Cato is funded by some businesses, but nearly every think tank is. Wealthy foundations also spread money to "pro-consumer" and other left-of-center activist groups/think tanks as well.

Cato is not "anti-consumer." Cato thinks a lot of Technocrats at some of these lavishly funded left-of-center tanks are merely devising ways to expand the power and control of government. They, however, also oppose a good deal that Big Business likes.

Big Business is not libertarian. Discrete ones, such as Big Tobacco, may like Cato's view that adults ought to be free to smoke and then pay the consequences if they do, and that property owners as opposed to the state should decide whether smoking will be permitted. So it makes sense for them to forge an alliance on that particular issue, but their motives are hardly the same.

There is a reason -- as I believe Cato fellows have pointed out, certainly many libertarians have -- Big Alcohol donates generously to Partnership for a Drug Free America and other drug prohibitionist groups. It is called keeping the competition out. If one didn't risk arrest and prison smoking pot and selling it to your pals, one might forgo the six pack more often.

I assure you, those are Gary North's words. Google it. I first saw him and his father-in-law interviewed in a religious studies course I took over twenty years ago. he man literally is American Taliban. But I also have checked the North postings at Lew Rockwell, and THOSE sentiments are missing. But no libertarian ought to be promoting anyone who holds the fascist views north does, even if he has the very occasional, useful insight on economics. But I have no intention of emailing Rockwell about it, and as for Glenn, he is aware of North, my opinion on the matter, and it is his position -- and it is his decision to make -- that anyone may reprint him. (Altho now that he is at Salon, I'm not sure what the copyright implications are for him -- but you can bet he knows.)

Bail bondsman: they are out of control, and I believe I'd abolish them. But even there, there is a huge nexus between them and the state, as they are basically private contractors enforcing the state's right to capture a fleeing accused. Libertarians have written numerous articles about the excesses (some of them truly heinous) of bounty hunters. There is a right to use force in that instance, but I do not think the govt should delegate it. At a minimum, bounty hunters ought to be deputized, licensed and trained. The wrongness of their actions goes back to the state using its right to employ force, but using private companies to do it where standards and training have often been, to understate, lacking.

So you're [bucky1] still a registered Republican. How very libertarian of you.

How does that follow? Ron Paul as many have noted, including Glenn, is the one Republican the authoritarian majority in the GOP is trying to stifle. They want him out of the debates, and they remove his name from online polls, because he wins them. Paul once ran on the Libertarian Party ticket, and he is the only real libertarian in the GOP congressional delegation. He was one of only 7 GOP Congressmen who did not vote for the MCA.

He is anti-war, anti-torture, and would repeal The Patriot Act.

one usually has to be a registered Republican.

Not in any state in which I've ever voted, and that has been three. I've never registered for any party. Open primaries do exist, you know.

And whatever else may be a bit extreme about bucky1's views, I don't see how he could be faulted for supporting Ron Paul. Paul is actually against most legal abortion (tho he thinks the federal govt ought to stay out of it). And yet, during the last debate, and even tho he was the only Ob-Gyn on the panel, when asked what was the worst evil of the moment, the chorus from the others was abortion.

Paul said it was the war.

yes, I even agree with him on certain issues. I just don't see how any responsible American, at this particular moment in our nation's hostory, can waste a moment weighing the merits of anyone in the Republican field

Well, this is how I see it: I may well vote for Paul in the primaries, if his campaign is still alive at that point. The Republican Party needs to be bitch-slapped very hard, and support for Paul online is so intense he is winning polls and generating a totally unexpected level of interest, such as appearances with Bill Maher and The Daily Show. People online tend to be very politically active and are among the most likely to vote in primaries -- I'd love to see Paul cause a huge problem for the rest of that wretched pack. A significant vote for Paul lets that party know just how thoroughly enough of those who once tended GOP reject the neocon/theocon hijacking. They can learn their lesson, or not.

In which case, Democrats win for decades to come. And I'll vote Democrat in the general election. (Altho Hillary scares me silly, because she lacks principles and I can see her going all warmonger and finding she likes the Executive-cum-monarch trail Bush has blazed.)

(Altho he is too liberal for my taste on some issues, there is one Democrat who would have earned my ardent support, and whom I would have worked for in the primaries, and that is Russ Feingold. But, alas, he isn't in the race.)