"Winning the Iowa caucuses would change all that instantly. Undoubtedly the movement that Paul inspired has moved far beyond the race-baiting it engaged in two decades ago. Young people from college campuses aren't lining up to hear him speak because of what appeared in those newsletter about the 1992 L.A. riots. Rand Paul tried his hardest to place Paul-style libertarianism into the context of the Tea Party. And he will likely carry on the movement without this 1990s baggage.

"But the questions remain. If Ron Paul is so libertarian that he won't even police people who use his name, if his movement is filled with incompetents and opportunists, then what kind of a president would he make? Would he even check in to see if his ideas are being implemented? Who would he appoint to Cabinet positions?"

"The Commission proposes to update the 2003 Directive on the re-use of public sector information by: Making it a general rule that all documents made accessible by public sector bodies can be re-used for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, unless protected by third party copyright; Establishing the principle that public bodies should not be allowed to charge more than costs triggered by the individual request for data (marginal costs); in practice this means most data will be offered for free or virtually for free, unless duly justified. Making it compulsory to provide data in commonly-used, machine-readable formats, to ensure data can be effectively re-used. Introducing regulatory oversight to enforce these principles; Massively expanding the reach of the Directive to include libraries, museums and archives for the first time; the existing 2003 rules will apply to data from such institutions."

"So, since you live in Russia and not North Korea, you make the turnout 98%."

"...for the DHS to be on a call with mayors, the logic of its chain of command and accountability implies that congressional overseers, with the blessing of the White House, told the DHS to authorise mayors to order their police forces – pumped up with millions of dollars of hardware and training from the DHS – to make war on peaceful citizens.

"Occupy has touched the third rail: personal congressional profits streams. Even though they are, as yet, unaware of what the implications of their movement are, those threatened by the stirrings of their dreams of reform are not"

"So what did Ofcom do? Naturally, it listened to the public, ignored the uncompetitive rent-seeking proposals from the commercial sector, adhered to EU law, and rejected the proposal. Well, that's what they did in a parallel universe. In this universe, Ofcom accepted the self-serving arguments of the companies they're meant to be regulating, ignored the public whose interests they were meant to be safeguarding, and gave the BBC what it asked for. Why did it do this? It's a secret. But not any more."

"People are capable of any sexual thing. To ban their marriage because someone doesn’t like the idea of them both being the same sex, that’s ridiculous."

"Near downtown, fruit trees and vegetable farms would replace neighborhoods that are an eerie landscape of empty buildings and vacant lots. Suburban commuters heading into the city center might pass through what looks like the countryside to get there. Surviving neighborhoods in the birthplace of the auto industry would become pockets in expanses of green."

Facebook and Twitter empower all groups—not just the pro-Western groups that we like. To put it in a more formal framework: not all social capital created by the Internet is bound to produce "social goods"; "social bads" are inevitable as well. The political scientist Robert Putnam, who was instrumental in promoting the notion of "social capital" in popular discourse, was not blind to such possibilities. In "Bowling Alone," his most famous book, he explicitly cautioned against the "kumbaya interpretation of social capital," stating that "networks…are generally good for those inside the network, but the external effects of social capital are by no means always positive."

"As the ship of New Labour tilts precariously in the waters, and the Conservatives struggle to define what they stand for other than a change of personalities at the top, various attempts are being made to define a new politics to fill the void.

This post makes a stab at trying to map the new ideological terrain that is opening up. Needless to say, ideological positions are fluid and imprecise things, and any effort of this kind is going to risk some oversimplification. In addition, by no means all interesting thinking going on at the moment can be fitted into categories like those I am about to use. But, caveats aside, here goes…"

"In Berlin alone, hundreds of complaints are made each year about noise levels in kindergartens and children's playgrounds. Some day-care facilities have even been forced to close after local residents have gone to court in search of a quiet life. Now Berlin's local government, the senate, has passed a law giving children the right to be noisy, the first law of its kind in Germany."

