Peter Morici: Discouraged Americans Quit Looking To Work

Despair is setting in.    The economy added 115,000 jobs in April -- much less than expected and not enough to keep up with natural population growth. The unemployment rate fell to 8.1% because another 522,000 adults quit looking for work and are no longer counted. In the weakest recovery since the Great Depression more than four-fifths of the reduction in ... MORE

R B Parrish: Supremes Uphold Your Right To Be Framed

"A prosecutor ... may receive absolute immunity from suit for acts violating the Constitution in order to advance important societal values." -Elena Kagan, Solicitor General, 2009      After the Civil War, Congress passed several civil rights laws, including one allowing anyone whose said rights had been violated to sue those       ... MORE

VIDEO: Thomas Sowell - Stimulus Or Sedative?

Darlene Storm: Your Car May Used Against You In Court

There is a little black box spy hiding in your vehicle. When you are car shopping, how many times has a salesman pitched the 15 to 30 specific data elements constantly being collected by the car's black box as you drive? Probably never, but there's electronic data everywhere and that includes your car collecting digital evidence which might turn into the star witness ... MORE

John Stossel: Keeping Nature Exactly As It Is...Forever

So human activity may be restricted endlessly. The human brain is torn between simple intuition and the more complex hard work of figuring out the unintended consequences of any policy. Who doesn’t like thinking about trees and greenery and happy animals? Who doesn’t want to see steps taken to protect those things, all else being equal? But ... MORE

VIDEO: Is Price Gouging Immoral? Should It Be Illegal?

Josh Barro: The TSA's Fake Liquids Rule

Bring your liquids, the odds are with you. Since the TSA inflicts so many new and arbitrary policies on travelers, for the last couple of years I’ve been applying one of my own: I don’t take my liquids out of my carry-on bag. And in nearly all instances, I’m finding that the TSA doesn’t care. Since the start of 2011, I’ve cleared security 47 times at U.S. airports. And   ... MORE

Charles T Drevna: War On Fossil Fuels Continues

'Crucify' does reflect Obama's warped energy policy.   The April 30 resignation of Environmental Protection Agency Regional Administrator Al Armendariz after he was caught telling the truth - that he wants to “crucify” companies he claims don’t comply with environmental laws - will do nothing to slow the Obama          ... MORE

Michael S Rozeff: America Invaded By Its Police State

Americans hand over liberty at every turn. I ask you, how illogical is it to argue that because you might be a terror threat to others, the police have a right to stop you on the road, or search you in a bus terminal, or search you in an airport, train station, supermarket, shopping mall, sports event, night club, or simply anywhere on any street at any time or in your home where  ... MORE

Obama & Democrats Garner Communist Party Donations

Toto pulls the political curtain on the Democrats' agenda.  The Communist Party USA isn’t always happy with the Democrats, but in the 2012 election, its chairman says, the best bet for advancing the Party’s goals is to back Barack Obama. In a report called “Defeating the Rightwing on the Road to Socialism” delivered to the CPUSA annual conference, Party ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - A Framework For Job Creation

Police Roadblocks Will Celebrate Mexican Holiday

Cinco de Mayo is prime time for DUI checkpoints.    For the first time in five years, Cinco de Mayo falls on a weekend. That's why many law enforcement agencies are setting up DUI checkpoints beginning Friday night, or even earlier. But stationary checkpoints aren't the only tool police will be using to make sure drivers are sober this weekend. But stationary ... MORE

Katie Kieffer: Why Doctors Hate ObamaCare

Your doctor won’t tell you this when you’re sitting in his office, so I will: He hates Obamacare. It’s time you know why your doctor is concerned about Obamacare. Doctors already live in constant fear of malpractice lawsuits. The last thing they want to do is stick their necks out and publicly attack Obamacare. Doctors also do not have an effective D.C. lobby ... MORE

VIDEO: Social Security vs. Private Retirement

CIPSA Lacks Protections For Individual Rights

by Sharon Bradford Franklin.    Congress should not pass CISPA. Although a carefully crafted information-sharing program that includes robust privacy safeguards could be an effective approach to cybersecurity, CISPA lacks such protections for individual rights. CISPA would appropriately authorize the federal government to share cyberthreat intelligence ... MORE

Larry Bell: EPA Has Petroleum Processors Over A Barrel

Costly regulations produce crude, unrefined results. Can we expect to see lots of Washington EPA bureaucrats on bicycles this summer? An estimated 50% of East Coast refinery capacity is predicted to shut down in June thanks to EPA regulatory restrictions on new refinery plant construction and upgrades, along with others that discourage ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: A Cynical Process

Power brokers with a narrow cause.   Labor unions, like the United Nations, are all too often judged by what they are envisioned as being — not by what they actually are or what they actually do. Many people, who do not look beyond the vision or the rhetoric to the reality, still think of labor unions as protectors of working people from their employers. And  ... MORE

Jacob Sullum: Twenty Years For Standing Her Own Ground

A harsh penalty for non-submission. "I got five baby mammas, and I put my hands on every last one of them except for one," Rico Gray confessed during a November 2010 deposition. "The way I was with women ... they had to walk on eggshells around me." He recalled punching women in the face, shoving them, choking them and tossing them out the door   ... MORE

VIDEO: FOX NEWS - Watching You While You Watch

Debra J Saunders: S.F.'s Political Correctness Runs Amok

Common sense again bruised in the city by the bay.  Former San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Brown is appalled. He didn't vote for Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, and he isn't his biggest fan. But when he considers the prosecution of Mirkarimi for bruising his wife's arm during a New Year's Eve argument, he is appalled. People lose sight of what types of cases  ... MORE

Gary Johnson And The End Of Marijuana As A Fringe Issue

from the Atlantic. Nominated for a Supreme Court seat in 1987, Douglas H. Ginsburg withdrew from consideration when it was revealed that he'd tried marijuana decades earlier as a student. Five years later, America elected Bill Clinton to the presidency despite his admission that he tried marijuana. The taboo against the drug was still powerful enough that he hedged his ... MORE

VIDEO: The April 2012 Nanny Of The Month


Busybodies minding YOUR own business.

