The Free View - weblog of a presidential candidate

Meyer and I on defending Dean's Scream, and on trotting out Judy

Dick Meyer echoes my view: that Dean's scream was nothing to be ashamed of, and that he shouldn't have backed down from it. Backing down from yourself is a major mistake in presidential politics. You can shift and spin and remake, but you should not try and pretend that something that is you is not you.

Dean could have spun his Iowa speech into something positive, and could have turned the tables on the media's effort to spin it negative. Instead he folded to the pressure of the nervous mainstream, and in doing so, turned his back on the revolution he's been riding.

He also trotted out his wife when he said he wasn't going to, and I was very disappointed to see that. I have no problem with candidates trotting out spouses, or any other family members that are willing to be trotted, but to hold that principle only until the pressure of pre-Iowa drives you to break it (and then to break it repeatedly in post-Iowa damage control) is a whole other thing. Most pundits and people seem to agree that Judy Dean was an asset to Dean's campaign in her appearances this past ten days, and that she seems to be a charming and lovely woman...but it's not a good sign for the future. If Dean was to stay in the race until the end, imagine how many emergency trots Judy Dean will be asked to do. My guess is that she would reluctantly find herself taking on the traditional campaign support role more and more. Which again is fine, but not so much when you've been saying how you need to stay home for your school-age son and your patients. I just sense a crack in the plan around Judy Dean's involvement. I guess it's a question of whether the campaign spouse thing can be just a weekend job-- and whether the female Dr. Dean is willing to shift her personality from private and shy to public and gregarious.

Who knows-- maybe she'll get into it, and she'll be hooting and screaming right alongside Howard. ;-)

CBS News | Defending Dean's Scream | January 28, 2004 17:06:51

Thoughts on Clark

Barring the collapse of Kerry's campaign, I see only one real scenario where Wesley Clark could win this race. It goes like this:

Dean eventually drops out, and frustrated Deaniacs move to Clark as the anti-war candidate (Michael Moore will be doing all he can to make that happen). Clark then breaks away as an independent, populist type, and replaces Dean as the Internet/progressive darling candidate.

It doesn't seem that Dean has the same exit strategy option, since he declared that he would back whoever the Democratic Party nominated. On the other hand, Clark is an interloper in the party. He could break away if there was a sufficient movement to support that. That's a really big "if" at this point, though.

Clark has been fumbling a bit too much for the high-pressure primary race. He'd have a lot more breathing room as in Independent. Of course, he would have countless new obstacles from that position, too. But that's a separate story.

Back in September, the day Clark was entering the race, I said he was the oe to watch out for. But that was before he had done any campaigning, and he has not lived up to expectations as a campaigner. It feels like he's not listening to his political advisors enough-- like he's doing what he wants to do, contrary to political common sense. That would be alright if he had some expertise on the matter of running for president, but that's not the case.

Quick thoughts on: Edwards, Lieberman

John Edwards: If Kerry falters in the next week, Edwards might have a chance. However, since everyone (himself included) agrees that he has to win South Carolina next week, he will most likely get stuck devoting most of this week's attention to it. Both Kerry and Clark are going to work hard on South Carolina too. I think there's a good chance Edwards will lose in SC-- in which case he will drop out of the race that night, I bet.

Lieberman: He's no longer in the race, whether he realizes it or not. He's an establishment player, and the establishment is going to line up behind Kerry. He might just be waiting for the right timing so that he can throw his votes with a sense that he's helping another campaign. I don't know how long he can wait-- there can't be too many people left who are telling him to keep going.

Kerry = Powerful Politician?

I've never paid much attention to John Kerry, even though I'm originally from Massachusetts. But the more I see him in this presidential race, the more I'm seeing that he is a very savvy and astute politician. He seems to be listening and learning as the race moves along-- in fact, one pundit who rode along with him told a story about how a much younger campaign aide was chastising Kerry about this or that technique, and how Kerry took the advice seriously, accepted it, and adapted. I'm also hearing about how he made smart choices when his campaign was considered dead in the water a month or two ago, and how they have paid off (obviously).

He does carry some of the same airs that made Michael Dukakis a weak candidate, but not nearly as much so. And he has a lot of strengths to counter that effect with. He has the powerful dual-barrel impact of being both a decorated war hero, and a prominent war protestor.

