In the years following 9/11, North Carolina was used as a staging ground to launch flights that picked up suspected terrorists abroad and transported them to CIA "black sites" and third-party countries where they were illegally detained and tortured. 

Declassified documents and news reports have confirmed that the CIA front company Aero Contractors, headquartered here, used North Carolina's aviation infrastructure and public airports to launch these "torture taxi" flights in support of the United States' Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation (RDI) program. 

The North Carolina Commission of Inquiry on Torture is a non-profit organization dedicated to investigating and establishing public accountability for the role that North Carolina's government and state resources played in helping to facilitate the U.S. torture program.

The Libertarian Party of North Carolina has launched a new campaign to support Craft Freedom, an association bringing awareness to regulatory issues affecting the growth of the craft brewing industry. 

This campaign includes T-shirt sales.

Craft beer brewers in North Carolina face a dilemma: limit the success and growth of their operations, the number of consumers who could discover and enjoy their product, the jobs they could create and the local economies they could benefit, or -- turn an important part of their operations over to a third party who has no real interest in the success of any individual brewer’s brand.

Stymied by this 1930’s-era state regulation, three NC breweries face that decision. Dozens more don't attempt serious growth because they know they will be put in the same, losing position.

Proposed state legislation will raise the production threshold fourfold before forcing brewers into this decision. It's a reasonable first step in allowing a dynamic and important local industry room to grow.

Here's how you can support craft freedom and the LPNC. 

* Order your T-shirt here. We need 50 orders to trigger the first edition printing, so please share this link far and wide.

* Then, go to CraftFreedom.org, sign the petition, and like them on Facebook.

* Call your state representative to voice your support. Click to find out who represents you.

* And show your support by proudly wearing our North Carolina for Free Beer T-shirt whenever you go to your favorite watering hole.

Read more about this issue:

Let Craft Brewers Grow

Charlotte Brewers Want to Expand. But a Big Campaign Donor Stands in their Way (Charlotte Observer) 

The Libertarian Party of North Carolina calls for the immediate release of libertarian activists Ubaldo Herrera Hernandez and Manuel Velasquez Visea, arrested February 2 by the Cuban government. 

“As libertarians, we condemn our own government's interference in Cuba's domestic affairs,” said James Hines, an at-large member of the party’s executive committee. 

Cubans had a right to revolt against the dictator Fulgencio Batista, who overthrew a democratic government in 1952 coup d’etat, Hines said. 

“Even more,” he added, “we mourn for the Cuban people because Fidel Castro, the man they trusted to lead the resistance against Batista, and his brother Raul, have proven far more brutal tyrants than the dictator they replaced.” 

by David Ulmer

Most people believe if you start your own business, work hard and build it into something, you should have the right to reap the rewards. That is the American dream. However, in North Carolina some local brewers are being denied that right. 

North Carolina has a prosperous and booming craft brewery industry. This economic boon was the direct result of a grassroots effort ten years ago called “Pop-the-Cap.” The reform lifted unnecessary rules and regulations on the craft brewers. It allowed the free-market to respond. 

Dozens of hard working entrepreneurs started making local beer for consumers across the state. They brought in $1.2 billion dollars and created more than 10,000 jobs, according to NC Craft Brewers Guild estimates. State community colleges even have programs to prepare young people to work in this fast growing industry. 

For some politicians and special interests groups, success is a problem. Large, established distributors, with government-granted monopolies on transporting alcoholic products, lobbied for laws requiring any brewery producing more than 25,000 barrels per year to use their services. Distributors then gain total control over where craft beers may be sold.

Distributors want government to give them a cut of a business they didn't help build.