Conrad Black: Blind Justice

Justice is blind, just not in the way it was intended.  An article in the Wall Street Journal last week having pointed out that 97 percent of U.S. criminal prosecutions are now guilty-plea bargains, and that 85 percent of the remaining 3 percent are trials that return guilty verdicts, I return to the spavined bĂȘte noire of the justice system. These are totalitarian   ... MORE

Matt Kibbe & Deenen Borelli: It's A Black And White Issue

Freedom works.    Americans coast to coast are victimized daily by an onslaught of hate and intolerance. But to Van Jones’s dismay, it’s not coming from the Tea Party movement. Race traitor, Uncle Tom, sell-out, racist, bigot. These are the names that fiscal conservatives, including ourselves, encounter daily from members of the liberal     ... MORE

VIDEO: Harry Browne - Why Drugs Should Be Legalized

Ed Black: Proposed Regulations Threaten Free Internet

We will have to fight to keep free internet.    The Internet is the world’s biggest economic and social success story of the past three decades. Citizens, NGOs, engineers and governments have all have joined together to write an amazing narrative. That success story now is under threat.  In Dubai this December a group of governments will conclude a treaty     ... MORE

John Stossel: We Fund Dependency

"There are no jobs!"  That is what people told me outside a government "jobs center" in New York City. To check this out, I sent four researchers around the area. They quickly found 40 job openings. Twenty-four were entry-level positions. One restaurant owner told me he would hire 12 people if workers would just apply. It made me wonder what my          ... MORE

VIDEO: Meet the Streets



Guess who thinks he is staying another four years?

Campaign To Legalize Pot Gets High-Profile GOP Support

by Gene Johnson.      The campaign to legalize and tax marijuana for adults in Washington state is rolling as next month's vote approaches, with more than $1 million in new contributions reported since last week and a surprising endorsement Wednesday from Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Michael Baumgartner. The money, most of it from retired     ... MORE

Expression Must Be Free Of Government Control

by Gene Policinski.     I can say what I want, even if it offends you. And so can you. No American government official, high or low, federal, state or local, can silence our freedom of expression — whether it’s our views on politics, public issues or religious faith. If someone says something we don’t like, we can freely express ourselves in opposition, even if that        ... MORE

High Court Hides From TSA Fourth Amendment Violations

by Jack Kenny.     The U.S. Supreme Court on October 1 rejected the appeal of a Michigan resident who claimed the use of body-imaging scanners and pat-down procedures by Transportation Security Administration agents at airports throughout the country violate airline passengers' privacy rights protected by the Fourth Amendment  ... MORE

A. B. Hinkle: Warrantless Spying Skyrockets Under Obama

Is it fascism yet?    That was the snarky question glued to the bumper of every self-respecting progressive’s gas/electric hybrid back during the Bush-Cheney administration. It now must be asked again. Back then, liberals were raising the alarm about impending fascism because of post-9/11 policies such as warrantless wiretapping, wars of choice, military        ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Shadowbosses

Thomas Sowell: Capital Gains Tax

Do you really think taxes and jobs are unrelated?   One of the many false talking points of the Obama administration is that a rich man like Warren Buffett should not be paying a lower tax rate than his secretary. But anyone whose earnings come from capital gains usually pays a lower tax rate. How are capital gains different from ordinary    ... MORE

Personal Freedom Tied To Economic Freedom

by Mark LaRochelle. President Obama has chosen to make this election about economic inequality. As he put it, “the average income for the top one percent of Americans has risen almost seven times faster than the income of the average middle class family.” To remedy this situation, says Obama, we must increase spending, raise taxes and generally    ... MORE

VIDEO: ReasonTV Looks At Atlas Shrugged Part II

Jacob Sullum: Slandering Muhammad Is Not A Crime

Pandering to Muslims at the expense of free speech. Addressing the U.N. General Assembly last week, President Obama tried to explain this strange attachment that Americans have to freedom of speech. He was handicapped by his attraction to a moral principle whose dangers the journalist Jonathan Rauch presciently highlighted in his 1993 book  ... MORE

The Painful Truth About Affirmative Action

A dishonest system that hurts minorities. Affirmative action in university admissions started in the late 1960s as a noble effort to jump-start racial integration and foster equal opportunity. But somewhere along the decades, it has lost its way. Over time, it has become a political lightning rod and one of our most divisive social policies.       ... MORE

Ralph Benko: Signs Of The Gold Standard Emerging In China

Is the road to prosperity paved with gold?     As noted in last week’s column about the rising recognition by authorities in Germany about the virtues of gold, the gold standard is receiving impressive new recognition internationally. The GOP plank calling for a commission to study “possible ways to set a fixed value for the dollar”  -- is ... MORE

Thomas Sowell - Cheap Politicians

We get what we pay for.   Now that the National Football League has apparently learned that it can be costly to hire cheap officials, perhaps the rest of us should learn the same lesson when it comes to government officials, whose bad calls can do a lot more damage. What do we do when we want a better car, a better home or a better bottle of wine?      ... MORE

VIDEO: Political Correctness And Public Health

Priest Accused Of Molestations Landed TSA Pat Down Gig

Has since earned promotion.     The Transportation and Security Administration (TSA) didn’t bother to do a background check on a priest who had been defrocked for molesting girls before they gave him a job, which included doing pat downs on children at Philadelphia International Airport. The Philadelphia Inquirer on Monday reported that   ... MORE

Supreme Court Opens Door To ObamaCare Challenge

Could America get a reprieve?    Tucked inside the Supreme Court's lengthy list of orders on Monday was an indication that the fight over President Obama's health care law soon could be back before the high court. Since the court's June decision upholding the law's individual mandate to buy insurance, one of the first Obamacare plaintiffs    ... MORE

VIDEO: Nanny of the Month Faceoff - Romney/Obama


Special interactive edition - Time for you to vote.

