A Less than Stunning Development

Didn't catch this on Sunday, but to the surprise of absolutely no one the Free State came in dead last in personal freedom:

It's no shock that Maryland falls on the nanny state side of the ledger.

But it was still a surprise to hear the finding in a recent study by libertarian professors that Maryland came in dead last in personal freedom among the 50 states. (Alaska is No. 1.)

Among the reasons: Maryland lacks gay marriage or civil unions, aggressively prosecutes victimless drug crimes, keeps tight controls on land use and has the nation's second-strictest gun laws after California.

"You might call it 'suburban liberalism' ... kind of the idea that we need to take care of people, make sure they don't harm themselves," said Jason Sorens, co-author of the study and an assistant professor of political science at the University at Buffalo.....

...."For Maryland to end up last, that was a bit surprising, especially since the margin wasn't terribly close," Sorens said with a laugh.

The full report is available here. And it gets worse; according to the study, we are the fifth least free state overall when you tie in our ranking as the 34th least free state based on economic factors.

How does the study describe our personal freedom issues? Like this:

Maryland’s impositions on personal freedom include the second-strictest gun laws in the country, and marijuana laws are fairly harsh (except that the first offense of high-level possession is a misdemeanor, and there is a weak medical marijuana law), motorists’ freedoms are highly restricted, gambling laws are tight, home schooling laws are burdensome (curricula must be approved by the government), centralized land-use planning is very advanced, eminent domain abuse is totally unreformed, victimless crimes arrest rates are high, and civil unions are not recognized.

Yeah, that about sums it up nicely.

Now obviously, and as Hartley points out, Maryland is not going to be all things to all people when it comes to personal freedom. But there are a lot of personal freedom issues listed in that list that are anathema to all facets of conservatism, and several that will cross party lines. As we have talked about hte issue of Republican branding time and time again, it is incumbent upon us as Republicans to take on the mantra of the party of smaller government and try to champion a number of these issues. In Maryland, the Democrats are the party of the nannystate, and we as Republicans need to make them own it.

Banned in Kos-sackstan

A very interesting story developing in the leftist blogosphere, as one Daily Kos member was banned for having the audacity to talk about John Edward's marital infidelities:

About a week ago, I posted a piece on the Huffington Post called Say It Ain’t So, John. I didn’t think it would have much more impact than my usual posts…maybe a dozen comments or so, a couple of people linking to it. To my surprise, it became the most read blog the Huffington Post for a few days.

I cross posted on DailyKos, which is probably the best known and biggest progressive blog. I’ve been posting at Kos for a long time. As more news about Edwards has come out, I followed up with more posts which were also the subject of a large number of comments. All of them looked at the Edwards situation from my point of view; that is, a liberal who is concerned about the implications this story may have in November.

Now I’m banned. I can’t write about ANYTHING at Kos. Can’t comment, can’t post a non-Edwards piece. Nothing.

And I stand by my title - it’s largely John Edward’s fault that I’m banned. I’m now personally a small piece of fallout from the scandal. That’s because Edward’s defense is shoot the messenger, not answer the questions. The rabid response of the people on Kos is directly related to Edwards and his own response. That’s exactly why I’m saying this has the potential to hurt the Democratic brand.

So answer the effin’ questions already, John. For everyone’s sake.

I’m not sure if the DailyKos is going to take down my writing and make me a complete un-person there. Of course, real progressives are against censorship so Maryscott O’Connor’s blog MyLeftWing is my new community home. (Maryscott was the lead actress in my film Breathing Room about 13 years ago, by the way.)

We have talked a lot before both briangriffiths.com, RedMaryland, the Conservative Refuge, the Word on the Street, and other places about the inability of liberals to take criticism, their inability accept dissent, and their default position to crush, vilify, or flush down the memory hole anybody who disagrees with their one view of the world.

But this is something above and beyond the pale. The Daily Kos crowd likes to talk a good game about how the Bush Administration tries to crush dissent, how mainstream Democrats tried to crush dissent, and how an open society accepts the fact that "dissent is patriotic." But can anybody rationally explain why such a site, the biggest site in the leftroots, would ban a poster from talking about a legitimate news story?

If this kind of thing is widespread in Kos-sackstan, I think it is safe to say that the Daily Kos has begun its inevitable slide to irrelevance.