John W. Whitehead: The American Delusion

A people distracted, diverted and insulated.    Caught up in the uproar over this year’s latest hullabaloo—militarized police in Ferguson, tanks on Main Street and ISIS—Americans have not only largely forgotten last year’s hullabaloo over the NSA and government surveillance but are generally foggy about everything that has happened in between.  ... MORE

Why Cops Take Your Property To Pad Their Own Budgets

by Corey Adwar.       A most disturbing study. Researchers with the Institute for Justice designed a game to test whether police have the tendency to abuse the practice of civil forfeiture, their right to seize personal property if it is considered more likely than not to be connected to a crime. Supporters of civil forfeiture hail it as an incentive  ... MORE

VIDEO: Milton Friedman - FDR and Social Security

Federal Regulations Cost US Businesses $2 Trillion

by Chad Moutray.   Choking out small business. Manufacturing leaders, like many other Americans, have been frustrated with the slow pace of growth so far this year, particularly in the first quarter. While manufacturers are mostly upbeat about demand and output over the coming months, they also remain somewhat tentative in their  ... MORE

Josh Hicks: IRS Finds More Key Hard-Drive Crashes

They say just bad luck, no tampering.      The Internal Revenue Service is missing e-mails from five more employees whose records could shed light on the agency’s targeting scandal, but there are no signs that its personnel have intentionally destroyed evidence, according to an IRS review. In a report to four congressional committees on Friday,   ... MORE

VIDEO: What Happens If You Give A Cop Some Coke

Why Illinois Medical Marijuana Patients Still Have No Meds

by Zenon Evans.    Good Intentions made a big splash last year when it opened its doors as the first medical marijuana clinic in not just Chicago but the entire state of Illinois. The business launched just days after Gov. Pat Quinn signed the Compassionate Use of Medical Cannabis Pilot Program Act. One problem: There was no medical marijuana.    ... MORE

The 5 Most Troubling Things in Congress’ New Spending Bill

by Romina Boccia.   Yesterday evening, the House of Representatives released its stopgap spending measure which blindly continues the bloated spending in the January omnibus bill that included special-interest handouts, wasteful and unnecessary energy spending, and transportation boondoggles. Instead of debating and voting on  ... MORE

Washington Post: Police Intelligence Targets Cash

by Robert O’Harrow Jr, Michael Sallah.   The perverse incentives in play. During the rush to improve homeland security a decade ago, an invitation went out from Congress to a newly retired California highway patrolman named Joe David. A lawmaker asked him to brief the Senate on how highway police could keep “our communities safe from     ... MORE

Press To Democrats: We’ll Take Free Speech, Thank You

From the editors of National Review.    Senate Democrats are on the precipice of voting to repeal the First Amendment. That extraordinary fact is a result of the increasingly authoritarian efforts of Democrats, notably Senate majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada, to suppress criticism of themselves and the government, and to suffocate any      ... MORE

VIDEO: 4th Amendment Assault By Government

Barry Farber: When Strong Words Came With Strong Deeds

"Don't break your toothpick."     Water power gets all the credit, but word power does the same kind of job. Water can unleash the forces of nature. Words can unleash the forces of human nature. Freedom-lovers from Minneapolis to Manila found energy and a stiffer backbone when, after the Japanese conquered the Philippine Islands, Gen.   ... MORE

NY TIMES: Coalition Urges Nations To Decriminalize Drugs

by Somini Sengupta.        A coalition of political figures from around the world, including Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary general, and several former European and Latin American presidents, is urging governments to decriminalize a variety of illegal drugs and set up regulated drug markets within their own countries. The proposal  ... MORE

THE MUST-SEE MOVIE OF THE YEAR!

John Stossel: Hold On, Mr. President

Not another prolonged engagement.     "Do you have a strategy now, Mr. President?" asked the cover of the Daily News next to a photo of the second American journalist to be beheaded by the terrorist group ISIS. The impulse to "do something" to counter such evil is strong. But why do we assume that government doing something is always an ... MORE

Sally Pipes: Obamacare's Device Tax Grows More Devious

Business is not going well at the Internal Revenue Service. The agency projected that it would collect $1.2 billion between April and September of last year from Obamacare’s medical device tax, which went into effect at the beginning of 2013. But the tax take was just three-quarters of that. Implementing the tax has proven nightmarish.  ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: Mob Rule Economics

Maybe low-paying jobs are better than none at all.    While we talk about democracy and equal rights, we seem increasingly to let both private and government decisions be determined by mob rule. There is nothing democratic about mob rule. It means that some people's votes are to be overruled by other people's disruptions, harassment    ... MORE

Walter E Williams: Favors And Loot For Sale

A political marketplace for cronies.    At a July fundraising event in Chicago, Mrs. Michelle Obama remarked, "So, yeah, there's too much money in politics. There's (sic) special interests that have too much influence." Sen. John McCain has been complaining for years that "there is too much money washing around political campaigns today."   ... MORE

VIDEO: Fox News - Ex-Cop Explains The Drug War

Thomas Sowell: Success Or Failure?

