Think it’s a worker’s paradise at Occupy Wall Street? Guess again –there’s strife, dissent and violence. Two people who have been at Zuccotti Park from day one discuss how the internal order hasn’t worked for them.

Sage: I’m leaving today, because this is no longer safe. Like, I had somebody–

Q: I’m still recording.

Sage: Sure. I had somebody in our sanitation team take a swing at me. And then I had like three really calm, friendly individuals telling me that they–that they didn’t just take a swing at me. It was, like, I was just…

Channing: Yeah. I had beef with sanitation ’cause they took my s*** down. They took my, like tent thing down that I made.

Sage: Oh, sure, sure, I was just saying that.

Q: But yeah, yeah, all I–

Channing: Yeah, no–they took my stuff. They–I had like a little tarp tent at the end of the park. Their whole thing was they were trying to clean out some of the people that were doing, like, drugs and stuff. But they started with–

Q: Drugs?

Channing: Yeah. Oh, my God. But they started with my tent. And, like, they threw away my toiletries, my food, and, like, a bunch of papers I had, that were really important from the hospital. And then, like, I tried to get them to help me, like, rebuild the tent or something, and they’re like, “We didn’t do it, it wasn’t us,” and I’m like, “I saw you doing it.” Like, I got called from direct action because they doing it.

Q: But I’ve got–

Sage: Yeah, so–

Q: –let me get you to just finish that, because–

Sage: I’m just gonna say the same thing. I don’t call it corruption anymore, ’cause corruption is when a good thing goes bad. And what I think this is–people go, “Oh, they’re so stupid.” No, they’re not. They’re smart, for their purposes, which are not for this camp to function as a community. (more…)

Today the Institute for Justice filed opening briefs in our fourth case to appear before the U.S. Supreme Court.

IJ’s first trip to the high court came in 2002 and resulted in a landmark victory for school choice.  We also won our second U.S. Supreme Court case, defending the American ideals of economic liberty and unfettered interstate commerce by striking down a ban on the direct shipment of wine.

Our third case changed America forever.  A local government in Connecticut decided to bulldoze an entire neighborhood and hand the land over to a politically connected private developer.  The law was stacked against the property owners in favor of the powerful special interests.  IJ, defending the property owners, lost in a controversial 5-4 ruling.

This was the infamous Kelo case, and it resulted in an explosion of outrage and grassroots activism all across the country.  Ed Morrissey recently wrote at Hot Air that it arguably set “the stage for the all-out eruption of Tea Party activism a few years later.” This epic battle to protect private property rights, ultimately vindicated by grassroots activists just like you, is one that will never be forgotten:

And now, as children nationwide get ready to begin a new school year, the Institute for Justice is defending Arizona’s innovative scholarship tax-credit program before the highest court in the land.

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The always great John Kass in today’s Chicago Tribune:

Now the NAACP, an organization with a historic role in civil rights, seems to be taking Jackson’s path to irrelevancy.

At its national convention in Kansas City, Mo., this week, the NAACP offered a resolution condemning what they call “racist elements” in the anti-big government tea party movement.

“You must expel the bigots and racists in your ranks or take full responsibility for all of their actions,” NAACP President Benjamin Jealous said.

Let me hazard a guess here. Some critics of President Barack Obama don’t like him because he has black skin. They might invoke other issues, but the black skin thing bothers them.

Conversely, some Obama supporters like him because he’s black. They might talk about other issues, but it’s the black skin that compels them.

But for the NAACP to condemn the tea party as racist — and the point of the resolution was to put the libertarian movement on the political defensive — isn’t only wrong, it’s wrongheaded.

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And then, we drove down to DC…

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Read the full transcript and listen to the audio here.

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A famous community organizer once said, “The only way to upset the power structure in your communities is to goad them, confuse them, irritate them and, most of all, make them live by their own rules.  If you make them live by their own rules, you destroy them.” Impossible demands can irritate modern leftists in ways nothing else can, whether it’s by banning Lucky Charms cereal because it’s racist against Irish people, calling Planned Parenthood saying you want to donate money for black abortions in the name of Margaret Sanger, or making Sen. Snowe sign an oversized bailout check for a billion dollars to Amtrak, in her own office.

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The scenario we posed the ACORN Housing employees in Baltimore is due to the application of similar power tactics. We gave ACORN a taste of its own medicine.  ACORN was alleged to be thug-like, criminal, and nefarious.  This criminal behavior was evidenced by a video of Baltimore ACORN community organizers breaking the locks on foreclosed homes.  Instead of railing against their radicalism, it is best to bring out this type of radicalism. Hannah Giles and I took advantage of ACORN’s regard for thug criminality by posing the most ridiculous criminal scenario we could think of and seeing if they would comply–which they did without hesitation.

Additionally, instead of focusing on foreclosure itself, which has become seemingly as politicized as abortion, we focused on crimes more difficult for the left to defend: trafficking of young helpless girls and tax evasion. The first group represents the severely disadvantaged, the second a threat to the distribution of wealth. (more…)