Steven Chapman: The Tyranny Of The Virtuous

We haven't yet rid ourselves of the Puritans!   The first law of thermodynamics says that energy can't be created and can't be destroyed — it can only be changed from one form into another. The same holds true of the puritanical impulse. Puritanism in the historical sense is as dead as the Salem witches. The religious group that settled in New     ... MORE

Matt Ridley On How Fossil Fuels Are Greening The Planet

An inconvenient truth the media ignores.   Matt Ridley, author of The Red Queen, Genome, The Rational Optimist and other books, dropped by Reason's studio in Los Angeles last month to talk about a curious global trend that is just starting to receive attention. Over the past three decades, our planet has gotten greener! Even stranger, the       ... MORE

VIDEO: What Evidence Supports Affirmative Action?


Thomas Sowell provides the answer.

One Of The World's Most Impoverishing Commands

by Yaron Brook and Don Watkins.       “Give back.” That’s the message sent to successful businessmen. You built a company? You made a lot of money? Fine. Now it’s time for you to use the money you’ve made to do some real good in the world. Apparently, creating our modern standard of living and our modern lifespan doesn’t count.           ... MORE

R. Emmett Tyrell Jr.: Rand Paul Comes Of Age

GOP should recognize this force to be reckoned with.   When Sen. Rand Paul took to the floor of the United States Senate the morning of March 6, he really — as they say — may have made a difference. It is a difference in our awareness of the issues facing the country. It is a difference in our perception of the man who is leading the   ... MORE

VIDEO: DEA Head's Absurd Marijuana Testimony

Veronique de Rugy: Farm Subsidies Must Die

A program to take from the poor and give to the rich.   On January 2, President Barack Obama signed a bill designed to avert the fiscal cliff. At the same time, to slightly less fanfare, he averted the “milk cliff.” By extending the 2008 farm bill another nine months, he prevented the automatic revival of a 1949 law requiring the   ... MORE

Andrew Napolitano: What If Nanny Is A Thug?

A hypothetical reality. What if a dictator in America used the force of law to tell you what to eat? What if the same dictator told you what to drink? What if the dictator told you the sizes of the containers in which you could purchase a lawful beverage? What if the dictator just made up the rules according to his own personal taste? What if the product ... MORE

If There Is No Inflation, Why Are Prices Up So Much?

by Michael Sivy. Last week, I ran out of ink for my printer and ordered some more online. My computer automatically pulled up the previous order, and I was shocked to see that the price of the ink cartridges I was buying had gone up 25%. To my mind, ink always seems overpriced. Manufacturers sell printers cheaply because they know that they  ... MORE

Barry Farber: Is This America, Or The Losers' Lounge?

A much needed pep talk. Rush Limbaugh says he’s ashamed to be an American. Glenn Beck says it’s time to surrender. Neal Boortz entitles his book summing up 42 years of talk-radio stardom “Maybe I Should Just Shut Up And Go Away.” One of our most effective columnists, Paul Hollrah, who served twice on the Electoral College and beat the Democratic    ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Police Militarization

Rick Moran: ObamaCare's 15-Page Application Form

Big winners: lawyers and paper pushers.   Remember when the president touted the ease with which consumers would be able to get a health insurance policy under Obamacare? It would be almost as easy as shopping on the internet, we were told. Oh, really? How many retail companies would stay in business if they required that you fill out  ... MORE

Gene Healy: Rand Paul Vs The "Forever War"

Challenging modern conservative orthodoxy.     The cruelest thing about politics is that it occasionally gets your hopes up. Sometimes, just when you've almost concluded that the best D.C. has to offer is ringside seats at the latest legislative catastrophe, you get an unexpected outbreak of political courage and common     ... MORE

VIDEO: On Bloomberg, Authority And Police States

Jerry Day tears into NY Nanny-In-Chief Bloomberg's presumptions of authority.

NCPA Research: Green Cars Are Not So Clean After All

Green vehicles are polluting and wasteful. Electric and hybrid cars were lauded as a cure for climate change and carbon emissions. Though electric vehicles are zero emissions, only 50,000 were sold in 2012 -- well short of the number needed to achieve President Obama's goal of 1 million green cars on the road by 2015. While    ... MORE

Tim Feran: Fear Of New Gun Laws Stokes Run On Ammo

In preparation for government tyranny.  Gun owners are having a hard time reloading lately as a spike in ammunition sales has stripped shelves bare in shops across the country.   “We’ve been out for a month, and we have no idea when any is coming in,” said David Tait of Ohio Valley Outdoors in Lancaster.   “People want to come in, and we just don’t ... MORE

A. Barton Hinkle: Will The Right Come Around On Pot?

Or will they assume the role of U.N. lackeys.      Advocates of treating marijuana more like alcohol gained another ally recently: the United Nations. The U.N. would claim otherwise. In fact, the U.N.’s International Narcotics Control Board would hotly deny it. The agency’s latest report laments the legalization of pot in Colorado and     ... MORE

Tracie Cone: Bill Would Ban Lead Ammunition In California

Inmates are running the asylum.     Environmentalists are pushing legislation to ban lead ammunition in California to prevent toxins from poisoning scavengers that eat animal remains left by hunters. Final language of the bill was introduced Monday by Assembly Member Anthony Rendon, D-Lakewood, who said the legislation would remove a    ... MORE

VIDEO: Thomas DiLorenzo - Roots Of The FED

Female Senator Gets 'Very Uncomfortable' TSA Screening

by Keith Laing.   Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) complained Monday she was subject to a very uncomfortable screening by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). McCaskill tweeted about the experience before boarding a flight on Monday.  The senator, who has complained about the TSA's security techniques in the past, tweeted that  ... MORE

Gavin Newsom: 'War On Drugs Is Abject Failure'

California Lieutenant Governor takes a stand. Citing the myriad politicians who have recently publicly declared their support for gay marriage, Newsom suggested it was time for leaders to "come out of the closet" on marijuana, too. "I am sick and tired of politicians saying one thing in private and saying another in public," he said. "It's time  ... MORE

VIDEO: The Successful Dumbing Down Of America


From the Jimmy Kimmel show.

