Ari Armstrong's FreeColorado.com has won the highest honor in this year's Samuel Adams Alliance Sammie Awards competition, the "Modern-Day Sam Adams Award." Armstrong's award, according to the Sam Adams Alliance, is significant and noteworthy:
Armstrong wins the $10,000 prize for his relentless—and ubiquitous—defense of free markets and individual liberty in the state of Colorado. He is author of FreeColorado.com and a columnist for the Grand Junction Free Press. In the last year, Ari’s work has been published in the Rocky Mountain News, Colorado Springs Gazette, Denver Post Online, and featured on numerous radio and television news programs.
According to FreeColorado.com, the Sammie Awards will be presented later this month by luminaries of the pro-freedom movement:
Armstrong will receive his "Golden Sammie" April 18 in Chicago. Presenting the awards will be Michelle Malkin, Stephen Moore, John Fund, Jonathan Hoenig, Mary Katharine, and Joe "The Plumber" Wurzelbacher.
In his entry, Armstrong summarized his "food stamp" diets of 2007 and 2009, his fight against political correctness (as with the "bitch slap" controversy of 2008), his work on health policy, and various other projects.
Armstrong said, "I congratulate the other winners and look forward to learning from their example. I thank the Sam Adams Alliance for recognizing the important work for liberty done at the regional level. Finally, I thank my fellow liberty activists in Colorado — especially my wife — for teaching me so much about liberty, individual rights, and free markets, and how to advocate those values through intellectual activism. This award is for you, my brothers and sisters in liberty."
Armstrong founded FreeColorado.com (then co-freedom.com) in late 1998, before the term "blog" had been coined.
My heartiest congratulations to Ari, a most deserving recipient of this award. He is an intelligent, articulate, and passionate advocate of the freedom philosophy, and I'm proud to have worked with him in the Libertarian Party of Colorado in the years that I was active in that organization. Bravo, Ari!