Students for Liberty has taken on the amazing task of organizing seven regional conferences this fall. The conferences bring different types of liberty-loving students together to hear from prominent speakers — many of whom are affiliated with the Republican Liberty Caucus.

This year’s regional conferences have occurred, thus far, in New York, Chicago, Phoenix/Tempe, and Austin. The RLC conducted outreach at three of the four seminars and had official speakers at two out of the four seminars.

I previously reported on the outreach at the first conference, which occurred on October 10. Two RLC supporters helped us table at that event, and two RLC representatives spoke. The most notable of the speakers was former National Board member Dr. Murray Sabrin, who was a contender for U.S. Senate in 2008. Additionally, RLC Northeast Regional Director Dan Halloran addressed the crowd. Dan is running an impressive campaign for New York City Council in a district that trends more conservative than most in the city.

Above: Students at the Chicago Conference weigh the issues.

On October 17 in Chicago, students heard from two RLC representatives: former Michigan State Representative Leon Drolet and former Wisconsin State Representative Terri McCormick (photos below).

Leon participated in a debate with Isaac Moorehouse about how liberty-oriented people can achieve our goals.  Leon argued for the RLC strategy.  Terri McCormick gave a presentation about the political elite versus the grassroots, arguing that now is the time we take our country back for liberty.

On October 24, RLC members conducted outreach at two Students for Liberty Conferences: the Texas SFL conference in Austin and the Southern SFL conference in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Rising young star and RLC supporter Jared Fuller organized the Winston-Salem conference, and North Carolina RLC members Gloria Lloyd and Dana Mazer tabled for the Republican Liberty Caucus at the conference.  Former Congressional candidate and North Carolina RLC Board member B.J. Lawson was among the featured speakers.  Dr. Lawson gave a speech called “The Economy, Monty Python, and You”:

Meanwhile, RLC National Chair Dave Nalle and Bexar County (Texas) RLC Membership Chair Nadia Gaona reached out at the Texas SFL conference.

Dave observed a general trend that we continue to see to in our small-but-growing movement, noting that “the long-time libertarian activists [in the] audience were eager to stand up and talk proudly about their token political campaigns where they spent no money but got their name mentioned in the local newspaper when they won 3% of the vote.”

Says Dave, “It’s heartening to see the growth of interest in liberty and bringing our government under control, but it’s enormously frustrating to see so much of this enthusiasm misdirected into the political dead end and do-nothingism which still characterizes the Libertarian Party. The truth is that the pissed-off non-intellectuals of the Tea Party movement who come to libertarianism out of expediency rather than intellect have already accomplished more real political change in a year than the Libertarian Party has accomplished in more than 30 years.”

All complaints aside, these events have proven tremendously beneficial to the movement and the RLC has been able to capitalize on the opportunity to reach new young people with our strategy for victory.

The next RLC outreach booths at Students for Liberty Conferences will occur on November 7, when members will conduct outreach at the Philadelphia and Boston Students for Liberty Conferences.  Prospective RLC endorsee, 2010 U.S. Senate candidate from Connecticut Peter Schiff will be speaking at the Boston conference.  Schiff has previously explained the RLC strategy in a poignant way.

We look forward to reaching additional students at these conferences and thank the Students for Liberty for continuing to host these tremendous regional events. Thanks, too, to all of the RLC representatives and volunteers who have helped us at the conferences.

Above: Former Michigan State Representative Leon Drolet makes his points in a debate on strategies to attain liberty in our lifetime.

With a stroke of his pen, Texas Governor Rick Perry may soon give Child Protective Services a new power: the ability to pick up your kids without your consent.

So the Republican Liberty Caucus of Texas, along with the Texas Home School Foundation and the Free Market Foundation, are waging war against SB 1440. The bill features a last-minute amendment tacked on by Democratic Rep. Patrick Rose that gives Child Protect Services the power to transport a child for purposes of an investigation without a hearing or parental consent. Instead, the agency needs only an affidavit that says there’s a “fair probability” of abuse.

