Federal Red Tape Hampers Battle Against Wildfires

by Stephan Dinan. The fire didn’t care what kind of federal land it was burning, but for sheriff’s deputies hovering over a blaze in northwestern Nevada last week, it made all the difference: If it was Bureau of Land Management property, they could legally drop the water they were carrying, but if it was Forest Service land, they were out of luck.   ... MORE

Deroy Murdock: EPA In Wonderland

Now fines companies for not using nonexistent fuel.  Why does America’s economy feel like an SUV that is running on fumes? The Obama administration’s laughably rigid enforcement of a Baby Bush–era ethanol mandate typifies today’s regulatory climate. When Uncle Sam governs with a tire iron in his hand, U.S. companies wisely pull off the road and   ... MORE

VIDEO: Williams With Sowell - Judicial Betrayal

Cal Thomas: The Stossel Solution

It works if America is still about liberty. In order to get the correct answer to anything, one must ask the right question. That is what former ABC News and current Fox News TV host John Stossel does on his weekly program. If ever there was "must see-TV," this is it. Stossel's show on Saturday, June 30 was a classic. It was called "Government,         ... MORE

Jeff Jacoby: Minimum Wage Laws Costly To Unemployed

Minimum wage is maximum folly. Congress enacted the first federal minimum wage in 1938. A provision of the Fair Labor Standards Act, it covered about 6 million workers and set a wage floor of 25 cents per hour. It also cost a lot people their jobs. The Labor Department reported that as many as 50,000 employees, mostly poor Southern blacks, were thrown out of ... MORE

VIDEO: In Transition To A Police State, America 2012


Public servants or the agents of an increasingly tyrannical state?    This video displays a troubling dynamic in America. It chronicles a driver detained at three different police roadblock during a commute westbound on I-8 in southern California, a highway that NEVER intersects the international border.  Probable cause is not a prerequisite for arbitrary interventions or checkpoint searches.

Laurence M Vance: Why The Drug War Should Be Ended

It should be identified for what it is, a war on freedom. The War on Drugs is a monstrous evil that has ruined more lives than drugs themselves. Taking drugs harms the person who partakes, but not those who abstain; the War on Drugs harms everyone, even those who abstain from taking drugs. Yet the Drug War enjoys bipartisan support in  ... MORE

Peter Schiff: The Real Fiscal Cliff

Foolish borrowing driving us over the cliff.   The media is now fixated on an apparently new feature dominating the economic landscape: a “fiscal cliff” from which the United States will fall in January 2013. They see the danger arising from the simultaneous implementation of the $2 trillion in automatic spending cuts (spread over 10 years) agreed  ... MORE

Andrew Napolitano: We Are At A Turning Point

Do you need government permission to exercise your rights? Presently in America, nearly half of all households receive either a salary or substantial benefits from the government. Presently in America, nearly half of all adults pay no federal income taxes. Presently in America, the half that pay no income taxes receive the bulk of their income    ... MORE

Sheldon Richman: The Government's Economic Impotency

The clueless politicians guiding our economy.   It should finally have dawned on the American people that the politicians who presume to guide the economy have no bloody idea what they’re doing. We’re long past the time when knowledge of economics was required to see that the government is impotent when it comes to creating economic      ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Generational Theft

Paul Driessen: America Pays Dearly To Go 'Green'

War on fossil fuels means higher prices for families. President Obama has spent 3 1/2 years waging war on fossil fuels - and American consumers and families are caught in the crossfire. They are getting hit with higher energy prices, watching billions go to unfriendly overseas countries for oil we could produce in the United States, and seeing billions   ... MORE

Jury Nullification Can Highlight Flaws In The Law

by Bob Egelko. The case of William Lynch, who admitted beating a priest in retaliation for a sexual assault 35 years earlier, was a classic example of jury nullification - jurors' power to acquit a defendant based on their sense of justice or subjective feelings, rather than the law's definition of guilt or innocence. Juries used that power in 1670 to free William Penn ... MORE

VIDEO: Educating Bill O'Reilly On The Constitution

AP: Surveillance Requests To Cellphone Carriers Surge

Needed: a Fourth Amendment for the 21st century.     Law enforcement agencies in the U.S. made more than 1.3 million requests for consumers' cellphone records in 2011, an alarming surge over previous years that reflected the increasingly gray area between privacy and technology. Cellphone carriers, responding to inquiries from a    ... MORE

John Stossel: Budget Insanity

Political vision does not seem to extend beyond next election. Last year, Congress agreed to $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts, unless politicians find other things to cut. They didn't, of course. So now, with so-called sequestration looming in January, panic has set in. Even the new "fiscally responsible" Republicans vote against cutting Energy      ... MORE

John Fund: California Demon

A state fast becoming America's version of Greece.  The lastest unemployment numbers show the economic recovery stalling. But as weak as the national economy is, it’s nothing compared to the condition of some states whose policies are guaranteed to scare away jobs and investment. Call it the European Disease: Run up spending and   ... MORE

Mike Riggs: Cooking The Drug War Books Obama-Style

3 accounting tricks the Obama administration uses. "Since day one, President Obama has led the way in reforming our Nation's drug policies by, among other things, addressing drug use and its consequences as a public health problem,” reads a statement posted on We the People, the petition site started by the, er, Obama administration ... MORE

VIDEO: Armen Alchian - Property Rights

Pamela Geller: Close Down The TSA!