"It is hard to imagine a better resurrection for a country that has been devastated by financial corruption than to turn facilitating transparency and justice into a business model."

"I'll give you an example: repeatedly in the AdelaideNow website one will see commentary from Aaron Fornarino of West Croydon. That person doesn't exist," Atkinson said on the air. "That name has been created by the Liberal Party in order to run Liberal Party commentary."

This morning, AdelaideNow took great delight in posting a picture of Fornarino posing with a Mac and his young daughter. He's a second-year law student who moved to the area last year and "lives in a flat on Port Rd, about 500m from Mr. Atkinson's electorate office."

"Mr. Cooper starts to make a point - that allowing same sex couples marriage equality would also entitle opposite sex couples to domestic partnership equality - but he can't actually say what would be wrong with this, just that nobody can prove that it *wouldn't* be harmful so maybe it would. The judge doesn't buy it. You don't have to prove that same sex marriage is harmless any more than you have to prove that freedom of speech or the press is harmless, which it sometimes isn't.

(Aside: I didn't realize that the Prop 8 people want to discriminate against gays *and* straights. It's not just important that gays can't have marriage; straights also shouldn't have civil unions.)"

"Twitter is blocked in China, but yesterday the Chinese twitters made tag #GoogleCN climbed to the top ten of twitter's keywords. It is a bit touching, and a bit hopeful - A profitable, foreign company get this means filtering and block still not make Chinese people (at least some of them) losing their eyesight and judgment to what is good and what is bad.

However, they are losing, and may lose faster, along with the Cinternet's separation from the Internet. Here are the top 20 websites according to Alexa:"

"On Tuesday voters in Takoma Park, Maryland, got to try out a new, transparent voting system that lets voters go online to verify that their ballots got counted in the final tally. The system also lets anyone independently audit election results to verify the votes went to the correct candidates."

"The most common response I am seeing to the Maine referendum is, "How dare they think they can vote on my civil right to marry whom I please?!" Here's the thing: you don't have a civil right to gay marriage. We want to think of civil rights as forces of nature, but they are compacts within society. And gay marriage has not been defined as a civil right by the U.S. government..."

"It shows the keenness of leading players in Britain’s media industry and Government to lobby the quango, which rules on complaints about TV programmes and carves up the radio and mobile phone markets."

"Fathers will be able to take six months' paternity leave, the government has announced. The move will allow mothers to decide to return to work after six months and fathers to stay at home for the rest of the 12 months off allowed by law."

"After a wave of ugly rhetoric and dubious policies, a number of northern Italian councils run by the far-right Northern League (Silvio Berlusconi’s biggest coalition partner in government) have gone on the rampage against anything foreign. Top of the list, the town of Capriate, 20 miles from Milan, where the council announced a ban on kebab and ‘ethnic’ shops from the town centre."

"A second possible basin of attraction is a system of decentralized, cooperative communities, whose relations are based on affinity—because we all share the same biosphere—and which maintain a high level of connectivity with one another. This form of social organization is perpetually open and always seeking new connections. In the spirit of complexity theory—and unlike previous revolutionary movements—this system embraces no determinism. The logic of autonomy allows the components of the system to optimize their own connections, and so connect to people, materials, passions and places in a manner that takes optimal advantage of material and energy flows."

"The purpose of the Bryant letters is to spell out that the British Foreign Office policy of support for gay and lesbian rights is not just a formality, but instead a central part of the government's drive for human rights that diplomats are to champion as part of British foreign policy."

"With these data in hand, the individual taxpayer can compare the pasta purchased by the registry are in the market price, or is cheaper or more expensive than the consumer purchase in the sale. If you're more expensive, with evidence of overpricing, may make a complaint to the prosecutor and the purchase can be suspended because it has not been paid."

