Ben O'Neill: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the US Courts

Gov't barriers cover lawlessness.     Many commentators following the NSA scandals have been eagerly awaiting the recommendations of the US government task force on the matter, and the proposed reforms to be implemented by President Obama to bring the spy agency under control. If you’re interested in this kind of thing, you can watch the     ... MORE

Nick Sibilla: Cops Deploy Traffic Stops To Seize Millions From Drivers Who Are Never Charged With A Crime

Highway robbery.      Incentives for cops to see you as the enemy. A deputy for the Humboldt County’s Sheriff Office in rural Nevada has been accused of confiscating over $60,000 from drivers who were never charged with a crime.  These cash seizures are now the subject of two federal lawsuits and are the latest to spotlight a little-known police      ... MORE

VIDEO: MIlton Friedman - The Real World Effects Of Unions

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ObamaCare Ruins More Than Health Care

by Richard E. Ralston.      Law helps take down privacy and liberty. No government intrusion in our lives is more direct, personal and threatening than Obamacare’s intrusion in the care of our own health. But Obamacare will harm us on a broader scale, as the underlying nature of the health law’s provisions, and the tactics used to implement     ... MORE

Atlas Shrugged Part III: Who Is John Galt?

by Brian Doherty.      A labor of love over money. John Aglialoro is a businessman, and a very successful one, named by Fortune magazine in 2007 as the 10th richest small business executive in the country. But his latest project is, he says, about “love.” It’s the film Atlas Shrugged III: Who is John Galt?, the conclusion of a trilogy of movies based    ... MORE

VIDEO: Garden Variety Congressional Nitwittery

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U.S. Congresswomen thinks Constitution is 400 years old.

Andrew Napolitano: A Rivalry Of Government Hackers

More evidence the government is not us.      The government is caught up in another scandal in which federal agents have been accused of hacking into one another's computers. When the CIA was established in 1947, Congress and President Truman were concerned that it might not confine itself to spying. Its sole statutory purpose was to   ... MORE

U.S. To Become Bigger Oil Producer Than Saudi Arabia

The glory of fracking.       Hector Gallegos sits in the cab of his pick-up enjoying a few hours of calm. A day earlier, workers finished carting off the huge rig that had drilled three new wells beneath this small patch of south Texas farmland and he’s now getting ready to prime them for production. He reckons that about three weeks from now    ... MORE

Americans Are Being Thrown In Jail For Filming Police

by John W. Whitehead.     Lights, Camera, Arrested. Once again, the U.S. government is attempting to police the world when it should be policing its own law enforcement agencies. We’ve got a warship cruising the Black Sea, fighter jets patrolling the Baltic skies, and a guided-missile destroyer searching the South China Sea for the downed     ... MORE

Why Rand Paul Will Be The Next President

by Brent Hatley.      What if liberty is a prime consideration? You have probably seen all of the ridiculous speculating about the GOP nomination in 2016. This is still speculating, but my sincere hope is you don’t think it’s ridiculous too. Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is laying the foundation for his presidential bid in concrete and steel. First, forget about   ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Generational Theft

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Legalized Theft Department: Asset Forfeiture Roundup

by Radley Balko.      The incentives to police for profit. There have been some interesting new developments across the country from the world of civil asset forfeiture, the upside-down policy where police and prosecutors can seize and keep your property, often without ever charging you with a crime, and then keep the proceeds for themselves.   ... MORE

How The NSA Plans To Infect 'Millions' Of Computers

by Ryan Gallagher and Glenn Greenwald.    Government malware to aid in warrantless searches. Top-secret documents reveal that the National Security Agency is dramatically expanding its ability to covertly hack into computers on a mass scale by using automated systems that reduce the level of human oversight in the process. The      ... MORE

VIDEO: The Current State Of The American Dream

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Cop Responds To Domestic Violence Call By Raping Victim

DNA reveals inconvenient truth.       Detroit police officer Deon Nunlee, 40, was charged on three counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct, one count of assault with intent to penetrate, and one count of misconduct while on duty after he allegedly raped a woman who called 911 saying her boyfriend had assaulted her. At the home, Nunlee ... MORE

John Stossel: War On Women

Sorry, genders are not exactly equal.       You've probably heard that Democratic Party leaders decided that a way to win votes this November is to shout loudly that Republicans wage "war on women." Politico calls this a "proven, persuasive argument."Give me a break. The idea of a conservative "war on women" is as silly as propaganda     ... MORE

Campus Censorship And The End Of American Debate

by Greg Luckianoff.       In the year and a half since I handed in the final draft of Unlearning Liberty, an amazing number of developments have taken place on and off campus regarding the free speech rights of college students and faculty. While some of them have been positive, several have been deeply disturbing to those of us who care     ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: The Left Versus Minorities

Hypocrisy exposed.       If anyone wanted to pick a time and place where the political left's avowed concern for minorities was definitively exposed as a fraud, it would be now — and the place would be New York City, where far left Mayor Bill de Blasio has launched an attack on charter schools, cutting their funding, among other things. These       ... MORE

VIDEO: Thomas Sowell - Why Drugs Should Be Legalized

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NSA Too Busy Spying on Americans To Catch Terrorists

JD Tuccille on Edward Snowden's latest reveal.     In testimony published last week by the European Parliament's Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice, and Home Affairs, NSA snooping whistleblower Edward Snowden told lawmakers that mass spying has proven to be an especially ineffective means of deterring wrongdoing. NSA claims to have  ... MORE

