States' Rights: Marijuana Becomes A Front Line Struggle

by David Kumbroch.      The country’s drug laws are currently getting closely examined. Two states have already given the go-ahead to recreational marijuana with many more allowing medical marijuana. Now two federal bills – HB499 and HB501 – seek to turn over drug enforcement to the states and tax legal marijuana. When it comes to states’ rights      ... MORE

U.S. Senator Says 4,700 Have Been Killed By Drones

"Sometimes you hit innocent people, and I hate that."   It was the first time a politician or any government representative had referred to a total number of fatalities in the drone strikes, which have been condemned by rights groups as extrajudicial assassinations. The toll from hundreds of drone-launched missile strikes against suspected   ... MORE

VIDEO: Milton Friedman - The Future Of Energy

Lawmaker Wants Smoking Banned in Cars With Children

Another reason to pull you over.     One Connecticut lawmaker is pushing to ban smoking in cars with children, citing the health risks of immature immune systems. The law has been a focus of State Representative Henry Genga since 2008, reports WABC-TV. Opened windows wouldn’t give drivers a free ride, however. “The second hand    ... MORE

James Dorn: Obama's Minimum Wage Is Zombie Economics

Minimum wage a maximum folly.    President Obama’s proposal to increase the federal minimum wage is a case of what Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman calls “zombie economic ideas.”  According to Krugman, “a zombie idea is a proposition that has been thoroughly refuted by analysis and evidence, and should be dead—but won’t stay    ... MORE

VIDEO: How Patent Trolls Kill Innovation

Chris Rossini: Rolling Back To That Dreaded Year: 1913

The beginning of the end.  In respect to liberty, 1913 was a dark year in U.S. history. Three key pieces of legislation were passed that (now 100 years later) have individual liberty seriously on the rocks. They were: The 16th Amendment, which created the Federal Income Tax, The 17th Amendment, which created the Popular Election of Senators,   ... MORE

Rick Moran: The Upside To Sequestration?

Government carries forward its own momentum. Matthew Cooper writing at the National Journal: Everyone agrees that sequestration is asinine, but Washington is increasingly resigned to it. Other deadlines have been met by fevered last-minute negotiations and, mercifully, avoidance of calamity. This time there's less urgency and more sighs. There is an ... MORE

Michelle Malkin: Disarming American Women

The Left: Fight rapists with pens, urine, vomit, tears.    If radical gun-grabbers have their way, your daughters, mothers, and grandmothers will have nothing but whistles, pens, and bodily fluids with which to defend themselves against violent attackers and sexual predators. Women of all ages, races, and political backgrounds should be up in arms over  ... MORE

Supreme Court Approves Search Warrants Issued By Dogs

by Jacob Sullum.   The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that "a court can presume" an alert by a drug-sniffing dog provides probable cause for a search "if a bona fide organization has certified a dog after testing his reliability in a controlled setting" or "if the dog has recently and successfully completed a training program that evaluated his    ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Laboratories Of Democracy

Robert Robb: Obama And The Death Of Federalism

To the Founders, federalism was big deal.       President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address illustrated what a dead letter federalism is among Democrats. Not that further illustration was necessary. Federalism holds that the national government should limit itself to things of truly national scope. Things that are primarily of local concern should be  ... MORE

ObamaCare's Health Exchanges Are Customer Free Zones

by Sally Pipes.      Last month, the CEO of the nation’s largest health insurance company warned that he and his peers may balk at participating in Obamacare’s insurance exchanges — online, government-run portals where consumers and small businesses without conventional employer-sponsored coverage may shop for policies starting next year.   ... MORE

VIDEO: Why The Price Of Everything Is Going Up


The more money put into circulation, the more there is to bid up prices.

Kurt Nimmo: California Lib Wants To Tax Concealed Carry

The latest scheme of a 2nd Amendment denier.      Rep. Linda Sánchez, a California Democrat with a history of attacks on the Second Amendment, introduced H.R. 793last week. The proposed legislation calls for an excise tax on concealed carry and a federal buyback program. It is co-sponsored by a number of Democrats in the House, including the   ... MORE

John Stossel: To Government, Every Penny Is Sacred

President Obama has new priorities.   That means new spending. In his State of the Union, he said, "The American people don't expect government to solve every problem." But then he went on to list how, under his guidance, government will solve a thousand problems, including some (like climate change and a loss of manufacturing jobs) that  ... MORE

Stephen J. Dunn: Nothing Civil About Asset Forfeiture

Policing for profit is a license to steal.   On receiving his monthly bank statements, a small business owner notices that the United States government has seized the balances of his accounts during the month. He calls the bank, and is given contact information of a Special Agent of the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Division. The    ... MORE

Katie Kieffer: Staring In Drone Dynasty

You are a reality star.    You might think no one sees you in your fenced-in backyard grilling hamburgers in your boxer shorts. But government drones equipped with HD cameras are filming a new reality show starring you: “Drone Dynasty.” In popular reality shows like “Duck Dynasty” and “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” we essentially  ... MORE

ViDEO: Drug War Reality Show Premiers Tonight

Full-Body-Pat-Downs In America's Public Schools

How the war on drugs is a war on children.   On a warm spring afternoon at American colleges, the intoxicating aroma of surely medicinal marijuana will be floating like a soft caress in the breeze, and hard-working students will be stocking up on amphetamine cocktails to sharpen their overstressed young minds for the coming exams.  ... MORE