Walter Galvin: Suppressing Our Economic Power

Should America have the highest corporate tax rate?  Sweden may be best known among Americans as home of the Nobel Prize and IKEA but astute politicians would be wise to take a closer look at what this Scandinavian nation is doing economically. Last month, Sweden announced plans to lower its corporate tax rate to 22% from 26.3%.      ... MORE

Obama Spending Plans Will Hit Middle Class Hard

Politicians to seek more control of your earnings. A new study by Douglas Holtz-Eakin of the American Action Forum finds that President Barack Obama's spending plan would raise taxes on the middle class.  "Taxpayers making as little as $30,000 will carry $1,500 more in taxes annually over the next 10 years," the study finds. The significance  ... MORE

Obama Increases Warrantless Surveillance Of Citizens

US spies on political activists without probable cause. The U.S. government has been “spying on political activists without probable cause” for decades, a practice that has been exacerbated in recent years, says Kris Hermes, a spokesman for the National Lawyers' Guild in Chicago. “The U.S. government has had a history of spying on political activists for    ... MORE

Why ObamaCare Has Doctors Depressed And Discouraged

by Dr. Marc Siegel. Wednesday night the first presidential debate will take place in Denver. The focus will be on domestic policy. But it’s a safe bet, while you’ll likely hear about ObamaCare, you won’t hear about the doctors on the front lines of medicine in the United States today. President Obama has said he likes the term ObamaCare because   ... MORE

VIDEO: Stossel - A System For Teachers, Not Students

Guantanamo Bay: Model For An American Police State?

NDAA helps connect the dots.   For most Americans, the detention center at Guantanamo Bay—once the topic of heated political debate by presidential hopeful Barack Obama but rarely talked about by the incumbent President Obama—has become a footnote in the government’s ongoing war on terror. Yet for the approximately 167 detainees  ... MORE

Steve Chapman: Will Pot Become Legal?

Good luck to feds trying to enforce the federal law.   Judging from recent history, any young person who aspires to be president should be aware that certain attributes seem to be critical. You have to be male. You have to have an Ivy League degree. You have to have been a governor or senator. And, don't forget, you have to have smoked     ... MORE

VIDEO: We Can Make The Choice For Better Schools

Walter E Williams: Trickle Down And Tax Cuts

"Tax cuts for the rich" rhetoric works on the gullible.   Dr. Thomas Sowell's "'Trickle Down Theory' and 'Tax Cuts for the Rich'" has just been published by the Hoover Institution. Having read this short paper, the conclusion you must reach is that the term "trickle down theory" is simply a tool of charlatans and political hustlers. Sowell states   ... MORE

Katy Kieffer: Grab A Glass Of Bacardi!

Dealing with "Washington lemons."  When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. When Washington gives you lemons, make lemonade and don’t forget the rum. D.C. lemons make it challenging to remain upbeat. “Lemon legislation” coming out of Washington, D.C. is effectively shredding the Constitution (think Obamacare or the Patient      ... MORE

Lee Harris: Stop Apologizing For Our Liberties

You cannot apologize to a fanatic.    It only serves to convince him that he was right all along, and that is the last course the United States should be pursuing at this critical juncture of world history. The last few weeks have witnessed a peculiar and disturbing spectacle: An American administration that has spent a great deal of time and energy     ... MORE

TSA Pat-Down Horror Stories Prompt Private-Screener Plan

One way to reign in an out-of-control bureaucracy.      The congressman who held 22 hearings over a year and a half that tracked public backlash against the Transportation Security Administration says he's ready to offer legislation to save the agency from itself. "The truth is this is a very dangerous world," Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House       ... MORE

VIDEO: Walter E Williams - Departure From Liberty

Michelle Jamrisko: Business Activity In US Is Shrinking

Only government remains a growth industry.  Business activity in the U.S. unexpectedly contracted in September for the first time in three years, adding to signs manufacturing will contribute less to the economic recovery. The Institute for Supply Management-Chicago Inc. said today its business barometer fell 49.7 this month from 53 in August.      ... MORE

Building Safely Without Government Building Codes

by Brian Phillips. Most people accept building codes as a necessary government intervention. One website states: "Codes provide minimum standards for building construction in order to safeguard the public’s safety, health, and welfare." Another website states: "If we searched we could find examples of people having built things that ended up falling on   ... MORE

VIDEO: The Morality Of Using Force To Distribute Wealth


Philip DeFranco is uncomfortable thinking about government and morality.

Andrew A. Morgan: Why The Left Hates The Laffer Curve

A self-evident economic truth.    For those who are familiar with the "Laffer Curve," the name generally brings on an immediate and politically charged opinion related to the inherent implications the curve has historically had on the topic of the government's tax rate policies. However, the underlying points illustrated by the curve deserve serious and   ... MORE

Joan Lowy: Privacy Worries On Domestic Drone Use

Drones to be routinely deployed over the next 3 years. More than a third of Americans worry their privacy will suffer if drones like those used to spy on U.S. enemies overseas become the latest police tool for tracking suspected criminals at home, according to an Associated Press-National Constitution Center poll. Congress has directed  ... MORE