Thomas Sowell: Serious About Syria?

Campaigning is Obama's strong suit, not governing.     Why are we even talking about taking military action in Syria? What is that military action supposed to accomplish? And what is the probability that it will in fact accomplish whatever that unknown goal might be? What is painfully clear from President Obama's actions, inactions and   ... MORE

Steven Greenhut: California's Slippery Gun-Control Slide

Gun-control push more than closing "loopholes."     Supporters of the latest spate of gun-control bills that will soon make their way to the governor’s desk insist they only are trying to close “loopholes” and that they won’t deprive Californians of their right to bear arms. But to peer at the future of gun ownership in California, one might look  ... MORE

VIDEO: War On Weed: A Tale Of Two Cities

Teresa Mull: States' Rights Only Apply To Getting High

Feds don't hesitate to interfere everywhere else.         The federal government is not known for being consistent, except, of course, when it comes to being inconsistent. Staying true to form, the Obama administration has decided randomly to respect states’ rights for once, saying it will not challenge policies put in place by Washington   ... MORE

Steve Chapman: The Endless Quest For Credibility

Credibility is overrated.  The United States boasts the most powerful military on Earth. We have 1.4 million active-duty personnel, thousands of tanks, ships and planes, and 5,000 nuclear warheads. We spend more on defense than the next 13 countries combined. Yet we are told we have to bomb Syria to preserve our credibility in world. Really?    ... MORE

VIDEO: Jury Nullification Vs. The Drug War

EPA Deploys SWAT To Check For Clean Water Violation

by Sean Doogan.          When agents with the Alaska Environmental Crimes Task Force surged out of the wilderness around the remote community of Chicken wearing body armor and jackets emblazoned with POLICE in big, bold letters, local placer miners didn’t quite know what to think. Did it really take eight armed men and a squad-size     ... MORE

Watch What Happens When The Camera Is Turned On Cops

Little brothers may be watching.     With the exponential growth of an incredibly intrusive surveillance state threatening to virtually destroy the Bill of Rights and the privacy of millions of Americans, the possibility of repealing or severely scaling back a federalized Big Brother in the United States seems remote. The technology at the    ... MORE

Andrew Napolitano: War, War, What Is It Good For?

All about the bragging rights.        President Obama's request for express congressional authorization for a limited aerial invasion of Syria raises profound legal and constitutional questions. For starters, there is simply no legal basis in international law to support an American invasion of Syria. Yet, notwithstanding that, federal law permits        ... MORE

John Stossel: The Milk Of Human Blindness

Milking buyers and sellers.       The Denver Post warns, "Milk, food prices could rise if Congress fails to act." Congress is working on a farm bill, which, among other things, will set limits on how high or low milk prices can be in different regions of the country. Politicians from both parties like to meddle in agriculture. When the Heritage    ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Police Ticket Quotas

Todd Zywicki: Set Visa, Master Card And Markets Free

Approve the credit card interchange fee settlement.       Last August, years of expensive litigation and a comprehensive evidentiary process culminated in a meeting of the minds among warring litigants to antitrust litigation that challenged the practice by which credit card networks set “interchange” fees (the fee paid by merchants to    ... MORE

State Takes Children Because Vet Dad Used Medical Pot

California took couple's children away for a year.      Citing the discovered marijuana as a ‘hazard’ in their official report, the agents removed the couple's two young boys - Cameran, then aged four, and Bailey, aged two - and placed them in an emergency shelter for ‘abused, abandoned, and neglected children’ in San Diego. Even though   ... MORE

VIDEO: Professor Dave Fights For Free Speech On Campus

Harassment and liberty.        The Foundation for Individual Rights in Higher Education would like to introduce you to Dave. A “born philosopher” and “intellectual rebel,” Dave grew up to be a college professor, a position he thought would allow him to help young college students challenge conventional wisdom and explore new ideas.   ... MORE

Did The White House Help Plan Syrian Chemical Attack?

by Yossef Bodansky.       There is a growing volume of new evidence from numerous sources in the Middle East — mostly affiliated with the Syrian opposition and its sponsors and supporters — which makes a very strong case, based on solid circumstantial evidence, that the August 21, 2013, chemical strike in the Damascus suburbs was indeed a  ... MORE

Daren Bakst: Government Control Of Your Diet

Threats to the "freedom to eat."       Many politicians and self-appointed nutrition czars see Americans as incapable of making decisions about a basic necessity of life: eating. Therefore, they feel that government at all levels must try to control their diets. This control means trying to direct people to eat a certain way or expressly  ... MORE

Why NSA's PRISM Program Should Terrify America

by Al Maurer.       When the government says it is not reading the content of your emails and other digital communications, just collecting the “metadata,” rather than being reassured, you should be alarmed. Let’s see how this works. When you send a letter to someone the contents are sealed inside an envelope and no one other than     ... MORE

Sarah Stillman: The Use And Abuse Of Civil Forfeiture

The police department's have a license to steal.       On a bright Thursday afternoon in 2007, Jennifer Boatright, a waitress at a Houston bar-and-grill, drove with her two young sons and her boyfriend, Ron Henderson, on U.S. 59 toward Linden, Henderson’s home town, near the Texas-Louisiana border. They made the trip every April, at the    ... MORE