"We all know some: parents who can't stand each other, but have made a hard-headed decision to stay together nonetheless. They are exactly the kind of people who would be glued back together by Cameron's policies if they succeeded in their goal. It turns out their children do worse than any other group – including those of divorcees or single mums. If you are raised by arguing parents who stayed together only for you, then you are 33 per cent more likely to become a binge-drinking teen than if you have a single parent, for example."

"The Chinese government estimates that trade in virtual currency exceeded several billion yuan last year, a figure that it claims has been growing at a rate of 20% annually. One billion yuan is currently equal to about $146 million. ... [estimated that] between 80% and 85% of gold farmers are based in China."

"Married Labour MPs Ann and Alan Keen have come under fire for claiming thousands of pounds on a second home near Parliament, while their designated main home is only 10 miles away. Now a group of men have taken direct action by squatting in the main home they say has been left unoccupied."

"'The minute I saw the faces of the agents, I knew I was in trouble. The first page of the Unthinkable script mentioned 9/11, terror plots, and the fact that the (fictional) world had become a police state. The TSA agents then proceeded to interrogate me, having a hard time understanding that a comic book could be about anything other than superheroes, let alone that anyone actually wrote scripts for comics. ...I cooperated politely and tried to explain to them the irony of the situation."

"HAVANA TIMES, June 24 (IPS) - Recognized for her work in defense of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transvestites and transsexuals, Mariela Castro Espín advocates a form of socialism that is more just, dialectical, inclusive, and especially, participative. ... 'For me, participatory socialist democracy is fundamental, not only at a level of political statements or at the theoretical level, but in the creation of those mechanisms in day to day life.'"

"Then, launching into utopian hyperbole, he mused: "You cannot have Rwanda again because information would come out far more quickly about what is actually going on and the public opinion would grow to the point where action would need to be taken."

We'd like to see him try Twittering that to people in Sudan, or Northern Sri Lanka, or Somalia."

Tsvangirai boldly states"Zimbabweans must come home.", a cacophony of protest and chanting from the crowd.

"Anonymous Iran is a collaboration between The Pirate Bay — operators of the world’s largest torrent site, convicted in April of copyright infringement — and Anonymous, the prankster collective dedicated to exposing 'Scientology’s crimes.'"

"Here’s an excellent example of pwnage: when the white supremacist group VNN Vanguard Nazi/KKK tried to host a hate rally in Knoxville, Tennessee, they were foiled by … clowns!"

"Today is Doncaster’s brand-spanking-new [English Democrat party] Mayor’s first day on the job, and his first engagement of the day was an interview with BBC Radio Sheffield’s Toby Foster. I hope Mayor Davies didn’t think he was in for an easy ride for his first official interview, because that’s not what he got."

"It asks: "Honestly, don't the Bavarians annoy us all?" and then proceeds to list all these annoyances, such as the "senseless jabbering," and sense of superiority as well as all those "pointless mountains and boring lakes." The site says that Bavaria never really belonged to Germany and "is better suited to Austria than us." The tract ends with the rallying cry: "Whoever finally wants to kick Bavaria out of the Federal Republic of Germany, simply needs to give their vote to the BP -- in all of Germany."

"To all intents and purposes, North Korea is no longer a perfect Stalinist economy. It is more like a country in central Africa, but with a bad and cold climate. ... Sometimes it feels like you are back at the time when China was still ruled by the great Tang dynasty, or maybe by the Song dynasty, and you would not be surprised to see horsemen in the armour of the Genghis Khan era appearing from behind a hill. You don’t see any signs of modern technology, no phone masts, no pylons, no railways, no paved roads, nothing."

"Put bluntly, right-leaning talk's audience is dying off. A recent profile of Limbaugh by Vanity Fair claimed that the average age of his listeners is 67 and rising. Fox's average viewer is said to be in their seventh decade. In a changing world, against a President catapulted to power with a staggering majority of the youth, they may (in the long term) turn out to be onto a losing bet."

