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Brian Tashman at Right Wing Watch reports:

Conservative activists are livid about a new bill to update a 1993 National Telecommunications and Information Administration report “on the current prevalence of hate crimes and hate speech in telecommunications,” which anti-Muslim activist Pamela Geller said “is Sharia.”

While speaking to Janet Mefferd yesterday, Geller alleged that the bill will “silence” any “criticism of the left and of the Islamic machine,” while Mefferd called the legislation “creeping Sharia like crazy.”

The 1993 report [PDF] unmistakably denounced the very hate speech measures that Geller suggests are included in the bill: “NTIA endorses the belief, expressed by virtually every commenter, that the best remedy to hate speech is not government restrictions, but more speech, to disseminate views that challenge notions of hate and bigotry.”

Geller then cited the disputed claim that Matthew Shepard’s murder was not motivated by anti-gay animus to argue that the bill is like a “steaming pile of dung [packaged] in a Tiffany box with a little white ribbon.”

More: Pamela Geller Misrepresents Hate Crimes Reporting Bill to Warn Sharia Law Is Coming to America

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David Corn has discovered video of Rand Paul, the crypto-libertarian Republican chip off of Ron Paul’s block, bashing the Republican Party’s most revered icon: WATCH: Rand Paul Says Jimmy Carter Was Better on the Budget Than Ronald Reagan.

As Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) ponders a presidential bid, he has lately made efforts to wrap himself in the banner of Ronald Reagan. In op-eds and speeches, the libertarian tea partier has increasingly invoked the Republicans’ most holy icon, especially after being attacked by members of his party’s establishment who have accused him of isolationism. Writing in the Washington Post last week, Paul likened his nuanced approach to foreign policy to what he claimed was Reagan’s embrace of “strategic ambiguity.” A few days earlier, at a so-called “Freedom Summit” in New Hampshire, Paul hailed Reagan as the last president who presided over the creation of millions of jobs, asserting that after the Gipper lowered tax rates, 20 million jobs were created and “more revenue came in.” (factcheck.org concluded that Paul was “falsifying evidence”—and ignoring that more jobs were created during President Bill Clinton’s tenure when tax rates went up.) But Paul hasn’t always cast himself as much of a Reagan fan. In fact, when he stumped for his father in 2008 and again when ran for Senate in 2010, Paul often referred to the grand old man of the GOP with a touch of disappointment and criticism. And he routinely made an assertion that might seem like blasphemy to many Republicans: President Jimmy Carter had a better record on fiscal discipline than Reagan.

In a variety of campaign appearances that were captured on video, Paul repeatedly compared Reagan unfavorably to Carter on one of Paul’s top policy priorities: government spending. When Paul was a surrogate speaker for his father, then-Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), during the elder Paul’s 2008 presidential quest, his sales pitch included dumping on Reagan for failing to rein in federal budget deficits. Standing on the back of a truck and addressing the crowd at the Coalition of New Hampshire Taxpayers picnic in July 2007, Rand Paul complained about Reagan and praised his father for having opposed Reagan’s budget:

The deficit went through the roof under Reagan. So how long did it take Ron Paul to figure out that the guy he had liked, endorsed, campaigned for, campaigned for him? The very first [Reagan] budget. Ron Paul voted “no” against the very first Reagan budget… Everybody loved this “great” budget. It was a $100 billion in debt. This was three times greater than Jimmy Carter’s worst deficit.

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Here is my full set at the Astra in Berlin, Germany on November 15th 2012. Part of The Guitar Masters Tour, November 2012.

Since I’ve got loads of questions on my live set-up, here it is:

I go out of my guitar (K&K trinity mini) stereo. Send the pure pick-up into my Tonebone pz-pre preamp (made by Radial). The mic goes in the K&K blender for giving it the batterry power. Then the outputs of those goes into a small sound card (I use a Native instruments Komplete Audio 6), into my laptop with Mainstage (I used Logic pro as well before) . I did some eqs on both signal in the studio to get rid of some crap. I put some preamp simulators and a good lexicon verb plugin. Then, on the master out, I put some more eqs that I use to make a room eq with my guitar for each concert and room I’m playing in. I go over all the frets during sound check for notching more or less some frequency bumps. When I feel everything is pretty much even and flat, I let the PA guy do the rest.

Ron Paul comes out in support of the far right “sovereign citizen” loons at the Bundy Ranch moronic convergence, because of course he does: The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity : Nevada Standoff a Symptom of Increasing Authoritarianism.

A still from this video

A government that continually violates our rights of property and contract can fairly be descried as authoritarian. Of course, the politicians and bureaucrats take offense at this term, but how else do you describe a government that forbids Americans from grazing cattle on land they have used for over a century, from buying health insurance that does not meet Obamacare’s standards, from trading with Cuba, or even from drinking raw milk? That so many in DC support the NSA spying and the TSA assaults on our privacy shows the low regard that too many in government have for our rights.

History shows us that authoritarian systems, whether fascist, communist, or Keynesian, will inevitably fail. I believe incidents such as that in Nevada show we may be witnessing the failure of the American authoritarian warfare-welfare state — and that of course would be good. This is why it is so important that those of us who understand the freedom philosophy spread the truth about how statism caused our problems and why liberty is the only solution.

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(If you can’t view the MP4 video, click below.)

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