If the bill became law, a judge would be able to grant Child Protect Services a court order similar to a criminal search warrant, allowing a CPS worker to immediately enter the home and, if necessary, remove the child and secure medical and mental-health records as part of an investigation. It could be done without notifying the parent in advance.

In the below video, Texas RLC member Pierre DeRochemont speaks at a June 10 Houston rally in opposition to the bill.

A feisty 72-year-old great- grandmother was tasered after a police officer pulled her over for speeding.

Video released by a Travis County Constable’s Office shows Deputy Chris Bieze confronting 72-year-old Kathryn Winkfein after stopping her for speeding on May 11 just outside Austin.

At first, the great-grandmother did refuse to sign her speeding ticket, but she then agreed to do it. The deputy did not allow her to do so, instead pushing her and warning her that he would use the taser if she did not move in the direction he wanted her to move in.

Mrs. Winkfein was going 60 m.p.h. in a 45 m.p.h. zone. Why couldn’t the deputy simply have given her to the paper to sign when she agreed to sign it? Alternatively, why couldn’t he have sent the ticket to her house like a standard bill?

At this blog, I have previously called for a taser ban. Tasers have become weapons of choice for law enforcement officers in essentially any situation they feel the need to use the taser. The arbitrary use of the taser would stop if tasers were banned entirely.

Below is the video of Kathryn Winkfein being tasered, in my view, unnecessarily:

Republican Liberty Caucus of Texas Urges Governor Perry to Veto SB 1440

Statewide caucus expresses alarm that a “last minute” amendment attempts to overturn legal precedents and constitutional rights

AUSTIN, TX – The Republican Liberty Caucus of Texas (RLC-TX) calls on Governor Rick Perry to veto SB-1440 as an abuse of administrative authority that dangerously erodes due process and constitutional rights accorded to our citizens and the family.

The last minute amendment to SB-1440 strips away due process and Fourth Amendment protections by granting Child Protective Services (CPS) the power to access the medical and mental health records of a child and to access and transport that child for interrogation and even strip searches without parental notification or a court hearing. CPS may obtain this order without establishing probable cause or even “for good cause shown” which is the present standard applied AFTER notice to the parents and the holding of a hearing before a Judge which includes the participation of parents. Current law already provides Child Protective Services (CPS) with powers for the emergency removal of a child in cases of obvious and provable abuse, which the RLC-TX supports.

“Due process is a key tenant of our nation’s constitutional governance. It is alarming to me that Texas legislators would even consider a law that grants powers of unreasonable search and seizure to state administrative authorities that include custodial intervention, physical examination and the interrogation of a child without probably cause simply to “build a case” when their investigative findings are not sufficient to follow the normal deliberative process,” L. Pierre de Rochemont said. “This lays the foundation for bringing “witch hunts” into the legal mainstream.”

The RLC-TX asks the Governor to consider recent rulings by the Texas Supreme Court and the 5th Court of Appeals that struck down a similar overreach of CPS authority in Gary W. Gates et al. v. Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory Services et. al.

“While no one wants to promulgate or permit child abuse, it is important that our society clearly recognize that unwarranted state intimidation is also traumatic to the family and a child’s wellbeing,” Mr. de Rochemont went on to say. “Backroom political wheelings and dealings in the dead of night never lead to sound or just law.”

The objectionable language contained in SB 1440 was originally filed by Senator Kirk Watson (Democrat-Austin, Travis County-part) as SB 1064, which did not make passage, and was later re-introduced as an amendment to SB 1440 by Representative Patrick Rose (Democrat-Dripping Springs for Blanco, Caldwell, and Hays Counties) at the very end of the legislative session. The dubious manner in which the amendment was introduced into an innocuous bill misrepresents legislative support that clearly did not advance its extreme provisions.

More information regarding the history of SB 1440 can be found at http://www.rightintexas.com/2009/06/giving-cps-blank-check.

