Why Not Raise The Minimum Wage To $100 An Hour?

by Carrie Sheffield.       Fast food workers are hitting the streets in cities across the country, walking out from their jobs, demanding higher wages. Many of these protesters want $15 an hour. President Obama and other Democrats decreed $10.10 is the correct minimum wage for now, up from the current federal standard of $7.25. That would be a      ... MORE

Uruguay Becomes 1st Country To Legalize Marijuana Trade

By Malena Castaldi and Felipe Llambias, Reuters.      Uruguay became the first country to legalize the growing, sale and smoking of marijuana on Tuesday, a pioneering social experiment that will be closely watched by other nations debating drug liberalization.  A government-sponsored bill approved by 16-13 votes in the Senate provides   ... MORE

VIDEO: Ayn Rand - Love And Values

Andrew Napolitano: A Conspiracy So Vast

Preparing the ground for tyranny.        Readers of this page are well aware of the revelations during the past six months of spying by the National Security Agency (NSA). Edward Snowden, a former employee of an NSA vendor, risked his life and liberty to inform us of a governmental conspiracy to violate our right to privacy, a right guaranteed by    ... MORE

WSJ Opinion: Juking The ObamaCare Stats

Obama administration hides inconvenient truth.     Most of Washington seems to have bought the White House claim that the 36 federal exchanges are finally working, and glory, glory, hallelujah. But if that's really true, then what explains the ongoing secrecy and evasion? On Wednesday the Health and Human Services Department        ... MORE

VIDEO: Federal Reserve Caused Crisis, Not Free Market

Raising Minimum Wage A Disaster For Minorities

by Mark J. Perry.       Probably the most vulnerable, at-risk group in the labor market would have to be black male teenagers, judging by the 44.3% jobless rate for that group in November. In contrast, the jobless rate for white male teens in November was less than half the rate of their black counterparts (19.8%); for male Hispanic teens the jobless    ... MORE

Jess Remington: Ex-DEA Agent Joins Marijuana Industry

Coming over from the dark side.        Patrick Moen, a 36-year-old from Portland, Oregon, recently made a dramatic career shift. Tired of leading a team of Portland-based DEA agents in arresting drug traffickers, he has joined a firm in Seattle, Washington that invests in budding marijuana businesses. "The potential social and financial    ... MORE

Barry Farber: The Panic Of Up-For-Reelection Democrates

High anxiety for left-wing politicos.      All Democrats who have to run for re-election next year will know this feeling. I was a passenger on a military flight refueling in Goose Bay, Labrador. The other passengers were mostly military officers, who were either reading or sleeping. I got increasingly interested in the refueling process. As I watched,   ...  MORE

Political Correctness Is Destroying Corporate America

by Steve Tobak.Why Christmas is Destroying Corporate America.” That’s right. A well-known blogger really tried to make that argument on a very popular website three years ago. Unfortunately, my blog was also on that site at the time. I remember thinking: Crap, there goes the neighborhood … and my credibility. Then again, the woman     ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Shoot, Shovel & Shut-Up

John Stossel: Celebrity Hypocrites

Do as I say, not as I do.         I'm annoyed that so many Hollywood celebrities hate the system that made them rich. Actor/comedian Russell Brand told the BBC he wants "a socialist, egalitarian system based on the massive redistribution of wealth." Director George Lucas got rich not just from movies but also by selling Star Wars merchandise. Yet he   ... MORE

Eric Schulzke: Robots Vs. Minimum Wage

Low-skill workers can be easily replaced.        Even as pressure builds to hike the minimum wage, evidence grows that low-wage/low-skill workers may be dispensable in a world where automation of simple tasks is inevitable, syndicated columnist Jonah Goldberg said Monday. Goldberg cited the irony that just one day before the president delivered  ... MORE

VIDEO: A New Christmas Story Sure To Become A Classic


How The Turd Stole Christmas

A. Barton Hinkle: More Contraception, Less Conscription

Birth control should be over-the-counter.      In a rational world, women in the U.S. would be able to buy birth control over the counter — something that is perfectly safe to do, and that women in other countries do as a matter of routine. But because American women cannot, the country is now embroiled in an unnecessary debate — one that,   ... MORE

Ever Vigilant, TSA Confiscates Sock Monkey's Toy Pistol

You can't make this stuff up.        "Rooster Monkburn" the cowboy sock monkey is without his pistol, thanks to a diligent TSA agent in St. Louis. Phyllis May of Redmond, Wash. says she is “appalled and shocked and embarrassed all at the same time” about the incident that happened on Wednesday. May has a small business selling unique sock      ...  MORE

No, You Can't Keep Your Drugs Either Under ObamaCare

by Scott Gottlieb.     The President famously promised that you could keep your health plan and doctor. For many people, both of those pledges are turning out to be false. And now, you might not be able to keep your medicine, either. There are two reasons why. The first has to do with the higher out of pocket costs patients will face. The second issue  ... MORE

John R. Quain: On Alert For Red-Light Cameras

Strike back against intrusive revenue generators.      Banished by voters in Houston, facing legal challenges in Missouri and working undercover in New York City, traffic-monitoring cameras, promoted as accident-reducing tools by safety advocates and decried as intrusive revenue-generators by opponents, are nothing if not            ... MORE

VIDEO: FBI Can Take Over Your Web Cam

NSA Spying Scandal Could Cost U.S. Tech Giants Billions

Privacy invasion bad for business.         The National Security Agency spying scandal could cost the top U.S. tech companies billions of dollars over the next several years, according to industry experts. In addition to consumer Internet companies, hardware and cloud-storage giants like IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Oracle could suffer    ... MORE

NYPD Beat Family And Kill Parakeet In Unwarranted Assault

by Nicolas Rizzi.     A Staten Island woman has sued the city claiming police entered her St. George home without a warrant, beat her family and killed her beloved pet parakeet, according to court documents. Last year, Evelyn Lugo's bird, Tito, was thrown from his cage after it was knocked off a dresser as cops came into her Corson Avenue   ... MORE

VIDEO: Turn The Water Off; Turn The Liberty On


What states can do to combat NSA tyranny.