Not that there aren't problems with John Kerry. For one, he offers very little for the Dean and Kucinich supporters who want real change.

Note to Howard Dean on diffusing distractions

Dean's about to give his New Hampshire speech.

What he should have done is to re-enact his Iowa night performance, but extremely slowly and quietly. He should have taken off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and done the whole same exact speech, but comically calmly.

That would have been the perfect move. I think he could have put the scream speech to bed for good I think. He's doing a (relatively) boring, ordinary stump speech instead.

EDIT: He's actually turning out to give a pretty good campaign speech. MSNBC is staying on and showing the whole thing, which is remarkable considering how quickly they cut away from Kerry's speech.

Cracks in Clark's Campaign

Wes Clark's speech was supposed to be from the heart and energized, but he was reading it (and it was very obvious he was doing so). Combine that with his nearly starting his speech at the same time as Kerry, and it shows some of the weakness in his campaign that pundits are talking about every day now.

I saw another spot of that the other day. Clark had a rally at (I think) a school gym. After the rally, he stepped down and went through the crowd taking and answering questions. Twice during that 20 minutes or so, he rebuffed media people who were trying to get access to him. In the first case, he was almost acting like he wasn't listening to his aide, who kept trying to get him to talk to some reporter. The second time was even worse-- he was going from person to person down the line, and when he found himself mistakenly treating a media person like a real person, he actually recoiled, and rudely said "Oh, you're another reporter? I can't talk to you," and abruptly turned his back on her and moved on.

Howard Dean half gets it

Howard Dean on MSNBC right now: "I don't think you can really change America if you've spent all that time in the U.S. Senate."

That's correct. What he doesn't realize is that the following is also true: You can't really change America by running for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.

Notes on New Hampshire Night

I'll be watching the news and activities from New Hampshire tonight, and I'm going to try and post some thoughts as I see and hear things worth commenting on.

Few things are more able to capture my attention than the primary campaigns. It's great to watch all these people campaigning, and to watch all but one of them fail. It's in the failures of all those people, and in the success of the ones who make it through to win, that so much of the story of presidential politics is told.

Kerry's about to give his victory speech. Clark appeared to be about to give his speech at the same time, but I think I saw one of his campaign handlers nab him in the nick of time to get him to hold off until Kerry was done. I can't tell for sure, because Kerry's got the cameras right now.

The revolution will not be Bipartisanized

There's a site called The Blogging of the President: 2004, where a bunch of folks who are obsessed with blogging and obsessed with politics get it on, so to speak. I've been peeking in there now and then, since I'm at least an 80% match with that crowd, and certainly fascinated by the revolution in media and society that underlies the major current Internet trends (which I would say are blogging and political organizing).

The BOP site is good stuff -- these folks are fanatics, but in a good way. They're like a big lab of scientists, studying themselves and their fellow scientists. Except the science is blogging and politics.

In this post there by Ezra Klein from just after Howard Dean's Iowa plunge, he talks about how the Dean phenomenon wasn't about Dean, per se-- how it was more about the movement than it was about the candidate. (A point I agree wholeheartedly with, by the way.) Then, in the comments area, I found something that made me want to reply. Following is that reply. You can see the full context here-- my comment is currently near the bottom. The comment I'm replying to is a long ways above. (It's hard to point directly to it.)

First, a curious aside: One of the people behind The Blogging of the President is a man named Stirling Newberry-- he's actually the guy who I reply to below. Well, back in May of 1997 I launched a discussion at Salon.com's TableTalk discussion area titled "Lance M. Brown for President -- Year 2008 ????"-- and Stirling Newberry was one of the folks who joined in the discussion. He pounded on me back then-- calling me an imbecile, etc. He had the sort of visceral reaction that some folks have when they hear "libertarian". I can't get into describing that more now, but it's kinda funny to bump into Stirling Newberry again, all these years later. And to know that we will probably interact, to some extent, into the future.

Anyway, here's my post from over there. It's primarily about why the voter revolution which is brewing will not find effective release through the Bipartisan political process.

Stirling said:

I pointed this out in an August interview in Salon.com and made the observation that the internet wants to move to "Open Source Politics" (pace blog of the same name) where everything is manipulable and the basics of politics - including law and policy, as well as message and organization - are open.

