Introducing Liberty Line
July 12, 2010 7 Comments
Ladies and gentleman, I would like to introduce you to Iowa’s newest political blog by sharing with you the very first post published on the site. This post will go far in describing and detailing what it is the contributors hope to accomplish.Liberty Line.
Liberty Has Some New Champions
There is a battle raging in America today. On one side we have those that would spend more and more money that the United States does not have. They would regulate more and more of our freedoms so as to fit their own personal view of the world. They would steal more and more of our hard earned money in an effort to fund their state sanctioned bribery programs. They are more than willing to sacrifice the livelihood of average hard working Americans in a misguided effort to “reform” our government. They have a tendency to willingly cede U.S. Sovereignty to a foreign world organization. This side of the battle is more about individual personalities than it is about hard and fast principles. With this side of the battle it is pretty much anything goes.
On the other hand we have the true patriots. These are the individuals that fight for the constitutional rights of every single American. They work hard against the forces of globalization. They fight against the other side’s desire to create a larger more ponderous and inefficient state and federal government. They fight in an effort to restrain the growth of government. They fight to restrain bloated government budgets. They fight through all the criticism leveled at them. With this side the battle is more about ideas and principles than it is about the individual. When any one personality begins to stand out they tend to shift to the other side of the battle because ego then takes over. The saying that really fits this side comes from Harvey Dent in The Dark Night, “you die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”
Unfortunately we have some of our so called leaders that are trying to straddle the fence. They want the best of both worlds. What they do not realize is that it does not work that way. Either you defend freedom and liberty wholeheartedly or you aid and abet those that want to restrict freedoms. You can rest assured that those of us at the Liberty Line will always come down on the side of Liberty and Freedom.
And now I would like to formally welcome you to the Liberty Line, a conglomeration of freedom loving Iowan’s no longer content to sit on the sidelines as our liberties are compromised in the name of political pragmatism. For the last several months we have watched as some of our most respected and principled leaders have compromised on our freedoms and liberty’s all for the sake of power. We have watched as supposed news sources turned to more tabloid like policies by publishing unsubstantiated rumors as proven fact. We watched as supposedly neutral observers launched a spin campaign that would have made Bill Clinton proud. We have surveyed the range of media options available to Iowan’s online and we have found them wanting.
The Liberty Line will be one of the most unique blogs in the state of Iowa. It is our desire to be completely open and honest. Our commentators will not hide behind a veil of anonymity. Instead they will comment about the current state of politics in the state under their real name. Furthermore we will apply this same high standard to our comment section. We believe that anyone commenting from behind a wall of anonymity is a detriment to civil and reasonable discussion. To facilitate this requirement we will require each commenter to register on the site and use their real name. Any comment that fails to fulfill this requirement will be deleted immediately and the individual responsible for the comment will be given a warning. For more information on our Rules for Participation please visit this page.
The Liberty Line will be leading the charge in defending our liberties and freedoms. We will be in the thick of the fight. The question yet to be answered is what side will you take in the battle? Will you side with the tyranny and oppression or will you stand with the new patriots in defense or liberty? The choice is yours.
So Publius wouldn’t be welcome to participate in your new website?
Your post is so vague I can’t tell what you mean most of the time. It certainly sounds ominous, all about “tyranny and oppression” and “unsubstantiated rumors” and “They would regulate more and more of our freedoms so as to fit their own personal view of the world.” That sounds like the Taliban, or the views of Focus on the Family.
So you are against all that? So you will be defending the freedom of women to rule their own bodies? And the freedom to marry?
I agree that the Iowa blogosphere is weak. You could make it stronger by being more specific and adding some links to your arguments.
And by letting Publius join your debates.
Jerry,
Certainly Publius would be welcome so long as he would use thier real names rather than hiding behind their moniker.
And of course the post is vague, I wrote it so because it is simply the introductory post for Liberty Line. If you had checked out the site you would know that Liberty Line places principles ahead of party.
And of course we will defend a women’s right to rule their own body up until their actions would cause the death or injury of another individual. As for marriage, to be perfectly honest I believe that marriage should be left for the churches, the government should be completely out of the business of approving or disapproving marriages. The government should not be in the business of promoting marriage, it should be the churches doing this.
If you want more specifics check out the site, the link is on the right.
Al thinks “The government should not be in the business of promoting marriage”.
