We have now endured the first presidential and only vice-presidential debates of the 2012 election season. The Republicans and Democrats have endeavored to highlight their many differences, but I think it is more telling to look at all of the topics that, thus far, neither party has dared to discuss and neither moderator has dared to bring up.

To be fair, it’s impossible to discuss everything in the debates, and there are no doubt activists of various stripes who are bemoaning the absence of dozens of topics, including climate change, immigration, and the Federal Reserve. Well, here is a list of some of the things that I wish the Republican or Democratic candidates would talk about:

Continue reading What Neither Party Has Talked About At The Debates So Far

I am not calling this post “The Libertarian Case For Mitt Romney,” because I agree with Doug Mataconis that there is no such case, and I’ve spent many posts arguing that Romney doesn’t seem likely to be any better than Obama on reducing the deficit or stopping the serious civil liberty abuses that have expanded under the last two presidents. I want to see Gary Johnson hit 5% and I think he’s got a real shot at it.

However, I think there’s an interesting point that I haven’t seen many libertarians making: There is an undeniably growing libertarian wing in the Republican party that did not exist the last time Republicans were in power. The question is whether it’s growing large enough to have an influence on policy.

Continue reading The Libertarian Case For Mitt Romney’s Party

Liberals like to think they have no bias, that they base their positions on evidence, following the data wherever it leads. But the real world is so complicated that they often trick themselves into discovering evidence for what they already believe, with the smug bonus of convincing themselves that it’s a “reality-based” position superior to their ideological opponents.

Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers claim to have evidence that Republicans are more fiscally irresponsible than Democrats. I think it’s just evidence of their own biases.

Continue reading Are Republicans More Fiscally Irresponsible Than Democrats?

One of the most horrific aspects of current US foreign policy is rarely reported by US media and even more rarely discussed by the leading presidential candidates. I’m talking about our military’s increasingly dangerous and unaccountable use of drone strikes, where a remote unmanned aircraft fires a missile on suspected terrorists in Middle Eastern countries like Pakistan and Yemen.

In theory, the use of drones is a great technological advance that allows us to eliminate dangerous individuals without putting our own soldiers at risk. But despite the Obama administration’s assurances that it’s a precisely-targeted mechanism with very few civilian casualties, the evidence is beginning to mount that it’s a woefully flawed program that is severely disrupting the lives of entire nations in ways that are not only counter effective, but also downright despicable.

What makes these drone strikes so evil?

Continue reading The Despicable Drone Strikes

I caught the audio of most of the presidential debate Wednesday night (transcript), and read lots of tweets and articles about it. It’s sad that Gary Johnson didn’t get to be part of it, but overall it was better than I expected.

Continue reading Some Thoughts From The First 2012 Presidential Debate

It seems that Big Brother is everywhere these days. Last week, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request by the ACLU, we learned that the Justice Department’s warrantless surveillance had increased 600% in the last decade, including a doubling in the last two years. This week we learned that the Obama administration will argue that it should be able to access any American’s cell phone tracking records without a warrant, as if it’s impossible for that kind of information to be abused when there is zero oversight. It’s easy to imagine that our government is increasingly monitoring our every move.

But that government is made of people just like us, and it’s also becoming clear that a lot of those people don’t really know what they’re doing.

Continue reading Big Brother Is Watching You, But He Doesn’t Really Know What He’s Doing