The Governing Class And The Decline Of America

by Steve McCann.  The United States will not reverse its descent into the abyss of financial and societal bankruptcy until the current political and governing establishment is replaced.  That will not happen until the American people, who have been deliberately ill-educated and deceived, experience first-hand the early stages of the turmoil and        ... MORE

Tibor Machan: It's All About Choices, Stupid

Associations should be voluntary. There is a phony conflict afoot that statists are fond of bringing up when they try to discredit the free society. It is about the individual versus the community. Champions of human liberty are often mis-characterized as denying the significance of human community life. As if individualists advocated that       ... MORE

VIDEO: Milton Friedman - Socialism & The War On Drugs

Sheldon Richman: Nullify The Drug War

Reclaiming individual liberty.    Thomas Jefferson said a revolution every 20 years would be a good thing. Regardless of what one thinks of that, perhaps a little constitutional crisis every now and then would have its benefits. One such crisis may be brewing now. On election day, solid majorities of voters in Colorado and Washington voted to make   ... MORE

Rituparna Basu: It's Time To Unplug Medicare's Third Rail

Time for a financial reckoning.      This election Paul Ryan and other Republicans dared approach the third rail that is Medicare, and Democrats upped the voltage, branding Republicans every chance they got as wanting to “end Medicare as we know it.” But whatever you thought of Ryan’s particular proposals for Medicare, and whoever you voted for, there’s one    ... MORE

VIDEO: Greg Gutfeld: The Joy of Hate


Liberal Speech Police, & Conservative Punks

Matt Welch: Means-Testing Everything But Government

Washington's phantom austerity.   Here's just how stubborn the growth of government is: Even after a Democratic president wins office by campaigning until Election Eve on a "net spending cut," even after he gives his first proposed budget the humblebragging title of "A New Era of Responsibility," even after both Barack Obama and Federal      ... MORE

Arvind Kumar: Fourteen Is The New Fifteen!

A little revision from the global warming cult. According to the leaders of the global warming doomsday cult, the average surface temperature of Earth is 14 degrees Celsius (57.2 degrees Fahrenheit), but this is a new value which has quietly replaced the original average of 15 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Fahrenheit). In March 1988, a few   ... MORE

John Stossel: Legalize Insider Trading

Think about it.  Insider trading leads the news again, casting a cloud over Steven Cohen's SAC Capital Advisors $14 billion hedge fund. The SEC charged Mathew Martoma, who used to manage a SAC Capital division, with using inside information about tests on an Alzheimer's drug to trade stock of the company working on it. The media love this stuff.   ... MORE

Feds Plot To Crackdown On Medical Marijuana Patients

Feds subpoena Mendocino County medical marijuana records. Mendocino County officials are under federal orders to surrender records from their now-suspended medical marijuana permitting program, raising questions about the fate of those named in the permits as well as more than $800,000 in fees collected from pot growers. But Sheriff Tom    ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - The Fiscal Cliff

Why $16,000,000,000,000 Only Hints At True U.S. Debt

by Chris Cox and Bill Archer.     A decade and a half ago, both of us served on President Clinton's Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform, the forerunner to President Obama's recent National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. In 1994 we predicted that, unless something was done to control runaway entitlement       ... MORE

Donald Lambro: Obama's War On Wealth

Higher taxes mean slower growth.    A big issue is missing in the debate over the “fiscal cliff”: how to get the Obama economy growing again, fueling capital investment, jobs and higher incomes. In all the fire and fury over whether we should raise or cut taxes, or how we can pound the deficits and a monster national debt into submission,       ... MORE

VIDEO: Why Reducing Spending is Our Only Hope

Jacob Sullum: Fine Print In Government's Privacy Policy

How your life became an open e-book.    In 1986 The American Banker defined E-mail as "a trademark of CompuServe," Computerworld noted that sending a single message required a 10-minute phone call, and InfoWorld described "a pilot scheme that will allow users of one system to send messages to mailbox holders on another." That was the year  ... MORE

Carbon Tax Could Come After Fiscal Cliff Deal

by William Bigelow.     According to one former member of the White House Climate Change Task Force under President Clinton, President Obama may have plans to implement a carbon tax as soon as the fiscal cliff negotiations are settled.  Forget the fact that Obama and his minions have repeatedly protested that they won’t press for a carbon tax, Paul   ... MORE

Brian Siegal: America Inching Toward Police State

Citizens under the microscope.   Remember, remember the ninth of November. It was a day not unlike any other, but a day that is yet another constantly overlooked reminder of the terrible state of this great nation. It is the day David Petraeus’ resignation was accepted. So, wonderful American citizens, I’d like to take this time to have a    ... MORE

Marijuana Legalization Poses Threat To Prison Industry

For-profit prisons fear bleak outlook.     Does the move toward legalization of marijuana pose a threat to the for-profit prison industry? On November 6th, voters in Colorado and Washington passed referenda legalizing the recreational use of marijuana. It is not clear yet how federal enforcement officials will respond to the new laws in practice,      ... MORE

VIDEO: F A Hayek - Unemployment And The Free Market

Walter E Williams: Parting Company

Secession is really the battle for self-determination.         For decades, it has been obvious that there are irreconcilable differences between Americans who want to control the lives of others and those who wish to be left alone. Which is the more peaceful solution: Americans using the brute force of government to beat liberty-minded       ... MORE

