Scandals likely to prove secondary to policy and ideas. The political world around the Pauls—retired Republican congressman Ron Paul and his son, sitting Kentucky senator Rand Paul—was roiled by mini-scandals last week. Treated as most consequential by national media was, naturally,
the one that touched on the senior Kentucky ... MORE
Brad Reid: An Overview Of Civil Asset Forfeiture
A look at history and recent cases. The forfeiture of assets associated with criminal activity has an ancient history. American colonists, particularly business owners, objected to general "writs of assistance" issued by British authorities that allowed broad searches and the subsequent seizures of discovered property suspected of ... MORE
Anthony L. Fisher: Stop And Frisk On Trial In NYC
Race, crime and unconstitutional policing. On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge
Shira Schiendlin ruled that the New York City Police
Department's use of "Stop and Frisk," a policing tactic in which
officers detain and search citizens on the street who are guilty of
suspcious behavior, is unconstitutional as currently practiced.
Mayor ... MORE
Politicians See $ Signs With Red-Light Traffic Cameras
Using technology to separate citizens from their money. A hundred more automatic red-light traffic cameras are up around Long Island, 50 in Nassau County. The warning signs that are supposed to encourage drivers to be very careful aren’t up yet. Revenue is up. Laws that try to alter driver behavior are not necessarily a bad thing, ... MORE
Obama Moves To Levy Cellphone Tax Without Congress
Government of unlimited power flexes its muscles. As we now know from the New York Times, the president hopes to "seize any opportunity I can find to work with Congress to strengthen the middle class, improve their prospects, improve their security. But where Congress is unwilling to act, I will take whatever administrative ... MORE
Holder And FBI Admit Lying To Promote Obama Reelection
Thomas Lifson on seemingly fixed nature of politicians. In their efforts to promote the re-election of Barack Obama, our nation's premier law enforcement agencies presented false data to the American public about a "crackdown" on mortgage fraud. Fox News reports: The Justice Department and FBI have quietly acknowledged they ... MORE
Labels:
deception,
Eric Holder,
FBI,
government,
Obama,
opportunity,
politicians,
scandal,
transparency
Gene Healy: For Obama, Words Conceal The Indefensible
Using language as a cover for the abuse of power. Let President Obama be clear, will you? He seems to think it's important. "The 'let me be clear' preface" is a recurring rhetorical tic
for Obama, the Washington
Post pointed out in 2010, and it's "become a signal that what
follows will be anything but." On Aug. 9, with his approval ... MORE
Bruce Deltrick Price: What Is Literacy In The 21st Century?
Another excuse for not teaching traditional skills. A new development in education is deciding what "literacy" should be in the 21st century. With a swirl of technological breakthroughs all around us, elite educators are gaga at the plethora of excuses for pooh-poohing subjects routinely taught in the dark age known as the 20th century. ... MORE
Labels:
academic,
communication,
education,
illiteracy,
skill,
society,
students,
teachers,
technology
Zachary Warbrodt: Congress Starts Looking Into Bitcoin
Politicians worried they can't control digital currency. A Senate committee is pressing federal regulators and law enforcement officials to explain how they plan to oversee Bitcoin and other virtual currencies as the issue gains increasing attention from government officials concerned about the role these new markets will play ... MORE
John Stossel: Battle Of The Sexes
Different choices make for different rewards. Women make only 77 cents per each dollar made by males. Outrageous! Sex discrimination! So say advocates of government-enforced "equality." But they are wrong. Women today are rarely victims of salary discrimination. If they were, market competition would punish bosses who ... MORE
Labels:
careers,
children,
choice,
discrimination,
disparity,
gender,
politics,
salary,
self-interest,
women
California's Senate Passes Ammunition Purchase Permit Bill
by Charles C. W. Cooke. As I write, California’s state legislature is attempting to regain for the state the lost title of Most Anti-Gun Place in the Union. The senate has just passed a provision that would require residents to get hold of a ”Purchase Permit” before buying ammunition. Per CBS: A controversial gun measure proposed by a Southern ... MORE
Peter Grier: Obama Rodeo Clown Gets Banned For Life
How dare he pass federal secrets! Missouri State Fair officials have banned for life the rodeo clown who
wore a President Obama mask while facing bulls at the event over the
weekend. The clown in question engaged in an “unconscionable stunt” and will never perform at the Show Me state venue again, the Missouri State Fair Commission said ... MORE
Labels:
free speech,
Obama,
offend,
political correctness,
politics,
presidency,
prohibition,
sensitivity
Rand Paul: Milton Friedman And Restraint
The Fed has been and is a failure. Lovers of Big Government and apologists for debt like Paul Krugman have tried to paint Milton Friedman as a contradiction. They say that Friedman’s insight that more Fed intervention might have mitigated the Great Depression is inconsistent with his view that the Depression would have been ... MORE
The Police State Mindset In Our Public Schools
by John W. Whitehead. Once upon a time in America, parents breathed a sigh of relief when their kids went back to school after a summer’s hiatus, content in the knowledge that for a good portion of the day their kids would be gainfully occupied, out of harm’s way and out of trouble. Those were the good old days, before school shootings ... MORE
Labels:
drug war,
police state,
policy,
political correctness,
schools,
search and seizure,
shooting
Thomas Sowell: Are We Serious About Education?
