Indy Transit Task Force Misses the Mark | Randal O'Toole | Cato Institute: Commentary

Indy Transit Task Force Misses the Mark | Randal O'Toole | Cato Institute: Commentary: "Commuter rail lines in cities comparable to Indianapolis, including Albuquerque, Dallas, Ft. Lauderdale, Nashville, Portland and Seattle, are so expensive and carry so few people it would cost less (and be better for the environment) to give every daily round-trip rider a brand-new Toyota Prius every other year for the rest of their lives."

A Global Assault on Religious Liberty | Doug Bandow | Cato Institute: Commentary

A Global Assault on Religious Liberty | Doug Bandow | Cato Institute: Commentary: "Dictators have been falling in the Middle East, but that doesn’t mean freedom is inevitably expanding. Unfortunately, the Arab Spring has turned into something far different than hoped. Especially for religious minorities."

"If people are oppressed because of their religious faith, they are likely to be victimized for holding other unpopular beliefs."

American Income Tax Tyranny | Richard W. Rahn | Cato Institute: Commentary

American Income Tax Tyranny | Richard W. Rahn | Cato Institute: Commentary: "Modern-day apologists for the progressive income tax argue that it is just — because it is imposed by the “consent of the governed” — and that is merely their first lie. America was established as a constitutional republic to protect despised minorities from the tyranny of the democratically elected majority. Democracy and consent of the governed are distinctly different concepts. Once it becomes acceptable to divide a population into classes, majorities can easily take the right of consent from a minority. Did black Americans, despite living in a democratic country, consent to being forced to ride in the back of the bus before the civil rights movement?"

"Most tyrannical regimes impose laws that are so extensive, complex and uncertain that the people can never know whether they are in compliance or not. This enables the state to target anyone, knowing they will almost certainly find some violation. The U.S. tax code now has something in the order of 77,000 pages. Obviously, no one person or even a group of tax professionals, including those at the Internal Revenue Service, can possibly know all of the rules and regulations. Hence, everyone is at risk of selective prosecution."

"Both the former Soviet Union and Nazi Germany imposed sizable exit taxes on their citizens — primarily Jews who tried to emigrate. Such tax tyranny is correctly viewed as a violation of a basic human right to move. Yet, the United States is one of the few remaining countries that still taxes people after they have left and are no longer U.S. citizens. Now, Sen. Barbara Boxer, California Democrat, is pushing a bill to go even further by preventing people from getting a passport on the mere allegation (not conviction) by the IRS that they owe $50,000 or more in unpaid taxes."

Santorum Supporter - Visits Ron Paul Rally @ Ft. Worth Texas - Shares His Reaction

Santorum Supporter - Visits Ron Paul Rally @ Ft. Worth Texas - Shares His Reaction: "There was enough energy in
that room to power a skyscraper. Teenagers, college students, whites,
Hispanics, African Americans, Asians, middle-aged, elderly, every
racial, ethnic, socio-economic, cross cultural ingredient of the
American melting pot was there."

"What exactly is our national security securing? Certainly not our
liberty. We have been sacrificing ever larger chucks of our liberty to
the gods of security for decades now and in the interests of securing
our liberty have given it all away. Go to an airport if you want to
witness the loss of liberty in all its glorious humiliation. One wonders
if we actually were taken over by another power and our Constitution
dismantled what exactly could they do to restrict our movements, monitor
our activities and control our actions that would be any worse or
oppressive than what our own government is doing right now?"

Nine Lessons Learned from the Oikos College Shooting

Nine Lessons Learned from the Oikos College Shooting: "In any school shooting the victims have a range of possible responses to consider. In my research on school shootings, the most successful student responses (ranked best to worst) are as follows:

1. Escape
   
2. Lock down in a secured location
   
3. Fight the attacker
   
4. Hide
   
5. Reason with the attacker
   
6. Cry, beg, plead, or submit"
   

"

'Col. Dave Grossman says "If the shooter wanted a fight, he would have started shooting up the police station." The shooter doesn't want a fair fight. He wants a massive body count. In order to accomplish his goal, he will target a disarmed population like a school.

History shows that the single worst fear an active shooter has is effective resistance from police or armed citizens foiling his plans for notoriety. In nearly every past event, the shooter has either surrendered or killed himself as soon as he is faced with effective resistance.'

Wisconsin Reporter/Waukesha County Republican Party U.S. Senate Debate - YouTube

Wisconsin Reporter/Waukesha County Republican Party U.S. Senate Debate - YouTube: "Republican candidates for U.S. Senate debate at the Waukesha Expo Center. Candidates include Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald, hedge fund manager Eric Hovde, former U.S. Rep. Mark Neumann and physical therapist Kip Smith."

How recruiters look at your resume

How recruiters look at your resume: In a study by TheLadders (of n equals 30), recruiters looked at resumes and make some judgments. During evaluations, eye tracking software was employed, and they found that the recruiters spent about six seconds on a resume looking for six main things: name, current company and title, previous company and title, previous position start and end dates, current position start and end dates, and education. After that, it was a crapshoot.

Time-Bomb Diplomacy | Justin Logan | Cato Institute: Commentary

Time-Bomb Diplomacy | Justin Logan | Cato Institute: Commentary: "In the long term, the problem is that it will be very hard for Washington to convince Tehran that it can trust American assurances. If Iran complies with whatever demands are made of it, how can it be sure that the United States will not attack anyway at some point in the future? It is very hard for a unipolar power like the United States to credibly commit to abstaining from doing something in the future because the cost of reneging is relatively low."

