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Perhaps moving corporate HQ to a tax haven in the E.U. wasn't Mark Zuckerberg's brightest move. Digital privacy rights are much stronger there.

"Real political change begins at the local level & there is no section of political geography more local than the Precinct. Get involved in the political process in your Precinct & make a difference in the world around you. Do your part to promote the ideals & principles that Americans have protected for generations" This site offers a how-to handbook style guide to participating in and managing successful GOTV (Get Out The Vote) operations.  The site even offers technology to assist efforts. One thing is very clear about the 2012 election fraud.  Getting out the vote is FAR MORE IMPORTANT than raising money and buying ad time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   My thinking is that the Tea Party Patriots need to launch a massive GOTV grassroots initiative that starts with two key efforts: .............. Contest the Obama Election Fraud.  Demand a recount in at least the four states where fraud was obvious, overwhelming and in-your-face clear.   .............. Immediately set about the task of replacing House Speaker Yohan Boehner with Darell Issa. ::  http://goo.gl/Z5xDk ............. Pump the Tea Party Manifesto :: http://goo.gl/ApWBP ............. Join forces to organize at the national level a Precinct Project strategy  ............. Adopt an Anti Agenda 21 movement based on the submission and support of State level Propositions protecting the Constitution, the principles of individual liberty embedded in the founding documents, and, individual property ownership rights.  Including homeownership and land usage.   The Precinct Project effort can become the force that takes on all of these issues.  On the ground local Manpower is the awsome force Tea Party Patriots bring to the table.  Time to start using that force.

Excellent article on the importance of gun ownership in America.  The author is a defense attorney practicing law in Arizona.  He's also a war veteran and well versed libertarian.   Excerpts: "I am an American. As such, none of my rights depend on a showing of need. I am a free man who has the right to define and pursue my happiness in any peaceful way I see fit. The government does not grant me rights. I was born free. The legitimate role of government is to act as my agent to protect my rights; which exist independent of government. Americans do not beg the government for rights nor are they required to demonstrate a "need" for rights." "Government never has a more tempting opportunity to increase its size, power and scope, and to curtail the liberties of free people, than during or immediately after a crisis. Indeed, crisis is so tempting an opportunity for government that governments invent crisis whenever possible. This is why "emergency acts" and "wars" on anyone and anything are so popular for governments. Nothing entices people to stop thinking, act impulsively, and to relinquish liberties so easily as a "crisis" or a "tragedy" or an "emergency." We need to be smarter if liberty is to survive." "Although President Obama appears excited about the notion of banning guns, I have not heard him order a ban on the very guns used to protect him. Apparently, when it comes to his protection, President Obama prefers to be protected by people armed with guns. "

Excellent article other than the fact that the author erred in referring to the AR-15 as an "assault rifle." It is not. It is an "assault weapon," a semi-automatic rifle with only a cosmetic resemblance to the M-16 fully automatic "assault rifle." "Assault rifles" have been outlawed in the U.S. for decades. The U.S. had a complete ban on "assault weapon" rifles from 1994 to 2004. It did not affect gun violence rates at all, because semi-automatic rifles that lacked the cosmetic resemblance to "assault rifles" remained on the market. The distinction between the two terms is critical to understanding the current gun debate. Those who propose a ban on "assault weapons" are offering only a cosmetic sop to the anti-gun crowd, banning a sub-set of semi-automatic rifles whilst leaving equally capable semi-autos on the market. The correct question to ask is "why bother?" One might as well ban toy guns that bear a resemblance to assault weapons; other toy guns remain unaffected. For a more in depth discussion of "assault weapon" vs. "assault rifle" with references see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_weapon

Heritage Foundation white paper: Forward: The commemoration of the bicentennial of the United States Constitution should be an occasion of festivity tempered by solemn gratitude for the gift our Founding Fathers bequeathed to us. But if the Constitution is to survive as something more than an abstract symbol - a parchment counterpart of the Statue of Liberty - the celebration must also be the occasion for broadened public awareness of the principles of constitutional government. For the anniversary comes at a time of grave crisis in our constitutional history. The federal judiciary, originally designed as part of a carefully balanced mechanism in which it shared guardianship of the Constitution with the executive, the two houses of Congress, and the state governments, has gradually taken sole custody unto itself, proclaiming that its decisions and not the Constitution are the supreme law of the land. What is even more dangerous, the Supreme Court has, during the last two or three decades, become progressively more blatant in disregarding the Constitution and arriving at decisions on the basis of the justices' ideological predilections in regard to "social progress" and "human dignity." These usurpations are compatible neither with the idea of constitutional government nor with the ideal of a government of laws. All the essays in this volume are, in one way or another, addressed to this problem, its ramifications, and its implications. They are the product of long, deep, and careful research and reflection; but, though they are appropriately cast in the muted tones of scholarship, collectively they sound an alarm bell in the night. Every thinking and public-spirited American can learn from their message. For two centuries the Constitution has provided the American people with a framework of limited government, designed for liberty. It is up to us to preserve that framework for our posterity, even as the Founders created it for theirs. Next year we will celebr

