Mark Hendrickson: Big Brother Is Increasingly Watching You

Every breath you take, every move you make.  One of the most hotly debated of all individual rights is the right to privacy. Generations of immigrants came to the United States to escape religious persecution, economic oppression, and the danger of becoming embroiled in the Old World’s frequently recurring wars. These reasons are variations  ... MORE

Paul Lilly: Florida Bans Internet Cafes

There was too much freedom going on.   Well, it's official. Florida governor Rick Scott signed into legislation the "Internet Cafe Ban," which effectively closed down around 1,000 such establishments in the state. The ban went into effect immediately, though some cafes shut their doors a week ago under the assumption that the ban would go through. ... MORE

VIDEO: Rand Paul - Government Spending Priorities

Andrew Napolitano: Obama Expands His Power To Kill

While reducing our capacity to defend ourselves.      Does the government work for us, or do we work for the government? How can the president claim the lawful power to kill whomever he wishes and at the same time ask Congress to incapacitate our ability to defend ourselves against those who might seek to kill us? Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul  ... MORE

Bob Taylor: Jackie Robinson And Political Correctness

Society is an ever-evolving process.   Jackie Robinson did more than simply change the face of baseball when he broke the race barrier in the sport sixty-six years ago. Robinson changed the course of history. He opened the gates for African American athletes to compete in all team sports, not just baseball and, in the process, he was also a major catalyst in    ... MORE

VIDEO: How The Anti-Bully Movement Hurts Kids

Robert Higgs: ABC's For Today's Public School Students

A is for Alzheimer’s Disease.    If you eat lots of vegetables and floss your teeth, you will live a long time and get this condition as your reward. B is for Baconator. If thou shouldst ever eat one, thou shalt surely die. C is for Crumbling Infrastructure, an incantation government officials mutter when they want to spend more of the public’s money   ... MORE

Matthew Walther: Rand The Realist

The Kentucky senator is his own man.   Rand Paul’s shirts always seem to fit. Look at almost any picture of him: The jacket lapel is always touching the tip of his collar, if only just barely. His untamed curls notwithstanding, he looks professional, put together, serious. The junior senator from Kentucky wasn’t wearing a jacket when I sat down     ... MORE

Tibor R. Machan: Corruption Of Individual Rights

Now we have the 'right' to coerce.   Whenever a good idea surfaces, there will surely be many who will try to hitch their wagon to it filled with corrupt versions that aim to serve numerous purposes having little to do with the original good idea. One example is the idea of individual natural human rights. Some simply disagree with the idea, like Jeremy  ... MORE

Charles C. W. Cooke: A Tax On Freedom

High taxes on guns and ammo punish the law-abiding.    ‘I’m not asking to take away people’s guns,” Maryland legislator Jon Cardin nervously told Politico this week. “I’m just saying that for an activity that is relatively dangerous, obviously, people who participate in that activity should pay the full costs of that activity.” America, witness a        ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Green Tyranny

Techdirt: Crusader Feinstein Looks To Limit More Options

This time it's violent video games.   Dianne Feinstein, whose post-Newtown assault weapons ban was defanged by Sen. Harry Reid before its inclusion in the Democrats' gun control bill, has decided to switch scapegoats. Now, she's determined to do something about violent video games, apparently unaware that the Supreme Court has already   ... MORE

Dana Loesch: When Tryanny Masquerades As Stupidity

The belief that criminals will abide gun laws.  When Democrats passed the assault weapons ban in 1994 it didn’t prevent further gun-related crime or stop the Columbine massacre. Connecticut’s own assault weapons ban did nothing to prevent Adam Lanza from committing theft (another crime) to illegally posses a gun that he used illegally. The small    ... MORE

VIDEO: Leading Politicians Out Of The Drug War

Jacob Sullum: Obama's Abuse Of Dead Children

The master opportunist strikes again.  "This is about doing the right thing for all the families who are here that have been torn apart by gun violence," President Obama declared on Monday, promoting his "common-sense gun safety reforms" in a speech at the University of Hartford, where the audience included parents of children who  ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: Tests And Tiger Moms

Inducing poverty with political correctness.   New York City's Stuyvesant High School is one of those all too rare public schools for intellectually outstanding students. Such students are often bored to death in schools where the work is geared to the lowest common denominator, and it is by no means uncommon for very bright   ... MORE

FBI Warrantless Cellphone Tracking 'Very Common'

Can you hear me now?   FBI investigators for at least five years have routinely used a sophisticated cellphone tracking tool that can pinpoint callers’ locations and listen to their conversations — all without getting a warrant for it, a federal court was told this week. The use of the “Stingray,” as the tool is called, “is a very common practice” by ... MORE

Man Facing Charges For Self-Defense Against Bear

What would they have done to Daniel Boone?       A 76-year-old Auburn, Massachusetts man Richard Ahlstrand had spotted a black bear in his backyard last Thursday around his bird feeders. On Friday, he went to fill up his bird feeders, and as a precaution, he took his shotgun. Sure enough, the black bear showed up and started to chase the old   ... MORE

VIDEO: Thomas Sowell - Culture Matters

Thomas Sowell: 'Proportional Response'

Lowering the prospective cost of aggression.  Since when has it been considered smart to tell your enemies what your plans are? Yet there on the front page of the April 8th New York Times was a story about how unnamed "American officials" were planning a "proportional" response to any North Korean attack. This was spelled in an example: If  ... MORE

