It's National Donut Day

Today is National Donut Day and the libertarians at the Competitive Enterprise Institute want you to gorge yourself because freedom. Seriously.

Overindulge. Have two donuts today: one for yourself, and one for your freedom. Some government officials and their academic advocates believe that certain nutrients like fat, sugar, or salt are “toxic” and want to ban, tax, or shame people into eliminating them from their diet. In CEI’s view, it’s one thing for these people to offer us advice, but their mandates and taxes cross the line. Our lives and lifestyles belong to us, and National Donut Day is the perfect opportunity for demonstrating what our founders deemed the pursuit of happiness.

Somehow they failed to attack the First Lady in their press release. This time.

LIVE VIDEO: Rand Paul Announces

Just starting.

Ayn Rand Fans Have A CPAC Booth

The Ayn Rand Institute argues that Social Security is "legalized theft." At the end of her life, Rand was collecting both Social Security and Medicare benefits, but that was only fair, they say, because that money had already been stolen from her.

ADF Vs Coeur d'Alene, Continued

In an attempt to swat away reports that Alliance Defending Freedom and its allies have consistently lied about the Hitching Post situation in the tiny Idaho town of Coeur d'Alene, the ADF has posted a response to the letter sent them on Monday by the town's attorney. First, an excerpt from the town's letter:

And here is how the ADF is spinning that.

“The city has said explicitly, repeatedly, and publicly that it would prosecute a for-profit business. That’s what the Hitching Post is, and it has never claimed to be anything other than that,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Jeremy Tedesco. “While the Knapps do operate a ministry, they charge a fee for the ceremonies in order to be able to make a modest living. Therefore, the city, in its letter and elsewhere, is admitting that it would prosecute these pastors, who are clearly under a present threat of being sent to jail, fined, or both. The city has had months to figure out its own ordinance, and our clients have years of incarceration and devastating fines hanging over their heads. The city’s disingenuous waffling is indefensible.”

The religious corporation document filed by the Knapps on Oct. 6 did not change the chapel to a non-profit entity. It continues to operate as a for-profit LLC. City officials told the Knapps that he and his wife Evelyn, both ordained ministers, are required to perform such ceremonies or face months in jail and/or thousands of dollars in fines. The city repeatedly claimed its “non-discrimination” ordinance requires the Knapps to perform same-sex wedding ceremonies now that the courts have overridden Idaho’s voter-approved constitutional amendment that affirmed marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

They "never claimed" to be anything but a for-profit business? You sure wouldn't know that from the hundreds of articles seen in Teabagistan, where readers believe that the Hitching Post owners are pious pastors who are thisclose to prison sentences. What the ADF is doing, clearly, is using Coeur d'Alene as a test case in their campaign to invalidate public accommodation laws nationwide. The Hitching Post has all the right elements: wedding venue, small town, beleaguered mom & pop operation, ordained ministers. What the ADF hasn't gotten, surely to their regret, are any outraged, ranting, homofascist litigants that they can point to and scream, "GAYSTAPO!"  For now, they have to twist the words of the Coeur d'Alene town attorney.

RELATED: Yesterday Andrew Sullivan quoted gay libertarian author Walter Olson, who supports those so-called "sincerely held religious belief" exemptions to public accommodation laws that protect LGBT Americans. But even Olson is calling out the ADF.

While I hope the Knapps succeed in establishing their exemption from this law, I am still shaking my head at the ADF’s framing efforts, which via Starnes set off a predictable panic about dangers to religious liberty (see also, last week, on the Houston pastors subpoena). In this instance, those efforts amount to something very akin to hiding the ball, including (as cited by Sullivan) the quiet legal revamping of the business onto a religious basis in recent weeks and the silent removal of extensive language on its website that until earlier this month had promoted the chapel as a venue for civil, non-religious wedding ceremonies. Now, the Knapps are free (or should be, in my view) to change their establishment’s business plan overnight to one that welcomes only ceremonies consistent with Foursquare Evangelical beliefs. But shouldn’t their lawyers be upfront that this is what’s going on?

This Week's TIME Magazine

Ayn Rand: How Is She Still A Thing?

From last night's Last Week Tonight.

Ann Coulter: I Want To Drown Libertarians

"The biggest current danger for Republicans is that idiots will vote for Libertarian candidates in do-or-die Senate elections, including Kentucky, Kansas, North Carolina and Colorado. Democratic candidates don't have to put up with this crap -- they're even trying to dump the official Democrat in Kansas to give the stealth Democrat a better shot. When we're all dying from lack of health care across the United States of Mexico, we'll be deeply impressed with your integrity, libertarians. If you are considering voting for the Libertarian candidate in any Senate election, please send me your name and address so I can track you down and drown you." - Ann Coulter, in a column that includes multiple demands for donations to the Senate campaign of Scott Brown.