Ronald Bailey: Why Economic Backwardness Persists

Empower the elites.  Why do some societies maintain institutions that cause economic backwardness? This is the vital question that MIT economist Daron Acemoglu and Harvard economist James Robinson asked in their seminal 2006 article, “Economic Backwardness in Political Perspective” in the American Political Science Review.         ... MORE

VIDEO: Fiscal Cliff - Raising Taxes on Mid-Income Americans

Thomas Sowell: Jensen And Flynn

Trivializing politically incorrect findings.   Anyone who has followed the decades-long controversies over the role of genes in IQ scores will recognize the names of the two leading advocates of opposite conclusions on that subject— Professor Arthur R. Jensen of the University of California at Berkeley and Professor James R. Flynn, an American expatriate   ... MORE

Robert Rector: 'Poverty' Like We've Never Seen It

The definition of poor keeps expanding.  The federal government now considers a family of four in New York City to be poor if its pre-tax income is below $37,900.Even with full medical coverage. The calculation helps explain why newly revised Census Bureau figures hike the number of poor Americans to 49 million as of last year, further widening   ... MORE

Government Regulators Have Alcohol In Their Crosshairs

Is alcohol the new soda?   Last week a new study released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that American adults drink alcoholic beverages in moderation. Calories from alcohol, the study concludes, make up 5 percent of the total calories consumed by American adults. What's more, few Americans consume alcohol   ... MORE

Supreme Court Blocks Law Prohibiting Taping Of Police

Light allowed to shine on police activities.    The U.S. Supreme Court has blocked enforcement of an Illinois law that prohibited people from recording police officers on the job. The justices on Monday left in place a lower court ruling that found that the state's anti-eavesdropping law violates free speech rights when used against people      ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - 2012 Election Summary

Carol Roth: Insider Trading Should Be Legalized

Information makes the market efficient.   Former SAC Capital trader Mathew Martoma’s insider trading investigation is just one of a bevy of high-profile insider trading cases that have come to light in the past few years and I think spending time and effort on these cases is a farce. Should the allegations prove to be true, I am not        ... MORE

Manny Fernandez: 'Secession Fever' Hits Texas

The bumper stickers are everywhere. In the weeks since President Obama’s re-election, Republicans around the country have been wondering how to proceed. Some conservatives in Texas have been asking a far more pointed question: how to secede. Secession fever has struck parts of Texas, which Mitt Romney won by nearly 1.3 million votes.             ... MORE

VIDEO: The Truth about the Minimum Wage

Yaron Brook: Why The Glass-Steagall Myth Persists

Lies about the free market.      The growth of government intervention over the last century was built on the back of a handful of myths. A generation ago, the dominant myth was that free markets had caused the Great Depression, a falsehood ultimately debunked by economists like Milton Friedman. Today, the key myth is     ... MORE

More Evidence Of Growing Police State in America

California man jailed four days for recording cops.        A California man was jailed for four days for attempting to record police officers on a public street. Daniel J. Saulmon was charged with resisting, delaying and obstructing an officer but the video shows he was standing well out the way of a traffic stop and was only arrested when   ... MORE

Thomas DiLorenzo: The American Tradition Of Secession

"This country was born through secession."        Leftists and neocons in the media who tend to agree on the propriety and desirability of an ever-growing welfare/warfare/police state were predictably apoplectic when Ron Paul recently stated on his House Web site that secession is "a deeply American principle." Congressman Paul      ... MORE

Laurence M Vance: Why Are Brothels Illegal?

Contempt for the principles of liberty and self-ownership.  In contrast to the boring and predictable presidential candidates, there are some unusually colorful candidates who somehow manage to get into office each time there is an election. Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger was twice elected to the California governorship. Professional wrestler Jesse  ... MORE

VIDEO: Ayn Rand - Altruism and Capitalism

Why Minimum Wage Laws Hurt, Not Help, Employees

by James Street.   I began working at the ripe old age of 15. I refereed paintball on the weekends. And it sucked. It was hot, stinky, I wasn't a big fan of most of my fellow employees, my boss was a jerk, and I got paid $6 an hour. I only worked 12 hours a week or so, and being a single teenager, Uncle Sam raped me royally on taxes. One would think that such a ... MORE

What Pot Legalization Means To The Pro-Freedom Agenda

by Steven Greenhut.    When it comes to real political change, the people almost always are light years ahead of the politicians, most of whom are so worried about re-election that they take only carefully crafted positions that appeal to their core constituencies. If anything, the general election reaffirmed the big-government status quo, but  ... MORE

VIDEO: 3 Reasons to Kill The Dept. of Homeland Security


It's Unnecessary, Inefficient, & Expensive

DHS Wants To Double Predator Drone Fleet Within The U.S.

Despite safety and privacy concerns.    Despite renewed criticism from both parties in Congress that domestic drones pose a privacy danger to US citizens—and a report from its own Inspector General recommending to stop buying them—the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has indicated it wants to more than double its fleet of Predator      ... MORE

Union Fail: Walmart Reports Record Sales

The people vote with their pocketbooks. Despite union efforts to target retailers like Walmart, businesses are reporting record Black Friday traffic – the biggest sign yet that the unions are out of touch with the American people. Starting at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving, Walmart put its products on Black Friday sale, sparking a run to the stores and     ... MORE