Church and State: A Marriage Not Made in Heaven

Washington, D.C.–Californians will soon have the chance to vote on Proposition 8, which would define marriage in the state constitution as being only between a man and a woman, denying marriage to same-sex couples. The proposition is heavily supported by the religious community. Said one religious leader who supports the measure, “We believe it is a religious issue as well as a political issue. That’s where we feel the Church must have a word.”

According to Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, “Regardless of how one thinks ‘marriage’ should be defined, there’s a much graver issue at stake: this is a flagrant attempt to inject religion into politics.
Read more

Let Them Fail

By Amit Ghate

Everywhere today politicians are blaring that they must save America’s financial institutions, alleging catastrophic risk to the economy were any to fail. Paulson and the entire Bush administration, in a discernible panic, are now pouring $700 billion into the big banks, having already bailed out AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Bear Stearns to the tune of $300 billion.

Capitalism doesn’t work, they declare, but fortunately the government is here to rescue us.

Sadly, they have it all backwards. The credit crisis is just more evidence that whenever the government supplants the free market and attempts to “manage,” i.e., control, the economy–disaster ensues.
Read more

LIVE! Election night coverage with Isnardi, Ellis & Space Coast Politics

Space Coast Politics will be streaming live video via the Internet from the Supervisor of Elections office on election night.

Space Coast Politics contributor Dawn Hooley and I will be reporting for Dave Isnardi and Clerk of Courts Scott Ellis, who will be broadcasting from the WMMB AM studios from 8 to 11pm.

Tune in to Dave and Scott on WMMB, or load up the Space Coast Politics web page for intelligent commentary and blow by blow analysis of the results as they come in.

No Copyright Exceptions

By Thomas A. Bowden (New York Times, October 28, 2008)

Re “Copyright and Politics Don’t Mix” (column, Oct. 21):

Lawrence Lessig’s proposal for copyright reform commits the same error as the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. Both take for granted that lawmakers should be carving up speech into political, commercial, artistic, and other categories, and then offering different legal protection according to how society values the output.

But speech is speech, and the individual speaks by right, not permission. Just as political speech deserves full First Amendment protection, it deserves full copyright protection as well. Media outlets that profit from disseminating political statements should have ready access to procedures for enforcing their property rights against YouTube or other infringers. That’s not censorship; that’s justice.

Read more…

Free Market Policies Needed to Solve the Crisis

By David Holcberg (Guardian, October 15, 2008)

President Bush said the U.S. government will “aggressively” use a “wide range of tools” to resolve the financial crisis.

Apparently, Bush’s “wide range of tools” is not wide enough to contain a single free market policy. All the “tools” our government has aggressively used to date–bailouts, takeovers, bans on short selling, manipulation of interest rates, creation of fiat money out of thin air, increased spending–have been yanked right out of the socialist and fascist toolkits.

We will only get out of the mess created by our government if it cans all of those “tools” that got us where we are and starts freeing the market from its statist policies.

Read more…

End the FCC’s War on Free Speech

Washington, D.C.–On November 4 the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Federal Communications Commission v. Fox Television Stations. At issue is whether the FCC can declare “fleeting expletives” indecent and fine broadcasters for violations.

“The government should put an end to the non-objective ‘indecency’ laws that permit the FCC to dictate what Americans can say and hear on the airwaves,” said Don Watkins, a writer for the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights.
Read more

15th Congressional District Race Heats up

Posey denies statement he made at dinner meeting earlier this year; Zilaitis calls him out on it

Once again, I find myself in the middle of a he said/he said political fight, this time between Congressional hopefuls Senator Bill Posey and Frank Zilaitis. This morning I asked a simple question regarding the candidates’ stances on the free market and business regulation.

As part of his answer, Zilaitis mentioned a statement Posey made regarding the insurance industry at a dinner meeting many months ago: “The state has been regulating the insurance industry since Christ was born”. Posey adamantly and repeatedly denied making the statement and said he wasn’t going to play Zilaitis’ “game”.
Read more

Rescue Me

Is Viagra a right or a privelege?

Thanks to President Clinton’s escapades with his intern, we’ve all been exposed to various definitions of sex. There are variations on the same thing, sometimes a person can be more giving and sometimes more receiving of (cough) enthusiasm and effort while engaging in any type of sex act(s).

Viagra, also known as Vitamin V, the blue pill and others, is used for the sole purpose of (cough), maximizing the male experience during a sexual act. There is no other purpose of Vitamin V. It doesn’t help lower one’s cholesterol, combat cancer, clean out sinuses, cure an illness or save one’s life.

Florida early voters favor Dems; GOP leads state in absentees

Nearly 2 million Floridians cast ballots in the first week of early voting, and the partisan breakdown gives a slight edge to Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.
Read more…

Next Page »