'Beaten Into Submission' by Political Correctness

by Tyler O'Neil.     The Left's focus on "political correctness" prevents Americans from speaking common sense about political issues, Dr. Ben Carson, former pediatric neurosurgery director at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center who shot to fame last year when he gave a politically incorrect speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, declared In a   ... MORE

VIDEO: Murray Rothbard - Involuntary Servitue: Taxation

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Making Cop-Worship Mandatory

“Get on the ground! Get on the ground!”     That demand is spat by police into the face of thousands of people every day in this country, many – perhaps most -- of whom have neither been caught in a criminal act nor have been named on an arrest warrant. The refrain is recited by home invaders in paramilitary garb after they have kicked in a  ... MORE

William Dunkelberg: Minimum Wage Myths

Economics is about incentives.     If the teen unemployment rate isn’t high enough for you, raise the minimum wage to $10 or $15 an hour. A year ago, the teen unemployment rate was over 25%.  It has declined to 20% a year later, that is progress, but it is still unacceptably high.  That means that I of every 5 our young citizens that want to work   ... MORE

Walter E Williams: Governed By Rules, Not Men

What kind of rules should govern our lives?     I'd argue that the best rules are those that we'd be satisfied with if our very worst enemy were in charge of decision-making. The foundation for such rules was laid out by my mother. Let's look at it. My mother worked as a domestic servant. That meant that my younger sister and I often lunched   ... MORE

Kaley V. United States: A Terrible Supreme Court Decision That Lets The Government Take Your Assets Before Trial

by Chanakya Sethi.   High Court expands government's ability to steal. Justice for Kerri and Brian Kaley, the Supreme Court held Tuesday, is of the Alice in Wonderland variety: First comes the punishment—the seizure of all their assets—then the trial, and the crime last of all.* “But suppose they never committed the crime?” Alice asks. “It doesn’t     ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Europe's Privilege Class

NSA Is 'Setting Fire To The Future Of The Internet'

by Ashe Schow.      Newest revelation from Edward Snowden. Edward Snowden, the man who leaked the National Security Agency data collection programs, said Monday the act of mass surveillance is “setting fire to the future of the Internet.” Snowden, speaking via satellite feed (in front of a green-screen display of the U.S. Constitution) to a   ... MORE

Science And Reason Vs. Political Correctness

by Victor Davis Hanson.    President Obama entered office promising to restore the sanctity of science. Instead, a fresh war against science, statistics and reason is being waged on behalf of politically correct politics. After the Sandy Hook tragedy, the president attempted to convert national outrage into new gun-control legislation.    ... MORE

VIDEO: Government Says "Naaayyy" To Horse Massage

Kammi Foote: A Huge Blow To California Property Rights

Some are more equal than others.       A barrage of new bills was introduced into the California Legislature recently including a bill that masks a huge blow to property rights under the guise of increased public protection. Assembly Bill 2206 by Assemblyman Gomez is almost identical to AB 2299 introduced in the 2011/2012 legislative session     ... MORE

Big Brother Getting Stronger Every Day

by William F.B. O'Reilly.     I went to bed earlier this week a semi-rational person. I awoke the next day a raving paranoid. It happens once in a while. It wasn't a single thing that put me over the edge; it was the accumulation of stories about expanding police technologies, the ones to which we, as citizens, routinely succumb. Call it a Keyser Söze   ... MORE

Jeff Jardine: Going In Reverse Down Free-Speech Road?

Cowards don't stay free.    Fifty years ago this fall, the Free Speech Movement rocked the UC Berkeley campus. The short version: It represented a clash between school/government officials who sought to stop students from promoting and raising funds for political causes on the campus by declaring rules prohibiting such activities would be     ... MORE

Nick Gillespie: Kill The FDA (Before It Kills Again!)

Death by government.     If you haven't seen The Dallas Buyers Club, which took home three Oscars last Sunday, you should. It's the most flat-out libertarian movie since Ghostbusters and one of the best message movies I can think of (of course, like all quality message movies, it's first and foremost a powerful piece of art). Specifically, it shines a  ... MORE

VIDEO: John Payne - Paramilitary Police

A Law So Stupid Even California Legislature Recognizes It

by Thomas Lifson.    Politicians try to kill their dumb law. California’s state legislature is seeking to repeal an idiotic law that took effect January 1st.  It turns out that some feel-good regulatory efforts generate enough blowback that they can actually be reversed. Stacy Finz reports in the San Francisco Chronicle: State lawmakers have passed a  ... MORE

To End IRS Abuses Of Free Speech, End The IRS

by J.D. Tuccille.        To read the headlines, you'd think the biggest controversy involving the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is over the spat between Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) in the course of an aborted hearing into the IRS's targeting of primarily conservative political organizations. "We're better than that    ... MORE

VIDEO: "We Won't Trade Our Liberty For Security"


What a Constitutional president would look like.

Court Slams First Amendment & Free Expression In School

Upholds ban on clothing with American flags.     It might offend Mexicans. Officials at a Northern California high school acted appropriately when they ordered students wearing American flag T-shirts to turn the garments inside out during the Mexican heritage celebration Cinco de Mayo, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday. The 9th U.S.    ... MORE

David Haranyi: Why Democrats Are Losing Voter Trust

Inside the numbers.       According to many experts, Republicans are expected to hold the House and could even take the U.S. Senate. This seems to be a perplexing turn of events for many in the media. "Poll: Democrats' advantage on key issues is not translating to a midterm-election edge," reads the headline of a piece in The Washington   ... MORE