VIDEO: Obama's Climate Action Plan

Jay Ambrose: Why The Minimum Wage Doesn't Make Sense

We don't need barriers to employment.           Impersonality or treating others as mere functions cheats us all, and so I engage in give-and-take with clerks, asking them about their lives, how they like their jobs, anything that doesn't seem to be overreaching. And I learn, as I have repeatedly learned talking to clerks at Walmart. One of them,    ... MORE

Ben O'Neill: The NSA And Its "Compliance Problems"

The watchers need watching.       One of the core principles of good governance in society is the idea that the authority of law ought to prevail over the brute power of people — i.e., that society should operate under the rule of law, not the rule of men. Aristotle wrote that “[t]he law ought to be supreme over all ...” and argued that ... where the    ... MORE

VIDEO: Media Brainwashing - Repeating The Message


Could this be the end of e-mail overload?

Citing ObamaCare, 40,000 Longshoremen Quit AFL-CIO

by Warner Todd Huston.      In what is being reported as a surprise move, the 40,000 members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) announced that they have formally ended their association with the AFL-CIO, one of the nation's largest private sector unions. The Longshoremen citied Obamacare and immigration reform as two   ... MORE

Medical Marijuana Stops Severe Seizures In Children

A Look At The Jury System & Our Participation In It

by Graham Dugas.        The jury system is one of the few remaining checks on the system available to those of us who love freedom. We must utilize this tool to the fullest measure if we ever hope to non-violently fight tyranny. Yes, it is a hassle but we needn’t look far to see all the evils visited upon us when this righteous check on tyranny and lunacy  ... MORE

U.S. Drug Agents Grab More Data Than NSA

by Cheryl K. Chumley.      When it comes to subpoenaing telephone records, U.S. drug agents may take the trophy from the National Security Agency. New information revealed by The New York Times on a counterdrug program called The Hemisphere Project shows the federal government has been paying the telecommunications company,   ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Recipe For A Police State

Harvard Study: Gun Control Does Not Decrease Violence

by Josh Furlong.        Following the tragedies in Aurora, Colo. and Newtown, Conn. last year, the national rhetoric revolved around controlling the types of firearms Americans should be legally allowed to own. But a recently highlighted study shows that controlling firearms is actually counterproductive. In a study published by Harvard      ... MORE

Stephen J. Dunn: The United States Of Tyranny

Turning cops into revenue collectors with badges.      Don’t get me wrong.  I love my country.  The United States is the greatest country on the face of the earth. But the U.S. Department of Justice is executing a civil asset forfeiture program without foundation in law, in shocking violation of entrepreneurs’ civil and constitutional      ... MORE

VIDEO: EPA Regulations Could Kill Coal Industry


Obama administration moves to put hundreds of jobs at risk.

Daniel Ellsberg: U.S. On Verge Of Becoming A Police State

Whistleblowers under assault by Obama.       Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, says the United States is on the verge of becoming a police state as evidenced by the National Security Agency's data collection programs and the treatment of secret document leakers Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning.         ... MORE

California City Tramples Property, Contract Rights

by Bob Barr.       It’s easy to make fun of California, the “Land of Fruits and Nuts,” with its history of “flower power” and its “fragrance free zones”; where environmental whackos are exalted, and Second Amendment supporters demonized. What is not humorous, however, are efforts by officials in the Golden State to use the power of      ... MORE

Walter E Williams: Touchy Topics

Here's a question:       What is the true test of one's commitment to freedom of expression? Is it when one permits others to express ideas with which he agrees? Or is it when he permits others to express ideas he finds deeply offensive? I'm betting that most people would wisely answer that it's the latter, and I'd agree. How about this question:      ... MORE

Ronald Bailey: Watched Cops Are Polite Cops

Who will watch the watchers?         What if all watchers were required to wear a video camera that would record their every interaction with citizens? In her ruling in a recent civil suit challenging the New York City police department’s notorious stop-and-frisk rousting of residents, Judge Shira A. Scheindlin of the Federal District Court in  ... MORE

VIDEO: Rand Paul - Middle East Foreign Policy

Government Spending Is Ruining Families

by Janice Shaw Crouse.       The economic picture in the United States gets worse with each passing day of the Obama administration, and families are especially hard-hit.  While the damage is already devastating, the ramifications will continue wreaking havoc on today's children when they are adults starting their own families. Comedians refer    ... MORE

Five States That Could Legalize Marijuana Next

by Ed Krayewski.             This week's announcement by the U.S. Department of Justice that it would not challenge states that had legalized marijuana provided it was "tightly regulated" was taken as a welcome, if late, sign by proponents of marijuana legalization, boosting efforts in other states. There’s no state legislature in the       ... MORE

VIDEO: Peter Schiff's New Silver Barter Bag

IBD: Too Much Government Caused The Great Recession

by Scott S. Powell.         Just a generation after the collapse of the Soviet socialist system, a recent Pew poll reports that 49% of Americans 18-29 years old have a positive view of socialism, while only 46% have positive views of capitalism. The ambivalence toward capitalism is due in part to the influence of the information and entertainment class  ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: Unintended Consequences

Devastation sold as "compassion," and "inclusion."     One of the many unintended consequences of the political crusade for increased homeownership among minorities, and low-income people in general, has been a housing boom and bust that left many foreclosed homes that had to be rented, because there were no longer enough qualified    ... MORE