It seems that in Oregon, some democrats want to force their perceived superior moral authority on others. How do pharmaceutical companies create demand for their products? In the case of vaccines, they lobby with Pediatric Associations and the State to make product purchase and consumption mandatory. 

But mandates have recently taken a chilling new twist. Yesterday, a bill that sets certain Medical Doctors and the State above religious freedom and a Parent’s Right to decide passed the Oregon Senate. 

Our inalienable rights to rear our young, worship whom we please and decide what goes into our bodies are not partisan issues...

Several hundred citizens of Chittenden County gathered at Burlington’s Unitarian Universalist Church Thursday evening to conduct a “citizens hearing” and express their ever-increasing opposition to the coming arrival of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft. From the moment of BTV’s selection as a home base for the new aircraft, citizens from nearby Burlington; South Burlington; Winooski; and others have been passionately and diligently organizing to prevent the arrival of the world’s most expensive weapons platform at the Vermont Air Guard...

On the occasion of this 2013 Memorial Day, I find it altogether fitting and proper that we as a country take a moment away from our sunny picnics and parades to not only honor our fallen soldiers, but also to consider the decisions and decision-makers that have asked so much of them.

Appearing at the National Defense University in the first major foreign policy and counter-terrorism speech of his 2nd term, President Obama focused primarily on addressing many of the rising concerns regarding his overwhelming implementation of drone strikes around the world as...

A few days ago in Stockholm I was walking by the water and was accosted by a youngish man from Ireland who shouted out my name. This is not something that happens to me often – apparently he is among that small subset of humanity that has read my book – so I took this coincidence as a sign to stop and have a conversation. 

It turned out he was in Sweden on a two-year program for boat-building, learning traditional techniques to build small boats by hand. His story inspired me in several ways. First, here was an intelligent young person is committed to work that offers no possibility of high social status or wealth. Second, he was...

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Whenever the Federal Reserve wants to tweak the dials of the economy -- or pretend that it can -- it turns first to its sock puppet at The Wall Street Journal, John Hilsenrath, and "leaks" a rumor of policy change (HERE). They like to do this late on Fridays when financial markets are about to close, so that market players will have a whole weekend to ponder the Fed's actions like medieval viziers reading goat entrails.

A long time ago, at the end of the last millennium, a group of U.S. government elites collectively known as “neoconservatives” drafted a visionary document called “The Project for a New American Century” (PNAC). Easily readable via the Internet, this PNAC document made clear that the 21st century United States’ chief goal would be nothing less than world domination (dubbed “full spectrum dominance” in Pentagon’ese) in the name of waging a global sequential war for the planet’s remaining fossil fuel energy resources. Looking back over the decade since the 9/11/2001 tragedy (itself an unsolved mystery, as...

   As I'm sure is common to many of us involved with and/or reading this blog, I spend a lot of time on online forums discussing issues of peak oil, climate change, fiat money collapse and other questions that may determine the survivability of complex human civilization. I often find it jarring to come downstairs from such discussions and see friends or family watching MSNBC hotly “debating” whether such and such a state has a “constitutional” right to revoke abortion rights prior to 10 weeks instead of the pre-established 12, whether so-and-so has doomed his candidacy by opposing gay marriage rights, or lamenting how influential the “gun...