Why All Of Us Should Mistrust The Government

by Andrew Napolitano.   It should come as no surprise that President Obama told Ohio State students at graduation ceremonies last week that they should not question authority and they should reject the calls of those who do. He argued that "our brave, creative, unique experiment in self-rule" has been so successful that trusting the government is the same    ... MORE

The Economic Ripple Effect Of The Bakken Shale Oil Boom

by Mark J. Perry.      The Minneapolis Fed recently performed an interesting analysis of the economic ripple effect of shale oil activity in North Dakota as it spreads out from “ground zero” in the Bakken area, here’s an excerpt: The Bakken oil boom has led to strong growth in employment and record low unemployment rates in that region.  ... MORE

VIDEO: Rick Perry - Reject The Medicaid Expansion

Reid J. Epstein: President's Cigarette Tax Up In Smoke

Fortunately, it just hot air all along.      Remember the cigarette tax hike President Barack Obama proposed in his big budget rollout? The White House barely does. Presidential budgets are all about theater. But this year’s was more theatrical than most: Its biggest single new proposal — the sin tax to generate $78 billion to fund a preschool     ... MORE

Bob Unruh: Nullification Is America's Answer To Feds

Avoid revolution, just say no.   On the heels of a poll that showed 29 percent of registered voters believe an “armed revolution” may be needed in America to restore liberties, a second poll indicates Americans already have figured out a solution – reject federal laws that are unconstitutional. The previous poll by Fairleigh Dickinson     ... MORE

VIDEO: Freedom 2013 - A Race Among The States

Raising Minimum Wage Will Kill Jobs For Young Millennials

by Evan Feinberg. Young Americans looking for work could receive another crushing blow this week as the U.S. Senate will decide Thursday whether to confirm Thomas Perez as the next secretary of labor. Perez has been touted as President Obama's point man for a national minimum wage increase that will disproportionately harm Millennials.     ... MORE

Forcing Internet Sellers Into A Tax Collection Jungle

Cal Thomas on taxing Internet sales.     In 1998 when President Clinton signed the bipartisan Internet Tax Freedom Act, which prohibited state and local taxation of Internet access and Internet-only services, the purpose was to promote the commercial potential of the Internet, especially for start-ups and small businesses. Congress extended   ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: Words That Replace Thought

In doing so, they turn smart people into morons.  If there is ever a contest for words that substitute for thought, “diversity” should be recognized as the undisputed world champion. You don’t need a speck of evidence, or a single step of logic, when you rhapsodize about the supposed benefits of diversity. The very idea of testing this   ... MORE

The Power Of Any Government To Tax You

Daniel J. Mitchell on the Internet Sales Tax.    I’m either a total optimist or a glutton for punishment. I recently explained the benefits of “tax havens” for the unfriendly readers of the New York Times. Now I’m defending a different form of tax competition for CNN, another news outlet that leans left. In this case, the topic is whether states can reach  ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Free Market Medical Care

Jacob Sullum: The Cannabis Is Out Of The Bag

A fed crackdown would backfire.  This week the Colorado General Assembly put the finishing touches on legislation aimed at taxing and regulating the commercial distribution of marijuana for recreational use. The process has been haunted by the fear that the federal government will try to quash this momentous experiment in pharmacological     ... MORE

Gun Crime Has Plunged, But Americans Think It Is Up

Emily Alpert on a Pew Research study.   Gun crime has plunged in the United States since its peak in the middle of the 1990s, including gun killings, assaults, robberies and other crimes, two new studies of government data show. Yet few Americans are aware of the dramatic drop, and more than half believe gun crime has risen, according to a  ... MORE

VIDEO: What Is A Gold Standard?

Michael J. Hurd: Religion, Education And The State

Is religion 'free' to spend tax dollars?       Northwest Rankin High School in Flowood, Mississippi is under fire for allegedly forcing its students to attend and listen to Christian lectures during three assemblies held in April alone. Worse yet, students were barred from leaving and teachers blocked the exits to prevent any of them from doing so. A lawsuit  ... MORE

Obama Wants Millennials To Love Big Government

by Gene Healy.  There's a specter haunting America's youth, President Obama warned in his commencement address to Ohio State University graduates Sunday -- the specter of "cynicism." In Obama's account, sinister (but unnamed) "voices" have been busily corrupting the once-idealistic Generation Y with a siren song of "creeping cynicism" toward    ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: Bouncing Ball Politics

Danger ahead.  If you are driving along and suddenly see a big red rubber ball come bouncing out into the street, you might want to put your foot on the brake pedal, because a small child may well come running out into the street after it. We all understand that an inexperienced young child who has his mind fixed on one thing may ignore other things that    ... MORE

Jonah Goldberg: Obama's Narrow Vision Of A Civil Society

Obama doesn't want you to worry about tyranny.   On Sunday, President Obama delivered the commencement address at Ohio State University. He once again gave voice to the essential element of his philosophy of government: Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some   ... MORE

VIDEO: Fox News - Internet Wiretap Proposal



Judge Andrew Napolitano on government's latest attempt to bypass 4th Amendment protections.

