My vote is mine...it's all the power I have...and it's worth it's weight in gold.

The next time someone tells you that you are 'throwing your vote away', ask them why they would vote for a candidate who did not reflect their views of which direction the nation should be oriented? Ask them the last time a sitting US President [or even a candidate] pursued a policy of restraining the Federal Government to it's enumerated powers....or where he or she placed the sovereignty of the individual above the consolidation of state power? Or weighed the liberty of the citizenry against the egregious waste of money [and many times, lives] in enforcing prohibitions against victimless crimes? Or where they didn't engage in the predictable and obsequious pomp and ceremony of religious deference? Or where they didn't worship at the altar of Exceptionalism.....use military power wantonly...and have blow-back as their [or their successor's] prize?

When was the last time your candidate stood for what was right instead of standing for the gaining and/or maintaining of political power for their chosen party?

Whether or not I vote for the Libertarian Party candidate or the snowballs-chance-in-hell campaign of Gary Johnson, you can be damned sure that I'm not throwing MY vote away. I'm not settling. My vote must earned, it will not be bartered away for the lesser of two evils. That more people don't vote their conscience is exactly why we are continually burdened  with the same cast of statist, centrist and uninspiring empty suits...whether they reside at 1600 Pennsylvania or on Main Street.

That's why I'm still intrigued by Gary Johnson. He won't get the nomination....but he can broaden the debate. He can force some inclusion of the principles that this nation preaches, yet all too seldom practices.

Gary Johnson, a former governor of New Mexico and a likely candidate for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, is talking about hookers.

"It's never been a consideration that I would enlist the services of a prostitute, myself personally," he says. "But if I were to do that, where would I want to enlist that service? Well, it would probably be in Nevada, where it's legal, because it would be safe." 

When's the last time Mitt Romney engaged in a hypothetical like that? But Johnson doesn't even blink. It's not like this is the only topic on which he risks offending the GOP's base. He also favors legalizing pot, supports abortion rights, and opposes the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Oh, and he doesn't go to church. "I don't think you'll ever hear me invoking God in anything I do," he tells me. 

It is an incongruous foundation from which to seek the mantle of a party whose last president, George W. Bush, famously claimed that his favorite philosopher is Jesus Christ. 

Johnson faces other obstacles, too. Aside from his low name-recognition, he has no discernible power base. After eight years on the job in Santa Fe, he was term-limited out of the governorship at the end of 2002 and stepped back from public life thereafter. Fundraising will be arduous. And his ambitions are the object of outright scorn from the Washington establishment.

Salon