Archive | June 20, 2008

Vis-à-Vis Visas

Dangerous criminal Martha Stewart’s being denied a visa to enter Britain is insane for the obvious reasons, but the part that puzzles me is: since when do American citizens need a visa to enter Britain? Is the reference to “visa” just a reporter’s glitch?


That Other Party

The Boston Tea Party, founded by Tom Knapp (Grand Anarch of the Left-Libertarian Blogosophere) a couple of years ago in protest against the LP’s increasing drift away from radicalism, has nominated Charles Jay for president and Knapp himself for vice-president.

If Knapp were on the top of the ticket I’d definitely be interested (sorry, Brad); but judging from Jay’s website (festooned with flags and typos) I can’t get too excited about his candidacy.

Jay seems broadly libertarian, but not especially radical. (Well, he’s radical as hell by mainstream standards, of course; but those aren’t the applicable standards here.) It looks to me as though the moderates have taken over the Boston Tea Party too. Jay insists that the IRS’s reign of terror must stop, but says nothing about abolishing the IRS. He apparently rejects a free market in health care. While he opposes the Iraq War, his commitment to non-interventionism seems weak-kneed. (I couldn’t find any info about his views on immigration; all that came up on the subject was this, which tells me less about Jay’s stand on immigration than about the incompetence of his web staff.) Jay is arguably more libertarian than Barr, but there’s just not enough there to justify regarding Jay’s candidacy as a viable protest alternative to the Barr/Root ticket. (As fun as it would be to see Knapp debate Root ….)


Lines of Blood

For any libertarians who still think which side one takes on the immigration issue is a minor, optional matter – two posts on how border laws kill: here and here.


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