"Freedom let's us improve our lives -- government control makes that impossible" -- Donald Beezley, Republican candidate for Colorado State House

The Broomfield Enterprise reports:

Local businessman Don Beezley, a Republican, launched his campaign for the statehouse on Sunday. He`ll be running against Rep. Dianne Primavera, D-Broomfield, who has held the House District 33 seat since 2007.

Beezley lives in Broomfield with his wife, Pat, and two sons, Connor and Alexander. He is the president of Tager Enterprises.

Beezley has been active in conservative and libertarian circles. He is a guest writer for the libertarian-leaning Independence Institute and serves on the advisory board of the conservative Leadership Program of the Rockies. He also is on the board of the Tabor Foundation, which promotes the Colorado Taxpayer`s Bill of Rights.

Some highlights of Beezley's stances:

•Low taxes and no new taxes

•Oppose unreasonable regulations and oppose any additional taxes, fees and burdens where jobs are created—businesses

•Tax policy that disconnects patients from their doctors must be changed by moving tax benefits to the individual level while empowering individuals with vehicles like Health Savings Accounts.

•School choice, especially in the form of charter schools, must be protected and competition that fuels excellence, innovation and continuous improvement must be fostered.

•Home schooling must be protected as an option for families to choose.

•Stop the massive tax and fee increases imposed by the Democrats—in violation of constitutional requirements that Colorado government must ask the people first.

•Maintain the commonsense provisions of the Taxpayer's Bill of rights (TABOR). Government must ask first before it can take your money.

•Recognize that the depths of a recession when people are losing their jobs and their homes is not the time to impose billions in new taxes and fees.

DonBeezley.com

There was a last minute entry before the filing deadline, in the race for Arkansas Congress District 4: Beth Anne Rankin. The District includes southwest Arkansas, stretching from Hot Springs to Texarkana.

Rankin is a small business owner, a gospel singer, and daughter of the former President of Southern Arkansas University. She was also Miss Arkansas 1994. She has performed in Branson, Missouri. Additionally, at a recent Sarah Palin visit to the State, she sang the opening Star Spangled Banner.

She has worked in numerous capacities in the Arkansas state capitol, including a stint under Gov. Mike Huckabee.

Rankin will be challenging incumbent Blue Dog Democrat Mike Ross.

Making her announcement she cited the reasons for her run:

Government is growing too big, too fast, and at too perilous a cost for future generations of Americans to bear.

Many consider her to be the hard-right constitutionalist candidate in the race. A website Pro-Arkansas for Liberty, which bills itself as a Save the Republic - Tea Party-oriented site with a heavy Ron Paul-orientation, lists her as one of 6 endorsed candidates in the State.

From Eric Dondero:

How soon til the cries of "meanie," and "scrooge" and "Mr. Grinch," start flying from Government Unions? Or, from Democrats talking about "cuts in school lunch programs," or "bigger class sizes," or more "homeless out in the streets"?

From NJ.com, March 11:

Gov. Chris Christie today will create a commission to privatize as many as 2,000 state jobs beginning next January, officials said Wednesday night.

The Republican governor today plans to sign an executive order creating the task force to cut the size and cost of the state payroll. Three officials familiar with his plans last night said the commission will identify which jobs or agencies would be operated by the private sector and how that would be accomplished. The officials declined to be named ahead of the announcement.

Privatizing jobs would require layoffs. By beginning them in January, Christie would not be subject to a deal between former Gov. Jon Corzine and state worker unions that would require the state to pay millions in raises to remaining workers if he orders layoffs before then.

Well, that didn't take long...

Maryann Woods-Murphy, the state’s teacher of the year is representing the NJ Teachers Association (Morris Politics):

“Many local schools will have to increase class size, lay off teachers and cut important programs. … And the even larger cuts you propose for the next school year will make it even harder for children to succeed.”

A libertarian blogger "against violent Islamism"

A liberal media icon is giving credit to a pro-defense libertarian blogger for breaking open the case of Collen LaRose, known as "Jihad Jane." LaRose the "Pennsylvania housewife," who allegedly organized Jihadists in Yemen and the UK to attack Western targets. ABC News reporter Eamon McNiff, took the unusual step of acknowleding that the mainstream media had been late to the story and that "for a group of 'Net vigilantes it was old news."

From ABC News:

In fact, at least one of the Web sleuths claims to have alerted the feds to Colleen LaRose's alleged efforts to raise money and recruit fighters for Islamic terrorists and to carry out her own jihad.

Groups like JawaReport, Quoth the Raven and the YouTube Smackdown Corps claim they had been monitoring LaRose's growing militancy for three years, and watched as the Internet -- particularly YouTube -- fed her fervor.

They also said "Jihad Jane" is not the only one on the Internet that the groups are monitoring.

"There are certainly many others out there who are more eloquent and appear to be more dangerous from the way they talk," a man calling himself Rusty Shackleford told ABC News.

Shackleford, a pen name, says he is a libertarian college professor who created the blog JawaReport in 2004 after he was enraged that Iraqi Islamists had beheaded an American named Nick Berg.

"It was my way of venting. But mostly it was about countering violent Islamist propaganda, specifically the videos that were being produced by al Qaeda in Iraq and other Salaafist jihadists fighting our troops," he said.

Shackleford said his goal from the beginning was combating violent Islamist material and support on the Web.

"I'm a blogger, but also an activist against violent Islamism.

Jawa Editor explains AntiIslamist activism

Continuing:

One of the things we do is try and pressure Webhosts to remove Websites that belong to terrorist organizations. An example of this would be the dozen or so times we've successfully had the Taliban's website removed. The websites sometimes pop back up, sometimes not," Shackleford said.

Shackleford and other contributors to JawaReport and sites like it noticed YouTube had become a hub for videos and comments in support of violent extremism and attacks against the West and its allies, leading to the creation of the YouTube Smackdown.

The Jawa Report is among a growing number of anti-IslamoFascist blogs that in the past have been incorrectly identified as "Conservative," but are now openly stating that they're anti-Islamist views come from an explicitly "libertarian" perspective. The list also includes Pamela Geller's (Ayn Randian) Atlas Shrugs, and Gates of Vienna.