"But by referring to "professional politicians", Griffin is presumably suggesting we should elect amateurs instead. Maybe that's why the advert's so amateurish. Maybe that's why all the BNP representatives in the ad read their lines so clumsily, like DFS employees in a bank holiday sale commercial circa 1986, or recently revived chemical coma patients being forced to recite barcode numbers at gunpoint. It's deliberate incompetence. Don't vote for those nasty slick parties. Vote for a shoddy one! Never mind the extremism, feel the ineptitude."

"To launch the Huddersfield Policy campaign, that Margaret Thatcher should pay for her own funeral, I have designed a postcard to protest the prospect of a state funeral for Margaret Thatcher. The person with most say on a state funeral is Elizabeth Windsor (sometimes known as the Queen), thus the cards should be sent to her, seeking to influence her decision making in advance of Margaret Thatcher's demise. You can download the card here, simply print, sign and post."

"The best way to respond to what-aboutery is to state a simple truth. Say it slowly: there can be more than one bad thing in the world. You can oppose American atrocities, and Chinese atrocities. You can be critical of Israel, and of Islamism. You can condemn Dubai's system of slavery, and the fact people are detained without trial in Britain. You can stand independent of governments - including your own - and criticize anyone who chooses to abuse human rights. The world is not divided into a Block of Light, and a Block of Darkness; you don't have to pick a tribe and defend its every action. "

"No, it’s increasingly clear that socialism’s newfound popularity comes from the Mitch McConnells, John Boehners, Rush Limbaughs, Sean Hannitys, and Glenn Becks of the world, whose repeated invocations of the term have pushed a previously DOA political movement to new heights of popularity."

"We understand that the Rev. Joseph E. Lowery, a civil rights icon and a dear friend of LGBT Americans, will close the inauguration ceremony. But would any inaugural committee say to Jewish Americans, "We're opening with an anti-Semite but closing the program with a rabbi, so don't worry"? "

A history of Zimbabwe's hyperinflation in pictures.

"They had printed T-shirts, mainly in bright yellow, and one would have been forgiven for thinking that Senator Obama was conducting a presidential campaign in Kenya."

"Kyle dodged and wheeled, and heard a cry: his brother, just behind him, had been struck. Next, someone clobbered Kyle, who drew a knife, but didn’t have a chance to use it. “I felt a pistol put to my head,” he said. Grazed by a bullet, he fell. When he rose, he drew his own pistol, hidden in his pocket. He spied his brother lying in the street. Someone else fired a shot, hitting Kyle in the arm. A man carrying a musket rushed at him. Another threw a brick, knocking him off his feet. George Kyle picked himself up and ran. He never did cast his vote."

Did watching the 2nd and 3rd debates give you a feeling of déjà vu? This montage of synced-up footage from all three presidential debates confirms our deep-seated belief that every debate was exactly the same.""

"In the more than twenty years that Human Rights Watch has worked in Latin America, no government has ever expelled our representatives for our work, not even the right-wing dictatorships guilty of far more egregious abuses than those committed by Chávez."

Vice Presidential Debate coverage rockrolled

"'It should be of no pride to American society to say they defend something like this,' President Ahmadinejad said."

"Screenshots of emails purportedly lifted from this account - which carries the address "gov.palin@yahoo.com" - were then passed to Wikileaks, and Wikileaks shared the stash with world+dog."

"Chuck, stand up, let the people see you," Biden shouted to [paraplegic] State Senator Chuck Graham, before realizing, to his horror, that Graham uses a wheelchair."

"unprecedented in raising more than $96,000 from nearly 6,000 people, many of whom do not live in Kansas. ... "There's no way I want to compete with that," says his opponent Republican State Rep. Arlen Siegfried.

"Rep Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) just pretended to be a Democrat. ... He then said, "I am a Democrat, and here is my energy plan" and he held up a picture of an old VW Bug with a sail attached to it. He paraded around the House floor with the sign while the crowd cheered."

"The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, se

"The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at le

Essays on the basics of and rationals behind constitutionalism.

