by Brian Irving
LPNC Vice Chair

Progressives, and the News & Observer, are up in arms again over another alleged attempt at voter suppression. This time they claim the Republicans have deliberately prevented people from registering to vote. The basis for the charge is that the number of people registering to vote while applying for public benefits or a driver's license has decreased. 

Under the federal National Voting Registration Act of 1993, state agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Motor Vehicles, in addition to boards of elections, must give anyone who uses their services the opportunity to register to vote. 

Groups including Democracy North Carolina, Action NC and the A. Philip Randolph Institute claim applications at these agencies have dropped more than 50 percent in the last two years. 

While admitting that the reason for the drop was unclear, a May 17 News & Observer editorial concluded, "The likely explanation is that when the McCrory administration took over, new leaders at DHHS, the Department of Motor Vehicles and the State Board of Elections simply overlooked the requirement." 

The next time you're in Fairmount, North Carolina, stop and have lunch at the L & M Convenience Mart. Congratulate the owner, Lyndon McClellan, who yesterday won a small victory over the overreaching IRS.

Nearly a year ago, the IRS seized $107,702.66 from his business account.

McClellan did nothing wrong. The IRS has never alleged he committed a crime, nor did they charge him with one. His only infraction was to make a series of deposits, each less than $10,000.

This, believe it or not, is illegal under a federal law intended to target drug dealers, racketeers, and terrorists.

The Institute for Justice, which calls itself "the national law firm for liberty," came to McClellan's defense.

On Wednesday, the federal prosecutor dismissed the case.

"We’re a not-for-profit, public interest law firm devoted to constitutional principles of liberty, free enterprise, and private property," said Robert Johnson, an IJ attorney who handled the case.

Read the press release from the Institute for Justice. 

The Libertarian Mind is a new book by David Boaz, the Cato Institute’s long-time executive vice president. It's a newly revised edition of his classic work, "Libertarianism: A Primer."

Boaz has updated the book with new information on the threat of government surveillance; the policies that led up to and stemmed from the 2008 financial crisis; corruption in Washington; and the unsustainable welfare state. The Libertarian Mind is the ultimate resource for the current, burgeoning libertarian movement.

As John Mackey, co-founder of Whole Foods, puts it, "Boaz’s message is both timeless and extraordinarily relevant to the challenges that we are facing today."

Boaz has played a key role in the development of the Cato Institute and the libertarian movement.

"I think the general idea of 'it's your life you get to run it the way you want to' is an appealing aspect of libertarianism," says Boaz.

Over the years, Boaz has been on the libertarian forefront fighting for drug decriminalization, educational choice, private property rights, and shrinking the growth of government. 

The Libertarian Mind is available on the Cato bookstore, from Amazon and other sources.

by Ken Fortenberry

As a teen-ager in the summer of 1968, I watched the evening TV news in horror and read the morning headlines in shock as our nation seemed to be coming apart at the seams. American cities from coast to coast were being burned, ripped and devastated by rioting mobs, angered by an unwinnable war in Vietnam, joblessness and hopelessness, ugly racial discrimination, and too many law enforcement officers who took the law into their own hands and injured and killed at whim.

Sad to say, but I believe the recent violence in Ferguson, Mo., and this week in Baltimore may be setting the stage for another summer of civil unrest, similar to that of 1968 when many of us were stunned and shell-shocked by events that we never expected to see in the United States.

What is especially troublesome to me is that we as a nation seemed to have learned nothing from our past, and our nation’s leaders have failed to understand that instead of solving the problems of nearly 50 years ago, they have created laws and policies that have woven those very same problems into the fabric of our social, economic and political system.

In doing so, they have created a sort of “national quilt” that is weak and unsustainable, and where the fibers of the citizenry itself are disconnected instead of bound together for the common good.