Bob Barr

People and organizations other than doctors increasingly are assuming power to decide which medications to prescribe or procedures to undertake. More and more, decisions about personal healthcare are no longer made by the treating physicians in consultation with their patients, and based on the doctors’ expertise.

The move to tax Internet sales, clothed as a ‘fairness’ issue, is the typical ‘wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing’ ploy so often used by governments unwilling to cut expenditures to match revenues. It matters not whether its proponents have a ‘D’ or an ‘R’ after their name. It is a tax increase in either case.

In a single generation, the Internet has given to virtually every person on the face of the earth the ability to communicate with fellow human beings on virtually any topic, at any time, and in every nook and cranny on the globe. This magnificent invention has done this without succumbing to government control.

The seemingly omnipresent storm clouds hanging over the Constitution often make it hard to find a silver lining. Every day, the front page of The Drudge Report is littered with stories of government assaults on our civil liberties – from local government officials all the way up to the Oval Office.