Rasmussen Poll: Nullification Goes Mainstream

by Mike Maharrey. Day after day, the media pounds out a relentless drumbeat against nullification. Pundits, commentators and so-called legal experts demonize it as unconstitutional, villainize it as racist and trivialize it with slurs like “wacky” and “kookie.” But while the political class continues to arrogantly ridicule Madison and Jefferson’s      ... MORE

John Stossel: Live Free Or Move

Voting with your feet.      Forty-three million Americans moved from one state to another between 1995 and 2010 — about one-seventh of Americans. It's good that we can move! Moving provides one of the few limits on the megalomania of state bureaucrats. Americans have moved away from high-taxed, heavily regulated states to lower-taxed,   ... MORE

VIDEO: Will Conservatives Sellout Consumers?


Politicians plot to separate more people from their money.

Jackie Calmes: New Worries For Democrats On Health Law

Once ObamaCare is law, there will be hell to pay.      As the administration struggles to put in place the final, complex piece of President Obama’s signature health care law, an endeavor on a scale not seen since Medicare’s creation nearly a half-century ago, Democrats are worried that major snags will be exploited by Republicans in     ... MORE

Massive New Fed Crackdown On Legal Pot Dispensaries

by Nicole Flatow.      In several West Coast cities, federal officials are initiating a new round of crackdowns against dispensaries that are seemingly complying with state medical marijuana law. In Seattle,  11 dispensaries received shutdown warnings. In San Francisco,  almost half of the city’s small number of state-licensed dispensaries received    ... MORE

Katie Kieffer: Get The Facts And Save Lives With Guns

Educate instead of indoctrinate.   Teach gun safety in classrooms and leave sex education to parents. Plan B won’t save young people from incurable STDs, but guns will protect women and children from being raped or murdered. The more young people know about guns, the safer our society will be. Rush Limbaugh said on his talk radio   ... MORE

Obama Is Off To Pimp More Spending And Regulation

by Kevin Glass. While Congress investigates the Obama Administration's actions during the Benghazi terrorist attack this week, President Obama will be leaving town to promote his "jobs" agenda in what the Associated Press dubs "a series of day trips." The White House says President Barack Obama's trip to Austin, Texas, on Thursday will kick off a series  ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - ObamaCare Overload

Steve Chapman: Surveillance Cameras Are Not All That

A help in Boston, but are cameras really a good idea? Video surveillance cameras have been growing in popularity for years, but in recent weeks their advance has gotten a turbo boost. After helping to identify two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings, they went from occasionally desirable to universally vital.  Mayor Rahm     ... MORE

Brian Vanyo: Unsustainable And Unconstitutional Spending

General welfare and political pandering.     According to deficit forecasts in President Barack Obama's latest budget, the national debt will surpass $20 trillion by 2016.  If this occurs (and it is almost certain to occur), then Obama will add more to the national debt during his presidency than all prior presidents combined, despite     ... MORE

VIDEO: There Is A Correct Way To Interpret Constitution

Benghazi Whistleblower Shocked That WH Blamed YouTube

by John Sexton.    In an appearance on Face the Nation this morning, Rep. Darrell Issa revealed several new pieces of information about the Obama administration's controversial description of the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, casting doubt that the White House mischaracterized its cause by mere accident. "The talking points ... MORE

Wayne Winegarden: Treating Alzheimer's With Regulations

Bureaucracy stands in the way of the best treatment.   The U.S. health care system is rife with rising costs and stagnating quality. All too often, the cure for these ailments calls for ever greater government intervention. Such cures misdiagnose the problem. The health care system’s problems are caused by too little patient control, not   ... MORE

The Boston Mindset: Cringe Like Sheep

A reality check from William A. Levinson.    Colonel Jeff Cooper's To Ride, Shoot Straight, and Speak the Truth describes exactly what is wrong with the United States today.  Cooper wrote of the society in which he grew up during the 1930s. Boys were taught to shoot and use their hands, and girls were taught to expect that in their men.       ... MORE

John Stossel: Train Wreck Ahead

The perils of a blind engineer.   Most Americans — even those who are legislators — know very little about the details of President Obama's Affordable Care Act, so-called Obamacare. Next year, when it goes into effect, we will learn the hard way. Many people lazily assume that the law will do roughly what it promises: give insurance to the uninsured   ... MORE

VIDEO: Thomas Sowell - Culture And Success

Government Nannies And The New Caffeine Crackdown

by Baylen Linnekin.    The FDA announced earlier this week that the agency will investigate “any and all products with added caffeine.” FDA officials claim they were spurred to take action after the recent introduction of one product, Alert Energy Gum, a new caffeinated gum made by Wrigley. The agency argues that such a novel product   ... MORE

Benjamin Powell: Bangladesh Sweatshops Improve Lives

The reality is counterintuitive.     U.S. companies are rethinking whether to continue sourcing garments from Bangladesh in the wake of the tragic collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory that killed hundreds of workers on April 25.  If they do so, most Bangladeshi garment workers will be worse off than they are today.      ... MORE

VIDEO: Locked Up For Drinking Tea While Being Black


Salty language warning. Public servants or public masters?

Steven Greenhut: California's Homeless Bill Of Rights

The latest nitwittery from Golden State lawmakers.       The Homeless Bill of Rights, the name applied to a new bill that recently soared through the California Assembly’s Judiciary Committee on a 7-2 vote, is the latest in a long line of California legislation that has grabbed national attention for its sheer lunacy. At the current rate,     ... MORE

Americans Paying For Senseless Regulatory System

Government regulations hinder economic growth.  Why, in the down economy with millions of Americans unemployed, is it so difficult to hire contractors for the routine services the happy homeowner needs? Appliance repairmen in Virginia have permanent signs on their trucks asking for assistants. They turn down new customers like popular ... MORE