Dean empowered people, but he did not enable them to be producers of the political idea.

No candidate of the two major parties can honestly offer to do this. Open source politics -- an actual living, net-enabled Democracy-in-action -- is only going to be possible (or desirable) in the context of a green-libertarian revolution, for lack of a better term. That is to say, co-emergent trends: one a libertarian "get government out of the way" uprising, and the other an exercising of peaceful sociopolitical power-- one that skips past the governing bodies, and puts the process of (directly) creating change into the hands of the people.

For instance, take drilling in ANWR.

The current process is: the enabled masses (the MoveOns, the netizens, etc) use their power to mob the elected officials into doing their bidding (protecting ANWR from drilling).

The new process will be: the enabled masses use their power to mob the drillers (oil companies, etc.) into doing their bidding (staying out of ANWR). In this case, the elected official (optionally) serves as a leader, communicating with her constituents about the issue, and facilitating their action.

That's the way the revolution that is trying to emerge through the blogs and the Deans and MoveOns will be able to come closest to the vision that all three imply (or state outright): namely, "taking the country back" from the powers that be.

The alternative -- fully merging the fluid, instant-action e-revolution with the power of government force -- would create a dangerous sort of "tyranny of the flash mob". The ascendant e-Left might find that delectable for the time being, but it could turn against them (or anyone else) at the whim of a given organized mass. There's a reason the U.S. was not set up as a pure democracy.

This does have to do with Dean's campaign, by the way. I started by saying that no candidate of the two major parties would be able to enable people in the way Stirling discussed. The Iowa screech thing seems to me to be a fracture between Dean's populist revolution, and the CW punditocracy. In a real populist revolution, Dean's behavior was not all that outrageous. He was rallying the troops after a discouraging battle loss. However, the establishment is treating Dean like he grew a second head or something. And Dean took the hit, basically apologizing for being too excited by his own revolution-- too enthusiastic for the thousands of people who had poured their hearts out for months in Iowa for him. He should have fully defended his enthusiasm, but he backed off of it instead.

I knew, once the Dean movement began to rise, that at some point it would come into crashing conflict with the needs of the bipartisan political process. It's very similar to McCain, who also softened his approach to suit the major party establishment. And like McCain, Dean will probably not break away from the party and run as an Independent, because in his heart he believes the party is more important (or maybe just more powerful?) than the revolution. And the party ultimately agrees with that premise, preferring stability and the known over revolution and the unknown.

My Iowa Night Ramble

[I posted this originally on The Little Brown Reader. It was technically related to this news article about the results of the Iowa caucus, but it turned into a more general assessment of the Democratic race.]

I'll say this about John Kerry-- he seems to be the smoothest and warmest in close quarters. He's the only one who doesn't seem to be brimming with nervous energy, like Gephardt, Clark, Dean, and (to a lesser extent) Edwards seem to be. Maybe that explains Kerry and Edwards' strong finishes in close-quarters Iowa.

Also, Dean seemed pretty wild in his post-results "speech"-- at least the segment I saw. I have not seen the whole thing.

Kerry's speech was pretty good for the occasion. He made a lot of smart phrasings and comments. As an outsider observer who won't be voting Democrat, I'm mildly impressed by Kerry for the time being. Anyone who can unsettle the Dean Machine has to be given at least a little credit.

New Hampshire is going to be a major showdown between Kerry and Dean. Both from neighboring New England states, and Kerry on the rise with Dean hitting some bumps (his false claim that Jimmy Carter invited him to Georgia this past Sunday not being the least). Very interesting.

In the end, this is George Bush's election to lose. Most of the main Democrats would suffice to beat him if things go bad in Bushland. The possible exceptions would be Dean, who is volatile, and John Edwards, who is young and inexperienced. (And possibly Lieberman, but he won't be a factor for long. He'll be lucky (and wasting his time) if he's still in the race when his state's primary comes up in March. He lost this race the day Al Gore endorsed Dean-- if not earlier.)

Either Bush (and the facts and reality on the ground, here and in Iraq and Afghanistan) is going to undo himself, or he's not. The best Democrat to beat him would be simply a credible alternative. That leaves Kerry and Clark, strictly speaking. Even if Edwards' youth can be cleared as a hurdle (and I think it can), his inexperience will be a potential achilles heel. And Dean will be a bumpy ride. He'd make a great independent or third-party candidate, but the two-party race doesn't have as much mercy on someone who's volatile. See: John McCain, except ratchet up the heat by a factor of ten.