Arthur Brooks: A Moral Case For Free Enterprise

Excerpted and adapted from "The Road to Freedom." Liberals often accuse conservatives of being obsessed by morality. But the truth is, many conservatives are reluctant to talk about morals or make a moral case for anything in politics and policy. They're willing to talk about principles, perhaps. Values, maybe. But morals? That evokes unpleasant    ... MORE

Stephen Lendman: Police State Harshness


The unleashing of unchecked police powers.    On April 26, the House passed HR 3523: Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) of 2011 248 - 168. A companion S. 2105: Cybersecurity Act of 2012 awaits Senate consideration. Obama promised a veto if passes. He lied. He does it repeatedly. The Senate will pass or defeat what he wants.     ... MORE

Jacob Sullum: Every Move You Make

How new surveillance technologies threaten privacy.   “If you win this case,” Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer told the Obama administration’s lawyer during oral argument in U.S. v. Jones last fall, “there is nothing to prevent the police or the government from monitoring 24 hours a day the public movement of every citizen of the United  ... MORE

Walter E. Williams: America's Two-Faced Liberals

Behind the facade. President Barack Obama and Wall Street occupiers, along with their allies in the mainstream media and on college campuses, have maintained an ongoing attack on high-income earners, people they call 1 percenters. Listening to their deceitful demagoguery, you would naturally think of them as 99 percenters, but you'd be dead-wrong. Last week, ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Makers Vs Takers

Jessica Meyers/Jonathan Allen: TSA's Groping Problem

Embattled TSA takes one hit after another.   TSA’s got a groping problem — physically and philosophically. In the past year, a former Miss America, a wrinkled Texas congressman and an angel-faced 4-year-old have accused Transportation Security Administration agents of harassing them. As if that wasn’t enough, the agency’s damaged brand took another  ... MORE

LA Times: Police Wait For FAA Clearance To Use Drones

Law enforcement salivates over prying eyes in the sky. Police departments across the country have bought inexpensive small drone aircraft with cameras to help track drug dealers, find missing children and locate wandering Alzheimer's patients, but federal rules designed to protect the nation's airspace have kept them grounded. That is about to change  ... MORE

VIDEO: Consumer Choice in Health Care

Kleiman/Caulkins/Hawken: Rethinking The War On Drugs

A policy that does far more harm than good.  "For every complex problem," H.L. Mencken wrote, "there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong." That is especially true of drug abuse and addiction. Indeed, the problem is so complex that it has produced not just one clear, simple, wrong solution but two: the "drug war" (prohibition plus massive,  ... MORE

Will Sondermann: Free Speech Is Still A Fundamental Right

There is no right not to be offended.   The First Amendment of the United States Constitution reads as follows: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government ... MORE

Star Parker: How To Keep The Poor Poor...

And blacks enslaved to government.   Media personality Tavis Smiley and Princeton philosophy professor Cornell West have just published their latest contribution to American poverty propaganda, “The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto.” The book should have a second subtitle: “How to keep the poor poor and blacks enslaved to government.” To the  ... MORE

Steve Chapman: A Bribery Ban Backfires

Choosing feeling good over doing good.  Until 1977, there was no country that criminalized the practice of bribery abroad. But that year, President Jimmy Carter signed a law making the United States the very first. In due course, this measure eliminated corruption from every nation where our corporations operate. Yes, it did—right after Carter got a ... MORE

VIDEO: David Henderson - Markets Breed Virtue

Brian Phillips: The Freedom To Choose

The essence of liberty is the freedom to choose.     Imagine the outcry that would occur if the government announced that manufacturers could only make one type of soda. Every soda manufacturer would be required to use the government’s formula, and Coke, Pepsi, Mountain Dew, 7-Up, along with every other soda, would become a relic of history. The     ... MORE

Chris Ladd: Who Still Supports The Drug War?

Politicians hide from the issue.    Last month Pat Robertson, televangelist and long-time icon of the religious right, announced that it's time to legalize marijuana. The firestorm of shock and indignation from all sides ... never materialized. Not a whimper. Who still supports our prohibition strategy in the War on Drugs? You won't find a single major political ... MORE

VIDEO: Houstonians Revolt Over TSA On Buses

Patrick Brennan: Public-Employee Unions Gone Wild

The expectation of retirement at 47. Terry List, a teacher in Saginaw Township, Mich., has a depressing lesson for her students: “I would not recommend to my pupils to become a teacher in Michigan.” What’s discouraging her? A proposed pension-reform bill in Michigan would derail her plans to retire — at age 47. After these rapacious reforms, List  ... MORE

Steven Greenhut: How Big Government Is Killing California

Bad destination for entrepreneurs, free spirits and dreamers. The new USC study pointing to a much-slower population growth rate in California has been greeted by demographers and urban planners as good news, in that it supposedly gives our state’s leaders a little breathing room to plan better for the future. The rate of growth has slowed to ... MORE