Thomas Sowell - Intellectuals And Race

Racism is now a default explanation. There are so many fallacies about race that it would be hard to say which is the most ridiculous. However, one fallacy behind many other fallacies is the notion that there is something unusual about different races being unequally represented in various institutions, careers or at different income or     ... MORE

Matt Welch: Toward A Libertarian Foreign Policy

Rand Paul moves the ball on a long-overdue project.       In October 2010, one month before a historic wave of Tea Party Republicans swept into power, Washington’s conservative establishment banded together to spread an urgent message to any would-be budget cutters on or near Capitol Hill: Hands off the military, kids. The $80 million  ... MORE

A Case Against Government Bans On Feeding The Homeless

by Baylen Linnekin.    During the late 1990s, when I worked as a researcher in the Judiciary Square area of downtown Washington, DC, my job required me to walk across The Mall twice each day to pick up documents at the Federal Aviation Administration and Department of Transportation. En route, I would invariably stop to talk with     ... MORE

Star Parker: Background Checks Won't Make Us Safer

Freedom isn't the problem, people are.   In April of 2007, a mentally disturbed student showed up at the campus of his school, Virginia Tech, brandishing two semi-automatic pistols, and murdered 32 students, teachers and school employees and wounded 17 others. Then he took his own life. It was the one of deadliest mass shooting incidents in American   . ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Ticket Scalping

Walter E Williams: Educational Rot

Schools of education are academic slums.   American education is in a sorry state of affairs, and there's enough blame for all participants to have their fair share. They include students who are hostile and alien to the education process, uninterested parents, teachers and administrators who either are incompetent or have been beaten down by the system,   ... MORE

Ralph Benko: DHS To Aquire 1.6 Billion Rounds Of Ammo

Just what is the Obama regime up to?     The Denver Post, on February 15th, ran an Associated Press article entitled Homeland Security aims to buy 1.6b rounds of ammo, to far too little notice.  It confirmed that the Department of Homeland Security has issued an open purchase order for 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition.  As elsewhere reported,      ... MORE

VIDEO: Are We Running Out Of Resources?

Rick Manning: McCain Goes Whacko Bird

A man whose time has gone.   Senator John McCain went all whacko bird to the Huffington Post attacking fellow Republican Senators Rand Paul and Ted Cruz.  His fellow Republican Senators crime was to have had the audacity to actually stand up to power and force the Obama Administration to accept that the U.S. Constitution does not allow the random   ... MORE

Rick Moran: Gun Control Efforts Are Dying In Congress

Not with a bang, but with a whimper.      A sure sign that nothing much will happen on the gun control front is that President Obama has barely lifted a finger to personally lobby lawmakers to pass his agenda. And he certainly hasn't been anywhere near the negotiations that ended up bringing 4 bills to the Senate Judiciary Committee - three of which ... MORE

NY Times Op-Ed: An Ugly Truth In The War On Drugs

Time to advance, not degrade, human rights.        This week, representatives from many nations will gather at the annual meeting of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna to determine the appropriate course of the international response to illicit drugs. Delegates will debate multiple resolutions while ignoring a truth that goes to ... MORE        

John Fund: Minimum Wage Equals Maximum Confusion

Why it hurts the poor more than helps.     President Obama made headlines in January when he called for raising the minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $9 and tying future increases to inflation. Politically, calling for a higher minimum wage is a winner. This week, New York’s state assembly voted to implement Obama’s plan locally. On the national level,   ... MORE

VIDEO: Milton Friedman - Exhaustible Resources

Nicole Russell: Rand's Band Of Brothers

The liberty diehards.       Whatever his ideological leanings, surely Shakespeare would have raised an eyebrow at the political scene Wednesday, if only for the content it would have stirred in his creative mind. Though Rand Paul spearheaded an epic 13-hour filibuster, he didn’t fill that time alone. Fourteen other Senators total — including one    ... MORE

Rick Moran: Gabby Gifford's Husband Buys An AR-15

The nauseating hypocrisy of this guy is incredible.      When caught red-handed by Breitbart, who tracked down a tip that Mark Kelly, former Rep. Gifford's husband purchased an "assault weapon," here's what the gun control advocate put on his Facebook page: I just had a background check a few days ago when I went to my local gun     ... MORE

VIDEO: Obama, Drones, and Presidential Kill Lists


Rand Paul stands up for American principles.

Rand Paul: Rising In Defense Of The Constitution

Insisting on a meaningful Bill of Rights.   On Wednesday, I rose to begin a filibuster on the nomination of John O. Brennan to be director of the CIA. I stood up with the intent of speaking until I was no longer able to speak. I vowed to speak as long as it took, until an alarm was sounded from coast to coast that our Constitution is important, that our rights to ... MORE

Brian Phillips: The Fallacy Of The 'Living Wage'

It strips some of the ability to make a living.   If the advocates of the “living wage” are truly convinced that arbitrary government dictates have no detrimental consequences on jobs, why don’t they advocate a “prosperity wage”? Instead of legislating a wage that allows families to “get by,” why don’t they legislate a wage that allows families to prosper? In other  ... MORE