If Bush blows it (or continues to blow it), then either Kerry or Clark will be able to beat him. With Dean there's a maybe factor, because he's developing an image, and if the image doesn't work for mainstream America, then he'll get whupped. (See: Ralph Nader) Of course, if he makes it that far he will reshape his image as needed (See: Bill Clinton), but he might then lose the base that's into him doing the extreme screaming thing. He's a wild card, to put it simply. And the Bush campaign is going to use anything they're given that might help them win. So far, Dean has given them the most to work with. Clark the second most (all his quotes praising Bush and Cheney are definitely going to be used if it's Clark v Bush). Edwards third. I don't think that to date John Kerry has given them anything to work with in terms of tearing him down.

Kerry now has a Republican guy whose life he saved in Vietnam appearing with him and supporting his campaign. That's pretty powerful. His wife is also a strong campaigner, it seems. And he's on his game, verbally-- very confident and likeable, despite his sort of weird face. (If Jon Stewart can call it "cadaver-like", I feel safe saying "weird".)

Make no mistake-- I expect that I would disagree with and oppose most everything that a John Kerry adminstration would do if he was elected-- and I won't be voting for him, any other Democrat, or Bush. I'm just calling the race as I see it. I'll be voting Libertarian, assuming one of the four current main contenders becomes the nominee. (There's a vague possibility that a Libertarian who supported the war in Iraq could be nominated, which is the only reason I hedge. None of the four main contenders support the war, as far as I know.)

I thought Clark looked to be the strongest solid competitor against Bush, but I'm inclined to think that maybe it's Kerry. I'm surprised to find myself thinking that. If he wins New Hampshire next week, then I'd think about pencilling him in as the possible Democratic Party nominee. And-- and again, it feels weird to say this-- I think that might work OK. John Kerry can appeal relentlessly on his heroism in actual battle, and relate that to the war and decisions regarding war, and essentially shame Bush for his cavalier misuse of the men and women of the military. Other than that, he'll play a centrist, sane, experienced guy who cares, but who can be tough.

All this is contingent on no major skeletons coming out of closets. I can't guess if there are any of those to come. And it's contingent on no powerful third-party or independent candidate showing up. And on Dean sticking with his promise to support the Dem. nominee even if it's not him (rather than breaking away and running as an independent, as some have theorized).

Event Tonight: Judge Gray comes to Nevada County

I've been quiet the past couple days in part because I've been focusing on this big event that's been coming up, which I'm helping to put together.

Today is the big day, and I've got a super-full day, so I don't have much time to explain. Luckily, there was abig article in the paper today about the event-- so it can explain for me.

I'm going to paste the whole thing in here for archival purposes. The original will be available at The Union's website for a couple weeks before it gets put in the for-pay archives.

Talk set on illegal drug regulation

by Roman Gokhman

Would regulating illegal drugs eradicate California's drug problem?

Libertarian Judge James Gray, who will give a presentation on the topic tonight, says such a move could not only reach that elusive law-enforcement goal, but also save the state billions of dollars.

Gray, a sitting Orange County Superior Court judge who is currently seeking a seat in the Senate, will give his talk, "Why our drug laws have failed and what we can do about it," tonight at the Miners Foundry.

"We are putting people who are addicted in jail," Gray said Tuesday. "We cannot incarcerate our way out of this. We have proved jail doesn't work."

His answer to the drug problem is to distinguish between drug uses. If someone does drugs and gets behind the wheel, it is a crime; if he does drugs and then goes to sleep, it is not, under Gray's favored approach.

"If they don't put our safety at risk, it's a medical problem," Gray said. "Hold people accountable for what they do."

Last year, the judge publicly switched from the Republican to the Libertarian Party. One of the reasons for his shift was his stance on decreasing drug abuse, he said.

"If you're going to expect either the Republicans or the Democrats to do anything positive ... to change the hopeless war on drugs, you will be disappointed," he said.

A Superior Court judge since 1989, Gray also worked as a prosecutor and municipal court judge. He said he convicted many for drug crimes but realized in 1992 that sending people to jail does not work. That's when he started speaking against prosecuting drug offenders.

