“There are only a few in elected office who have any real loyalty to free markets and limited government. The agenda of neo-conservatives in the economy calls for a very active central government. Indeed, while there are some neo-conservatives who continue to use the rhetoric of limited government, and who oppose increases in the federal income tax as a way to maintain the political benefits that apply to those who talk about free markets, it is now the neo-conservatives who promote fiat monetary policies even more than those on the liberal left.”

Rep. Ron Paul warns us @ http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/003449.html

Info @ http://www.campaignforliberty.com/blog/?p=275

The war has proved to be a fiasco, and is now widely unpopular. But Minnesota Democrats have only been able to come up with a comedian to challenge Senator Coleman.

Minnesota voters have another choice. Dean Barkley is seeking to challenge Sen. Coleman as the candidate of the Independence Party. Dean Barkley helped elect Jesse Ventura as Governor of Minnesota in 1998, and has briefly served as appointed Senator. 

Dean Barkley calls for fiscal responsibility, and points out the Federal Debt is killing our economy and our children’s future. Barkley calls for ending the Iraq War, and points out that Americans were misled into supporting the war.

Dean Barkley calls the War on Drugs a failure, and calls for an emphasis of rehabilitation rather than imprisonment as a way to deal with the drug problem.

Dean Barkley campaign site @ http://www.barkleyforsenate.org/

“The new budget estimates show that federal spending will top $3.13 trillion in 2009, up 68 percent from $1.86 trillion when the current president came to office in 2001. That increase is enormous — indeed it is more than twice the 32 percent increase under eight years of President Bill Clinton in the 1990s. The deficit is expected to rise to a record $482 billion next year and then decline and magically disappear by 2012, based on the usual phony accounting that we have become used to from this White House. However, the deficit can be, and should be, erased by major spending reforms and cuts, and that should be the top domestic priority of the next president.”

Source: http://www.cato.org/pressroom.php?display=ncomments&id=102

Tucker Carlson will MC the events. Featured speakers will include:

**Barry Goldwater, Jr, former Congressman from California

**Gary Johnson, former Governor of New Mexico

**Bruce Fein, former Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Reagan

**Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform

**Adam Curry from MTV

More information @ http://rally.campaignforliberty.com/

 ”Voters were promised, passionately and vehemently, that the new Congress would bring our troops home. Many were explicitly elected in 2006 under that banner. But our troops are still overseas, funding has been increased even beyond the administration’s wish list, and troop withdrawal has been negotiated away.”

 ”When things are going badly in Iraq, they say we must stay until the situation improves. When things improve, they tell us we must stay because our gains cannot be jeopardized.”

Rep. Ron Paul looks at the top issue of 2008 http://www.antiwar.com/paul/?articleid=13145

“Measuring the growth in the number of activities considered federal crimes is challenging. Ideally, one compares counts of federal crimes taken at different times and employing consistent criteria to determine what constitutes a federal crime. Obtaining compara­ble data, however, is almost impossible. Nonetheless, a careful survey of laws enacted by Congress does permit reasonable estimation of the number of federal criminal offenses.”

“This report follows from other attempts to count the number of federal criminal offenses or to measure their growth. The most complete count of federal crimes, done by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in the early 1980s, put the number at 3,000. A 1998 report by a task force of the American Bar Association relied on the DOJ figure and other data to measure the growth of federal criminal law but did not itself actu­ally provide a count of federal crimes.[1] In a 2004 Fed­eralist Society monograph building on the DOJ and ABA reports, I counted new federal crimes enacted following the point at which the ABA report finished its data collection at the close of 1996. That report estimates that there were 4,000 federal crimes at the start of 2000.[2] This report updates that total through 2007, finding 452 additional crimes created since 2007, for a total of at least 4,450 federal crimes.[3]”

John S. Baker, Jr has compiled a report for the Heritage Foundation http://www.heritage.org/Research/LegalIssues/lm26.cfm

“Civil liberties were violated, and only 28 senators cared to see justice served,” says Libertarian Party spokesperson Andrew Davis, “and Barack Obama was not one of them.”

The Libertarian Party has repeatedly called for the rejection of any amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that empowered the government to spy on American citizens and granted immunity to companies complicit in illegal surveillance operations.

Full release from The Libertarian Party http://www.lp.org/news/press-releases/telecom-immunity-fails-to-render-justice-to-the-american-people

Netroots activists are raising money online to run advertisements against “Blue Dog Democrats”, such as Rep. Chris Carney, D-Pa., who voted for a bill that would immunize telecommunications companies who cooperated  with the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping.
Credit: Eggman

“A group of high-profile progressive bloggers and libertarian Republicans are rolling out a new political action committee called Accountability Now to channel widespread anger over pending legislation that would legalize much of the president’s warrantless electronic surveillance of Americans, and grant retroactive legal immunity to telephone companies that cooperated with the spying when it was still illegal.” 

Wire Magazine reports on this new alliance:

 http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/07/online-activist.html

“Just what is pushing prices skyward? Surprisingly, the G-8 finance ministers failed to mention the US dollar’s role. Every commodity trader knows that all commodities trade off changes in the value of the greenback. When the value of the dollar falls, the nominal dollar prices of internationally traded commodities, like gold, rice, and oil, must increase because more dollars are required to purchase the same quantity of any commodity. Accordingly, a weak dollar should signal higher commodity prices. And it does.”

Steve Hanke of the Cato Institute looks at the oil market http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9490