Author: Eric Garris

In my years of politics, I have heard from many Capitol Hill staffers that Congressmembers hate constituent mail.

Is it possible that someone has found a solution? I tend not to be much of a conspiracy theorist, but I had been wondering about possible motives behind the ricin letters.

Whatever the motive, it appears that writing letters to your congressional representative may soon become a thing of the past. Of course, there is still email, although most of Congress has been ignoring email for years.

H.R. 3439, making its way through Congress, would authorize the federal government to "embed" CIA agents within local police departments to blur the distinction between local cops and feds.

The Campaign to Demilitarize the Police is organizing to stop the bill, and has been targeting the bill’s author, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), with protest actions.

Believe it or not, Antiwar.com is now nine years old. An important component of our news collection has always been provided by volunteer researchers. Half of all our links and articles have been provided by such volunteers.

In recent weeks, some of our most productive researchers have had to reduce their activity due to personal reasons. We are trying to pick up the slack, but we need help.

Here’s how you can help:

• Become an official Antiwar.com Researcher: We will rely on you to cover specific media sources on a regular, designated basis. No minimum required, just a commitment to cover them on a regular basis. You can choose the media outlets you are interested in (they can easily include the sites you already surf), or we can assign ones to you.

• Send in your link suggestions whenever you happen to see articles or other information we should be interested in. You can send one link or a hundred. Please don’t assume we have already seen a particular article. You may use our link submission form or contact me for more information.

Working for Antiwar.com is a very satisfying experience. The immediacy of the Web provides for near-instant gratification. You will see your contributions included on the site within hours. And the satisfaction of knowing you are helping the cause of peace is without compare.

For more information, or to volunteer, please contact me

You may have noticed a change in our format.

We are still getting elements of the new format up and running, so please bear with us. We will be introducing many new features to improve Antiwar.com as a resource to you.

This format change took many months, and was done on the cheap. The heroic Mike Ewens is mainly responsible for the building of this great new product. He learned as he did it, and I think he did a fantastic job.

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Today’s Wall Street Journal as an OpEd by one of my oldest friends.

I got involved with the libertarian movement in 1972. One of the first libertarians I met and quickly became friends with was Bill Evers. In 1973 I initiated a faction fight in California’s Peace and Freedom Party (which I had been active in for a few years) between libertarians and socialists. By 1974 we had won a statewide primary fight and took control of the legal structure of the Party.

Bill Evers was one of the intellectual guiding lights for our successful faction. He co-wrote the 1974 platform of the California Peace and Freedom Party, which was unabashedly libertarian and specifically Rothbardian. Later that year, Murray Rothbard changed his earlier position and joined and endorsed the young Libertarian Party (LP).

At the 1975 national LP convention, Murray Rothbard and Bill Evers rewrote the party platform. The essential hardcore elements of the Rothbard-Evers platform continue today, partly due to LP rules which make it extremely difficult to change platform planks.

In 1978, Justin Raimondo, Bob Costello, and I formed the Libertarian Party Radical Caucus (LPRC) to continue to move the LP toward more principled stands, with a central focus on foreign policy. Shortly after the formation of the LPRC, Bill Evers joined and urged Murray Rothbard to do the same. We expanded the LPRC Central Committee to include Bill and Murray. Bill’s friends Colin Hunter and Scott Olmsted soon joined the Central Committee.

For the next few years (also the heyday years of the LP), the LPRC grew and gained influence within the LP. In 1983 the LPRC dissolved after the Central Committee split over the choice of a Presidential nominee for the LP. At the time, Bill Evers attacked Raimondo and me for "selling out" by supporting the Cato Institute-affiliated candidate, Earl Ravenal, over the "hardcore libertarian" choice of David Bergland.

During his involvement with the LP, I remember Bill Evers as Murray Rothbard’s closest associate, practically joined at the hip. The pair were explicit anarchists and proud enemies of the state.

In the 1990s Bill became a Republican and began his campaign to get a "high" government job. Bill was largely unsuccessful, landing only a low-level advisory position, rather than the assistant cabinet status he has been seeking, with a focus on the federal and California departments of education, while working at the Hoover Institution. The War on Terror changed everything, including for Bill. There was now an important connection (for the Empire) between the Department of Education and the Pentagon. Bill, with his unrivaled expertise in foreign affairs, soon became a more valuable asset.

In August 2003, Hoover announced that Bill was appointed senior adviser to the Iraqi Ministry of Education. Actually, he would be working for the Pentagon via the Coalition Provisional Authority. Bill returned last month to Hoover as a hero, with his political future much brighter. In today’s article in the Wall Street Journal, Bill describes how successful the Pentagon has been at restoring public eduation in Iraq.

When Bill ran for Congress in 1982, he called for withdrawal of all US forces from around the world. He even made a point of calling for the abolition of the Marine Corps, in a challenge to his opponent, noted antiwar Republican (and ex-Marine) Paul McClosky.

I don’t know when Bill became pro-war, but I understand that he was a strong advocate of the invasion of Iraq, egging on the Stanford College Republicans to support the war.

Is Murray Rothbard rolling over in his grave?

This week we begin switching over to our new look. Eventually, we will also have better archive searching as our database is built.

Please let us know what you think, and let us know about any problems or suggestions you have for us as we conduct the changeover. Please write to me.

Attention Netscape 4.x users: We know that the formatting features do not work well in Netscape 4.9 and earlier. You will still be able to navigate, but we suggest that you upgrade to a later browser. With only about 1.5% of users, you will find that your browser will work with less and less sites.