Blogs

The illegal-tax protestor Irwin Schiff has been in a government cage since 2005, and is not due out until 2017 - if he lives that long. He's 86 this month and is in failing health. Despite that, he's just produced yet another crackerjack legal brief to support his latest appeal.
 
It proves conclusively to anyone with an open mind that the income tax is being collected in gross and multiple violations of law. It can be read here - or, to set it in context, you can read a trial summary first, then click on the APPEAL button at its top-right and then on "2014 Appeal Memorandum" at the bottom.
 
In one sense it's all irrelevant, because government would be unacceptable even if it conscienciously observed all its own laws and limits on its power. But it does provide powerful proof that in this important field - the collection of nearly half its revenue (more, if one counts the state income taxes that rely on it) - no shred of such obedience can be seen. The story therefore supports any effort we make to show that limited government is impossible.
 
One of the Memo's key points is Schiff's tightly reasoned proof that the tax is a tax on property, not "income" (which is not and cannot be legally defined) and therefore must be apportioned, by State; yet it is not and never has been.
 
I predict the 9th Circuit will find a way to shut its eyes to the Memo, so it's up to us to spread the word as widely as possible so as to put the Feds under the pressure of public opinion. Possibly the kind of outrage that has followed the Snowden revelations will be repeated when 130 million i-tax payers realize they have been swindled as well an impoverished.

Chief Liberty Office Jeffery Tucker thanks libertarians for the successful crowdfunding campaign in this Liberty.me video.

In this misesmedia video, Peter Klein explains how a free market in coffee commondities would function.

The absurdity of the intellectual monopoly (intellectual property) system is nicely illustrated in this catoinstitutevideo.

In this Liberty.me video, two radical libertarians celebrate friendship.

A libertarian activist announces his freedom in this AdamKokesh video.

There are a number of lesser-known theories (the electric universe, for one) out there which explain the world differently than we're used to hearing. I came across one recently that I enjoyed, described in Jeff Yee's The Particles of the Universe. It's a fun read, and the basic idea is crazy-simple: everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, is made of neutrinos. Simple diagrams show the arrangement of neutrinos that make up an electron, proton, and so on. There's quite a bit more including time itself and the mass of particles (much of which is energy -- E=MC sq, after all -- stored from the time of the Big Bang when neutrinos and electrons and so on were smashing into each other with massive kinetic energy). The images in the Kindle file are low-res, and that makes the text in the images hard to read, but for the most part Yee does a great job of making this astonishingly simple and elegant idea seem sensible and real. Best 99 cents I've spend in a while.

My Guardian post about this was well received yesterday.
 
The Guardian is left-of-center and has an excellent "Comment" forum, well patronized. I encourage other Root Strikers to join me there.

In this ReasonTV video, Dennis Hof, propreieter of the Moonlite Bunny Ranch, advocates for legalization of prostitution.

Jim Harper discusses the NSA police state in this catoinstitutevideo.