Ronald Bailey: Separating Church And State Money

If religious institutions truly want to be left alone ....  “I don’t believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute,” Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum declared in a February 26 interview with ABC’s This Week. “What kind of country do we live in that says only people of nonfaith can come into the public ... MORE

F H Buckley: Meet The Flukes!

Too many Americans today are "born without a skin."   There’s a uniquely American ritual that has so far escaped the attention of cultural anthropologists. A group of people huddle, near a water cooler perhaps. One of them lowers his head, looks nervously from side to side, and then begins to speak softly, so that no one else might hear. You’ve   ... MORE

VIDEO: Milton Friedman - What If We Don't Cure Inflation?

Washington Times: The War On Teachers Unions

Romney seizes high ground on school choice. Parents would like to choose where their kids go to school, if they could. In a speech to the Latino Coalition’s Annual Economic Summit in Washington D.C., Mitt Romney laid out his case for choice-based education reform. “Here we are in the most prosperous nation, but millions of kids are getting a Third  ... MORE

Glenn Greewald: Obama's Warrantless Spying Fight

Wants reform-free power to eavesdrop without warrants. In 2006, The New York Times‘ James Risen and Eric Lichtblau won the Pulitzer Prize for their December, 2005 article revealing that the Bush administration was eavesdropping on the electronic communications of Americans without the warrants required by the FISA law (headline: “Officials Say U.S.  ... MORE

VIDEO: Does free enterprise hurt the poor?

John Stossel: Crony Capitalism Stifles Competition

Instinctively, we look for people's motives.   We need to know whom we can trust and whom we can't. We're especially skeptical of business because we know business wants our money. It took me too long to understand that business's desire for profit is a good thing. To get our money, businesses — if they can't look to the government for favors ... MORE

Kenric Ward: 'Repeal Amendment' Gets A Virginia Push

Self-defense from an unlimited federal government. Virginians are among the leaders pushing a Repeal Amendment that would give states the option to revoke federal laws or regulations. Touted by conservatives and constitutionalists as a tool to restore the balance of national and state governments, the amendment would enable states to repeal any ... MORE

This Memorial Day, Freedom Is Dying Before Our Very Eyes

by Andrew Napolitano.   What if Memorial Day reminds us of times when we had more freedom? What if freedom is dying right under our eyes? What if the memory of the past is more fulfilling than the reality of the present? What if the federal government could write any law, regulate any behavior and tax any event, no matter what the Constitution   ... MORE

Kyle Olson: Are We Slaves To The Government Class?

Public servants or public masters?    Over the past year, a lot of people have been talking about “the 1%” versus “the 99%.” But if you’re concerned about one class exploiting another for economic gain, that’s the wrong way to look at the problem. The protesters are right about one thing: there are gross class inequities in America. There is one class that  ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Reining In Regulation


A look at the "Reins Act" as a means of curbing America's regulatory monster.

Sarah Hulsenga: Romney To Greatly Expand School Choice

A serious proposal to improve American education. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Wednesday proposed a major change in the government's education policy that would tie federal funds to students and not schools and greatly expand school choice. "I'm going to expand parental choice in an unprecedented way," Romney says ... MORE

Eddy Dlfenbein: 100 Million Americans Without Jobs

The national unemployment rates gets lots of attention, and lately more attention has been paid to the workforce participation rate since more Americans have given up looking for a job, but we can also see that an astounding 100 million Americans don’t have jobs. Specifically, these are people who are part of the civilian over-16 non-institutional      ... MORE

VIDEO: 3 Absurd Reasons for Banning Drugs

David Harsanyi: Church Of The Holy Contraception

The new mandated societal imperative. Are you sick and tired of these moralizing moralizers imposing their morality on the rest of us? I know I am. Though it's commonly said that social conservatives would force us to live under theocratic rule if they could, these days the group most successful in imposing its worldview on others happens to be ... MORE

Johan Goldberg: Obama, Romney And The 'Social Market'

Which kind of capitalism is in our future?   ‘This is not a distraction, this is what this campaign is going to be about,” President Obama said Monday at the NATO summit. The “this” in question is Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital and what it says about Romney’s economic vision for the country. Team Romney should have ... MORE

Jacob Sullum: Is That A Spy In Your Pocket?

Warrantless cellphone tracking threatens your privacy.   In January the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that tracking a suspect's movements by attaching a GPS transmitter to his car counts as a "search" under the Fourth Amendment. But because the majority opinion emphasized the physical intrusion needed to surreptitiously install ... MORE

Richard F Miniter: Education Decline, One Step At A Time

SMART arguments for dumb ideas.   Some time ago, I joined the National Council for the Social Studies, the NCSS. I've since had that membership canceled -- I suspect because they read some of my pieces and realize I'm neither a social studies teacher nor a groupie. However, thanks to that fleeting association, I remain on several NCSS e-mailing lists ... MORE

VIDEO: Phillip K Howard - The Death Of Common Sense

Cal Thomas: The Citizen And The Government

A moral, political and economic lesson.  In the Aesop Fable "The Grasshopper and the Ant," there are moral, economic and political lessons for our time, or any other. As the story goes, the lazy grasshopper wiles away his summer days singing and hopping and having an all-around good time while industrious ants work and march and struggle to carry ... MORE