n a chapter titled "Breaking the Back of Crony Capitalism," Schweizer lays out some much needed reforms that he hopes are undertaken. Here are some of his proposals: * Create a legal code that makes trading on nonpublic government information illegal both for those who pass the information and for those who trade on it.  * Corporate insiders trading their own company's stock are required to disclose these transactions to the SEC within two days. Why not apply the same standard to Congress?  * Members of Congress should not be allowed to trade stock in companies that are overseen by their committees. * Apply whistleblower laws to Congress. If it's good enough for federal workers and corporate employees, it should be good enough for Congress.  * Disallow "sweetheart" IPOs. Unless the initial public offering goes through a public auction, in which people can openly compete for shares in a bidding contest, members of Congress should not be allowed to participate. * Family members of legislators should not be allowed to become lobbyists. * The federal government needs to get out of the business of offering grants and taxpayer-backed loans.  Americans who have suspected that Washington does not have their interests at heart and wonder on their trips to the nation's capital how it is such a gilded boomtown will get answers in this book.  The country is at the beginning stages of a citizen revolt against the permanent political class whose interests are tied to the crony capitalistic system that benefits their own self-interest. 

"Where do the candidates on our primary ballots come from? An estimated 95 per cent of the candidates of the Republican and Democrat parties who win the primary election are those who are endorsed by the leadership of those parties. Do You Know Who Elects The Party Leaders? Did You Elect Them? Who elects the leadership of the parties? Do you know? Are you a registered Republican? Guess what? As a "mere" registered Republican voter, without more, you did not have a vote in the election of the present leadership of the Republican Party. Sorry, but those are the facts. Only elected precinct committeemen get to vote for the leadership of the Party. Do I yet have your attention? Ponder the fact that only elected precinct committeemen get to elect the Party leadership. Don't you want to have a vote in those elections? Getting into position to have that right is easy. About 3,141 counties exist in the United States. Almost all have a county party organization. And, those county organizations almost always endorse candidates in the party primaries. And, usually, those party-endorsed candidates win. Tired of the kind of Republican In Name Only Republicans who are winning the primaries? Then do something real and become a Republican Party precinct committeeman! Guess what? About half of the Republican Party precinct committeeman slots, nationwide, are unfilled! There's about 400,000 slots nationwide and about 200,000 of those slots are vacant. If conservatives filled up all the empty slots they OWN the Party. Precinct Committeemen are the Party. Do I yet have your attention? Has the light bulb above your head clicked on yet? In some counties, like the one where I reside, Maricopa County, Arizona, within which Phoenix sits, TWO-THIRDS of the precinct committeeman slots in the Republican Party sat unfilled on Election Day, 2008. [Well, it's now November, 2012, and we're now at 52 per cent strength instead of where we were back in 2008 at 31 per cent.] Spend a few

Incredibly elegant writing! excerpt: A broken link with the public, and a war in Afghanistan he neither embraces and sells to his party nor abandons-this is a time of puzzlement for President Obama. His fall from political grace has been as swift as his rise a handful of years ago. He had been hot political property in 2006 and, of course, in 2008. But now he will campaign for his party's 2010 candidates from afar, holding fund raisers but not hitting the campaign trail in most of the contested races. Those mass rallies of Obama frenzy are surely of the past. The vaunted Obama economic stimulus, at $862 billion, has failed. The "progressives" want to double down, and were they to have their way, would have pushed for a bigger stimulus still. But the American people are in open rebellion against an economic strategy of public debt, higher taxes and unending deficits. We're not all Keynesians, it turns out. The panic that propelled Mr. Obama to the presidency has waned. There is deep concern, to be sure. But the Obama strategy has lost the consent of the governed. Mr. Obama could protest that his swift and sudden fall from grace is no fault of his. He had been a blank slate, and the devotees had projected onto him their hopes and dreams. His victory had not been the triumph of policies he had enunciated in great detail. He had never run anything in his entire life. He had a scant public record, but oddly this worked to his advantage. If he was going to begin the world anew, it was better that he knew little about the machinery of government.

Sarah Palin did not announce whether she would enter the 2012 presidential contest in a fiery and substantive speech in Iowa on Saturday, but she did make three more significant announcements that, in the long run, will potentially be more important than a potential future announcement date. First, as part of a five point plan to revive America's economy, Palin called for the elimination of the federal corporate income tax as a way to "break the back of crony capitalism." Her reasons for eliminating the federal corporate income tax, though, were more important than the actual proposal because it was a way in which she drew a line to differentiate herself from not only President Barack Obama, but nearly every other GOP presidential candidate, most notably Texas Gov. Rick Perry.  Second, on the three year anniversary of her vice presidential acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in 2008 when Palin, a reform minded governor who had record approval ratings, invigorated the flailing McCain campaign, Palin cast herself squarely as the anti-McCain. Palin said that she could not understand why some people referred to Tea Partiers as "hobbits," a clear reference to McCain's remarks that denigrated a political movement his critics claim he shamelessly, like a typical politician, used to get re-elected only to turn his back on it once he got back to his familiar Washington trappings. Palin has written on her Facebook page that America needs a "do-over" in 2012, and her speech gave more fuel to the thought that Palin believes America should get a 2008 rematch against President Obama with her name on top of the Republican ticket.  Third, her speech was significant because, should she choose to enter the presidential race, it put forth a skillfully crafted blueprint that would allow her to seamlessly run a primary and general election campaign at the same time, much like what then candidate Obama did against Hillary Clinton and George W. Bus

