YAL Members in California Meet Senator Rand Paul

Members of YAL-UCSD, YAL-CSUF, and YAL-Western Law met Rand Paul on Saturday at his book signing in La Jolla, California. The Senator was kind enough to take a group photo with us.

CSUF Young Americans for Liberty Running Operation Politically Homeless

From Susan Carnet:

Last week while tabling, California State University-Fullerton Young Americans for Liberty ran Operation Politically Homeless for the first time after receiving our kit in the mail. Check out our video below:

Could Yemen Be Next?

Cross posted at Interest of the State.

As the downfall of the Gaddafi regime now looks imminent, could Yemen's government be the next to fall?

Yemen’s president Ali Abdullah Saleh has already announced that he will not run again in 2013, which, if not deposed, will have given him 33 years as top dog in Sana’a. As president, Saleh has been a staunch ally with the US in the “War on Terror.” Up until 2008, Yemen did not receive much economic or military aid. When 2009 came around, the story was different. Aid to Yemen increased to $67 million, and in 2010 to $150 million.

The huge uptick in aid was due to the newest threat in America’s “War on Terror”: Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). In 2009, AQAP affiliate Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad opened fire on a military recruitment center in Little Rock. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab failed in his attempt to bring down a Christmas Day flight after being allowed to fly despite going through no security thanks to the C.I.A.  And most recently, there was the infamous cargo planes bomb plot that would have detonated bombs midair over Chicago.

Government-funded intimidation in NC

I recently posted about Andrew Henson of the Civitas Institute's expose of grossly wasteful spending by the North Carolina Child Care Services Association -- an expose that garnered an angry response from the government-funded CCSA and its supporters.  And now, CCSA, without attempting to disprove anything written by the Civitas Institute, is threatening Civitas with a defamation lawsuit that would be funded almost exclusively with taxpayer money.  Civitas writes:

CCSA did not produce a single example of actual “falsehoods” contained in our articles.

We need your help to raise the funds necessary to fight the attempts by this, and other, taxpayer-funded organizations to silence our story on the mismanagement of government money.

CCSA’s own response to the investigation substantiated the original story Civitas published. Now they are using a law firm to try and scare us into pulling our story and “…issue retractions of the falsehoods [Civitas has] disseminated.”

While their threats and bullying don’t worry me what does worry me are the legal bills that result from us defending our first amendment rights! CCSA has a budget of over $30,000,000 according to the last published report and over $29,000,000 came from government sources. Our contributions last year, all from private sources, came to less than $1,000,000.

Read the rest of Civitas' posting here.