Grover Norquist Went To Burning Man

"Some self-professed 'progressives' whined at the thought of my attending what they believed was a ghetto for liberal hippies. Yes, there was a gentleman who skateboarded without elbow or kneepads – or any knickers whatsover. Yes, I rode in cars dressed-up as cats, bees and spiders; I watched trucks carrying pirate ships and 30 dancers. I drank absinthe. But anyone complaining about a Washington wonk like me at Burning Man is not a Burner himself: The first principle of Burning Man is 'radical inclusiveness', which pretty much rules out the nobody-here-but-us liberals 'gated community' nonsense. A community that comes together with a minimum of 'rules' demands self-reliance – that everyone clean up after themselves and help thy neighbor. Some day, I want to live 52 weeks a year in a state or city that acts like this. I want to attend a national political convention that advocates the wisdom of Burning Man." - Libertarian hero Grover Norquist, writing for the Guardian.

Rand Paul's Spaceship Lands At CPAC

Infighting Is Funny, Part 93

From the New York Times:

Mr. Cruz and his aides believe he is uniquely suited to galvanize conservatives, pointing to his leadership of the effort to cut off funding for the Affordable Care Act — confrontational, pugnacious, disdainful of President Obama. Mr. Cruz, 42 — a Texan, a born-again Baptist and son of an evangelical preacher — also connects naturally with Christian conservatives, many of whom have become foot soldiers in the Tea Party and view Mr. Paul as too unorthodox on social issues.

Mr. Paul’s inner circle privately derides Mr. Cruz as “the chief of the wacko birds,” echoing a phrase from Senator John McCain of Arizona. And, while allowing Mr. Cruz to lead the charge on Obamacare, the Kentucky senator has quietly been reaching out to more establishment forces within the Republican Party, trying to prove to big donors and mainline Republican organizations that he is more than a Tea Party figure or a rerun of his father’s failed candidacies.

Image source.

Ron Paul Backs Bradley Manning

The screaming across Teabagistan this morning is really something.  And the senior Paul's position is miles away from his son's.

"There do have to be laws to protect some secrets. I think if you’ve got the, you know, the plans on how to make a nuclear bomb that is a state secret. If you give that to the enemy, that is being treasonous,” said the Senator from Kentucky, “Even if you reveal it, you just have to have laws against that. What Manning did was just willy-nilly, just released millions of pages of things and I think some people have said there is potentially some harm from that. You know individual agents that could have been killed or put at risk from this. So there is a problem with that. So I just can’t support that.”

Sen. Rand Paul Vs. Gov. Chris Christie

Over the weekend Christie took on the libertarians:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is ripping libertarians — including Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) — for challenging government surveillance programs and failing to understand the dangers of terrorism. “This strain of libertarianism that’s going through parties right now and making big headlines I think is a very dangerous thought,” the New Jersey GOP governor said on Thursday at a Republican governors forum in Aspen, Colo. “You can name any number of people and (Paul is) one of them.” “These esoteric, intellectual debates — I want them to come to New Jersey and sit across from the widows and the orphans and have that conversation. And they won’t, because that’s a much tougher conversation to have,” Christie said.

Yesterday Paul fired back on Fox News.

Brian Brown: We're Libertarians

"There is really one or two outcomes that’s going to happen in this: either we’re going to have the state embrace this new definition of marriage and use the power of the state to punish, repress and marginalize those of us that know that marriage is the union of a man and a woman, or we’re going to have the state recognize the truth about marriage.  Ours is actually a libertarian argument. We’re not arguing that the state create marriage, the state does not create marriage, but the state has to recognize the truth that marriage is by its nature the union of a man and a woman. When it abandons that truth, you’re giving the power to the state to call black white and white black, to put a falsehood into the law and a state that can do that is a state that pretty much can do anything." - Hate group leader Brian Brown, speaking on a Tea Party Unity conference call.

Glenn Beck: Get Me Back On Cable

Since Glenn Beck left Fox News to launch his web-only television show, he has devolved even further (if that's possible) into crackpot fringe conspiracy theory-laden batshittery.  And today he launched a campaign to force cable providers to pick up his web channel.  Think Progress weighs in:

Beck started promoting GetTheBlaze.com on Monday, asking fans to demonstrate to their television provider that there is wider demand for the libertarian channel. If his channel does get picked up by cable television providers, anyone who pays for cable will subsidize Beck’s channel, regardless of whether or not they watch it. As The New York Times explains, TV channels get small per-subscriber fees, whether or not the subscribers ever watch. Beck argues that carrying TheBlaze would be no different from supposedly ideological cable channels like MSNBC and Al Jazeera America. But since leaving Fox, Beck’s radical libertarianism has gone even further fringe.

