Libertarian Think Tank

Vern Mckinley is a Republican running in Virginia’s 10th District primary against incumbent Republican Frank Wolf. McKinley has a picture of Barry Goldwater on his campaign website, so you know he’s the real deal. Wolf strikes me as one of those conservatives-for-rent that followed strong Republican leaders, but turned into Democrats when nobody was looking. One thing is for sure, though; even if Mckinley beats him, he is going to meet a lot more Wolfs in Congress. Their ranks will have shrunk. They will be tired and forlorn. Can Vern Mckinley give back the cojones that Pelosi snatched away? Maybe his youth is the key.

 Here is Vern with Bob Barr, Wayne Allen Root, and Mike Gravel at Reason Magazine in D.C.

Good luck tomorrow, brother.

 Who else wants to run?

I don’t know much about Larry Cooney, except that he has been a contributing commenter at the Tank and that he was a Washington State delegate for Ron Paul. Now he is running to represent Kitsap.

 Get a website and send us the link, Larry!

I had a similar conversation to this one, but without the moderator. I said that I was displeased about the Seattle smoking ban which demands that smokers stay 25 feet away from the entrance of an eating or drinking establishment. A friend of a friend (who seemed inordinately upset about the topic) exclaimed that he liked the ban because he didn’t have to breathe smoke while getting plastered at the Pacific Inn. I tried to explain that that wasn’t my point, but alas, it was to no avail. He assumed I was a smoker demanding an indoor puff and we got all derailed from there. I am not a smoker.

The moral is that the electorate votes on what they like, not theoretical understandings of personal liberties. You need tyrannical regimes and revolutions to make them think like that. But even after our own revolution, we founded a republic in the hope that representatives could think more abstractly than the majoritarian will. I still hope about that.

Here is a prime example of that. The woman insists that secondhand smoke and transfats are bad, but skips to the conclusion that they should be outlawed. She makes no argument to that effect (though, to be fair, she didn’t have much time). For her, it just simply follows.

Great Reason.tv piece. It may very well be that it’s stupid for bacondogs to be illegal, but my beef is that Los Angeles City forces vendors to shell-out $26,000 for a hotdog cart if they want to sell the highly-demanded bacondogs. Question: if the cops patrol the streets enough to throw away vendors’ carts without due process, why can’t they just write tickets for violations?

A friend of mine, who is wedded to the idea that Democrats are the poor man’s champions, often asks me how limited government can ever help the poor. Elizabeth Palacios is my answer. Her bacondog sales earned her a car and house. The city has mandated that she purchase a hotdog cart 5 times as expensive as the one she has now. She spent 45 days in the cooler because she couldn’t. Keep seeling those dogs, sister.  

Miracle grow is suing a small organic fertilizer company called “Terracycle” because Terracycle’s packaging is just too similar to MiracleGrow’s and because Terracycle audaciously claims that their completely organic worm-composting system is healthier for crops than the chemical stuff.