"By getting tough on drug crimes, we're getting soft on everything else," he said.

However, Gray is careful to point out the difference between legalization and regulation.

"I would not legalize any of these drugs," he said. "But I would have a program of decriminalization."

This means regulating drugs for adults without using big brands or advertising and taking them out of the hands of illegal dealers.

"We would make it as boring as possible," he said.

Gray said he wants to start with the decriminalization of marijuana first.

"Then we will see what happens," he said.

If decriminalization of marijuana is done right, he said, there would be three positive outcomes right away.

The state would save $1 billion of tax payers' money by not prosecuting petty drug abusers. Another $2 billion would be raised by taxing the drug. Finally, marijuana would become less available to youth because it would be sold through licensed dealers in the same way alcohol is sold.

Many people take Gray's views to be outrageous.

"We have a major drug problem in Nevada County," said Tony Gilchrease, chairman of the Nevada County Republican Party. "What this county doesn't need is a bigger problem."

Gilchrease said making drugs legal or regulated for adults would make it more accessible to youth, not more difficult to get a hold of.

"Are cigarettes not available today?" he said. "All you have to do is walk down the street to see 14- and 15-year-olds smoking. That argument has a whole bunch of holes in it.

"That would destroy the youth of this nation."

The event is sponsored by Nevada County Citizens for Sensible Drug Policy, a local group headed by Lance Brown, chairman of the county's Libertarian Party.

But the presentation will not be directly related to Gray's Senate bid or a Libertarian fund-raiser, Gray and Brown said.

"It's not for Libertarians," Brown said. "It's for everybody."

___

KNOW AND GO

What: "Why our drug laws have failed and what we can do about it," a presentation by Judge James Gray.

Where: Miners Foundry in Nevada City.

When: Doors open at 6 p.m. for a reception. Presentation starts at 7:30 p.m.

Tickets: $10 in advance, $12 at the door, $8 for students or low-income individuals. Tickets on sale at Book Seller, BriarPatch, Harmony Books and Odyssey Books.

Information: www.NevadaCountyEvents.org or 274-2474.

Lance (and Judge Jim Gray) on the radio this morning

I don't have time for further explanation right now, but here's a news flash on a chance to hear me (and someone much more important than me) on the radio this morning. It's in the form of the short e-mail I sent out to a few lists last night:

Fellow Libertarians,

Judge Jim Gray is going to be on the radio (and on the internet) this morning at approximately 9:10 AM, for the rest of the hour. He'll be speaking with Paul Emery, host of KVMR's Thursday morning show. I'll also be in the studio playing backup for the judge, who will be on the phone.

The interview will be on KVMR 89.5 FM within 50-100 miles of Nevada City, and will be streaming live at www.kvmr.org for everyone else.

Topics will include: the judge and his book and experiences, libertarianism in general, the judge's upcoming visit and talk in Nevada City, and his Senate campaign. Call-ins will also be featured; the phone numbers are (800) 355-KVMR for Northern California, and (530) 265-9555 locally and for everyone else.

For more information about his upcoming talk in Nevada City on January 21st, visit here:
www.nevadacountyevents.org

Be well, Be Free,

Lance Brown
Chairman
Nevada County Libertarian Party
http://nclp.org
lance@nclp.org
530-274-2474

Thanks for Linking to...

I am way behind in acknowledging folks who have linked to Freedom2008.com, and I'm going to try and pick off a few at a time so I can try and catch up.

Most recently, I noticed that Paul Kelly, a stand-up comedian in the Chicago area, has me listed among his right-column links on his itsfunny.biz blog (and not as a humor item, as far as I can tell.)

Former LP Campus Coordinator Marc Brandl includes me in his blogroll at O'Lucky Man! as well.

Rob Booth, a "libertarian Republican" (<--an oxymoron, if you ask me), posted a link to E-Actions for Freedom back in late November. He didn't comment on it (though he referenced my presidential campaign in the link), but I have to give him kudos because the day he linked, the top action at E-Actions was from the ACLU. Further reading seems to indicate that he's a pretty nice guy. He's what they call a "South Park Republican" -- which is a libertarian who hasn't fully swallowed the pill yet, and therefore continues to glom onto the GOP out of a sense that it's the morally superior of the two parties "that can win". Ultimately, they are still sold on the GOP's false promise of limited government, and that whole Ronald-Reagan-national pride-moral fiber-"traditional values" thing. Which is all well and good -- excellent, in fact -- on the personal and social level. But which is not all well and good when it results in defending the mingling of church and state, and is not good when it turns into warhawking jingoism, and is not good when it results in "Freedom Fries", or "defense of marriage" inanery.

