Whatever your feelings about President Barack Obama, you’ll have to agree that he tries to do the right thing. It’s not his fault that the Republicans have conspired to destroy his Presidency by creating gridlock in Congress. Republican candidate Mitt Romney, on the other hand, embodies everything that’s wrong with our political system. He’s a liar and a phony who will sell out to special interests at the drop of a dollar bill. A vote for Romney is a vote for the policies of George W. Bush, the man who created the mess we’re in.

President Obama is trying to solve the problems Dubya created. If you vote with your brains now, it will solve the problem with your pocketbook later. Don’t turn back the clock.

Larry Flynt and HUSTLER Magazine announce a cash offer of up to $1 Million for information about Mitt Romney’s unreleased tax returns and/or details of his offshore assets, bank accounts, and business partnerships. What is he hiding?

See details in the ad published in The Washington Post, USA Today, Bermuda Sun and Handelszeitung:

With polls showing that 50% of Americans favor the legalization of marijuana, why aren’t steps being taken to make that a reality? Blame those that have the most to lose from legal weed: the pharmaceutical, alcohol and prison industries. Pharmaceutical companies don’t want people turning to pot for pain relief because it would mean fewer customers buying prescription medications. Brewers and distillers don’t want the competition either. With mounting scientific evidence that pot is safer than alcohol, legal marijuana would clearly put a major dent in the booze business’s profits. Private, for-profit prisons only make money if they’re filled to capacity, and that means locking up weed growers and pot smokers.

I have no way of knowing with certainty what really transpired in Sanford, Florida, between Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman on that fateful night of February 26, 2012, although it appears Zimmerman was out looking for trouble. However, I can say with certainty that the Stand Your Ground law signed by Florida Governor Jeb Bush back in 2005 has been nothing but a prescription for disaster.

Essentially the statute allows any licensed gun owner to shoot someone if he or she feels “reasonably” threatened by that person—even if that person is unarmed. In effect, this has turned the entire state of Florida into the Wild West, where deadly shootouts were once commonplace. Already 200 people in Florida have been killed as a result of the Stand Your Ground law. According to press reports, many of the victims were unarmed.

Most disturbing, 25 other states have followed Florida’s example by passing similar laws. Is this really the America we want? I don’t think so.

Incredible as it might seem, the Republicans want to turn the clock back to 1937, when contraception was still illegal in this country. That’s what will happen if Personhood USA and several other groups have their way. They are placing—on numerous state ballots—a proposed constitutional amendment declaring that life begins at conception. If passed, this measure not only would likely ban abortions under virtually any circumstances (including rape and incest), but it would also ban birth control methods like the IUD and Plan B emergency contraceptive. Even the Pill could be history.

Worse still, the amendment would prevent married women from conceiving children via in vitro fertilization. The Personhood Amendment will be up for a vote in at least 12 states. Presidential hopefuls Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul have all signed a pledge supporting it. Mitt Romney didn’t sign but has agreed that life begins at conception, the basis of the anti choice measure.

I don’t believe there’s any way the American people will let the GOP get away with this. If the Republicans aren’t careful, they will sow the seeds of their own destruction.

In New Year’s Eve 2011, President Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act into law. This bill further erodes our civil liberties by allowing the President to indefinitely detain—hold without legal counsel—anyone he declares to be a terrorist, including American citizens. Even though President Obama, in a signing statement, claimed he would never use this power, he now has that ability. And so will any future President.

Back in 1945, at the end of World War II, American journalist Milton Mayer went to Germany to find out why the Nazis had been allowed to destroy that country’s civil liberties. One of the Germans Mayer interviewed for his book They Thought They Were Free explained it like this: “To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it…each step so small, so inconsequential, so well explained…one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.”

So I ask you: Regarding the gradual erosion of America’s civil liberties, how high is the corn in the field?

Los Angeles, CA – May 24, 2012 – In response to the recent press surrounding the publishing of an Ad Parody featuring S.E. Cupp, Hustler Founder Larry Flynt offers the following statement:

“As a result of our publishing an ad parody of political pundit S.E. Cupp that depicted her having oral sex, the prudish and delusional right wing has accused me and my magazine of being sexist and waging a war on women,” says Mr. Flynt. “That’s absurd. The picture was clearly labeled as satire. It was intended as humorous commentary about her politics. We stated that no such image of Ms. Cupp actually exists. Secondly, the feature, which we run every month, has previously depicted such male luminaries as Mario Cuomo, Dan Rather and, most recently, my friend Bill Maher. How misogynistic or sexist is that?”

Mr. Flynt Continues:

“The ad parody was protected free speech as decided by unanimous decision by the Supreme Court in 1988, Flynt v. Falwell, which afforded parody protection under the First Amendment. So critics, get a life. Find another horse to beat.
We don’t know anything about Ms. Cupp’s personal life, but we do know that oral sex is practiced by the majority of adult Americans, both male and female. The fact that the picture of Ms. Cupp has generated so much flap says more about the sexual repression of the American people than it does anything else. Oral sex is a normal and healthy practice.”

Beverly Hills, CA – May 1, 2012 – Hustler Magazine and its publisher, Larry Flynt, today achieved another victory in defense of the First Amendment. In a unanimous decision by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, the court threw out a jury award of punitive damages in a lawsuit brought by Maureen Toffoloni, the mother of Nancy Benoit, the murdered wife of professional wrestler Chris Benoit. The lawsuit alleged that in publishing nude photographs of Ms. Benoit as part of an article about her murder, Hustler violated her right of publicity.

At trial in an Atlanta federal court, the jury awarded Ms. Benoit’s estate approximately $19.6 million in punitive damages for Hustler’s publication of Benoit’s images. The trial judge reduced that amount to the Georgia statutory maximum of $250,000, which the court of appeals decision vacated.

On appeal, Hustler argued that even if the nude photographs were not newsworthy, Flynt and his staff honestly believed that their publication was newsworthy and protected by the First Amendment. As a result, any award of punitive damages was unjustified. In agreeing with Hustler, the 11th Circuit panel found that Ms. Toffoloni had failed to refute the testimony of numerous witnesses establishing that Hustler’s staff honestly believed in the newsworthiness of the images, and that “no reasonable jury could find by clear and convincing evidence that punitive damages were warranted.”

Come meet Larry Flynt for his book signing tour of One Nation Under Sex!

He will be appearing at the Hustler Hollywood stores in the following cities:
NEW ORLEANS, LA: June 21
FT. LAUDERDALE, FL: June 22
NASHVILLE, TN: June 23
CINCINNATI, OH: June 24
MONROE, OH: June 25
LEXINGTON, KY: June 26
ST. LOUIS, MO: June 27
SAN DIEGO, CA: July 12
TACOMA, WA: July 14

All appearances start at 7pm.
The first 25 guests receive a free gift bag!

For location details and directions visit www.HustlerStore.com

It started when a bunch of college kids, responding to a tweet, descended on Wall Street. They stayed, and the crowd grew. Now there are thousands of them, and they’re not just in New York City anymore. Nor is the movement still limited to undergrads.

In a nation where 1% of the population controls almost half of the wealth, these protesters have chosen to call themselves the 99 Percent. They are the working class, the poor, the disenfranchised. They represent everyone excluded from a political process that has been hijacked by corporations and multimillionaires. The 99 Percent want their government back.

This looks and feels like something different. It feels organic. It reminds me of the 1960s’ antiwar movement. A long-simmering undercurrent of unrest in our country is now bubbling to the surface. Our politicians ignore this movement at their peril. As Bob Dylan said, “The times they are a-changin’.”