I recently wrote an editorial for The Times New about the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, which has recently passed through Congress and will be signed by President Obama.  Check it out here.  (If the link does not work just refresh the page, the site is having some issues)

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Motorhome Diaries is a project started by Jason Talley and Pete Eyre to spread the ideas of liberty as they travel across the country in their recently purchased used motorhome.

They started the tour in New Hampshire and have already made it to the west coast. They are now making their way back east, this time via the southern states. While in Jones County, Mississippi they had their first encounter with police officers. You can read a full account of the events here.

Briefly recapping, the motorhome was pulled over by a police officer for having a paper registration. Adam Mueller, who was also in the vehicle, had his camera taken from him when attempting to record the events. The camera was later returned, but the video was deleted. Jason, who was not driving but merely a passenger, was pepper sprayed after refusing to produce identification for the officers. He was blinded for over an hour.

They were also interviewed on Free Talk Live to talk about the events. You can listen to that interview below.

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H.R. 414 , cleverly named the Camera Phone Predator Alert Act, is sponsored by Peter T. King who is the representative for New York’s third district. The law would ensure every cellphone makes a sound when the camera function is being used.

If passed, the law will require “any mobile phone containing a digital camera to sound a tone whenever a photograph is taken with the camera’s phone. Prohibits such a phone from being equipped with a means of disabling or silencing the tone. Treats the requirement as a consumer product safety standard and requires enforcement by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).” In other words, the tone would be considered, by the government, as a safety feature and disabling it would violate safety standards set up by the CPSC.  

Judging by the name of the law, it may have been proposed as a measure to combat the recent trend of taking “upskirting” pictures with camera phones. 

Looking at recent cases of police brutality, however, might reveal a more sinister side effect that could occur if the proposed law is passed. 

Take, for instance, the San Fransisco Bay Area BART incident (video below) where a police officer shot a man, who was on the ground and possibly handcuffed, in the back. The officer’s excuse is that he meant to pull out his taser, but grabbed and fired his handgun instead. A gun, however, is much heavier than a taser, and he should have realized the difference. 

Later news came out revealing that the cops at the BART station were confiscating the phones of people whom were using them to take pictures of and video record the incident. Luckily, many of the people who were recording the incident were on the train and it left before the officers could collect their phones. 

If all of these cellphones were making clicking noises as they recorded it would have been much easier for the police to identify those that were being used to obtain evidence of the incident. 

Whatever the reason behind the proposed law it is clear that the House of Representatives should be focusing on more pressing issues like the state of the US economy.

Article originally published on digitaljournal.com

The term Anarchy has been used since the French Revolution to describe a society with no government. This is the most basic definition of Anarchy. The word, however, is much misunderstood, as most individuals seem to equate it with violence and chaos. Real Anarchists (not the kind you see in movies, but the ones that exist in the real world) are actually opposed to violence and chaos. This, in fact, is where their resistance to the state actually stems from, as they believe that governments are amongst the worst perpetuators of violence, oppression, and chaos in the world.

One specific place that Anarchists often see fault in government is through their oppression of the people they rule over. In fact, the Declaration of Independence of the United States declares that, “…to secure these rights, government are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Anarchists, however, will argue that there is never true consent of the governed. In any form of government there will always be a percentage of the population, no matter how small, that disagrees with the actions of the government, and those individuals will always be oppressed.

Individualist Anarchists also believe in the absolute sovereignty of the individual. This means that every person should have complete and unlimited control over his or her own self. If a person wants to use a drug, they should be allowed to. If a person wants to speak their mind, then they should be allowed to. The individual is king over himself. Anarchists believe that any restraint on this sovereignty is evil, but if a government places that restraint, then it is an absolute evil. This is because governments can act under the veil of legitimacy. This line of thinking leads Anarchists to the conclusion that individualism and the state are utterly irreconcilable.

Anarchists also favor economic freedom meaning that the state should not have any influence in the economy. This is because they see political power and wealth as inseparable. When a government is formed, much of the countries wealth is funneled to the political elite and their direct supporters and influences. Anarchists believe that when there is a state apparatus in place a majority of the people, likely the middle-class and lower-class, are exploited. There is also a minority of people that both exploit and are exploited. There is, however, one class of people that are the rich political elites that do nothing but exploit the rest of the population. The elite status and the wealth were obtained through politics and the government, which therefore makes the state evil in their inherent oppression of the majority of the population.

Anarchists are not inherently violent individuals, despite their reputation, and they do not aim to bring chaos to the world. The end goal of Anarchism is the abolishment of the state, but supporters of the philosophy do not believe that this will lead to chaos. On the contrary, they believe that governments all over the world create violence, oppression, exploitation, and chaos everywhere they are formed. This, according to Anarchists, is achieved through wars, taxes, suppression of personal freedoms, suppression of economic freedoms, and many other immoral acts of the state. Therefore, a society without the influence of governing bodies that have a “legal monopoly over the use force,” as Anarcho-Capitalist Murray Rothbard puts it, could not have a worse outcome than what already exists.

For more information on the subject written by yours truly check out Rational Anarchy:  A Brief Definition

Stefan Molyneaux, of Free Domain Radio, tackles the question:

What is the role of government?

Part 1:

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6