I don't know which if any of those political sins Rob Booth is guilty of, and I don't mean to direct those barbs at him. Just those like him. ;-) No...seriously, I'm generalizing about no one in particular, but I bet many of you know some folks who are riding the moral-superiority-in-politics wave. If you're tapped into the Republican talkstream, you either know what I'm talking about, or you're doing what I'm talking about and don't know it.

That's why it took me so long to post about his link-- because visiting his site stirred up some thoughts in me. I still haven't expressed them very fully, but that's all I can afford right now. And again, let me say that Rob seems like an alright guy, as far as I can tell. No besmirchment of him is intended. (Except the first part where I said that "libertarian Republican" -- a label he gives himself -- is an oxymoron. I stand behind that.)

Anyway, thanks for the link, Rob, and Marc, and Paul! I'll be sending one back as soon as I resurrect the links panel on the right side of the page.

CampusLP.org Re-launch

The easiest way to let you know about the major step forward I've taken with CampusLP.org is to paste in the hyperlicious e-mail I just sent out to the Campus Activist e-mail list. So here you go:

Campus Libertarians, Advisors, and Supporters,

The new (and vastly improved) www.CampusLP.org is taking shape in a big way!

Here's a partial list of the features that have been added recently:

Discussion forums

Events Calendar

Chat rooms

Downloads area, with ready-to-print posters

This is in addition to the ability to add articles, links, reviews, and basically anything else. And *that's* in addition to free hosting and free blogs for your Campus LP group. And there's more to come. Lots more.

Like mailing lists, image galleries, lots more posters, strategies and tips, event ideas, a speakers' bureau, a grant program(?!)-

BUT-

Right now it's just a shell -- a revolution waiting to happen.

It could be a jamming recruiting center; a repository for great handouts and other media; a training camp; a virtual office for the burgeoning national Campus Libertarians organization; a place to strategize for the Convention; a place to get ideas; a place to share ideas; a place to present a united front to students and others nationwide, and so on. It could be something much bigger than any of those parts would imply, as the people behind MoveOn.org and the Dean campaign would surely tell you.

For any of that to happen convincingly, we'll need to have lots of folks participating and contributing in various ways. Even if all you do is add a link to your club, or sign up for an account for now, please take a minute right now and set up a free account at CampusLP.org, here.

This new version of the site is less than two weeks old, so it's just an infant compared to what it will grow into. But it's ready to have life breathed into it, by you. Whether you've got something to offer or are in dire need of help, CampusLP.org aims to hook you up. And if you are interested in improving the success of your club, or of campus libertarians nationwide-- CampusLP.org is all about that. 100%.

If you're ready to walk the walk in terms of libertarian campus activism, then let's start to seriously get together and amplify the impact of our shared concerns. Sound good? You in? Then let's get going, because the new semester isn't going to wait around. :-)

http://www.campuslp.org/index.php

If you've got any questions or suggestions, you can post them in the discussion forum if you want. Please spread the word to those who might be interested.

Thanks!

Be Well, Be Free,

Lance Brown
Freedom Activist

lance@freedom2008.com
ICQ #:2694547
Phone: 530-274-2474

The Free View - weblog of a presidential candidate
http://freedom2008.com

Detained in America

This is an awesome story about the very many people who have been detained in contravention with the Bill of Rights since 9/11.

Detained in America: A Guest Column by Bruce Jackson

The Desaparecidos of George W. Bush

Auburn Journal LTE is published

A while back, I posted the letter I sent in to the Auburn Journal about Steve Kubby. Well, I had given up checking their web site, because I didn't think it was going to be published. Then I got an e-mail from Steve: "Hey Lance, Thanks for the great letter...." So I checked the site, and there it was.

They chopped out the whole middle paragraph from my original-- and I can see why, I suppose. Though it's a little disappointing, because it was the most impassioned part of the letter.