VIDEO: Andrew Napolitano - Innocent Until Proven Guilty

Emily Miller: Concealed Carry Renewed

Pumping oxygen to the 2nd Amendment.       The top legislative priority for gun owners in the previous Congress was passage of a national concealed carry reciprocity bill. The measure sailed through the House on a bipartisan 272 to 154 vote only to die at the hands of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who refused to bring it to the floor. Since President   ... MORE

New York Toddlers Cram For Kindergarten Entrance Exam

by Gary North.    At age 4, kids are expert test-takers. They have to be. If they don’t score well, they will have to attend a public school. Yes, a public school. A New York City public school. The kid is doomed. Rich parents dread the thought. At $30,000 for kindergarten, there is still intense competition. Think of $400,000 for a kid’s education,   ... MORE

VIDEO: Social Security Spending Since 1950

R Rahn: More Government Control Equals Poorer Nations

A free market tutorial from, of all places, Moscow.  An upside down world. Here I am, in my London hotel room, watching an English-language financial program being broadcast from Moscow on RT (Russian TV). The program host is correctly berating the heads of the major Western central banks for acting like socialists in setting interest rates and ... MORE

3 Reasons To Build The Keystone XL Pipeline

by Meredith Bragg & Nick Gillespie.      Few energy projects have inspired the level of vitriol surrounding the Keystone XL Pipeline, that would run 1,700 miles from Alberta, Canada through the United States to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico. The oil sands of Alberta are estimated to hold 170 million 170 billon barrels of petroleum, the largest reservoir of black ... MORE

Jeff Berwick: Is America A Police State Yet?

There are ways to measure. Wendy McElroy writes: If you need to ask the question, then the answer is “yes”. But that is a glib response and I do not feel glib about America's slide through the nine rings of political hell. A police state is generally defined as a totalitarian government that exerts extreme and pervasive social, political and economic control over ... MORE

Jay D. Homnick: Uncle Sam Finds His Snitch

The IRS invents a whole new kind of tax refund.   My attitude to the second Obama administration is captured in the old joke about Bertha who gets on the New York-to-Chicago Greyhound bus and asks the driver to let her know when they get to Cleveland. She keeps loudly reminding him every half-hour or so until he is ready to pull his hair out. But he    ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - States Vs Feds

Sheldon Richman: Don't Trust The Government On Drones

Obama's targeted killings set a dangerous precedent. “Covert” drone warfare requires a level of confidence in politicians that they will never deserve. In the Kentucky Resolutions, the 1798 protest against the Alien and Sedition Acts, Thomas Jefferson wrote, "It would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in [politicians] to silence our fears    ... MORE

Michael Moeller: There Is No 'Good Regulation'

The case for unbridled economic freedom.   For an unapologetic capitalist, it's particularly frustrating when an allegedly pro-capitalist politician lacks the intellectual ammunition to adequately defend the free market. Concessions to statist opponents provide the illusion that statists have the moral upper hand. This is especially self-defeating when a  ... MORE

VIDEO: What's So Great about Economic Freedom?

Andrew Napolitano: Obama's Secret Court For Killing

What about the laws he swore to uphold?      President Obama willingly admits he dispatched CIA agents to kill an American and his teenage son and the son's American friend while they were in a desert in Yemen in 2011. He says he did so because the adult had encouraged folks to wage war on the United States and the children were just         ... MORE

Let Consumers Make Their Own Choices On Sugary Drinks

by Baylen Linnekin.    Earlier this week the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a group that regularly pushes for increased food regulations and considers soda to be “a slow-acting but ruthlessly efficient bioweapon,” announced it would be launching “a major action regarding the regulation of soda and other sugar-sweetened beverages.”       ... MORE

Walter E Williams: The Reality Of Abraham Lincoln

The politically-incorrect reality.   Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" has been a box-office hit and nominated for 12 Academy Awards, including best picture, best director and best actor for Daniel Day-Lewis, who portrayed our 16th president. I haven't seen the movie; therefore, this column is not about the movie but about a man deified by many. My colleague  ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: Guns And Pensions

The great appeal of pension politics.   A nation's choice between spending on military defense and spending on civilian goods has often been posed as "guns versus butter." But understanding the choices of many nations' political leaders might be helped by examining the contrast between their runaway spending on pensions while skimping     ... MORE

VIDEO: W E Williams - Social Security & Other Deceptions

John Hoeven: The Right Climate For Remarkable Results

Lessons from North Dakota's oil fields. Delayed energy projects and regulatory hurdles to domestic oil production not only cost the United States economy billions of dollars and millions of jobs, but they also stand in the way of an elusive goal: true American energy security. I believe, however, that our nation is within striking range of that goal and,    ... MORE

Scott Shackford: Dead Letters

The U.S. Postal Service's long, hard fall.  The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) did not fare well in 2012. Costs, losses, and debts rose as the volume of mail continued a decline that began in the middle of the last decade. Now the USPS is warning that without help from Congress, it will run out of money by the end of October. In reason’s May 1991     ... MORE

VIDEO: The Morality Of ObamaCare

Sheriffs Prepare To Abandon Citizens To Federal Gun Grab

by Brandon Turbeville.  In the wake of the highly questionable surge in school shootings and the long-awaited gun grabbing effort being promoted by the President, lawmakers, and the mainstream media, hundreds of American sheriffs have now gone on the record to state publicly that they will not enforce any new gun laws such as the ones being proposed in the  ... MORE

Mark Almonte: Why Do Civilians Need Assault Weapons?

Could you visualize yourself needing one?   The two strongest reasons for civilians to own assault weapons are self-defense and defense against tyranny. One self-defense situation that comes to mind is the L.A. riots.  Who can forget the nightly news's live footage of thugs hurling rocks at passing cars, buildings on fire, and looters smashing storefront   ... MORE