Lisa Mallory and Anthony Reed each won their respective elections last week.

Lisa Mallory, Treasurer of the Republican Liberty Caucus of Texas, could not fool voters: they knew her to be the passionate leader that she is. Running for Leander Independent School District Board member, Lisa was able to trample her opponents. Leander ISD serves more than 25,000 students in the Austin area.

With 25 years of business experience and political training from the Leadership Institute, Lisa focused her campaign on improving the district’s test scores, lowering bond rates, and more oversight. Lisa proves what a highly capable, motivated citizen can accomplish at the local level — but the best is yet to come when Leander ISD has her on their school board.

RLC’er Anthony Reed, a 16-year resident of the Fort Worth suburb of Haltom (pop. 40,000), won election to the Haltom City Council. According to Reed, “Nothing is more important to me than the rights of all Haltom City citizens and businesses; and it is the respect, protection, and service of these rights from our government that has and will make Haltom City rise to the top — to become a beacon of liberty and community involvement for all of Texas to see.”

Look for good things to come from these liberty-loving Texas leaders.

Lisa Mallory, Treasurer of the Republican Liberty Caucus of Texas, was interviewed on the Liberty Cafe Show hosted by Nancy and Katie.

Lisa is running for Leander Independent School District Trustee, Place 1, which is a large school district in the Austin area.

At Lisa’s website, she explains that America “is suffering from a leadership deficit and a general decay in the moral standards necessary to maintain America’s status as leader amongst nations.”

Lisa already serves as Travis County Republican Party Pct. 379 Chair and Election Judge.

Listen to Lisa to learn about the value of running for School Board!  She’s also a very qualified, well-spoken candidate who is prepared to run for this office.

RLC member Phil Pepin of San Antonio, Texas was a guest speaker at the San Antonio Tea Party rally last Wednesday. Mr. Pepin added graphics and pictures of the incredible crowd at the San Antonio Tea Party to his speech, “The War On Economic Freedom.” His speech covers the damage caused by government regulation, corporatism, and the Federal Reserve.

With tea parties going on nationwide I thought I’d better get down to Austin and make sure I didn’t miss out on our local protest. I went incognito, dressed informally and hiding behind a very large camera to get a feel for the mood, mix with the crowd and see how powerful the grassroots movement really was. I’d heard all the claims from the left and the media — that it was just an attempt by Republicans to try to gain some attention and that there would be just a few kooks protesting in a handful of cities.

What I found in Austin and what I learned during the day was much more impressive than I had been lead to expect. First off, the crowd in Austin was surprisingly large. I attended the first (and likely smaller) of two tax-day events, and it had 1500 people jammed onto the very small area of the steps and plaza infront of the Austin City Hall. Subsequently I learned that rather than a handful of other protests nationwide, the Austin protest was just one of close to 2000, and despite how impressed I was with our local turnout, it was small by national standards, with some other cities turning people out in the tens of thousands and a total estimated nationwide attendance likely to be in the millions by the end of the day.

It was also quite apparent that despite substantial Republican involvement, this was conceived as a non-partisan event. The idea originated with Rick Santelli’s rant on CNBC and was picked up by all sorts of groups, and they were prominent at the Austin Tea Party.

Ron Paul’s non-partisan Campaign for Liberty was there, along with the Libertarian Party, the Constitution Party and local issue groups whose interests cross party lines. Plus Americans for Prosperity was a major presence, and they’re a strictly non-partisan group with funding from the Koch family who are known for libertarian but strictly non-Republican political activism. The speakers included a lot of Republicans, lead by Governor Rick Perry and Railroad Commissioner Michael Williams, but also including representatives of various activist groups including several speakers from the Libertarian Party and Mike Voorhees from the Travis County chapter of the Republican Liberty Caucus. So while the local Republicans had joined in and assumed a large role, the overall character was not partisan.