Look at what political incentives have produced. Two recent events — one on the east coast and one on the west coast — raise painful questions about whether we are really serious when we say that we want better education for minority children. One of these events was an announcement by Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C., ... MORE
Is Nullification Gaining Mainstream Momentum?
by Joe Wolverton, II. Are states ready to flex their constitutional muscle and restrain the federal behemoth with the chains of the Constitution? Maybe. In an article published by Politico on July 27, Tal Kopan wrote,
“Infuriated by what they see as the long arm of Washington reaching
into their business, states are increasingly telling the ... MORE
Aaron Goldstein: Why The Redskins Get Under Their Skin
The nerdy Left has gone on the warpath again. When I read that Slate, Mother Jones and the New Republic had announced with great fanfare that they would not identify Washington’s NFL team as the Redskins, I had two thoughts. My first thought was how often the writers at Slate, Mother Jones and the New Republic write stories ... MORE
Labels:
busybody,
football,
free speech,
liberalism,
offend,
political correctness,
politics,
sports
Ira Stoll: Obama's Bogus Case For A "Decent Wage"
The president's latest bad economic idea. President Obama’s high-wage vision of the American economy could make a consumer’s typical shopping trip nearly five times more expensive. Think that’s an exaggeration? Obama promised recently
that for the “remainder of his presidency” he would focus his
energy on “asking our businesses ... MORE
Asset Forfeiture, The Cash Cow Of The Drug War
by Lucy Steigerwald. During a July 9 traffic stop in
Meridian, Mississippi, police found $360,000 stashed in a secret
compartment in the car. Though that’s perhaps an eyebrow-raising amount
of money, readers of that linked article might notice something odd—the
driver was let go, but the money was kept by the cops. The unnamed
individual ... MORE
Daniel J Mitchell: More Americans Are Going Galt
Why folks are deciding to renounce American citizenship. President Obama promised he would unite the world…and he’s right. Representatives from dozens of nations have bitterly complained about an awful piece of legislation, called the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), that was enacted back in 2010. They despise this ... MORE
Labels:
citizenship,
government,
income tax,
intervention,
IRS,
law,
legislation,
Obama,
tax,
tax rates
Ruling: NY Police's 'Stop-And-Frisk' Tactics Violates Rights
Court points out the obvious to NY Mayor Bloomberg. In a stinging rebuke to the Bloomberg administration, a federal judge ruled on Monday that the New York City Police's "stop and frisk" crime-fighting tactics violate the constitutional rights of minorities, despite claims by the mayor and police commissioner that it has driven down rates ... MORE
Ronald Bailey: The Top 5 Bogus Health Scares
How activist misinformation harms Americans. Health activists, nutrition nannies, medical paternalists, and just plain old quacks regularly conjure up a variety of menaces that are supposedly damaging the health of Americans. Their scares ranging from the decades-long campaign against fluoridation to worries that saccharin ... MORE
Labels:
autism,
cell phones,
disease,
health,
information,
nanny state,
obesity,
salt,
scare tactics
Walter E Williams: Energy Manipulation
Lobbying for hypocrisy. Why is it that natural gas sells in the U.S. for $3.94 per 1,000 cubic feet and in Europe and Japan for $11.60 and $17, respectively? Part of the answer is our huge supply. With high-tech methods of extraction and with discovery of vast gas-rich shale deposits, estimated reserves are about 2.4 quadrillion cubic feet. ... MORE
Labels:
economics,
energy,
exports,
gas prices,
natural gas,
politics,
restrictions,
special interest
Andrew O'Hehir: The NSA-DEA Police State Tango
The poisoning of our judicial system. So the paranoid hippie pot dealer you knew in college was right all along: The feds really were after him. In the latest post-Snowden bombshell
about the extent and consequences of government spying, we learned from
Reuters reporters this week that a secret branch of the DEA called the
Special . ... MORE
Rand Paul: National Security Run Amok
Feds convinced Americans would rather be safe than free. In March, Sen. Ron Wyden asked Director of National IntelligenceJames R. Clapper if the federal government had “any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans.” Mr. Clapper replied, “Not wittingly.” In June, we learned that the National Security ... MORE
Labels:
data mining,
DEA,
DOJ,
drug war,
government,
IRS,
NSA,
security,
snooping,
spying,
surveillance
Nick Gillespie: 5 Myths About Libertarians
What you think you know is wrong. The specter of libertarianism is haunting America. Advocates of sharply reducing the government’s size, scope and spending are raising big bucks from GOP donors, trying to steal the mantle of populism, being blamed for the demise of Detroit and even getting caught in the middle of a battle for the Republican ... MORE
Katrina Trinko: Standing Up To The Unions
Even Dems are opposing outrageous union demands. Even in California, the buck stops occasionally. The final outcome is not yet clear, but even a four-day strike against BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit, the rail system that serves San Francisco and the surrounding area) in July and the threat of a longer one haven’t won transit-union workers ... MORE
Labels:
benefits,
California,
Democrats,
labor,
politicians,
strikes,
taxpayer,
unions,
wages,
workers
Agent Admits Tea Party Groups Still In IRS Crosshairs
by Paul Bedard. In a remarkable admission that is likely to rock the Internal Revenue Service again, testimony released Thursday by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp reveals that an agent involved in reviewing tax exempt applications from conservative groups told a committee investigator that the agency is still targeting ... MORE
Reid: Obamacare Just A Step Towards Single-Payer System
by Mark Tapscott. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said Friday that Obamacare isn't the final word in government health care reform, it's just a big step toward the real solution, which is a single-payer system. The Las Vegas Sun reports that Reid made that statement during an appearance on a Nevada PBS news discussion program: ... MORE
The Problem With Federal Food-Labeling Laws
by Baylen Linnekin. Since I wrote a
column focusing on the increasing ubiquity and success of
private food labeling in June, a series of important federal food
labeling issues have made headlines. Not surprisingly, the
government’s actions are mostly rife with drawbacks. Just this month, the FDA published a final
rule on gluten-free ... MORE
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