Washington Times Editorial: Burying Crony Capitalism

The courts strike a blow for economic freedom.  An established business knows that the most direct way to dominate the market is to enlist government assistance. Trade groups frequently seek the imposition of licensing requirements — in the name of public safety, of course. Requiring someone who wants to be a barber, tour guide  ... MORE

VIDEO: MSNBC Promotes State Ownership Of Children

Matt Welch: When The Madness Began To Lift

The fruits of Rand Paul's historic filibuster.   The 2004 Republican National Convention, held in New York City as close as possible to the three-year anniversary of the day the World Trade Center was pulverized by terrorists, was a three-day festival of chest-thumping snarls directed at anyone who’d dare mention the concepts of civil liberties or   ... MORE

Cal Thomas: Gun Laws And Human Nature

Sometimes, the best defense is a good offense.      In 1983 when President Reagan ordered the deployment of missiles in Europe as part of his "peace through strength" strategy to counter the Soviet Union, the very liberal town of Takoma Park, Md., declared itself a "nuclear free zone." City officials passed an ordinance known as The Takoma Park Nuclear   ... MORE

Paul Craig Roberts: The Assault On Gold

The Federal Reserve's last stand?    For Americans, financial and economic Armageddon might be close at hand. The evidence for this conclusion is the concerted effort by the Federal Reserve and its dependent financial institutions to scare people away from gold and silver by driving down their prices. When gold prices hit $1,917.50 an    ... MORE

Walter E Williams: Black Unemployment

Let's look at the causes.  A couple of weeks ago, Black Entertainment Television founder Bob Johnson, speaking at The National Press Club, said the nation "would never tolerate white unemployment at 14 and 15 percent." Black unemployment has been double that of white Americans for more than 50 years. The black youth unemployment rate is more     ... MORE

VIDEO: Margaret Thatcher, Champion Of Capitalism

Travis Holt: The Medical Police State

Who is the real terrorist here?    Recently I posted the story of a Connecticut man who was abducted by the state and thrown into a psych ward after a doctor found his answering machine greeting to be "peculiar." Can it get any more evil than that? I'll let you be the judge. In Iowa a man who complained to his physical therapist about the ... MORE

Jed Morey: Hang The Jury

The secret that shouldn't be. A single juror has the ability to acquit a defendant in a trial for any reason. Even if the juror believes the defendant is guilty. This is called jury nullification. This is not a loophole. Nor is it illegal. But it’s a secret and it shouldn’t be. With that said, let’s begin. A cursory review of prison statistics illustrates the     ... MORE

VIDEO: We Are Giving Away Our Power

Steve Chapman: What's Worse Than Horse Slaughter?

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.   When it comes to government action, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Hold down gasoline prices to help motorists, and you create shortages. Punish landlords to protect tenants, and apartments get harder to find. Invade Iraq to spread freedom, and you get civil war.        ... MORE

Sen. Rand Paul: Minimizing Authority Of Judges

The case against mandatory minimums.       I, like anyone else, whether a member of Congress or a parent, am concerned with the well-being of our children. We all want to keep our families and our communities safe. We want to see violent predators and criminals put behind bars and punished for the harm they do to others and to. ... MORE

Why I'm Teaching My Son To Break The Law

by J.D. Tuccille.      In 1858, hundreds of residents of Oberlin and Wellington, Ohio—many of them students and faculty at Oberlin College—surrounded Wadsworth's Hotel, in Wellington, in which law enforcement officers and slavehunters held a fugitive slave named John Price, under the authority of the Fugitive Slave Act. After a brief standoff,     ... MORE

Washington Times: Freedom's Just Another Word

In NJ, California and NY, not so much. Freedom means different things to each of us, but in New Jersey, California and New York, shrinking personal and economic freedom means shrinking population. In the decade since 2001, New York has lost 9 percent of its population, California 4.5 percent, and New Jersey 5.6 percent.        ... MORE

VIDEO: Milton Friedman - Department Of Energy

Dave Kopel: Turning Gun Owners Into Felons

Spouse can't even borrow gun for over 7 days.  Public-opinion polls about “universal background checks” for gun sales show widespread support. While President Obama and Mayor Bloomberg talk about “gun sales,” the actual legislation moving through Congress aims to regulate far more than sales. It would turn almost every gun owner into a  ... MORE

Food Stamp Program Spent Record $80.4B in FY 2012

Nearly $7000 per family of four.    During fiscal year 2012, the U.S. government spent a record $80.4 billion on food stamps, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), a $2.7 billion increase from FY 2011.  (Fiscal year 2012 ran from Oct. 1, 2011 through Sept. 30, 2012.) According to the Monthly Treasury Statement that          ... MORE

VIDEO: Total Government Debt Since 1950

Happily Beyond The Days Of Ron Paul's Lonely Crusades

by Nathan Lewis.    On March 14, H.R. 1176, the “Centennial Monetary Commission Act of 2013,” was presented in Congress. It has thirteen sponsors. Thirteen is a good number. We are already beyond the days of Ron Paul’s lonely crusades, of only a few years ago. The bill aims to “establish a commission to examine the United States monetary policy,        ... MORE

Mona Charen: Sowell Does It Again

Another great insightful read from Tom.     I plunged into Thomas Sowell's latest book "Intellectuals and Race" immediately upon its arrival but soon realized that I needed to slow down. Many writers express a few ideas with a great cataract of words. Sowell is the opposite. Every sentence contains at least one insight or fascinating statistic, frequently      ... MORE