Climate Bullies, The Surrealists Of Science

Science geeks stand up against global bullies.           Popular perceptions about climate appear surrealistic to me. I'm a seasoned science geek who has been involved in big-time climate modeling, serious mathematics, theory, and more. Popular discussions of this subject have come to look like a Salvador Dali painting, as once noted by     ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: Christmas Books - The Gift Of Clarity

Great winter reads.     As Christmas approaches, the shopping mall can become a shopping maul. One of the ways of buying gifts for family and friends, without becoming part of a mob scene in the stores, is to shop on the Internet. However, for many kinds of gifts, you want to be able to see it directly, and perhaps handle it, before you part with your      ... MORE

Sheldon Richman: Crime And Punishment In A Free Society

Would a free society be a crime-free society?     I don’t foresee a future of new human beings who consistently respect the rights of others. Rather, I’m drawing attention to the distinction between crime and tort — between offenses against the state (or society) and offenses against individual persons or their justly held property. We’re so   ... MORE

Stupid Laws Cause Dangerous Hospital Shortages

by John K. Ross.       This week, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a federal lawsuit alleging mistreatment of a woman in the days leading up to her miscarriage at a Catholic hospital in Muskegon, Michigan. The ACLU accuses Mercy Health Partners of negligence for, among other things, failing to direct Tamesha Means to a       ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Privatize Everything

John W. Whitehead: The End Of Private Property

In the era of the American police state.         If the government can tell you what you can and cannot do within the privacy of your home, whether it relates to what you eat, what you smoke or whom you love, you no longer have any rights whatsoever within your home. If government officials can fine and arrest you for growing    ... MORE

Walter E Williams: Our Fragile Planet

And our even more fragile capitalistic system.     Let's examine a few statements reflecting a vision thought to be beyond question. "The world that we live in is beautiful but fragile." "The 3rd rock from the sun is a fragile oasis." Here are a couple of Earth Day quotes: "Remember that Earth needs to be saved every single day." "Remember the      ... MORE

VIDEO: Greenpeace Santa Threatens Empty Stocking


Tis the season to exploit the image of St. Nick.

Only The Private Sector Stimulates Job Growth

by Chriss Street.        The mainstream media were shocked today when U.S. job growth continued at a very strong pace in November, despite the October government shutdown that ended on October 17th. Employers added 203,000 jobs and the reported unemployment rate fell from 7.3% to 7%, its lowest level since November 2008. Economists had      ... MORE

Mike Elgan: Are Your Smartphone Apps Selling You Out

Of course they are.      The president of the United States says he's not "allowed" to own an iPhone, which is why he's sticking with his BlackBerry, according to The Wall Street JournalIt's a politically sensitive subject because the iPhone is the big American brand, and the president is a self-proclaimed fan of the late Apple founder and CEO Steve   ... MORE

IRS Using Google Maps To Spy On Taxpayers

by Josh Peterson.     Agents from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) are using Google Maps as part of their tool kit to audit taxpayers and organizations, The Daily Caller has learned. A redacted IRS letter dated Sept. 8, 2011 reveals that at least in one case the IRS’s examiners used photos of a property, obtained through Google Maps, as        ... MORE

TSA: Parking At Airport Grounds For Warrantless Search

Bureaucratic dictate trumps 4th Amendment.             The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has now expanded its intrusive searching protocol to include the interior of parked cars left at the airport.  Reports of vehicle searches have been reported at multiple airports since this summer. Since roughly June, airports have    ... MORE

VIDEO: Milton Friedman - The Path To Better Schools

California Taxpayers To Subsidize Green Cars For The Poor

by Steven Greenhut.     One longtime critic of federal transportation spending once concluded that it would be less expensive for the government to buy every new transit rider a Jaguar XJ8 than it would be to build certain new rail systems. Unfortunately, California officials may not have realized that the idea of buying people new cars        ... MORE

Humberto Fontova: Caveat On Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela's commitment to liberty.     A Martian visiting earth this week, coasting TV channels and perusing papers, would have to conclude that among the items that most interest this planet’s news bureaus is the plight of former political prisoners, especially black ones. Well, many Cubans (many of them black) suffered longer and    ... MORE

VIDEO: Free Speech In Peril

Environmentalist Wackos 1 Animal Rights Activists 0

Steven Dinan on govt-permitted eagle chopping.    The Interior Department says it will change the rules and issue permits that would let wind farms kill eagles for up to 30 years, or six times longer than the current permits allow. Wind farms — the fields of windmill turbines that dot the landscape — kill about 440,000 birds of all species every   ... MORE

Jim Epstein: What We Saw At NYC's Fast Food Strike

More much ado about nothing.      Yesterday, Naomi Brockwell and I attended a demonstration demanding that fast-food restaurants boost their minimum wage to $15 per hour, or a little more than double the current federal minimum wage. The strike, which was led by a group called Fast Food Forward that’s affiliated with the Service         ... MORE