While I am pro-choice and think it’s a person’s right to do what they want with their own body, all things being equal… I think it’s best not to facilitate the selling of black market kidneys through one’s blog. I’ve therefore unapproved the comments.

But it is an interesting question to think about. Would you allow the comments on your own blog?

Congressman David Price of North Carolina’s 4th District has:

• Voted for a $700 billion taxpayer-financed bailout of Wall Street billionaires. That’s reason enough right there to vote Mr. David Price out of office, but I will continue.
• Voted for the PATRIOT Act, oy vey! And just when you thought he couldn’t get any worse…
• Voted to raid the Social Security trust fund to spend money this country doesn’t have on various projects, including other members’ (and his own) incessant pork barrel requests.
• Votes for war funding.
• Thrown civil liberties to the wind when he voted for FISA, the bill that gave immunity to telecom companies that spied on their innocent customers for the government, unconstitutionally.

One of Lawson’s county coordinators is Rev. Ray McKinnon, a hardcore Democrat who met Dr. Lawson while campaigning for Hillary. No, BJ Lawson is not your typical Republican. While Price usually wins the district by 65%, polls have him at less than 50% with 10% undecided. Meanwhile, while Price hid from his constituents during the bailout fiasco, Lawson was bringing serious money in from Americans angry at the bailout, to the tune of over $170,000 in ONE DAY, which simply must be a record for North Carolina.

Because I am “Libertarian Girl,” some people assume some things about me. I am not a member of the Libertarian Party, and I go across partisan rhetoric to support issues, not groups. I receive solicitations in the mail from both Republicans and Democrats due to the wide range of causes I support and organizations that I’m a member of; I’ve gotten signed photos of McCain and Palin and letters begging support from Hillary.

I’m not a Libertarian, a Republican, or a Democrat, but I’ve voted for all three at times. As an election judge in this district the last primary cycle, I noticed that many voting Democratic took care to maintain their independent status, not wanting to be listed as a Democrat. This is a stance I can respect, voting for the person and the issues, not the party. According to an interview on Live Free Radio earlier this week, Lawson said an Orange County Democrat was hesitant to give her support, but came back the next day at Festifall and said, “After reading about you and your stance on the issues, I’d vote for you even if you were a member of the Communist Party.” Who could say the same about David Price, the disappearing act who won’t answer a simple question of: Does he read bills before he votes on them?

I hope there are many Democrats in the Fourth District who vote for who will really represent them and their interests in Congress, and that would be a vote for BJ Lawson.

I voted for David Price the last time he was up for re-election, but this time I will be glad to vote for a true man of the people, for a man who is not red or blue but American… BJ Lawson.

Therefore, I officially endorse BJ Lawson for the Fourth District congressional race, if you have not already figured this out. And it’s not because his kids are so darn cute, it’s because of the Constitutional principles that he is running on.

Today, I head from two extremes: venturing from the very Eastern-European Bratislava, Slovakia into Vienna, Austria, the capital of the Hapsburg Empire and a former imperial city. Austria is a very socialist country, as Arnold Schwarzenegger let us know.

What’s interesting, then, is that Austria lends its name to one of the most free market-oriented strains of economic thought, the Austrian School of Economics. Wikipedia’s article on the Austrian School is virtually incomprehensible, but what it boils down to is this: as little intervention in “the invisible hand” of the market as possible. I had the delight of listening to Austrian-school economist Bettina Greaves speak at UNC-Chapel Hill last year, and she boiled it down in simple terms: from the time the first caveman made something that another person could use and they bartered services, the market has worked and has also been thwarted from working through government intervention, as it is today.

Two of the most famous Austrian economists are Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises (who was Bettina Greaves’ mentor). Hayek was a Nobel Prize-winning professor at the London School of Economics and the University of Chicago and is one of the key economists able to influence a return to more liberal (liberal as in free) economic policies in the latter half of the 20th century. He was a thorn in the side of John Maynard Keynes, and their debates were legendary and still continue today among their followers.

Of course, there’s still plenty of government intervention and we certainly don’t have a classically liberal economic system at the moment, but what we do have is an improvement from Keynesian policies.

Hayek was a student of Ludwig von Mises at the University of Vienna and during that time, Hayek began to turn away from the socialism he had previously espoused to favor a more libertarian style of economic freedom with little government intervention. It was a good development for not just libertarianism, but for the world, and it is a lesson that Austria has yet to learn.

So today, Libertarian Girl ventures to the land of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek.

Auf wiedersehn.

I’m quite pleased to let the Republican leadership know that Republicans in my voting district agree that we should “strengthen the ‘War Against Islamic Jihadists’”– by leaving Iraq as soon as possible. We also want to make the Bush tax cuts permanent– and abolish the income tax and replace it with nothing. While we’re at it, let’s create “a stronger national defense” Reagan would be proud of– by closing most of our 140+ military bases throughout the world and securing our own borders. Let’s help the economy– by abolishing the Federal Reserve to stabilize the money supply. I’ll also tell them that education has no place in legislation at the federal level, and although the survey oddly says nothing about guns, I’m going to mention that guns are important to safety, too.

Senator Ensign writes that he wants to “reconnect with our grassroots base and refocus our policy agenda on the core Reagan Republican principles upon which it was founded– smaller government, cutting wasteful spending, lower taxes, a strong national defense and a belief in our inalienable individual liberties and freedoms.”

Wow, that sounds a lot like what I’m saying, but not what other Republicans are, and not even what the committee is saying in its own survey! It says it wants a “smaller government” and then goes on to ask about increasing Social Security, defense spending, education spending, and foreign aid. If we increase spending on all or even one of these programs, how exactly are we going to have a “smaller government” and no “wasteful spending”?

Ensign goes on to say that ending the “War against Islamic Jihadists” would be “retreat-and-defeat” or “cut-and-run.” This is pretty disingenuous. First of all, there were no Islamic jihadists within Iraq until we came along, as our own government admits. Internationally, jihadist terrorism has increased 600% since we invaded Iraq. So if we’re fighting a war against Islamic jihadism by invading Iraq and staying there indefinitely, we’re really not doing a good job with that. (Sure, that study was published in a left-leaning publication, but if it’s not true, why has there not been a survey done in response finding that terrorism has decreased? If it had, surely a right-winger would by now have come up with a study confirming this.) Indeed, the CIA’s top bin Laden expert for 10 years said Iraq “broke the back of our counterterrorism program.” We would be better off with actually capturing the people responsible for the September 11 attacks, who are not in Iraq but most likely in Pakistan, which is our ally.

Well, Senator Ensign, I’m mailing my survey to you today. I’m sure you’ll be excited to hear from me, a typical Republican Party leader.