I find white supremacists to be a pretty despicable lot, all in all. I really wish there was a way to boot these people off the planet, frankly. But if I were in Ron Paul's shoes, I would be doing precisely what he's doing. Paul, one of the pack of GOP Presidential candidates, has received heavy criticism for a $500 campaign donation from a white supremacist. He has been pressed to return it, but says he will keep it. Although I support Paul, I will concede that his spin on why he is ...

This is kind of a redux, but I figured I'd start fresh for those who weren't around for the first article. When I was younger, I was a pretty die hard socialist. For many years I counted among my friends one J. Quinn Brisben, the 1992 Socialist Party USA candidate for president. In fact, my three year old son was named after Quinn, who taught me a lot about the labor history of the United States. As I've grown older, I've come to eschew the state socialism of the Soviet Union, China, and C...

(Disclaimer: This article is a parody and not to be taken seriously): "You have the right to free speech As long as you're not dumb enough to actually TRY it!" (The Clash, "Know Your Rights") You don't need to look very far to see places where people have abused their freedom of speech: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/18/national/main2699800.shtml I guess I don't need to say much about this one. Fred Phelps and his group have protested funerals of every high profile death ...

Mike Huckabee's been making waves in the GOP primary race. I had wondered why, but hadn't paid horribly close attention. I have, of course, long known who Mike Huckabee is and why he will always hang on at some level. But I admit I was somewhat taken aback by his recent poll numbers. Huckabee is and has always been a Republican's Republican. He's been doing the prolife lecture circuit for many years now, and has long been a favorite of conservative kingmakers. But it was his recent endorsemen...

Ever since I first heard about the idea of a flat tax, I thought it sounded pretty cool. But I was hushed by the voices of my colleagues, who called a flat tax "regressive", and further indicated that I was a traitor to my class. The idea, they would tell me, is to tax the rich more so that the poor don't have to pay taxes. One little bitty problem with that. Nobody gets out of paying taxes. Noone. In fact, when the oil prices began their stratospheric climb, I distinctly remember a member of...

I am not a Mitt Romney fan. I personally am not supporting him in the primaries, and I wouldn't consider him on my top two or three ideal candidates out of the field. Yet if he wins the GOP nomination, he stands a better than even chance at winning my "lesser of two evils" prize, and I find it curious that most of the religious right has not endorsed him as their candidate. As many of you know, I have a love/hate relationship with Mormonism as the faith of my upbringing, a faith I personal...

One of the most hypocritical things I have heard from the mouths of liberals is that race and gender do not matter. The fact is, not only does the far left not believe it, but race and sex are oftentimes the ONLY thing that matter to them. And the 2008 Presidential Primary race underscores that pretty heavily. I can't tell you how many times I have heard someone on the left say they want to vote for Hillary because she would be our first woman President. Or they want to vote for Obama beca...

I remember countless tyimes throughout the last several years when our sitting President would invoke God. The far left would shout from the highest rooftops that he was violating separation of church and state by making his faith public. That's why I find it compelling that one of Yahoo! News' lead stories features one certain former first lady's attendance at a Methodist church in Des Moines Iowa, without a hint of the irony of the article's appearing without sharp criticism: http://new...

Following in the footsteps of the DNC, the Republican Party is now promising to penalize several states for holding their primaries too early. This has been one big, nasty mess all around with states fumbling over one another to hold the "first" primary, and the craziness would be good late show material if we could get the writers off of their strike. On second thought, that might mean no new episodes of "Cavemen", so let the strike continue! There is a very simple solution to this quagmire,...

Throughout my life, I have always been told that Republicans are the party of the rich, and Democrats the party of the poor. This is likely because Republicans have traditionally been associated with conservatives and Democrats with liberals (the truth of those stereotypes is not something I will discuss in the body of this article; it's too tangential). What I have noticed that feeds this stereotype, though, is that conservatives are better business people than liberals. And because people a...

I was 14 years old when I got my first lesson in the bigotted ideals that guided my so called "liberal" family. My brother was learning to drive, and my dad had purchased his first car for him. He was talking with my brother about driving, and contemptuously referring to the "rich bitches" who drove fancier cars to the school. And it didn't end there. My father never had a kind word for anyone who was successful. They were all liars, cheats, and dishonest in his eyes. Small wonder, th...

As 2008 grows nearer and with it the insanity of the Presidential election and all of the accompanying House and Senate races to complete the three ring circus, it's becoming apparent there are issues that they cannot ignore if they have any hope of winning. While the establishment would argue that we have no chance of winning anyway, the growing disenchantment with the political status quo cause me to beg to differ. All we lack is a candidate that can run the distance, something that may be nea...

For years, the religious right has clamored for a leader that represents their valies. That espouses the "family" values they hold dear, values, they say, that are consistent with those of our founding fathers (remember, though, that THEIR perception does not necessarily equal reality!). And in this upcoming election, there are two whose values come close to those conservative Christians hold dear. One of them they won't even consider. For a conservative Christian, there's little not t...

A few weeks ago, this thought came to me: We've lived too long under the government we deserve. It's time to give ourselves the government our GRANDCHILDREN deserve! You see, for too many years, we have operated our government on the "play now, pay later" principle. Debt has seldom been taken seriously, as we feel that we can simply repay the money we're borrowing at some esoteric later time. But it doesn't take a great economist's mind to see the flaw in this. If our government is livi...

For those who have come to know me and my politics, I am a person caught between a few different worlds politically. I self identify as a Libertarian, and that would be a fair summation of my philosophy, albeit an overly simplistic one. I am a Libertarian not because I see perfection in the party, but because I see it as the party most given to the kinds of reforms I feel are necessary. I have no home in the Democratic Party because they've forgotten the poor they claim to champion, and be...