Indeed, with the continued proliferation of additional sources of information and programming, including satellite broadcasting and the Internet, the need for the Fairness Doctrine has lessened even further since 1987.”

Liberal efforts to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine are “completely on track,” and Democrats intend to push for the measure by linking talk radio to “hate crimes,” according to a conservative media analyst.

The Internal Revenue Service has lost a lawyer’s challenge in front of a jury to prove a constitutional foundation for the nation’s income tax, and the victorious attorney now is setting his sights higher.

“I think now people are beginning to realize that this has got to be the largest fraud, backed up by intimidation and extortion and by the sheer force of taking peoples property and hard-earned money without any lawful authorization whatsoever,” lawyer Tom Cryer told WND just days after a jury in Louisiana acquitted him of two criminal tax counts.

A team of inspectors from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives fled an Idaho gun shop where they were inspecting sales records when they learned their actions were being recorded on a blog.

[The federal agency] notifies the court than an inspection of Red’s Trading Post … was initiated on July 17, 2007. The inspection was suspended due to the threat to the inspectors’ safety created by Ryan Horsley, the Manager of Red’s,” the court filing said. The filing documented how some unidentified person had taken pictures of the inspectors at work.

“At about this time, Supervisor Young’s assistant from the Spokane office contacted her and advised that Mr. Horsley had updated his internet blog (http://redstradingpost.blogspot.com/) to include the information that ATF, and Supervisor Young personally, was at the store conducting an inspection,” the filing said. So Young contacted others.

“The Director of Industry Operations, Richard Van Loan, agreed with Supervisor Young’s assessment that the photographing of the rental car used by ATF personnel, coupled with the instantaneous posting on the internet of ATF’s presence … posed a credible threat to their safety and was designed to harass and intimidate,” the court filing said.

July 23 (Bloomberg) — The $100-a-barrel oil that Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said would prevail by 2009 may be only a few months away.

Jeffrey Currie, a London-based commodity analyst at the world’s biggest securities firm, says $95 crude is likely this year unless OPEC unexpectedly increases production, and declining inventories are raising the chances for $100 oil. Jeff Rubin at CIBC World Markets predicts $100 a barrel as soon as next year.

“We’re only a headline of significance away from $100 oil,” said John Kilduff, an analyst in the New York office of futures broker Man Financial Inc. “The unrelenting pressure of increased demand has left the market a coiled spring.” New disruptions of Nigerian or Iraqi supplies, or any military strike against Iran, might trigger the rise, Kilduff said in a July 20 interview.

In fact, the exact opposite is true: The only solution for high petroleum prices are even higher petroleum prices. If crude oil is cheap, there is no investment in other energy sources and less effort is made to conserve, thus eventually guaranteeing acute shortages and even higher prices than today.

That is the paradoxical truth that has paralyzed Western governments since the oil-price explosion of 1999. The rise of petroleum prices from less than $10 a barrel to more than $30 threatens to trigger a wave of inflation that would inevitably be followed by sharp increases in interest rates, which would in turn cause a recession. That would end the miraculously long U.S. boom in the worst possible way.

There appears to be only one solution to this catastrophe: a nasty, pernicious and painful gas tax that will drive gasoline prices to heretofore unseen levels. Take the tax revenue squeezed from every red-blooded American’s fuel consumption and roll it into alternative energy research and technology. Fast-track the whole damn project. Forget pathetic attempts at lowering emissions by 20 or 25% by 2020. The game will be over. Do it now. It will hurt, but in the long run we will all breathe easier.