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On March 31, The New Yorker published an item in its humor vertical, Shouts & Murmurs, titled "L.P.D.: Libertarian Police Department." At least 31,000 people liked it.

I can laugh along with parodies of libertarian ideology. But shouldn't a reductio ad absurdum start with a belief that the target of the satire actually holds?Tom O'Donnellproceeds as if libertarians object to the state enforcing property rightsthat is to say, one of the very few state actions that virtually all libertarians find legitimate!If America'ssheriffs were all summarily replaced by Libertarian Partyofficials selected at random, I'm sure some ridiculous things would happen. Just not any of the particular things that were described.

That isn't to say that there weren't parts of the article that made me laugh.It got me thinking too.If the non-libertarian approach to policing* was the target instead, would you need hyperbole or reductio ad absurdum? Or could you just write down what actually happens under the officials elected by non-libertarians?It is, of course, hard to make it funny when all the horrific examples are true.

* * *

I was just finishing up my shift by having sex with a prostitute when I got a call about an opportunity for overtime. A no-knock raid was going down across town.

"You're trying to have your salary spike this year to game the pension system, right?" my buddy told me. "Well, we're raiding a house where an informant says there's marijuana, and it's going to be awesomewe've got a $283,ooo military-grade armored SWAT truckandthe kind offlash grenades that literally scared that one guy to death."

"Don't start without me," I told him. "I just have to stop by this pawn shop. It's run by some friends of mine from ATF. They paid this mentally disabled teenager $150 dollars to get a neck tattoo of a giant squid smoking a joint. Those guys are hilarious."

But when I got to the shop the guys weren't in any mood to joke aroundsomething about having lost their gunsagain. That meant I had extra time to get to the raid. En route, I headed through a black and Latino neighborhood, and who did I see on the street? A teenage male who made what I would describe as a furtive movement.

Link:

N.L.P.D.: Non-Libertarian Police Department

MOBILE, Alabama At 61, Gary Johnson is a competitive skier, has climbed Mount Everest and wants to climb the highest peak on all seven continents.

His climbed Everest the tallest mountain in the world on a broken leg in 2003. But another goal might prove to be an even higher hurdle: Getting elected president of the United States as a Libertarian.

The former two-term governor of New Mexico who ran as a Libertarian in 2012 is not a candidate in 2016 yet. But he sounded like one as he worked the room at The Bull restaurant in downtown Mobile on Monday while soliciting donations for his organization, Our America Initiative.

I was born with an overdose of common sense, he told a crowd of about 20 as he shared his views on the economy, health care, foreign policy and social issues.

Johnson apparently also was born with a healthy dose of self-confidence. He predicted he would be a wildly successful president.

Johnson will attend a fundraiser in Montgomery Tuesday afternoon before participating in a forum on environmental policy at the University of Alabama at Birminghams Blazer Hall at 6 p.m. He will close out his Alabama trip at a fundraiser at Riverchase Country Club in Birmingham.

Diehard supporters would like to see Johnson give the presidency another shot. A Change.org petition to draft him has garnered 1,170 signatures.

Dennis Knizley, a Mobile lawyer who serves on the Alabama Libertarian Party Executive Committee, noted that Johnsons experience in high office sets him apart from many other of the partys candidates.

To the Libertarians, hes a godsend, he said.

Libertarians remain longshots

More here:

Libertarian Gary Johnson once climbed Everest, but that might be only second-highest hurdle

#TBT House Republicans Pass Budget That Balances #ThatsFair
U.S. Congressman Sean Duffy (WI-07) took to the Floor of the House to remind the American people that House Republicans have once again, passed a Budget Reso...

By: RepSeanDuffy

The rest is here:

#TBT House Republicans Pass Budget That Balances #ThatsFair - Video

Key Peele Black Republicans

By: errachk ronaldo

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Key & Peele Black Republicans - Video

Republicans want top officials from the Dayton administration to answer questions about what they knew of problems with the MNsure health exchange before its rocky launch on Oct. 1.

Citing recent news reports, Republicans on a MNsure oversight committee said that DFL Gov. Mark Dayton and his top advisers were warned about health exchange defects "well in advance of their decision to make the website available to consumers," they wrote in a letter sent Monday to the DFL chairs of the committee.

Asking that Dayton's human services commissioner, former chief of staff and the former MNsure executive director attend a committee meeting scheduled for Wednesday, the Republicans wrote: "Minnesotans deserve answers to the continued questions about the management failure at MNsure prior to its launch."

Sen. Tony Lourey, DFL-Kerrick, co-chairman of the legislative oversight committee, said in a voicemail message Monday that he had forwarded the letter to Dayton and expected "the administration to have people to answer questions appropriately" during the meeting.

Linden Zakula, a spokesman for Dayton, blasted the request in a statement, saying Republicans should be "as interested in hearing current good news, as they are in dredging up old bad news."

Two proposed witnesses are no longer employed by the state, Zakula said. Human Services Commissioner Lucinda Jesson said Monday she is scheduled to testify at a Senate committee meeting on funding for the state security hospital in St. Peter -- but if that ends soon enough, she may be able to attend the oversight hearing.

The Republicans' letter, Zakula said, makes "outrageously false statements about MNsure's current condition, while they attempt to divert the committee's attention to circumstances that are six months old."

Republicans said in their letter that the Wednesday session provides "a unique opportunity to follow up with those from the governor's office and MNsure about their joint decision to go live on October 1."

The letter was written by oversight committee members Sen. Michelle Benson, R-Ham Lake; Sen. Sean Nienow, R-Cambridge; Rep. Tara Mack, R-Apple Valley; and Rep. Joe Hoppe, R-Chaska.

On Sept. 19, Dayton was briefed by MNsure leaders and told there was a possibility that the health exchange website might not be able to launch on Oct. 1, Zakula said. The meeting with Dayton was reported Sunday by the Minneapolis-based Star Tribune newspaper.

See the article here:

Republicans on MNsure oversight panel seek answers on rollout problems