Barry Poulson: Greatest Threat To Our Economic Freedom

The silent bailout of the states.   A conflict has emerged between states that have pursued prudent fiscal policies versus those that have been profligate in their spending, accumulating crippling amounts of debt. While the danger of this disparity has not yet captured public attention, the “silent bailout” of these fiscally irresponsible states by the ... MORE

Eric Holder's Contempt: Who Owns The Government?

by Mike Razar.   Who owns the documents being suppressed in the clumsy Fast and Furious cover-up? Murder-gate would be a descriptive moniker. Could some intrepid reporter ask the hapless Jay Carney if the POTUS believes that the U.S. Government is "of the people, by the people, and for the people"? If he believes that, then surely he   ... MORE

VIDEO: Milton Friedman - Why Tax Reform Is Impossible

Restraining Arizona, Unleashing The President

by Andrew Napolitano. The Supreme Court overlooks the natural and fundamental freedom to associate. When the Obama administration decided that it had no interest in preventing the movement of undocumented aliens from Mexico into the southwest United States, the State of Arizona decided to take matters into its own hands.    .... MORE

Retaining Harder Than Declaring Our Independence

by Jackie Gingrich Cushman.   We declared our independence from Great Britain 236 years ago next week. It was a declaration long in coming, brought about by the overreaching rule of King George III and Britain's insistence on taxation without representation. The taxation began in the 1760s, the Boston Massacre occurred in 1770, the Boston Tea  ... MORE

VIDEO: The All-Powerful Commerce Clause



Politicians use it to control every facet of your life.

Thomas Sowell: A Political Glossary - Part III

The distinction between cosmic justice & social justice. This is Part III in a series. Part I can be found here. Part II can be found here. If there were a Hall of Fame for political rhetoric, the phrase "social justice" would deserve a prominent place there. It has the prime virtue of political catchwords: It means many different things to many different  ... MORE

This Election Just Became About ObamaCare

by Jeffrey H. Anderson.  In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision upholding the constitutionality of Obamacare, the principal choice now facing Americans on November 6 will be whether to keep Obamacare or to repeal it.  The question is a binary one, and the answer — expressed almost entirely through their presidential vote — will go a long way  ... MORE

Government Spends Millions Advertising Food Stamps

Does the safety net market really need a stimulus?  More than one in seven Americans are on food stamps, but the federal government wants even more people to sign up for the safety net program. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been running radio ads for the past four months encouraging those eligible to enroll. The campaign is    ... MORE

John Hinderaker: Is Welfare Spending Futile?

That’s the question raised by this chart, plotting federal welfare spending against the poverty rate. When President Johnson announced the War on Poverty, he said his intention was to abolish poverty in America. That hasn’t happened, of course. And I doubt that any liberal today would proclaim such a goal. Today, welfare spending is mainly a way to funnel dollars into the pockets of Democratic Party constituencies; therefore, for Democrats, the more the better, with no end in sight or even desired. The explosion in    ... MORE

VIDEO: FOX NEWS: Leaking, Killing & Other Govt Activity

Joel Poindexter: Setting Things Straight On Nullification

The people's last stand against tyranny: just say no. Writing for Hot Air’s Green Room last week, Patrick Ishmael declared that nullification was unconstitutional and cited a number of columns from organizations such as The Heartlander and The Heritage Foundation as proof. Ishmael’s post was mostly a continuation of a discussion, as he calls it,   ... MORE

Cops Claim That Face-Chewer Was On Bath Salts A Lie

Another drug warrior scapegoats marijuana as the culprit. Lab tests detected only marijuana in the system of a Florida man shot while chewing on another man's face, the medical examiner said Wednesday, ruling out other street drugs including the components typically found in the stimulants known as "bath salts." There has been much    ... MORE

VIDEO: The Incandescent Stupidy Of DEA On Display


Sad Truth Dept: Top drug warrior thinks pot is addictive and as bad as crack.

Thomas Sowell: A Political Glossary - Part II

Reading between the syllables. Politicians seem to have a special fondness for words that have two very different meanings, so we are likely to hear a lot of these kinds of words this election year. "Access" is one of those words. Politicians seem to be forever coming to the rescue of people who have been denied "access" to credit, college or whatever. See part I ... MORE

Larry Huss: The Federal Assault On Freedom Of Religion

Obama wants to trump the tenets of Catholic morality. The Catholic Church believes that abortion is the taking of a human life – an innocent human life. It makes no distinction between an abortion and murder. I stand with the Catholic Church. Despite that stance, the Church has avoided a direct confrontation with the federal government   ... MORE

Jacob Sullum: The Mythical Right To Decency

High court misses chance to overturn speech restrictions. Pity the poor speech regulators at the Federal Communications Commission, who are charged with sifting through complaints about TV and radio programs in a farcical attempt to determine which references to "sexual or excretory organs or activities" are "patently offensive as measured  ... MORE

Barry Farber: Morgan Freeman's Afraid Of Me

Helping an adult afraid of the light.    Morgan Freeman’s afraid of me. Why? Well, apparently I’m one of the guys on “the other side of the fence”; you know, conservatives, tea partiers, Republicans. I’ve helped children quit being afraid of the dark, but this is the first time I’ve tried it with an Oscar-winning superstar way beyond his childhood. Morgan  ... MORE

VIDEO: Floyd Abrams - 1st Amendment Integrity

Thomas Sowell: A Political Glossary

When politicians talk fairness, hide your wallet. Since this is an election year, we can expect to hear a lot of words -- and the meaning of those words is not always clear. So it may be helpful to have a glossary of political terms. One of the most versatile terms in the political vocabulary is "fairness." It has been used over a vast range of issues, from  ... MORE

