going along with his crap and angry because I feel like Christians think it's their job to change people. Why can't you Christians accept that you can't change everybody to your liking! There are attempts to band gay marriage and abortion because of Christians! Stop trying to impose your narrow view of the world on everybody!