Obviously there were common interests being expressed, most obviously a strong objection to tax increases, erosion of constitutional rights and out of control government spending. Unfortunately, what seemed to be happening both in the speeches and in the media coverage was the dumbing down of the message to a single element.

While the focus of the grassroots anger really seems to be on excessive government spending and the growth of government intrusion in the lives of citizens, too many of those speaking and too much of the coverage boiled it down to an anti-tax message. That’s largely the result of holding these events on April 15th, but it gave President Obama the opportunity to address the protests dismissively by dragging out his dubious promises about a tax cut for the middle class and no new taxes for 95% of the population. It’s an unfortunate outcome of taking a movement like this to a broad audience that the message gets diluted and misdirected, in this case with the result that most observers and many of those involved will only get the superficial anti-tax message and miss the stronger and much more fundamental message that out of control spending and fiscal mismanagement area much bigger threat than mere tax increases.

You can get some idea of the character of the protest from my photos of the posters and the crowd. The signs were mostly hand-made and some of the messages were surprisingly sophisticated. I was pleased to see one which read “inflation is hidden taxation,” demonstrating an understanding of the economy which seems to be lost on or ignored by our political leaders. Although I hear there were problems in other parts of the country, the Austin Tea Party was unmarred by MoveOn agitators, “citizen journalists” from HuffPo and Union stooges, though they may just have been keeping a low profile in a relatively inhospitable environment.

One of the things which surprised me was the relative youth of the protesters. Several college Republicans spoke, and the activists from groups like the Campaign for Liberty and the Republican Liberty Caucus also seemed to be mostly in their 20s. The crowd also seemed surprisingly normal. Sure, there was one FLDS family dressed in creepy from head to toe, and a guy dressed as Uncle Sam and another dressed as Jesus, but most of the people there looked like tech workers on their lunch break or college students or other typical Austinites.

I fit right in with my t-shirt and shorts and excess of digital hardware. One interesting thing I noticed was that despite our proximity to Lake Lady Bird, there seemed not to be an actual or even symbolic tea bag in sight. They may have been saving them for the evening rally, or perhaps the scoffing about “teabagging” from Rachel Maddow and the Huffington Post had prompted people to tone down those references.

As I hammer out this story on the trusty old Powerbook, the Tea Parties are still going on around the nation, and the news media is finding themselves forced to report on them with little else to cover on a slow news day. They’re trying to squeeze in as much as they can about Obama’s hollow promises of tax simplification and tax cuts for the middle class he has already destroyed, but footage of an empty shirt at a lonely podium really doesn’t play well against crowds of angry Americans who are demanding real change and responsibility from their government.

As a result of organized Democrat opposition in key state legislatures, the state sovereignty movement is probably not going to be able to sweep the nation or even produce passed sovereignty resolutions in a majority of the states. Yet there have been some important achievements that may be enough to be called a limited victory, though the victories may never be acknowledged by the media and the current administration.

In one of the biggest developments for the state sovereignty effort, on Thursday Governor Rick Perry of Texas came out with a wholehearted endorsement of not only Texas House Representative Brandon Creighton’s state sovereignty resolution (HCR 50), but in support of all of the states whose legislatures are seeking to assert their rights to self-governance under the 10th Amendment to the Constitution.

I’ve never been a big fan of Rick Perry, though I’ve always admired his lovely hair. He’s too much in the pocket of the religious right and has too often been wrong on key issues vital to the future of Texas like the legalization of gambling. Yet on this issue Perry has consistently taken the lead, championing the autonomy of state governments, by rejecting federal stimulus money for unemployment and the strings which came with it, and now by supporting legislative efforts to assert 10th Amendment rights.

The bold stand which Perry and a few other governors like Alaska’s Sarah Palin, Mississippi’s Haley Barbour, and South Carolina’s Mark Sanford have taken against federal intrusion into the rights of state governments and the citizens of those states and the efforts of more than 30 state legislatures which have tried to pass — with mixed success — resolutions asserting state sovereignty under the 10th Amendment have offered a small ray of hope for better government at a time when the administration in Washington seems to be running completely out of control.