Sunstein was the Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration, a long-time buddy of Obama's who taught law at the University of Chicago. He's also the husband of neocon U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power. He now teaches law at Harvard.  I haven't read Sunstein's book, but did read a paper he had previously published, as I recall on SSRN, along the same theme. It was a comical read, seemingly the winner of some sort of contest to see who could stuff the most logical fallacies into a set number of pages. And of course the premises of the fallacies had no citations. Sunstein simply assumes that the official version of events is invariably the only true version and that any version that conflicts is a dangerous "conspiracy theory."  So then he proposes some asinine, truly juvenile propaganda methods that the government might use to destroy the reputations of the "conspiracy theorists." Having been a professional, trained propagandist for the U.S. Army in Viet Nam, I can say with some confidence that no one need fear Sunstein's proposed methods.  Short story, Sunstein is a "good ole' boy" from the Chicago Democratic Machine who in truth lacks the skills and abilities to be even a good academic, let alone a good propagandist. That isn't to suggest that ad hominem attacks can never destroy reputations. But "conspiracy theorist" just isn't strong enough to instill fear. Call us "terrorists" instead and maybe you'd get some traction. 

"As economist Julian Simon observed, people always produce more than they consume and always better the human condition of themselves and their neighbors - if they are free to do so. Why was Simon able to make this observation based on American experiences and other more brief episodes in human history? The answer to this question is elegantly described by George Gilder in his book "Knowledge and Power: The information Theory of Capitalism and How It is Revolutionizing Our World." Gilder teaches us about the "economics" of human advance. Establishment economics is, of course, a somewhat murky forest of "supply" and "demand" and "micros" and "macros" and all sorts of other abstractions. Within economics has arisen a sort of political contest as to whether "demand" or "supply" is most important. Does the market respond to "demands" for certain sorts of goods, or are goods unexpectedly "supplied" to the market by inventors and entrepreneurs - as surprises which then create market demand themselves? It is clear that the "supply" side trumps the "demand" side in this controversy. As George Gilder elucidates, potential advances - products and other goods - arise first in the minds of entrepreneurs who, using information, existing tools and skills in assembling and utilizing capital, bring these advances to the market. If the entrepreneur is right about the demand that will arise when his new product becomes available, he is rewarded with the fun of providing it and with profits. In order to do this, the entrepreneur needs a relatively quiet, noise-free environment, where the information comprising his innovation can express itself. His environment needs easily available capital in the hands of free men, so that he has rich opportunities to seek that capital and utilize it. The entrepreneur also needs a system of justice that protects his efforts and his coworkers. He needs a system of individual liberty where the

This could be very interesting if the case is filed and Putin, et al, submit themselves to the U.S. court's jurisdiction to contest the case. Russia has released ample evidence that MH17 was shot down by the Ukraine Military. The U.S. and Ukraine, on the other hand, have issued nothing but conclusory claims that the Ukrainian separatists (and by implication, Russia) did the dirty deed. Moreover, such a defense might raise issues such as whether the Ukraine coup government was legally constituted, the separatists right to self determination of their government when faced with the coup government's military campaign to ethnically cleanse eastern Ukraine of those with Russian blood, etc.    The U.S. government, of course, would not want to see such issues aired in a trial where the truth of its claims could be disproved.  One of the hazards of dispensing Kool-Aid propaganda is that some who drink the Kool-Aid may believe and act upon it in ways that cause blowback. 

Shortly after Barack Obama swept into the White House while giving Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid a coattail Marxist Congress, Newsweek Magazine ran the cover "We're all Socialists now," based on Jon Meacham's lead article with the same headline.  Without a doubt, the election of that president and that Congress moved reality closer to Meacham's point.  It was astonishing that liberal apologist Meacham admitted as much. Yet it took until last night before it was literally true, as New Hampshire gave a full-throated socialist a rout over semi-socialist Hillary Clinton on the Democrat side and the once and now apparently again socialist Donald Trump won the GOP primary after going left of Bernie Sanders in his final rallies in the state.  To translate, Obama's hope and change and fundamental transformation of the nation are right on track - barreling warp-speed to the left in both presidential primary contests.

During our 12 days of Cannabis Christmas specials, only two winners will be randomly selected each day to receive a prize pack worth $150! Keep an eye out for a Golden Ticket in your package! Tweet$(document).ready(function() {var media = $('img[src*=\'oc-content/uploads/\']').attr('src'); if(media==undefined) { media = ''; $('.pinterest').remove(); } else { media = '&media='+escape(media); };$('.pinterest').find('a').attr('href','http://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url='+escape(document.URL...