Washington Times: Land Of The Drones

Government is gaining ground in the sky. In the Age of Obama, Uncle Sam is watching. High-tech surveillance aircraft once limited to the use of the world’s largest military organizations are now finding their way to local law-enforcement agencies. With the ability to put an eye in the sky over every square inch of U.S. soil, these machines ... MORE

VIDEO: Penn Jillette On Obama's Drug Hypocrisy


strong language warning

Let's Not Forget Why Our Ancestors Came Here

by Richard Rahn. If you are a nonimmigrant American reading this, do you know why your ancestors came to America? The fact is, a large percentage of immigrants were trying to escape various forms of government persecution, including religious and tax persecution. The American Revolution was set off, in part, by a tax on tea that ranged from about 10 percent to 33 percent ... MORE

How Strong Property Rights Promote Social Equality

by Timothy B. Lee.  In today’s poetic justice news, Star Wars creator George Lucas is planning to take revenge on his meddlesome Marin Valley neighbors. For years, he’s been trying to get permission to build a new studio in Marin County. But his neighbors wouldn’t budge, insisting that it was a place for homes, not businesses. So now Lucas is pulling out ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: Big Lies In Politics

Unrealistic hopes spawn liars.    The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy them, and only in the short run. The current outbreaks of riots in Europe show what happens when the truth catches up with both ... MORE

Greg Beato: Michelle Obama Shrinks Your Snickers

King-sized no more. In 1998 a Colorado handyman got swept up in an avalanche that buried his snowmobile and left him stranded in a blizzard. For five days and four nights, rescue teams struggled to locate him. Luckily, the Snickers bar he had in his pocket was a king-sized version. Every one of its 510 calories helped him survive his ordeal.   ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - When People Don't Matter

Walter E Williams: Should Black People Tolerate This?

Each year, roughly 7,000 blacks are murdered.     Ninety-four percent of the time, the murderer is another black person. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, between 1976 and 2011, there were 279,384 black murder victims. Using the 94 percent figure means that 262,621 were murdered by other blacks. Though blacks are 13 percent of the     ... MORE

Veronique de Rugy: America's Small-Business Fetish

When it comes to job creation, size doesn't matter. On February 12, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) sent a message to his 62,550 followers on Twitter: “Small business is the job growth engine in this country and we need to pursue policies that reflect that reality to create jobs.” Cantor was wrong on both counts. Despite overwhelming conventional  ... MORE

VIDEO: Are Free Markets Fair?

Thomas Sowell: A Book For Republicans

Class warfare: good politics and bad government.   Democrats have been having a field day with the cry of "tax cuts for the rich" — for which Republicans seem to have no reply. This is especially surprising, because Democrats made the same arguments back in the 1920s, and the Republicans then not only had a reply, but one that eventually carried the day  ... MORE

Peter Ferrara: Obama's Unemployment Rate Stuck At 11%

America's decline is not inevitable.   This latest recession started in December, 2007.  Since the Great Depression 75 years ago, recessions in America have lasted an average of 10 months, with the longest previously lasting 16 months, not counting this latest spooky downturn. The National Bureau of Economic Research, the recognized scorekeeper of when  ... MORE

Laurence M Vance: The War On Drugs: Cui Bono?


Who benefits from government's drug war? Cui bono, a maxim of Cassius quoted by Cicero meaning “who benefits?” or “to whose advantage?” is a useful principle when investigating political assassinations, conspiracy theories, mysterious deaths — and the war on drugs. The war on drugs, which actually began in the United States before World War I with the  ... MORE

Jim Mahoney: California Dreamin': A Nightmare Of Collapse

A state dying from self-inflicted wounds. There was a time when the California dream conjured visions of sun, endless summers, hot love, cool breezes, and muscle cars.  The California economy, once the world's 7th largest, supported these dreams -- carrying us into the future on its brawny young shoulders.  Innovation in aviation, computers, and countless ... MORE

VIDEO: Harry Browne - Cashing Out Social Security

Daniel J Flynn: Football Does A Body Good

Nannyism doesn't.    Should consenting adults be allowed to play football? Prior to a debate on the subject at New York University earlier this month, 53 percent of the audience opposed a ban on college football (and just 16 percent supported). Following the debate, 53 percent of the audience supported a ban. That dramatic opinion shift comes in ... MORE

Daren Jonescu: The Vanishing Feeling Of Freedom

It is hard for some to understand what is at stake. The primary reason why it is so difficult to defend political liberty today is because freedom is a rational construct, and thus cannot be understood by the irrational.  Children, or adults whose moral reasoning skills are stalled at childish levels, are unable to experience it -- they literally don't   ... MORE

VIDEO: Saving Endangered Species

Bill O'Reilly: Hating The Rich

My late father was a man of strong opinion. He despised phonies, cowards and liars. He named names -- sometimes in very close proximity to those being singled out. A veteran of World War II, he recognized a weasel when he saw one. But my dad never denigrated rich people in general. We lived in Levittown, N.Y., where everybody had pretty much the  ... MORE

Washington State To Partially Legalize Home Cooking

by Matthew Yglesias. Details vary from place to place, but the standard legal rule in the United States is that if you want to bake some cookies in your house then you're free to do so. You can also give the cookies you baked to friends, family, and neighbors. You can bring the cookies in to work to share with coworkers. You're also free to exchange the cookies in a wide   ... MORE