By Carla Gericke

Jury nullification plays a vital role in a healthy legal system. It allows people to vote their conscience and nullify bad laws, thus sending a strong message to legislators. This is how alcohol prohibition was overthrown. This is how marijuana prohibition will be overthrown.

On April 13, 2011, a jury in New Hampshire’s Grafton County Superior Court brought residents one step closer to this reality. Bob Constantine, a fifty-two year old man with a bushy white mustache and the slow gait of a man with bad hips, was charged on September 4, 2009 with two felonies for "Manufacturing a Controlled Substance," and one misdemeanor count of marijuana possession.

by Garret Ean
April 9, 2011

The Bradley Manning Support Network called on all artists and organizers to raise consciousness about Bradley’s case before he faces trial. For those who don’t know, Bradley Manning is the US Army soldier who leaked evidence of war crimes to Wikileaks, including the infamous “Collateral Murder” video which shows unarmed journalists and those who try to rescue them being slaughtered by Apache helicopter gunfire. Bradley is being held under conditions which violate a number of international standards as well as the military’s own code. His severe isolation treatment would qualify as torture in many nations.

Today I biked downtown with a box of chalk and a charged camera, taking pictures of the places where I left messages in support of Manning. At the library, I encountered some resistance, and kept a video log throughout the day of activities there.

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By Congressman Ron Paul, TX

Last week the Obama Administration took the United States to war against Libya without bothering to notify Congress, much less obtain a Constitutionally-mandated declaration of war. In the midst of our severe economic downturn, this misadventure has already cost us hundreds of millions of dollars and we can be sure the final price tag will be several times higher.

Why did the US intervene in a civil war in a country that has neither attacked us nor poses a threat? We are told this was another humanitarian intervention, like Clinton’s 1999 war against Serbia. But as civilian victims of the US-led coalition bombing continue to add up, it is getting difficult to determine whether the problem we are creating on the ground is worse than the one we were trying to solve.

CONCORD – The House Health, Human Services, and Elderly Affairs Committee brought seriously ill Granite Staters closer to relief today with a 14-3 “ought to pass” vote on a bill to allow the medical use of marijuana. H.B. 442, which creates a narrow exception in New Hampshire law for people with certain qualifying conditions to use marijuana to treat their conditions with a doctor’s recommendation, will now move on to the full House for a vote.

Introduced by Rep. Evalyn Merrick (D-), herself a cancer survivor, the bill has 5 Republican cosponsors, including the chair of the Health, Human Services, and Elderly Affairs Committee, Rep. John Reagan (R-Deerfield). HB 442 also enjoys strong support among voters; a 2008 Mason-Dixon poll showed that 71% of New Hampshire voters are in favor of allowing the use of medical marijuana, with only 21% opposed.

By L. Neil Smith
Publisher and Senior Columnist
The Libertarian Enterprise

For the first time, in its sixteenth year of publication, this journal of libertarian views and opinion—bound by an absolute moral resolve never to initiate force against anyone for any reason, nor to advocate or delegate its initiation—has been threatened by agents of the federal government and ordered to remove content from its website.

We have done so. When you learn, in a general way, what that content consisted of, you will be perplexed, at first, then angrier and angrier as you see what has been done to what was once a free country, and realize precisely who is most responsible for having done it.

The Obama administration came into office proclaiming "sunshine" policies. When some of the U.S. government's dirty laundry was laid out in the bright light of day by WikiLeaks, however, its officials responded in a knee-jerk, punitive manner in the case of Bradley Manning, now in extreme isolation in a Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia. The urge of the Obama administration and the U.S. military to break his will, to crush him, is unsettling, to say the least. Whatever happens to Julian Assange or WikiLeaks, Washington is clearly intent on destroying this young Army private and then putting him away until hell freezes over.

It should not be this way.

Those of the young generation, people too young to remember the collapse of Soviet-bloc and other socialist states in 1989 and 1990, are fortunate to be living through another thrilling example of a seemingly impenetrable State edifice reduced to impotence when faced with crowds demanding freedom, peace, and justice.

There is surely no greater event than this. To see it instills in us a sense of hope that the longing for freedom that beats in the heart of every human being can be realized in our time.

This is why all young people should pay close attention to what is happening in Egypt, to the protests against the regime of Hosni Mubarak as well as the pathetic response coming from his imperial partner, the US, which has given him $60 billion in military and secret police aid to keep him in power.

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http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/egypt-peoples-uprising168.html

by William Grigg

Among the "warning signs" of Jared Loughner's derangement, Time magazine instructs us, was his criticism of Federal Reserve Notes as "worthless." According to the custodians of acceptable opinion, this isn't a rational assessment of the intrinsic value of the Regime's ever-depreciating fiat scrip; it's a symptom of "paranoia," just like Loughner's reported preoccupation with government mind control.

Only those who are clinically deranged could harbor such anti-social views about the government ruling us – an institution representing the refined essence of benevolence, administered by beings of infinite competence whose digestive by-products emit the pleasant odor of freshly cut daisies. This is why the State's media auxiliaries (including the right-collectivists over at National Review) are largely ignoring Loughner's sociopathic indifference to the rights of other individuals while focusing tirelessly on his alienation from the government.

http://fedupflyers.org/

As I was driving up to DC last week, the Chief Pilot in Houston called to ask what I wanted to do when my current leave of absence expires (which it did yesterday). I told him nothing had substantially changed from the last time I spoke with the company – TSA has conceded not to abuse crew members, but has reserved for itself the authority to randomly pull us out of line and frisk us. I’d like to return to work, but if some government agent decides he wants to put his hands on me without provocation, I still do not consent.

By Kat Kanning
December 29th, 2010

Jailed Tax Protester Richard Simkanin died in prison at 12:43 yesterday. I spoke with Simakin's friend, Daniel Schinzing of Keene, TX, who said that Simkanin had been experiencing weakness, chest pain, and had a large lump on his chest. News of Simkanin's death was not a surprise, given his condition. He was 67 years old at the time of his death.

Simkanin had been released from prison earlier this year, but jailed again after claims of violation of his terms of release. He had served seven years in federal prison after refusing to withhold taxes from his employees at his Bedford, TX plastics business. He had been sentenced to an additional 7 years after his alleged violation of terms of release.

Richard's story, according to http://www.dicksimkanin.com/