Can you believe it?  The Independence Institute is turning 25 years old this November, and this year’s Founder’s Night celebration is going to be the best ever, bar none.  We’ve outgrown our previous Founder’s Night location (the Sewell Ballroom) and will be moving to bigger and better digs at Infinity Park’s International Ballroom in Glendale, CO.  Perhaps the most exciting piece of this year’s event is the keynote speaker.  This man is known for his political incorrectness, sarcasm, satirical wit, and free market values.  Of course I’m speaking of none other than Mr. P.J. O’Rourke. Now if you’ve never seen this guy speak, you are certainly in for a treat.  You will leave with a busted gut and more jokes than watching 3 nights of Comedy Central.  Just take a look at this roast of the Clinton administration – part 1 and part 2.

It will be an amazing night so hurry up and RSVP, as seats are already filling up.  You can do it online here or call Mary up @ 303.279.6536.

PJ’s bio for those who’d like to learn more:

Patrick Jake O’Rourke (born November 14, 1947 in Toledo, Ohio) is an American political satirist, journalist, and writer. O’Rourke is the H. L. Mencken Research Fellow at the Cato Institute and is a regular correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, The American Spectator, and The Weekly Standard, and frequent panelist on National Public Radio’s game show Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! He is known in the United Kingdom as the face of a long-running series of television advertisements for British Airways in the 1990s.

He is the author of 15 books, most recently Driving Like Crazy. This was preceded by On The Wealth of Nations, a commentary on Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (and the first in The Atlantic Monthly‘s “Books That Changed The World” series). According to a 60 Minutes profile, he is also the most quoted living man in The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Humorous Quotations.

***Heard Obama’s health care speech to the nation? Thought he was full of it? Yeah, me too. And so does Scott Harrington of the Wall Street Journal, who fact-checked the speech for its fallacies and misrepresentations.

***Mr. Tom Moriarty was kind enough to film my speech at the 9.12 rally and edit it very nicely, despite being a self-proclaimed amateur. Thanks Tom!

***Ari Armstrong says we must “Restore Free Market to Address Pre-Existing Conditions.” Very well done Ari.

***The center-right bloggers of the People’s Press Collective would like to hear your opinions on Colorado’s political landscape in this survey.

***Head over to iVoices.org. We’ve got several new podcasts – a couple featuring education policy analyst Ben DeGrow, and one featuring yours truly discussing McCain-Feingold with Dave Kopel.

***The Economics of Mandated Health Insurance – great one liner, “I can’t use up all of my savings just to buy mandatory insurance,” Mr. Norton says. It’s like penalizing “the homeless for refusing to buy a mansion.” I’m with you brother.

***Have you heard about the new MAD? It’s Mothers Against Debt, headed by our Amy Oliver who decided to launch the new campaign during the 9.12 rally last Saturday.

This is what it sounds like to me when I hear politicians promising government “solutions” to public policy issues. It makes about as much sense as them promising us unicorns, fairies, Santa Clause, and a Broncos Super Bowl victory…

© 2008, Benjamin Hummel. To see more cartoons like this go to www.politixcartoons.com.

The anti-free speech aspects of federal campaign finance reform laws have been getting a lot of attention lately. As those laws come before the Supreme Court, their “progressive” advocates have been urging the Court to be “restrained” rather than “activist,” and uphold those laws.

There is a delicious irony here.

When “progressives” took over the Supreme Court in the twentieth century, they largely re-wrote the Constitution.  Continue Reading »

Thanks to Ari Armstrong for filming and putting this on YouTube.

There has been some blog attention (see, e.g., here) recently to a pair of U.S. District Court rulings that the federal Fish and Wildlife Service did not meet legal standards when it limited permission to possess eagle feathers for religious purposes to members of recognized Indian tribes only. (U.S. v. Wilgus & U.S. v. Hardman).

There has been less attention to the constitutionality of the government eagle-feather restrictions.

If you believe that the Constitution, like virtually every other legal document, should construed according to its original meaning, you might well question whether the federal government has power to ban possession of eagle feathers at all. The Constitution gives Congress power to regulate interstate commerce, but the Founding-Era record makes it clear that this did not authorize flat bans on particular kinds of property. So to justify such a ban under the Commerce Power, the government must rely on the very strained interpretations of that power adopted by the modern Supreme Court.

Another possible basis for a federal ban are statutes adopted under migratory bird treaties. The notion that treaties allow Congress to adopt laws outside its enumerated powers was adopted by the Supreme Court in the 20^th century. But it, too, has been challenged recently by a top constitutional scholar writing in the nation’s leading law journal.

Still more importantly, the First Amendment prohibits the federal government from creating an “establishment of religion.” And both under the original meaning of the First Amendment and under modern Supreme Court interpretations, the federal government may not favor some religions over others. If a statute directly hampers religious exercise, the government may exempt religious adherents. But the government cannot exempt some of the hampered religions and refuse to exempt others.

While I can’t claim to have researched the subject exhaustively, a rule that limits an exception to Indians in recognized tribes — thereby excluding religions of non-recognized tribes as well as non-Indian religions — certainly looks like a constitutional violation to me.

(Rob Natelson, a leading scholar of the American Founding, teaches Constitutional Law and First Amendment Law at the University of Montana; his opinions, of course, are his own.)

As traditional print media continues to shrink in Colorado, who will step in to fill the void? Alan Gottlieb from Education News Colorado and Todd Shepherd from the Independence Institute’s “Independence Investigates” project join me to discuss the challenges and future of non-profit based news gathering and investigative reporting outlets in Colorado. Tune in tonight at 8:30pm on KBDI channel 12.

From our good friends over at the Sam Adams Alliance…
An entertaining look at the ever-so-tough job of being a health czar.

Listening to the NPR coverage of Denver’s Liberty on the Rocks (south metro) meet-up last night to watch Obama’s health care speech, you can hear how foreign Jeff Brady feels in such a pro-freedom environment. It must be difficult for a reporter from NPR to grasp that there are people out there who value the individual over the collective, and personal liberty over tyranny. Despite how awkward Jeff Brady is during the coverage, he gives LOTR a fair shake I must admit.  The Westword also picked up on the gathering and attention, and gave equally fair coverage to the group.  Here is our good friend Ari Armstrong’s take on the event and the NPR report on his website, FreeColorado.com. Congratulations to the folks of Liberty on the Rocks, and especially President Amanda Teresi, T.L. James, and Orin Ray for making the broadcast. Amanda’s quote about what insurance actually is was especially impressive. Good job guys!

There remains some significant details to be ironed out.

- President Obama, on his own health reform plan