Max Frankel: Where Did Our 'Inalienable Rights' Go?

from the New York Times.    NOW that we sense the magnitude of our government’s effort to track Americans’ telephone and Internet transactions, the issue finally and fully before us is not how we balance personal privacy with police efficiency. We have long since surrendered a record of our curiosities and fantasies to Google. We have     ... MORE

Tibor R. Machan: How To Secure A Free Country

We need protection from unlimited government.        NSA’s excuse for snooping on innocent citizens — namely, that it can prevent serious harm to us, might even save lives — is spurious.  If you incarcerated us all, that, too, might do all that. Free men and women are, of course, capable of violence, even murder, but unless it is     ... MORE

VIDEO: Milton Friedman - The Future Of Freedom

Matt Rousu: Time For Feds To Legalize Internet Gambling

A nanny state is no friend of liberty.     While Americans love to wager money, our country has an interesting relationship with legalized gambling.  Though it’s legal in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, many Indian Reservations, and other places in the US, it is illegal elsewhere.  Further, the legality of online gambling sites has also been questioned.   ... MORE

Congress Killed Our Privacy And Empowered The NSA

by Andrew Napolitano.   Which is more dangerous to personal liberty in a free society: a renegade who tells an inconvenient truth about government law-breaking, or government officials who lie about what the renegade revealed? That's the core issue in the great public debate this summer, as Americans come to the realization that their      ... MORE

VIDEO: Surf Without Surveillance

R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.: Justice Thomas Echos JFK

Quotas and affirmative action cause nothing but trouble.  For four decades the American people have been perplexed by “affirmative action,” “quotas,” and all the circumlocutions that have accumulated around them. Reading about them is painful. Living with them is worse. What has the Supreme Court trying been trying to tell us with  ... MORE

Folks Use 'Incompetent' And 'Liar' To Describe Obama

Jennifer Harper on Pew Research findings.     One gauge of a president’s favorability is the assorted descriptors the public volunteers to a pollster about the leader of the Free World. The Pew Research Center has tracked the assorted description of President Obama over the years, and has this to say: “The survey finds that the one-word       ... MORE

Julie Borowski: Knowing Your Rights Gets More Important

Freedom is under attack incrementally.    Many Americans have probably read about oppressive governments in history books and thought, “Why didn’t the people stand up and stop this from happening?” In hindsight, it just seems so obvious that the people should have noticed and protested government overstepping its bounds. But often,   ... MORE

Spying's The Real Story, Not Edward Snowden

by Gene Healy.   I promised myself to stay away from Orwell metaphors for the duration of the latest surveillance-state controversy. But the punditocracy's recent "two-minutes hate" against National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden has me backsliding already. Judging by the vicious -- and irrelevant -- attacks on Snowden's character, all too  ... MORE

VIDEO: Black Conservatives - Think For Yourself

Emily Miller: Using Taxes To Threaten 2nd Amendment

Making self-protection unaffordable.      Liberals are trying every tool at their disposal this year to go after guns. They have failed on Capitol Hill to restrict the Second Amendment, so they are moving through the states to enact their agenda. The latest maneuver is to hike the tax on guns and ammunition to dissuade the law-abiding     ... MORE

John Stossel: Banning The Things That Make Us Happy

People say America is a free country.     But what if you want to drink, have a cigarette or make a bet? Government often says "no" to protect us from ourselves. It's as if the government is still run by the Puritans who settled this land four centuries ago. They said pleasure and luxury are sinful. Today's government has a better argument    ... MORE

VIDEO: The Feds Want Snowden To Become A Spy

New Carbon Regulations Come At Great Cost To America

by Jeffrey Folks.   Five years into Obama's presidency, twelve million Americans remain unemployed, ten million others are underemployed, the unemployment rate is rising, and Obama wants to make it worse. In the fourth year of the Reagan presidency, the national economy grew by 6.8%.  Last year, under Obama, it was still stuck at 2.2%.  That   ... MORE

James Ostrowski: How To Help Low-Wage Workers

Without raising the minimum wage.   The minimum wage law is in the news again, largely because the Democrats have misinterpreted the election as something other than a protest against the Iraq War and one-party rule. Why do politicians love to propose increases in the minimum wage? 1. It costs them nothing other than the ink and paper     ... MORE

Jacob Sullum: When Policing Becomes Harrassment

Why NYPD's stop-and-frisk program is unconstitutional. The first time David Floyd was stopped and frisked, on a Friday afternoon in April 2007, he was walking down Beach Avenue a few doors from his house in the Bronx. Two police officers confronted him, demanding to know who he was, where he was going, what he was doing, and whether    ... MORE

David A. Lieb: Nullification Efforts Mounting In The States

State resolve on gun rights, pot and other issues.   Imagine the scenario: A federal agent attempts to arrest someone for illegally selling a machine gun. Instead, the federal agent is arrested — charged in a state court with the crime of enforcing federal gun laws. Farfetched? Not as much as you might think. The scenario would become     ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Drug Myths

Thomas Sowell: Random Thoughts On The Passing Scene

Laser beams of wisdom.   Edmund Burke said, "There is no safety for honest men, but by believing all possible evil of evil men." Evil men do not always snarl. Some smile charmingly. Those are the most dangerous. If you don't think the mainstream media slants the news, keep track of how often they tell you that the Arctic ice pack is shrinking and how   ... MORE

Walter E Williams: Bit By Bit Strategy

A relentless march of busybodies and tyrants.   There's a move on to prohibit Washington's football team from calling itself "Redskins," even though a 2009 U.S. Supreme Court decision said that it has that right. Now the name change advocates are turning to the political arena and intimidation. The NCAA has already banned the University of    ... MORE

VIDEO: Ben Swann: NSA's Criminal Activity

Katie Kieffer: Go See Copperhead The Movie

Don’t give up on Hollywood.     I just had the exciting opportunity to pre-screen Gettysburg director Ron Maxwell’s third Civil War movie premiering Friday, June 28. If you see just one movie this summer, make it Copperhead. Copperhead is worth seeing because it re-tells American history with an intimate, engaging and non-textbook approach.    ... MORE

No, The NSA Leaks Aren't Putting Americans At Risk

by Steve Chapman.   If a person in government says the sun will come up tomorrow, it's sensible to believe that person -- but not until the first rays seep over the horizon. Skepticism is even more justified when the government has been caught hiding something from the public and needs to excuse the secrecy. In the aftermath of Edward Snowden's    ... MORE