Liberty Drip

Ravi Kopparapu and Jacob Haqq-Misra's thought provoking opinion piece in the Washington Post May 26, “We’re asking the wrong questions about UFOs,” suggested a redirection of the recently piqued public interest in answering the question of what unidentified aerial phenomena are, to how we can figure out what they are.  I concur that the latter question is more immediately important than the former; however, two more peels of this onion are necessary. The questions which must come before all others are whether we can figure out what they are and so what if we do? The reason these questions are so important is that the authors and a number of other leading thinkers are advocating the dedication of public resources to the matter of answering the how question. Were they merely putting their own time and energy to the question, I would gladly cheer them on.  Bravo!  After all, who doesn't root for the underdog?  But betting money on the underdog is a different matter, esp...

Dear Fellow LEO:   In Washington there's an old saying: You're either at the table or you're on the menu. Well, if you're like me, you're tired of bites being taken out of your behind by a misled public and by cowardly public officials. This is why I have been gratified to read of the participation of so many police unions in various reform discussions. I believe we serve our own interests, as well as those of our communities, when we adopt a pro-reform agenda in a fashion consistent with police best practices and community safety.    Let's be clear-eyed about what's at stake. While some of us might think that politicians who chant “defund the police” couldn't possibly mean it, I assure you that a certain percentage of them are as serious as an armed robbery. When indoors and away from crowds, what they will tell you is that the chant refers to replacing patrol officers with other forms of civil servants.    The problem posed by this idea is ...

I will admit I am not with the times. I am no pop culture expert. I don’t go to the movies. I don’t stay up late to watch either of the Jimmys. I rarely watch TV. A couple of hours per week is my limit and it’s usually a movie or documentary. But every now and then, I turn on the TV and watch a movie or binge on a National Geographic series. (Yes, I pay for cable even though I never watch it and neither does anyone else in my house.) Yesterday, I came across a film called Red2 starring Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, and some other big names I can’t recall. They are spies or government assassins or something, all older and well passed their prime, and they (gasp!) find themselves in the middle of Russia with only a few hours to save the world from a bomb that has been hidden under the Kremlin for decades. Bruce Willis’ character takes the crew to an old safe house that he hadn’t used since the bomb had been lost in the 1980’s. The apartment is a dusty museum full of relics ...

2020 has been the year of the new normal. Masks have become such a part of our lives that seeing someone in a public place such as a grocery store seems wrong somehow. Signs on the floor and tables in restaurants barricaded by chairs or crime scene tape are expected. But our story begins in 2000. Right here in Broward County, FL. It’s the story of the Chad family. There was Hanging Chad, Dimpled Chad, and all the other little Chads. Broward became the focus of the nation and indeed the world as the charming but incompetent Supervisor of Elections Miriam Oliphant and her department fumbled the presidential election. You know the rest. The 2000 fiasco changed the world in a lot of ways. It made both of the legacy parties aware of the advantages of having an army of lawyers at the ready come election time. The parties also learned to use electoral disinformation more effectively to convince people of the outcome they desired and to get popular opinion on their side. Now, with social media...

  The voters of the state of Florida passed a law which will result in a $15 minimum wage by 2026. The bill passed with just over 60% of the vote. Some will say this is a victory for workers’ rights, and equality and fairness and all that blah blah blah. I am willing to bet it will be the opposite. Full disclosure: I am a business owner. I have hourly employees. All of them make more than the current minimum wage. Not all of them are at or above $15 per hour. I have a problem with the minimum wage that has nothing to do with how it may affect my business. See, I will treat payroll as I treat every other expense. I will pass on the additional cost to my customers. I hope they will benefit from the wage increase as well, because they’re going to pay more for everything they buy and every service they contract. Actually, I take that back. I hope they don’t benefit from the wage increase. I hope they don’t see themselves as minimum wage people. I hope they believe in themselves a littl...

  By Adolfo Jimenez for The Liberty Block In 2018, New York Attorney General Letitia James called the NRA a terrorist organization and vowed to shut them down. This is not the first time that a radical anti-freedom Democrat has  referred to the NRA  in such a way. Now, it looks like she’s now trying to make good on her promise. In the lawsuit announced Thursday, she referred to the NRA’s “charitable mission.” Perhaps she was just using the accepted term for how an organization with the NRA’s tax status describes what it does, but I do not think that she deserves  the benefit of the doubt. Are they charitable (non-profit) or are they terrorists? Not sure the line between the two is a fine one. It would seem that Ms. James is flexible in her terminology. She’s an attorney and as such, language is the bat she swings, but there should at least be some consistency in her messaging. Wouldn’t you agree? The lawsuit alleges that NRA leadership, including long-time chief exec...

No, not the lockdown. In some ways, that will never end without a serious uprising, and when I say serious, I'm talking about the real people in the world, not the basement-dwelling Ivy League commies pooping in the streets of Portland. But I digress. I mean, when are we going to cancel the cancel culture? Every day we hear more stories about a celebrity or a CEO or even some poor schmuck being cancelled because of something he said or did a lifetime ago. A museum curator was fired for saying he would collect the works of white painters. He didn't say he would exclusively collect white painters, he mentioned that he would buy Caucasian canvases in addition to the works of oppressed minorities. That's it. His crime was to say he would do what the Cancel Commandos claim to want to do: include all people regardless of race or whatever other labels these no-labels hypocrites stick on people. I have to wonder if anyone has really looked into who the cancelers are. I wonder if th...