The War On Poverty: $15 Trillion & Nothing To Show For It

by Michael Tennant. Fifteen trillion dollars: That’s how much American taxpayers have forked over in the name of helping the poor since 1964. And what do we have to show for it? A poverty rate that has barely budged, an entrenched bureaucracy, and a population — like that of Greece and Portugal, two welfare-state basket cases — increasingly    ... MORE

VIDEO: Jury Nullification & The Pursuit Of Justice

John Fund: Twilight Of The Unions

Hard times at the AFSCME convention. Since 2008, we’ve seen the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression. Unlike 75 years ago, however, unions and the Left have this time largely failed to build a rigorous movement of economic populism to further their goals: Witness the now largely disbanded Occupy movement. Indeed, as members ... MORE

Steve Conover: Is Government Really 'The Solution'?

If so, the problem must be prosperity.   Additional government action is facing tough obstacles today. But is conservative 'propaganda' really to blame? In a recent Washington Post op-ed, E.J. Dionne scolded his fellow liberals for refusing to admit what the Republicans have been saying all along: That liberals think government is the solution.     ... MORE

Walter E Williams: Too Much College

College for all just waters down higher education. In President Barack Obama's 2012 State of the Union address, he said that "higher education can't be a luxury. It is an economic imperative that every family in America should be able to afford." Such talk makes for political points, but there's no evidence that a college education is an economic ... MORE

Ira Stoll: Obama's Enemies Face Tax Scrutiny

Job creators critical of Obama are in the crosshairs. Billionaires thinking of becoming politically active on the right side of the political spectrum be warned: the press will want to know how much you pay in taxes. President Nixon tried to get the IRS to audit the taxes of his liberal political enemies. The press, the public, and historians rightfully  ... MORE

VIDEO: FOX NEWS - TSA (Totally Stupid Allegations)

Adam Thierer: Achieving Internet Order Without Law

Heavy-handed regulations are highly overrated.    The popular narrative in Internet policy circles these days goes something like this: The early days of the Net were a glorious unregulated nirvana, but eventually governments had to move in and assert more authority over cyberspace or else an unruly “Wild West” would have developed and left us   ... MORE

Hilary Burke: Uruguay Aims To Legalize Marijuana

Officials conclude pot less harmful than black market. Uruguay's government unveiled a proposal to legalize and monitor the marijuana market, arguing that the drug is less harmful than the black market where it is trafficked. President Jose Mujica's leftist government will send a bill to Congress shortly on this as part of a package of measures to fight  ... MORE

VIDEO: Economic Mobility is Alive and Well in America!

Rory Cooper: Obama's Fast & Furious Scandal Grows

Keeping the facts away from sunshine.  On the night of December 15, 2010, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was shot and killed by an untraceable assault weapon that was deliberately handed to Mexican drug lords by U.S. officials via Operation Fast and Furious. Ever since, the Terry family and Americans across the nation have asked how this could ... MORE

Washington Times: A Regulatory Drug Shortage

Cancer patients endangered by FDA bureaucrats. The last thing a sick person wants to hear is that ample supplies of a life-saving medicine have been replaced by a surplus of red tape. That’s precisely what’s happening nationwide, with 82 percent of hospitals reporting shortages so severe that treatment must be put on hold, according to the     ... MORE

Patrick Brennan: The Inequality Fetish

Does unequal income cause economic ills?    There must be something in the water in Scandinavia: Nobel laureates, from our president to Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, all agree that high levels of inequality are a serious problem, if not the problem, facing our weak economy. According to this liberal thesis, either the 2008 financial ... MORE

Liberal Logic Has Become A Contradiction In Terms

Random thoughts on the passing scene by Thomas Sowell. Many people may have voted for Barack Obama in 2008 because of his charisma. But anyone familiar with the disastrous track record of charismatic political leaders around the world in the 20th century should have run for the hills when they encountered a politician with   ... MORE

VIDEO: Thomas Sowell - Race, Poverty & Intellectuals

FDA Hinders Treatment For Girl With Rare Disease

Government stands between girl and hope. There's a drug available to treat the symptoms of 10-year-old Brooke Foster's life-threatening, rare disease, but it isn't for sale in the United States. Brooke's mom, Kelli Foster, struggled for years to get her daughter's disease, mastocytosis, diagnosed. Now the New Jersey mom is fighting to have a drug that can treat   ... MORE

14-Year Old With Gun Protects Siblings From Intruder

Criminals demand more gun control in Arizona.    A 14-year-old boy shot and nearly killed an intruder who broke into his Phoenix home and pulled a gun on him while he was watching his three younger siblings, police said Saturday. The teen and his siblings, ages 8, 10 and 12, were at home alone when a woman rang the doorbell on Friday. A common    ... MORE

VIDEO: Afterburner with Bill Whittle: Follow the Ideology


Why President Obama must claim executive privilege over Fast and Furious.

Should We Hire Even More Teachers, Cops And Fireman?

by Nick Gillespie. Though it feels like it was about a thousand years ago, it was only a couple of weeks back that President Barack Obama announced that the private sector was "doing fine" and that it was the public sector that really needed a helping hand getting through this furshlugginer economy. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney bravely critiqued his    ... MORE

Jim Wilson: Is Gun Control Just Another Petty Tyranny?

Where do you draw the line?    I’m not a big gun control fan or advocate. I’ve joked on this blog that I live in a state where the second is the only amendment that matters. I think the second amendment is an important one. I think law abiding people should be able to arm themselves, for protection, for hunting, target shooting, and    ... MORE