"One does not have to be extraordinarily empathetic to see how the prospect of a Libya-style deal might play with Iran’s Supreme Leader. Put bluntly, given the past decade of U.S. foreign policy and the structure of the international system, Iran would be irrational not to want a nuke. Our policy of sanctions and pressure is doing little to change that."

"Traditional conservatives will recall that Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution grants Congress the power to declare war. They will also recall that despite the last 60 years of American diplomatic history, the last enemy against whom the United States declared war was Ion Antonescu’s Romania in June 1942.

Part of the reason congressional war-making has fallen out of favor is that in declaring war Congress leaves its fingerprints all over the affair. If the decision is a bad one, legislators might pay a dear political price for having embroiled the nation in a costly or counterproductive war. The Founders’ decision to vest war-making power in the Congress reflected in part a belief that the nation should be reticent to enter conflicts. As enunciated by James Wilson, entrusting the war power to Congress had the advantage that “this system will not hurry us into war; it is calculated to guard against it.”"

"Congress has urged the president to launch a war on Iran while ignoring its own power to do so. Last November, Senator Joseph Lieberman told the Weekly Standard’s William Kristol that there is “a broad, bipartisan base of support if the Commander in Chief comes to a point where he thinks [war with Iran is] necessary.” Lieberman and his permahawk confrère Sen. Lindsey Graham have drafted legislation declaring that the president can do anything he wants to Iran except contain it."

Obama's And Paul Ryan's Conflicting Budget Visions | Michael D. Tanner | Cato Institute: Commentary

Obama's And Paul Ryan's Conflicting Budget Visions | Michael D. Tanner | Cato Institute: Commentary: "Neither President Obama nor Paul Ryan actually cuts government spending. Rather, both are playing the time-honored game of calling a reduction in the rate of increase a “cut.” Thus, the president would increase federal spending from $3.8 trillion in 2013 to $5.82 trillion in 2022. That might not be as big an increase there might otherwise be, but in no way can it be called a cut. Meanwhile, Ryan, who is being accused of “thinly veiled Social Darwinism,” would actually increase spending from $3.53 trillion in 2013 to $4.88 trillion in 2022.

The president warns that Ryan’s spending “cuts” would “gut” the social safety net. And, it is true that Ryan’s budget knife falls more heavily on domestic discretionary spending than does the president’s — but only relatively. Over the next 10 years, Ryan would spend $352 billion less on those programs than would Obama, an average of just $35.2 billion per year in additional cuts. Given that domestic discretionary spending under the president’s budget will total more than $4 trillion over the next decade, Ryan’s cuts look less than draconian."

"Ryan would also allow taxes to increase as a percentage of GDP, returning to roughly their historical average around 18 percent of GDP."

What's at Stake as Obama Tries to Intimidate the Supreme Court | Jim Powell | Cato Institute: Commentary

What's at Stake as Obama Tries to Intimidate the Supreme Court | Jim Powell | Cato Institute: Commentary: "There have been cases where a president was upset about an opinion after it was issued, but not cases where a president tried to influence a decision in the making. That might be comparable to jury tampering — usually treated as a felony."

What about FDR's attempt to pack the court?

"By trying to bully another branch of our government, Obama appears to be challenging our federal system itself, based as it is on a separation of powers.

Perhaps we need to remind ourselves how hard people struggled and how much they sacrificed to develop this, the most successful political system ever devised for limiting government power and protecting liberty."

"In 1628, Coke drafted the Petition of Right that aimed to limit the king’s power: (1) taxes couldn’t be imposed without Parliament’s consent; (2) citizens couldn’t be forced to provide food and shelter for soldiers; (3) individuals could be imprisoned only upon the order of a judge; (4) the king couldn’t arbitrarily declare martial law."

"[John Lilburne] was the first person to challenge the legitimacy of the Star Chamber, the English royal court that had become a notorious instrument for suppressing dissent. He was the first to challenge Parliament’s prerogative as a law court for imprisoning adversaries. He was the first to challenge the prosecution tactic of extracting confessions until defendants incriminated themselves. He challenged the standard practice of imprisoning people without filing formal charges. He challenged judges who tried to intimidate juries."

"One of [William Penn's] cases helped secure the right to trial by jury. In 1670, as a young lawyer, he decided to challenge the Conventicle Act that Parliament had passed to suppress “seditious conventicles” (as assemblies of religious dissidents were called). Many Quakers were imprisoned.

The jury acquitted the Quakers, but the Lord Mayor of London refused to accept the verdict. He fined the jury members and ordered that they be held in Newgate Prison until they came back with a guilty verdict. Still, they affirmed their acquittal. After the jury had been imprisoned for about two months, England’s Court of Common Pleas issued a writ of habeas corpus to set those people free. Then they sued the Lord Mayor of London for false arrest. The Lord Chief Justice of England, together with his 11 associates, ruled unanimously that juries must not be coerced or punished for their verdicts."

Madison: “A law violating a constitution established by the people themselves, would be considered by the Judges as null and void.”

"Senator Wheeler thundered [about FDR's court packing plan]: “Create now a political Court to echo the ideas of the executive and you have created a weapon which in the hands of another President could... cut down those guarantees of liberty written by the blood of your forefathers.”"