John Stossel: Complex Societies Need Simple Laws

End the rule-making orgy.    “If you have 10,000 regulations,” Winston Churchill said, “you destroy all respect for law.” He was right. But Churchill never imagined a government that would add 10,000 year after year. That’s what we have in America. We have 160,000 pages of rules from the feds alone. States and localities have probably doubled that. We have so many ... MORE

John Merline: The Myth Of Scare Oil In The U.S.

We have 60 times more than Obama claims. When he was running for the Oval Office four years ago amid $4-a-gallon gasoline prices, then-Sen. Barack Obama dismissed the idea of expanded oil production as a way to relieve the pain at the pump. "Even if you opened up every square inch of our land and our coasts to drilling," he said. "America still has only ... MORE

VIDEO: Thomas Sowell - Race And Gender Gaps

James Rosen: New Study Finds Obama 'No. 1 Regulator'

The supreme commander of regulation nation.   One week after he signed Executive Order No. 13563, mandating that all executive branch agencies “identify and consider regulatory approaches that reduce burdens,” President Obama delivered his 2011 State of the Union Address: “When we find rules that put an unnecessary burden on businesses, we will fix them,”    ... MORE

Can The Secret Service Tell You To Shut Up?

by Andrew Napolitano.       The First Amendment to the Constitution prohibits the government from  infringing upon the freedom of speech, the freedom of association and the freedom to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Speech is language and other forms of expression' and association and petition connote physical presence in reasonable   ... MORE

VIDEO: Real Estate Agents And You


Does your real estate agent agent have your best interests in mind?

Jeffrey A Singer: The Coming Medical Ethics Crisis

The medical profession and your health put at risk. For the past several years, the medical profession has been undergoing a disturbing transformation. The process was begun by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in an effort to control exploding Medicare costs, and was accelerated by the passage of the Patient Protection and    ... MORE

MarketWatch: Liberty Guard Files Lawsuit Against TSA

Civil liberties vs. TSA intrusive searches. Liberty Guard, a national, non-profit, non-partisan organization with more than 4,000 members dedicated to protecting and defending individual liberty, has filed suit in the Superior Court for the Eastern District of Virginia against the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and the United States Department of .. MORE

Washington Times: Global Warming Greed

641 programs throw tax dollars at windmills/solar panels. It’s only now becoming clear how many people have become rich thanks to the global-warming scare. Politicians from both parties have been so afraid of being labeled a “denier” that they’ll vote for any piece of legislation bearing the trendy green label. The numbers are adding up fast. ... MORE

Matthew Holliday: Capitalism Distorted By 3 Myths

Did you really think America had a free market? The confluence of the 2012 presidential election, high unemployment, the Occupy Wall Street movement and high gas prices has led to an intensifying debate over the economic future of the U.S. In turn this has lead to many misunderstandings and mischaracterizations of how free markets  ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Conspiracy Theories


Why are so many Americans eager to embrace conspiracy theories?

Emily DiCicco: NYPD Surveillance And American Principles

Don’t mention that! Remember to edit out those words!   Don’t discuss that event! Under authoritative governments, citizens are forced to censor not only their emails, but their daily conversations, for fear of government action against them. Unfortunately, for students at 15 northeastern universities, including the University of Pennsylvania  ... MORE

Steve Forbes: Chuck Schumer, Know-Nothing Senator

The wind behind an absurd approach to oil policy.  Chuck Schumer (Democrat–New York), the headline-loving U.S. senator who hasn’t disguised his ambition to succeed Harry Reid as the Senate Majority Leader, garnered some press attention the other day by calling on Saudi Arabia to boost its oil production in order to help suppress a politically   ... MORE

Sandra Fabry: EPA Is Flexing Its Job-Killing Muscle

Where environmentalism isn't a 'spectator sport.'    Lisa Jackson’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is at it again. Already having been called out on flawed science for its ground water studies in Wyoming in the fight over the practice of hydraulic fracturing, the agency is now clashing with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, which charges the EPA with ... MORE

Chuck DeVore: Texas Vs. California

Why many go from the Golden State to the Lone Star State. One in five Americans calls California or Texas home. The two most populous states have a lot in common: a long coast, a sunny climate, a diverse population, plenty of oil in the ground, and Mexico to the south. Where they diverge is in their governance. For six years ending in 2010, I      ... MORE

Philip Klein: CBO Estimates ObamaCare Will Cost $1.76T

Cost estimate already twice the original forecast.    President Obama's national health care law will cost $1.76 trillion over a decade, according to a new projection released today by the Congressional Budget Office, rather than the $940 billion forecast when it was signed into law. Democrats employed many accounting tricks when they were ... MORE

Ronald Bailey: Newt's Despicable Gasoline Price Promise

Newt imagines he can control the law of supply and demand. Former House Speaker and current Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich has promised voters that gasoline will be $2.50 per gallon after he becomes president. In fact, Gingrich thinks he may even be able to get the price down to $1.20 per gallon. "His promise to go the moon is     ... MORE

VIDEO: Fox News: Death By Government (without a trial)

John W. Whitehead: NYC, Prototype Of A Police State?

