Good morning fellow libertarians. Sunday morning finds us awaiting the opening of our business session in order to choose our presidential candidate. From the amount of buttons and signs being worn, to me, it looks like the current frontrunners are Mr. Barr, Ms. Ruwart, Mr. Root, and Mr. Gravel.

A recap of Saturdays business session included the institution of a new platform for the national party. At the 2006 convention a  large part of the platform was deleted and yesterday saw the completion of that mission by the reform caucas. Our own Alicia Mattson, Chair of the Platform Committee, spearheaded the move to institute the directional principle platform via the submitted majority report. There was a minority report brought to the floor, but problems arose quickly with the minority report planks trying to match up with the majority report. The body determined in short order that the majority report would rule the day. Once the first vote or two went against the minority report it was realized by all that the minority report did not have the needed support from the delegates and was quickly withdrawn. The new platform does away with the older format and in essence shortens the entire document. Near the end of the business session all of the remaining older planks were killed including the sections on the right to bear arms and the drug war. There was alot of resistance to removing these last few planks but eventually it was the will of the body to do away with these in favor of shorter, less defined planks that will , in the opinion of the reform caucas, help make the lp a “big tent” party.

In regional news there was an exciting turn of events for the weekend. It appears that quite a few of the delegates from the florida state party wound up with the wrong room number for the meeting to determine our LNC reps. The meeting took place on Friday. After several meetings between state chairs it was determined that there would not be a revote for the lnc positions and the Florida delegation pulled there participation with region 4. In essence, this move then left our region without enough lp members to be declared a super region and now there will only be one LNC rep and one alternate for region 4. Our new region representative will be Stewart Flood ( South Carolina) and the alternate will be our own Heather Scott. It is assumed that Mr. Barr may now seek an at-large lnc seat on Monday. We at the lptn wish the best of luck to Florida and their decision is respected. 

Saturday night concluded with the presidential debate which was carried live on c-span. Saturday’s delegate count was around the 560 mark so that meant that each of the presidential contenders were required to collect around 56 tokens in order to participate in the debate. Those that met this criteria were Mr. Phillies, Mr. Jingozian, Ms. Ruwart, Mr. Barr, Mr. Gravel, Mr. Root, and Mr. Kubby. The debate was lively and in my opinion there was no clear winner. The nomination process on Sunday should be interesting. Well that is it for now, I will check back in later.