As the federal government spends us into generations of inconceivable debt, responsible state governments are trying to insulate themselves, protect their citizens and govern with fiscal common sense. Perry summed up what has become the common concern of people across the nation when he said:

“I believe that our federal government has become oppressive in its size, its intrusion into the lives of our citizens, and its interference with the affairs of our state. That is why I am here today to express my unwavering support for efforts all across our country to reaffirm the states’ rights affirmed by the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. I believe that returning to the letter and spirit of the U.S. Constitution and its essential 10th Amendment will free our state from undue regulations, and ultimately strengthen our Union.”

Meanwhile state sovereignty resolutions have been moving forward in the state legislatures. In Oklahoma, Alaska, South Dakota, Indiana and most recently this week in Idaho and North Dakota, sovereignty bills have passed in both houses. But New Mexico, Arkansas and New Hampshire sovereignty bills were either killed in committee or voted down along partisan lines, and that’s likely to happen in many more states in the next couple of months. In other states bills just seem not to be moving forward and may not go anywhere because of Democrat opposition.

Even if the state sovereignty movement has not yet achieved enough success to be called a revolution, with six state legislatures and a number of prominent governors committed to sending a message to Washington, it is bound to have some impact. The influence has already been felt among Republican Senators and Representatives, who have started to realize that keeping their jobs means not waffling on fiscal issues. What remains to be seen is what governors with an eye on the presidency in 2012 like Sanford and Perry are banking on — whether this movement will translate into votes in the 2010 Congressional elections, building towards an even bigger shakeup in 2012.

Perhaps even more importantly, it shows that at least on the state level, some legislators and governors have woken up to the fact that the people are fed up with the excesses of the federal government and the mess they have created and are screaming for real grassroots change.

Not just a change of faces in the White House, but fundamental changes in national policy and a transfer of power away from bureaucrats and politicians and back to the people. We’re tired of seeing our rights, our money and our futures squandered and want to be back in control, through the ballot, through protests and through using the power of state governments under the Constitution to hold the federal government accountable and bring an end to its abuses of power.

The Mercatus Center recently released a study (pdf) by William P. Ruger and Jason Sorens on “Freedom in the 50 States,” which measures economic and social liberty in all fifty states.

According to the authors, the “study improves on prior attempts to score economic freedom for American states in three primary ways: (1) it includes measures of social and personal freedoms such as peaceable citizens’ rights to educate their own children, own and carry firearms, and be free from unreasonable search and seizure; (2) it includes far more variables, even on economic policies alone, than prior studies, and there are no missing data on any variable; and (3) it uses new, more accurate measurements of key variables, particularly state fiscal policies.”

The results:

“We find that the freest states in the country are New Hampshire, Colorado, and South Dakota, which together achieve a virtual tie for first place. All three states feature low taxes and government spending and middling levels of regulation and paternalism. New York is the least free by a considerable margin, followed by New Jersey, Rhode Island, California, and Maryland.”

On personal freedom alone, Alaska is the clear winner, followed by Maine, New Mexico, Arkansas, and Texas. Maryland, Illinois, and New York are at the rear. On economic freedom alone, New Hampshire, South Dakota, and Colorado are the freest, while New York, Maine, and California are the least free.

“As for freedom in the different regions of the country, the Mountain and West North Central regions are the freest overall while the Middle Atlantic lags far behind on both economic and personal freedom. Regression analysis demonstrates that states enjoying more economic and personal freedom tend to attract substantially higher rates of internal net migration.”

This is one of the best studies I’ve encountered. I encourage you to review your own states’ profile in the study.

Of course, the Republican Liberty Caucus ranks legislators on its Liberty Index, but this comprehensive study by Profs. Ruger and Sorens will be most useful to grassroots activists interested in continuing to work toward our libertarian ideal.