Here you go:

Case against Kubby is a waste of time, money

Shortly after one of your readers said that he hoped Canada would keep Steve Kubby and save Placer County the cost of incarcerating him, Canada made its decision to refuse Kubby's plea for political refugee status. Still, your reader was right to hope that no more of Placer County's resources would be wasted pursuing this folly of a prosecution.

As a Libertarian, I feel that my friend and colleague shouldn't have had to deal with any of this craziness. Kubby never hurt anyone and should have been left alone.

Lance Brown

Nevada City

The Lance Brown Syndicate

I've been working on a bunch of different things recently-- not the least of which has been trying to reconstruct a viable home page for this site, after my blog setup crashed on me and wouldn't allow me to post new entries, almost a month ago now.

The second week of December was tech madness week here-- just as I had cracked the egg on launching BillofRightsDay.com, two of my sites had huge problems. PeoplesForum.com became unavailable all of the sudden, kicking off over a week of messiness while we tried to straighten out that problem. (You can read all about it at PF's downtime message site PFisdown.com.) At virtually the same time, this here site had its crasheroo-- kicking off a month of variably sketchy band-aid solutions while I tried to steer toward a better direction.

During that same week, I was launching the Boot Boortz Blog, which I haven't even mentioned here yet, because I wanted to give it a proper intro. I'm not giving it that right now, but it needs to be at least mentioned, because it's on the front page now. (You can read my first brief explanation of it over there.)

Which gets me back on track in terms of this entry, because it's the new front page of Freedom2008.com that this entry is about. You'll see that there is a new feature on the home page, and I couldn't be much more excited about it than I am, despite its relative simplicity. I've got what are called "feeds" showing from 8 of the sites or blogs that I'm involved with-- currently, the following are listed:

-The Little Brown Reader
-PNAC.info
-CampusLP.org
-E-Actions for Freedom
-NCLP News and Views
-Nevada County Bill of Rights Defense Committee
-BillofRightsDay.com
-Boot Boortz Blog

That leaves GreenLiberty.org, Future Solutions, and StopCarnivore.org unlisted-- because right now none of those sites aren't set up to be "syndicated", which is the term for when bits of one site are fed onto another.

It should go without saying that having my wider network on active display will present a much stronger front to new visitors who happen upon the home page. And if it doesn't go without saying, then consider it said.

I've got a lot of little items to post, so more's on the way.

Libertarian Movies

Here's a list of Films on Liberty and the State, with mini-reviews for each, from Stephen W. Carson at Mises.org.

The list is long and the reviews are concise and effective. Non-libertarians might be thrown off a little by all the references to Austrians and Murray Rothbard. Austrian Economics is a school of economic thought which is largely held to be the backbone of libertarian economic theory. I must confess to not being very well-read in terms of the Austrian School's big names -- Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises, and Friedrich Hayek. This makes me a bit of an anomaly among hardcore libertarians. The stereotypical libertarian is an economics geek who likes guns. I'm more from the individualist/hippie side of the movement, I guess. It's probably the Ayn Rand influence that kept me from growing up to be a full-on left-liberal. Ayn Rand is sort of Austrian Economics for the Masses. She novelized it, and Americanized it. So without knowing it, I was schooled in Austrian economics when I was 15, reading Atlas Shrugged.

Which explains why I haven't felt a great need to dive into the vast sea of scholarly work on the subject of Austrian economics. When I do dabble in such readings, or when I hear folks refer to the works and conclusions of von Mises or Rothbard or Hayek, most of what I hear and read seems self-evident to me-- as though someone is explaining the inner workings of something I'm already familiar with. It all centers around a few basic premises and theories anyway-- then it's just a matter of trying out the premises, and comparing the theories with the real world.

They are a pretty close match.

But I didn't mean to get into economics class mode, which is what I'm on the brink of doing (the above sentence is a truncated version of what was about to become an extended rant.) I was just trying to point you to this cool page of freedom-oriented movies. They all sound pretty good to me.

The list is far from comprehensive -- there are a zillion more suggestions on this Reader's Suggestions page at MissLiberty.com. (My "review" of the wacky Sylvester Stallone/Michael Caine movie "Victory" is on that page somewhere.) And of course there's the Miss Liberty's Guide to Film and Video, from Jon Osborne (creator of MissLiberty.com, and proprietor of the weekly freedom-based TV guide.