"Of the remaining 32 [of 37] states, 27 were completely, correctly predicted, or a success rate of 84.375%! That's certainly not bad, especially considering that no political knowledge was used for the predictions; they could be done completely by machine

"Yesterday afternoon the Union flag was replaced with the international symbol of the LGBT community at the British embassy in the Latvian capital." *wondering if it'll fly at Warsaw Pride in 2 days time*

"We call on all governments to: 1. Procure only information technology that implements free and open standards; 2. Deliver e-government services based exclusively on free and open standards; 3. Use only free and open digital standards in their own activit

Five months in, Nick Clegg gets mad.

"So now we know what the enemy has, and that they have absolutely nothing in terms of intellectual capital to bring to the battle. They do, however, have their bedside connections with the current establishment. That's the major threat to us at this point

"To answer this question, I’ll start by noting that there are in general two ways that firms can make profits: by making something people want, or by rent-seeking. The former is usually beneficial: it increases the sum of human happiness and welfare. Th

"The article, calling for decriminalization of all file sharing, has started a loud debate in Swedish media."

"Contact your Councillors, MP, MEPs, MSPs, or Northern Ireland, Welsh and London AMs for free."

"Viacom has put online the entire eight year archive of its top rating comedy series, Daily Show with Jon Stewart, in a move which will be closely watched by all the major networks, advertisers, telcos and the burgeoning new media video industry."

"...But the decay and death of old laws can be just as important, even when they're unobserved. The story of our obscenity laws highlights where, exactly, American laws go to die."

Ann Coulter, PWNED.

"Second, winning the Nobel Prize does not automatically qualify you to be commander in chief. I think George Bush has proved definitively that to be president, you don’t need to care about science, literature or peace."

"...a Chinese Internet expert working in IT industry has produced an exclusive study on the key mechanism of the Chinese official system of online censorship, surveillance and propaganda"

"A popular Spanish singer has been banned from performing in a [state-run] Caracas stadium over remarks he made about Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez."

"Allowing hype to build about an early election was a "massive error of judgment" by Gordon Brown, he said."

"Branson, who along with Machel was travelling with Carter, said some refugees had slipped notes in his pockets. "We (are) still suffering from the war as our girls are being raped on a daily basis," read one of the notes, translated from Arabic."

"Now we are creating a new fog of mythologies -- about a "dictator" who isn't one, about "appeasement" that is completely inapplicable, about nuclear weapons that don't exist, about a country that is "evil" -- that make it seem like we must do something."

"When the Vietnam war was at the level of the Iraq war today there was almost no opposition. Public protest of the Iraq war is far beyond that of the Vietnam war at any comparable stage. People have just forgotten."

After placing the bait, snipers observed the area around it, Captain Didier said in his statement. “If someone found the item, picked it up and attempted to leave with the item ... we would engage the individual, as I saw this as a sign that they would

"There are several non-governmental organizations that publish and maintain assessments of the state of freedom in the world and rank countries as being free, partly free, or unfree using various measures of freedom, including political rights, economic r

"After Meyer caused the disturbance, two officers who'd been standing to the side of the room moved closer to him, Antar said. At that point, Antar told me, Meyer began taunting the officers. "He turned to the cops and said, 'What, are you going to Taser

"Maybe he'll learn in the future that Freedom of speech doesn't mean you can just take over someone else's venue. UF lacks freedom of speech? Hardly, the video poster lacks understanding of the law. Next time kiddo, argue with the Judge not the cops!"

"I am not appalled by photographs of this kind. What is appalling about two young people who are obviously very affectionate towards each other?"

"The 21-year-old student can be heard screaming for help as the stun gun is administered."

"Bose, who had been arrested 11 times by the British in India, had fled the Raj with one mission in mind. That was to seek Hitler's help in pushing the British out of India."

"Field then continued, “If mothers ruled the world, there would be no –” But the Fox Emmycast cut off her sound and pointed the camera away from the stage, silencing the rest of her sentence: “god-damned wars in the first place.”"