Political news from today's Times and a look at the weekly addresses.

News Release
May 17, 2013

Libertarian Party: Don’t waste time investigating IRS, abolish it NOW along with income tax

Return to 1992 spending level would allow balanced budget, end to income tax
The presidential administrations of Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, and, now, Barack Obama have all been caught using the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to target political enemies.

As long as we have the IRS ? and the income tax ? we should expect more presidents to use their power to silence and intimidate free voices. No IRS investigation or firing of a few scapegoats will change that.

“We must abolish the IRS and end any need for a regulatory agency that snoops into people’s private lives,” said Libertarian Party Executive Director Carla Howell. “We must draw back total federal spending to the level of 1992, which is more than enough to fulfill the government’s constitutional duties to protect our life, liberty, and property. This will allow us to balance the budget immediately, end the federal income tax completely, and give back an average of more than $12,000 to every family in America.”

“We don’t need an income tax, and we certainly don’t need the IRS,” Howell said.

The Libertarian Party is the only political party in America calling for both dismantling the IRS altogether and dramatically and immediately downsizing Big Government.

“The Libertarian Party is running candidates to dramatically downsize the federal government,” Howell said. “We can cut federal spending by 50 percent, or even 90 percent, and Americans will be better for it. We can end the personal income tax, the corporate income tax, the death tax, and all federal payroll taxes. There will be no need for the IRS, nor any substitute agency.”

“Ending the income tax, abolishing the IRS, and cutting federal spending to the level of 1992 means no more deficit spending,” Howell said. “This will stop inflation and stabilize prices. Even more importantly, it will transfer wealth out of the wasteful, dysfunctional and destructive government sector and into the productive private sector, resulting in a bounty of new jobs and prosperity for Americans.”

“We will make living in America and doing business in America much better,” Howell said. “Individuals, businesses, and political organizations will all be safe from government interrogation and free to express their political views. It will dramatically increase the wealth of the private sector and inspire hundreds of billions of dollars in investment in small businesses and American jobs.”

Another benefit of abolishing the IRS is that it would become far more difficult to fund massive interventionist military presence and warfare around the globe.

“It will also require our massive military budgets to go down, which currently encourage overseas meddling and war,” Howell said. “We get rid of the IRS, we get rid of the income tax, we dramatically downsize federal spending and taxation, and America and the world will be better for it.”

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New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) "defended his starring role in publicly funded tourism ads that Democrats say gives him an unfair advantage in the race for governor," the Newark Star Ledger reports.

Said Christie: "I don't see any advantage due or undue to me. I'm doing my job and if I was unwilling to appear in those ads in my view that would be me putting politics and concern for criticism ahead of doing my job the right way and I'm not going to do that."

Gawker is trying to raise $200,000 to buy the video of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine so they can publish it online.

The Federal Election Commission has fined former Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) and his parents $54,000 for improper severance payments to Cindy Hampton, a former campaign aide who had an extramarital affair with the Nevada Republican, Politico reports.

"Doug Hampton, Cindy Hampton's husband, was deputy chief of staff in Ensign's Senate office at that time, as well as being the senator's best friend. The resulting scandal, which exploded into public view in June 2009, led to a lengthy Senate Ethics Committee investigation and criminal probe by the Justice Department, and destroyed Ensign's once-promising political career. Ensign resigned from the Senate in May 2011."

Amid the headlines, we took a look at pre-scandal opinion polling on the IRS and the tea party, which shows sizable splits between Democrats and Republicans -- as well as some surprises.

House Republicans upped the ante in their ongoing investigation of the Benghazi affair, issuing a subpoena to former U.S. Ambassador Thomas Pickering, demanding he appear before a closed-door deposition to answer questions about the independent review he chaired into the State Department?s role in last year?s terror attacks.

There are still plenty of unanswered questions about how Internal Revenue Service agents in Cincinnati started targeting certain groups applying for tax-exempt status, like who first issued the directive to start looking for ?tea party? groups. But testimony Friday by acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller and IRS watchdog J. Russell George filled in some blanks.

Found in LibertarianChristians.com

Is it okay to kill? I don?t mean a bug in your house, a snake in your garage, or a deer in the woods. Deer tastes good; you may not know if that snake in your garage is poisonous; and bugs are home invaders.
I mean is it okay to kill a man, a human being, a person? Again, I don?t mean someone trying to kill you, rob your business, rape your wife, harm your children, or break into your house. Killing someone might be perfectly justified in those circumstances if it involves defense against aggression.
Specifically, is it okay to kill someone who has not threatened or committed violence or aggression against you, your family, your friends, your neighborhood, anyone you know, or any American you don?t know?

No? Then ?
What if he is not an American?
What if he lives thousands of miles away from America?
What if he adheres to a religion that is different from that of most Americans?
What if he is a darker color than most Americans?
What if he speaks a language that most Americans don?t understand?
What if he has habits that seem peculiar to most Americans?
What if he holds to a political ideology that doesn?t resemble America?s?
What if he smells different than most Americans?
Does someone having one or more of these characteristics alone mean it is okay to kill him?

Please read the rest of the article here .

This was originally posted at LewRockwell.com .

 

One of the more interesting moments at the IRS hearing Friday was when several congressmen tried to unravel how the news of the IRS targeting of conservative groups came to be announced ? and why lawmakers didn't find out first.