Parasites, forever. The American people have had it. It got hardly any notice in the mainstream media, but the New York Post did report on June 24 that "a JFK Airport terminal had to be evacuated and hundreds of passengers marched back through security screening all because one dimwitted agent failed to realize his metal detector  ... MORE

Absence Of Limits On Free Speech Promotes Tolerance

A lesson from Canada. Hardly was there time to celebrate the demise of Section 13, the infamous provision of the Canadian Human Rights Act prohibiting "communication of hate messages," before we were reminded this was not the only unwarranted restriction on freedom of speech on the books. Section 319.2 of the Criminal Code, for example, ... MORE

VIDEO: Conservative vs. Libertarian Take on Constitution

Alex Becker: Chris Christie Calls War On Drugs 'A Failure'

Prohibition creating bigger problems than drug use. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) has become the latest leader to condemn the now 40-year-old war on drugs. "The war on drugs, while well-intentioned, has been a failure," Christie said Monday during a speech at The Brookings Institution. "We're warehousing addicted people everyday in state prisons in   ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: Jobs Versus Net Jobs

Sometimes a gain in one means a loss in the other. One of the reasons for the popularity of political rhetoric is that everybody can be right, in terms of their own rhetoric, no matter how much the rhetoric of one side contradicts the rhetoric of the other side. President Obama constantly repeats how many millions of jobs have been created ... MORE

George Will: Navajos Feeling The Regulatory Heavy Hand

More punishment for Arizona.   The federal government is a bull that has found yet another china shop, this time in Arizona. It seems determined to inflict, for angelic motives and progressive goals, economic damage on this state. And economic and social damage on American Indians, who over the years have experienced quite enough of that ... MORE

Walter E Williams: Difficult Economic Lessons

Sifting the objective from the subjective. One of the more difficult lessons to teach economics neophytes — and, many times, trained economists — is that economic theory cannot say anything definitive about subjective statements, such as what's better, good, bad or worse. Let's try a few examples to make the point. Cabernet sauvignon wine is ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Paying Cops To Not Police

David Catron: The States Can Still Kill ObamaCare

Taking aim at the law's Achilles' heel. Now that conservatives and libertarians are beginning to recover from the injuries they sustained by banging their heads against walls, desks, and other hard objects on June 28, perhaps it's a good time to introduce a ray of hope that might have seemed absurdly Pollyannaish during the dark hours    ... MORE

Reminder: TSA Still Asking Women To "Raise Your Skirt"

Thong underwear not recommended for air travel. No, women still haven’t gotten used to this TSA practice.  And it’s still offensive, humiliating, degrading, and makes being a woman an unfortunate preexisting condition (thanks, Nancy!).  The TSA asked a female passenger at Philadelphia International Airport this morning to raise her ... MORE

VIDEO: "Don't Tread on Others" vs "Don't Tread on Me"

Don Richmond: Defending Constitutional Principles

No precept may properly be made law if it violates rights. To defend the principles of the Constitution, one must understand what they are. While the Declaration of Independence advocated individual rights, the Constitution was written to form a government that would protect those rights. However, as we know from history, the Constitution ... MORE

Michael Suede: Jury Nullification Becomes Reality in N.H.

Judging the law as well as the facts.  For those of you who don’t know much about jury nullification, basically it’s when the jury finds a defendant innocent because of their dislike of the law. For example, a jury might refuse to convict a non-violent drug offender because they disagree with the fundamental premise of drug laws themselves.     ... MORE

Paul Armentano: Why Marijuana Should Be Legalized

The public is ready for a new approach.   It's time for politicians to call for a truce in the so-called war on drugs. According to a 2010 investigation by the Associated Press, lawmakers have spent over $1 trillion dollars enforcing the drug war. Their actions have resulted in a quadrupling of the U.S. prison population since 1980, but little  ... MORE

John Fund: Off The Rails, Over The Cliff

California's train to nowhere: full speed ahead.  It’s hard to express how sad it was for me to watch, in person, as the state I grew up in committed fiscal suicide. I went down to the state capitol here on Friday afternoon to watch the state senate approve, by a single vote, a $4.7 billion bond package to build a high-speed-rail system from ... MORE

VIDEO: Thomas DiLorenzo - Understanding Capitalism

Duncan Holmes: Five Steps To A Police State

Herded down the collectivist path.   Step 1. Take away people’s mobility Step 2. Control how much and how far people can travel. Walter Reuther once called the automobile a great invention, because he said it gave people a fifth freedom. (This was referring to Roosevelt’s famous four freedoms.) What he meant was simple.  It was called   ... MORE

Sarah de Crescenzo: Court Rules Cities Can't Ban Pot Shops

State law preempts municipal bans. Orange County cities fighting to keep out medical marijuana dispensaries may have a tougher time doing so after a Monday ruling affirming the legality of the shops under California law. A three-justice panel of the 2nd District Court of Appeal ruled that Los Angeles County's ban on medical marijuana is "preempted" by state  ... MORE

VIDEO: Will Taxing the Rich Fix the Deficit?

AP: Broke California Spends $62 Billion On High-Speed Rail


They can always get a bailout. California lawmakers gave the green light to start building the nation's first dedicated high-speed rail line, a multibillion dollar project that will eventually link Los Angeles and San Francisco. The move marked major political victories for Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown and the Obama administration. Both have promoted ... MORE

Washington Times: The U.N. Is Coming For Your Guns

Obama administration is pushing for global arms control. The United Nations is deliberating over a treaty that will place comprehensive limits on the international weapons trade. The language of the draft agreement is so expansive it wouldn’t take an Obama-appointed judge very long to extend the treaty to cover the domestic firearms market ... MORE