Obama is a failure? Not so fast.        Those people who say that President Obama has no clear vision and no clear strategy for dealing with the ISIS terrorists in the Middle East may be mistaken. It seems to me that he has a very clear and very consistent strategy. And a vision behind that strategy. First the strategy — which is to get each crisis off  ...  MORE

Michelle Obama's Stupid & Tyrannical Snack Rules For Kids

by Victor Skinner.   School nutrition experts in Nebraska are struggling to comply with new federal snack regulations championed by First Lady Michelle Obama. “I think we’ve gone too far, too fast,” Diane Zipay, director of nutritional services for the Westside School District told KIETV.com. “And I don’t think it’s a real-world environment.    ... MORE

VIDEO: The Growth Of Federal Regulation Since 1950

Paramedics Rush To Child Who Waited in Car 5 Minutes

by Lenore Skenazy.   Boy survives! Mother taken into custody. Playing out an elaborate charade of concern for a child who was obviously in no danger, police arrested a mom who let her son wait in the car while she ran into a Chicagoland Whole Foods for less than five minutes. Then, for reasons known only to those who write and follow protocols    ... MORE

IBD: The Worst Job Stat Continues To Get Even Worse

by Jed Graham. Amid all the focus on boosting the minimum wage and legislating living wages, virtually no one seems to have noticed what is happening to the workweek in low-wage industries. 

Since December 2012, private industries paying up to about $14.50 an hour have added, on net, 972,000 nonsupervisory jobs with an average workweek of a mere 17.7 hours, an IBD analysis finds. 

That doesn't mean new employees are being hired for such few hours. Rather, it reflects a combination of reduced hours in existing jobs and   ... MORE

When It’s Easier To Pay No Wages Rather Than A Minimum

by Tyler Durden.   As of today there is no hotter subject following on the heels of Obama-Care than the current fight brewing in the minimum wage debate. Regardless of which side of the aisle (or counter) you’re on, the argument as to demand a government regulated hike of upwards of 50% or more in some places puts a question squarely on the     ... MORE

Young, Bummed & In Debt: Why Aren't Millennials Angrier?

by Veronique de Rugy.    Until recently, a bad job market was nearly always bad news for political incumbents. Unemployed and anxious voters have a habit of throwing the bums out. But headed into the 2016 election season, one large demographic group is still likely to vote Democratic: millennials. Which is weird, because when it comes to the labor  ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Police State USA

Cops Seize Family Home After $40 Drug Bust

by Zoe Szathmary.   How Philadelphia uses cops to legally steal. A Philadelphia civil forfeiture law has reportedly allowed the government to take away citizens' homes - and much of it funds city prosecutors. CBS Philadelphia reported on the story, saying homeowners Christos Sourovelis, Norys Hernandez and Doris Welch have filed a lawsuit, ... MORE

Jacob Sullum: 40,000 Prisoners Of Pot Prohibition

Some will die in prison.     Now that growing and selling marijuana are legitimate businesses in Colorado and Washington, the injustice of sending people to prison for engaging in those activities is starker than ever before. Last week at Reason.com, for example, Aaron Malin highlighted the case of Jeff Mizanskey, a Missouri man who   ... MORE

VIDEO: Getting Real - Lisa Desjardins's CNN Goodbye

Speaking Ill Of The Police Is Now A "Hate Crime"

by William Norman Grigg.     The NYPD has now added its name to the roster of Officially Protected Victims by filing “hate crimes” charges against 36-year-old Rosella Best, who had tagged police vehicles and a public school with anti-NYPD graffiti. Among the entirely defensible sentiments inscribed by Best are “NYPD pick on the harmless,”  ... MORE

Cops Say Tasering 8-Year-Old For Tantrum Was Justified

by Vincent Schilling.  Two months after an 8-year-old girl was tasered by a Pierre, South Dakota police officer in October of 2013, Hughes County State’s Attorney Wendy Kloeppner released a report which stated “she was satisfied with an independent investigation, deploying a taser was the best viable way to diffuse the situation,” and no charges would   ... MORE

Dick Marple: Jury Nullification Keeps Government In Check

Sept 5th was Jury Rights Day.      It was on that day in 1670 that Quaker William Penn of London was arrested, pleaded not guilty and subsequently argued against England’s Conventicle Acts, which outlawed the practice of religions other than the Church of England. The judge instructed the jurors to find Penn guilty, but they refused to   ... MORE

Dan Mitchell: America's Ever-Expanding Regulation Swamp

An economy tangled in red tape.      Maybe I’m biased because I mostly work on fiscal policy, but it certainly seems feasible to come up with rough estimates for the damage caused by onerous taxes and excessive spending. On a personal level, for instance, we have a decent idea of how much the government takes from us and we know  ... MORE

VIDEO: Tom Woods - Representative Slavery

Tim Walberg: Stopping The Abuse Of Civil Asset Forfeiture

The robbery of the highwayman.      Imagine you are driving down the highway on your way to buy a car. You spent months researching years, makes and models, and you finally found somebody who was selling the exact ride you were looking for at a reasonable price. Suddenly, police pull you over for allegedly going 37 mph in a 35 mph zone.    ... MORE

Mark Strauss: How To Reduce Painkiller Overdoses

Just ask states with legalized medical marijuana.      As the number of patients who receive opioid prescriptions to treat non-cancer pain has increased in the past decade, so too have the number of overdoses. A new study, however, finds that states that legalized medical marijuana between 1999 and 2010 had 25% fewer annual       ... MORE

VIDEO: The Law You Won't Be Told About

Ronald Bailey: How to Slake California's Thirst

"Nature makes a drought, but Man makes a shortage."  That's the trenchant slogan that the Leiden University College water resource economist David Zetland uses to sum up how bureaucratic mismanagement of supply and demand misallocates water pervasively. California's current water crisis—exacerbated by a three-year   ... MORE

Baylen Linnekin: Food Trucks Have Turned the Corner

Are we at the dawn of a new era for food trucks?    Food truck cuisine has often been about pushing boundaries. Think Korean tacos. But how about a cannabis-infused food truck? Earlier this year, NPR reported on the THC-infused pulled-pork sandwiches cooked up by a Denver food truck. Sound like a new era for food trucks? While cannabis   ... MORE