So no joint tax returns? No survivor’s benefits for wives of soldiers? or of SS recipients? No assumption that the deceased husband wanted his wife to inherit his house?
Nor should government determine what sex the partners have to be? Because as long as we have some benefits that accrue to married persons, government should not discriminate among marriages unless it can show some state interest in doing so (e.g., preventing children from marrying at age 11). Right?
Jerry,
All of the answers to your many snarky questions are already found in common law inheritance principles. Joint Ownership of property as part of a marriage relationship. Property ownership is not a function of civil government code, it is a principle that goes back thousands of years and is ingrained into most societies.
As far as Joint Tax Returns… are you really in favor of taxing production? Everyone knows that when you tax something you get less of it. Lets just completely eliminate all production taxes and let people produce, make, and earn everything they need to live. Instead we should tax spending and other voluntary transactions. Remember “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are… endowed by their creator with… [the] unalienable right… [to the] pursuit of property.”
Wake up, Al. Time for another post making fun of global warming. If you don’t do it, stuff like this might start to weaken your resolve:
* June 2010 was the fourth consecutive warmest month on record (March, April, and May 2010 were also the warmest on record). This was the 304th consecutive month with a global temperature above the 20th century average. The last month with below-average temperature was February 1985.
I suppose Fox forgot to report on this, so you didn’t know it. That might explain your silence.
BTW, I found that at JuanCole.com yesterday. (Another wordpress blog)
Since climate change doesn’t interest you anymore, let’s get back to liberty. Perhaps you can take up this news and tell us how to get control of our government again:
from http://www.harpers.org/archive/2010/08/hbc-90007484
August 6, 6:19 PM
Three-Card Monte at Gitmo
Here’s an AP investigative story that reveals in good detail the Bush Administration’s attitude to the law and the Supreme Court. As the Supreme Court began to take steps that resulted in the collapse of the Guantánamo paradigm carefully constructed by John Yoo and his co-conspirators at the Justice Department, it appears that the CIA whisked away key prisoners so as to avoid compliance with the Supreme Court’s likely orders:
The existence of a CIA prison at Guantanamo was reported in 2004, but it has always been unclear who was there. Unlike the overseas black sites, there was no waterboarding or other harsh interrogation tactics at Strawberry Fields, officials said. It was a holding facility, a place for some of the key figures in the 9/11 attacks to await trial. Not long after they arrived, things began unraveling. In November, over the administration’s objections, the Supreme Court agreed to consider whether Guantanamo Bay detainees could sue in U.S. courts. The administration had worried for several years that this might happen. In 2001, Justice Department lawyers Patrick Philbin and John Yoo wrote a memo saying courts were unlikely to grant detainees such rights. But if it happened, they warned, prisoners could argue that the U.S. had mistreated them and that the military tribunal system was unlawful.
“There was obviously a fear that everything that had been done to them might come out,” said al-Nashiri’s lawyer, Nancy Hollander. Worse for the CIA, if the Supreme Court granted detainees rights, the entire covert program was at risk. Zubaydah and al-Nashiri could tell their lawyers about being waterboarded in Thailand. Al-Nashiri might discuss having a drill and an unloaded gun put to his head at a CIA prison in Poland. “Anything that could expose these detainees to individuals outside the government was a nonstarter,” one U.S. official familiar with the program said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the government’s legal analysis.
In early March 2004, as the legal documents piled up at the Supreme Court, the high court announced that oral arguments would be held in June. After that, a ruling could come at any time, and everyone at the island prison—secretly or not—would be covered. On March 27, just as the sun was setting on Guantanamo, a Gulfstream IV jet left Cuba. The plane landed in Rabat the next morning. By the time the Supreme Court ruled June 28 that detainees should have access to U.S. courts, the CIA had once again scattered Zubaydah, al-Nashiri and the others throughout the black sites.
All of this was occurring with the approval of the highest levels of the Bush Administration.
One other point worth flagging: unnamed officials state that “there was no waterboarding or other harsh interrogation tactics” at the CIA’s facility at Gitmo. This is indeed the CIA’s position. But it would be foolish to accept it at face value. The evidence that harsh tactics were used at Gitmo in sessions involving CIA personnel is now overwhelming. There is no documentation yet of waterboarding at Gitmo, but the case book is far from closed on that score, too.