Hit the link for the crackpottery currently getting heavy coverage on Beck's channel.

Libertarian Students Boo Ann Coulter

Andrew Kirell reports at Mediaite:: 

The war was certainly worth the cost because Saddam Hussein was “definitely looking for uranium from Niger,” she said. Her remarks were met with tepid boos and confusion, but the room was mostly pleasant at that point. But when the subject turned the the legalizing drugs, things quickly became tense. “Libertarians and pot,” Coulter said with a dismissive laugh. “This is why people think libertarians are pussies,” she said. Yes, it was bleeped. But I was there in person, so I know she said it.

Stossel then asked: “Why can’t gays get married?” “Well, they can,” Coulter replied. “They have to marry a member of the opposite sex.” The room filled with boos. “This is another one where you’re just sucking up to liberals when there are big fights,” Coulter explained. “No, we believe the individual should be left alone,” Stossel shot back. “Marriage is the most important institution to civilize young people. I make divorce a lot more difficult,” she said. “Liberals want to destroy the family,” she continued, eliciting jeers and mocking laughter from the students.

IDAHO: State GOP Rep Intro's Bill Requiring Atlas Shrugged In High Schools

Idaho GOP state Sen. John Goedde has introduced a bill that requires high school students to read Ayn Rand's libertarian opus, Atlas Shrugs.  You don't graduate if you can't pass a test on the book.

The 1957 novel has been embraced by libertarians and the tea party movement, in part for its opposition to “statism” and embrace of capitalism, as Rand expressed her philosophy of “objectivism,” focusing on “the morality of rational self-interest.” In recent years, the novel has been touted by conservative commentators including Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. “When I read Atlas Shrugged, and it’s been probably 30 years since I read it, but it certainly gives one a sense of personal responsibility,” Goedde said. Sen. Cherie Buckner-Webb, D-Boise, questioned the choice of the book for a graduation requirement. “We have a wide variety of children who will be trying to graduate and reading and grasping some of these things, and their cultural context may be different,” she said.

Goedde says he doesn't intend to lobby for the bill's passage, he's just trying to make a statement. After all, that's the book that "made my son a Republican."

Ron Paul Delivers Farewell Speech

Rep. Ron Paul, as you probably know, did not run again for his House seat this year in order to pursue the presidency. Yesterday he delivered a million-word farewell address to the appropriately empty House chamber. Let's just hope the news cameras are there when the people of his home planet send their spaceship for the return voyage.

UPDATE: I failed to mention that during his 12 terms in Congress, Ron Paul introduced 620 (almost entirely) wackadoodle bills.  Only four of the bills sponsored by Ron Paul ever got to a floor vote. And exactly ONE passed. 

HomoconQuotable - Chris Barron

"The Liberty movement is growing every day, and I firmly believe that libertarianism is the greatest single hope for America’s future.  While libertarians will not get the chance to elect a libertarian president in 2012, we can begin to right the ship by electing the candidate who most closely represents our values and our vision of government. The work of transforming America and putting libertarian ideals to work will be a long and hard fight, but one well worth it. A few years ago, not many outside of Washington think tanks knew what libertarianism even was. Now, thanks to the campaigns of people like Ron Paul, we have taken a big step in educating voters and winning converts to our cause. Let’s take another step now by electing Mitt Romney, and ending Barack Obama’s big government reign of terror." - GOProud co-founder Chris Barron, writing for Glenn Beck's The Blaze.

HONDURAS: American Libertarians To Build New City Free Of Taxes

The Honduran government has granted permission for the construction of a new city that will be completely free of income, sales, and capital gains taxes. The city will be built by an American investment group of libertarians that says it will use the state of Texas as a model for the few laws they will put in place.

Proponents say the tiny, as-yet unnamed town will become a Central American beacon of job creation and investment, by combining secure property rights with minimal government interference. “Once we provide a sound legal system within which to do business, the whole job creation machine – the miracle of capitalism – will get going,” Michael Strong, CEO of the MKG Group, which will build the city and set its laws, told FoxNews.com. Strong said that the agreement with the Honduran government states that the only tax will be on property. “Our goal is to be the most economically free entity on Earth,” Strong said. “First, we will build the critical infrastructure -- roads, water, power, sewers," Strong said. "In collaboration with the [Honduran] government, we will then create the city’s government system and the security, and 3 to 6 months after that we will build the first factories.” The MKG Group city is the first to get approval, but Honduras plans to create other “free cities” as well.

Strong is on the board of directors of homocon billionaire Peter Thiel's Seasteading Institute, which has proposed a similar plan to creating floating "free cities" using oil drilling platforms.  The Honduran project will presumably include Thiel's plan to evade international banking regulations.

Romney/Ryan/Rand 2012