You have more to fear than fear itself. “I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh biggest army in the world. I have my own State Department, much to Foggy Bottom’s annoyance. We have the United Nations in New York, and so we have an entree into the diplomatic world that Washington does not have.”—Michael Bloomberg, Mayor  ... MORE

Jeff Greenlee: We Are All Libertarians Now

The dark, dirty (but not-so-little) secret.   Less than two months after Barack Obama's inauguration, Newsweek ran a cover story written by its editor, Jon Meacham, with the title "We Are All Socialists Now." The giddy faux-journalists in the predominately leftist media were still intoxicated from the Novermber 2008 victory parties, achieved after easily  ... MORE

VIDEO: IRS War To Control Tax Preparation Licenses

Yaron Brooks & Don Watkins: The "On Your Own" Economy


A self-directing free man or society's servant. “From cradle to grave.” So goes the motto of the entitlement state, whose creator Otto von Bismarck said: “Give the working-man the right to work as long as he is healthy, assure him care when he is sick, assure him maintenance when he is old.” Are you bothered by the thought of government embedding ... MORE

Sheldon Richman: Adam Smith Vs. Crony Capitalism

Smith's suspicions about business people were well-founded. I admit it: I like Adam Smith. His perceptiveness never fails to impress. True, he didn’t foresee the marginal revolution that Carl Menger would launch a century later (with, less significantly in my view, Jevons and Walras), but give the guy a break. The Wealth of Nations is a great piece of work.   ... MORE

Mike Tuttle: Rush Limbaugh And Freedom Of Speech

Are his right being trampled?  After Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a slut, the Internet exploded with comments from people taking one side or another. And, while Limbaugh’s faithful “mega-dittoes” crowd could be counted upon to defend their champion, it was the “strange bedfellows” that were made that confounded many. Bill Maher came out in open   ... MORE

Obama Regulations Cost Americans $46 Billion A Year

by Paul Bedard. Some 10,215 new federal regulations from the Obama administration are costing consumers, businesses and the economy overall $46 billion annually, more than five times the regulatory price tag of former President Bush in his first three years in office. Worse: just implementing those regulations had a one-time additional cost of $11 billion   ... MORE

VIDEO: Derrick Bell And A Revenge Society

Walter E. Williams: Compliant Americans

A nation of sheep. Last month, at a Raeford, N.C., elementary school, a teacher confiscated the lunch of a 5-year-old girl because it didn't meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines and therefore was deemed nonnutritious. She replaced it with school cafeteria chicken nuggets. The girl's home-prepared lunch was nutritious; it consisted of a turkey ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: The Big Hoax

What political spin and pious euphemisms don't tell us.   There have been many frauds of historic proportions — for example, the financial pyramid scheme for which Charles Ponzi was sent to prison in the 1920s, and for which Franklin D. Roosevelt was praised in the 1930s, when he called it Social Security. In our own times, Bernie Madoff's hoax has made  ... MORE

VIDEO: What You Should Know About Drug Prohibition

Bill Dunkelberg: Mountain Of Regulations Deters Jobs

Government's economic obstacle course. Hiring the first employee can be so costly that many entrepreneurs never do it. They prefer to stay in solo businesses, which number more than 10 million in the United States. A brief summary of the regulations involved makes it clear why many decide not to become an "employer." My electrician refuses to have an   ... MORE

Pam Bondi: Feds Power Grab Must Be Stopped

If only we had a potent Constitution. Florida and more than half of the states in the nation have challenged the federal government’s Affordable Care Act because it deprives Americans of their individual liberty and violates the United States Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether to enforce constitutional limitations on ... MORE

Peter Van Buren: Eric Holder And The End Of Rights

America gives away its freedom.   Historians of the future, if they are not imprisoned for saying so, will trace the end of America's democratic experiment to the fearful days immediately after 9/11, what Bruce Springsteen called the days of the empty sky, when frightened, small men named Bush and Cheney made the first decisions to abandon the  ... MORE

Katherine Mangu-Ward: Feds Pay $10M For $50 Light Bulb

Government's attempt to provide cheap green lighting. In 2007, when Congress passed legislation that would gradually ban old school incandescent light bulbs, they added a carrot to the pile of sticks: A $10 million dollar prize to encourage the development of a cheap, green, domestic light bulb to replace the dearly departed Edison model.  ... MORE

VIDEO: Williams With Sowell - Envy As A Political Tool

Michael Hurd: The Productive And The Unproductive


There are only two classes in a free society.   Mitt Romney claims that his tax cuts will stimulate the economy and pay off the deficit. If history is any guide, this won’t be true. Ronald Reagan cut taxes in the 1980s. For a time, the economy improved and the government gained more revenue. Congress spent that money and expanded the deficit. George W. Bush ... MORE

Dean Obeidallah: The Government Is Reading Your Tweets

A curse called Homeland Security. There were once seven words you couldn't say on television, as the late comedy icon George Carlin famously lampooned 40 years ago. Now it appears there are more than 500 words you shouldn't say on Twitter or Facebook unless you want to be flagged by the Department of Homeland Security. There is a surveillance program ... MORE

VIDEO: Penn Jillette: Daylight Savings Time


Strong language warning       A classic episode from 2009.

Ethan A. Huff: Obama Turns Crony Capitalism Green

Firms burn through tax dollars, give bonuses, go bankrupt. The Obama Administration's green energy development program, which has leveraged billions of taxpayer dollars into high-risk green energy startups, is rapidly turning out to be one of the biggest financial scams on the American people in recent history. A new investigative report by ABC News ... MORE

TPM: State Nullification Movements Move Forward

Arizona Senate passes bill to create nullification jury. After being shot down earlier this week, the Arizona State Senate revived and successfully passed a bill that would create a mechanism for the state to nullify federal laws. As TPM has reported, Senate Bill 1433 would create a 12-person “Joint Legislative Committee on Nullification of Federal Laws ... MORE