Craig Timberg: New Apple Encryption Will Lock Out Police

Serving consumers at government's expense.       Apple said Wednesday night that it is making it impossible for the company to turn over data from most iPhones or iPads to police — even when they have a search warrant — taking a hard new line as tech companies attempt to blunt allegations that they have too readily participated in   ... MORE

Richard M. Ebeling: The Miracle and Morality of the Market

Freedom to choose is the freedom to self-determine.   One of the great fallacies arrogantly believed in by those in political power is the notion that they can know enough to manage and command the lives of everyone in society with better results than if people are left to live their own lives as they freely choose. The fact is, there is far more   ... MORE

VIDEO: Labor Unions and Anti-Trust Laws

Scott Shackford: Texas Wants to Execute Man Who Killed Home Intruder Who Turned Out to Be A SWAT Member

Should protecting your home be a capital crime?   Attempting to serve a search warrant by entering a house through a window got Killeen, Texas, Police Detective Charles Dinwiddie shot in the face and killed last May.  It was yet another SWAT raid organized for a purpose other than the reason they were invented. The police had a   ... MORE

Andrew Napolitano: More Unlawful Presidential Killing

Something is amiss here.     As the debate rages over whether the president needs congressional authorization for war prior to his deployment of the military to degrade or destroy ISIS, the terrorist organization that none of us had heard about until a few months ago, the nation has lost sight of the more fundamental issue of President ... MORE

VIDEO: Finally - Robot Bartenders Who Pour Stiff Drinks!

Lenore Skenazy: 'Just Don't Let Your Kids Play Outside'

Busybodies minding your own business.   Children's book author Kari Anne Roy was recently visited by the Austin police and Child Protective Services for allowing her son Isaac, age 6, to do the unthinkable: Play outside, up her street, unsupervised. He'd been out there for about 10 minutes when Roy's doorbell rang. She opened ... MORE

Washington Is Trying To Get Your Retirement Account

by Charles Payne.      Big government's next big reach. Tuesday was another anxious day for the market, ahead of three major events beginning with the Fed decision getting announced today, Scotland’s vote on Thursday, and the debut of Alibaba on Friday. All along, I have felt that the past few sessions have been an orchestrated attempt to    ... MORE

Bill Would Abolish Civil Asset Forfeiture In Wyoming

by Laura Hancock.     An attempt to repeal legalized theft. The state legislative committee will sponsor a bill in the 2015 session that would prohibit law enforcement and prosecutors from seizing property unless the owner has been convicted of a crime. Wyoming’s civil asset forfeiture laws currently allow authorities to take money, weapons,   ... MORE

Property Rights and Property Taxes: To Possess Not Own

by Nick Giambruno. Do you really own something that you are forced to perpetually make payments on and which can be seized from you if you don’t pay? I would say that you don’t. You would possess such an item, but you wouldn’t own it—an important distinction.  A ridiculous perversion of the concept of ownership and property rights has   ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Reefer Madness

Walter E Williams: Multiculturalism Is A Failure

Western culture and values are superior.     German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared that in Germany, multiculturalism has "utterly failed." Both Australia's ex-prime minister John Howard and Spain's ex-prime minister Jose Maria Aznar reached the same conclusion about multiculturalism in their countries. British Prime Minister      ... MORE

Sharia Law Compatible With Constitution Says Rep. Waters

by Sara Noble.       Political nitwittery on parade. Maxine Waters is under the impression that Shariah Law can be implemented while our U.S. Constitution is in effect. Anyone who disagrees is an Islamophobe and a hater according to her. Last week, the Council of Pakistan Affairs and Islamic Society of Orange County welcomed Maxine Waters to a   ... MORE

VIDEO: Liberty and Equality

Jacob Sullum: Federal Appeals Court Rebukes Florida Cops for Using SWAT-Style Raids to Check For Barbers' Licenses

Government pit bulls tethered by court.   Today a federal appeals court rebuked police in Orange County, Florida, for mounting a warrantless, SWAT-style raid on a barbershop under the pretense of assisting state inspectors. "We have twice held, on facts disturbingly similar to those presented here, that a criminal raid executed   ... MORE

John Stossel: Immigration Is America

Guess who built this country?   Conservatives rightly point out that America is a nation of laws. No one should be exempt. That's why many oppose amnesty and other paths to citizenship for illegal immigrants who are here now. "If they want to be in America," the argument goes, "they ought to return to their own countries and apply for a visa      ... MORE

Canada Warns Citizens Of America's Cash-Hungry Cops

A heads up on asset forfeiture schemes.    On its official website, the Canadian government informs its citizens that “there is no limit to the amount of money that you may legally take into or out of the United States.” Nonetheless, it adds, banking in the U.S. can be difficult for non-residents, so Canadians shouldn’t carry large amounts of cash.   ... MORE

Leo Vs. Science: Vanishing Evidence For Climate Change

The incandescent ignorance of a Hollywood star.  In the runup to the Sept. 23 UN Climate Summit in New York, Leonardo DiCaprio is releasing a series of films about the “climate crisis.” The first is “Carbon,” which tells us the world is threatened by a “carbon monster.” Coal, oil, natural gas and other carbon-based forms of energy are causing   ... MORE

VIDEO: Fox News - No Military Solution

Surveillance States Have Placed Us In An Invisible Prison

by John Twelve Hawks. Going untracked in the digital dystopia. The continuing revelations by Edward Snowden have convinced many of us that we are living in a modern surveillance state. And the problem isn’t just the activities of the National Security Agency and Great Britain’s GCHQ. “Trickle Down Surveillance” has provided spy technology  ... MORE

Emails: EPA Rules Part Of The Progressive Agenda

Mice trying to become rats through body building. Emails between top Environmental Protection Agency officials reveal they saw their fight against global warming as putting them at “forefront of progressive national policy.” “You are at the forefront of progressive national policy on one of the critical issues of our time.  ... MORE

VIDEO: So You Think Money Is The Root Of All Evil?

Scott DeSapio: Thank you, John Aglialoro

Atlas Shrugged III - Who Is John Galt?   A vision of liberty. On September 6th, 2014, I stood up in front of a packed house in Las Vegas, NV, and stated, “This is not the movie that’s been playing in your head since you closed the back cover. This is however, without question, a celebration of Ayn Rand’s ideas.” That packed house was filled    ... MORE

Katie Kieffer: Why Farmers Need Keystone XL

It’s harvest time!    But oil shipments out of the Bakken are causing dangerous and costly rail delays for farmers. The oil boom in the Northern Plains is a boon to the U.S. economy, creating thousands of jobs and increasing our supply of American energy. With nearly 3 million Americans out of work, the Bakken is like a pool of cool water in an arid    ... MORE

Jacob Sullum: How Cops Became Robbers

Supreme Court helps cops trolling for loot.     One afternoon in August 2012, Mandrel Stuart was driving with his girlfriend into Washington, D.C., when a Fairfax County cop pulled him over on Interstate 66, ostensibly because the windows of his SUV were too dark. Lacking the device necessary to check whether the tinting of the ... MORE

Andrew Napolitano: Waging War

The War Powers Resolution is a two-edged sword.     James Madison is commonly referred to as the Father of the Constitution in large measure because, in the secrecy of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, he kept the most complete set of notes. He also had a very keen mind and a modest demeanor and an uncanny   ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - The Future Of Drones

Marijuana Legalization Likely To Be Expanded In November

by Kelley Beaucar Vlahos.    Even more states could vote to legalize marijuana this year, as pro-pot advocates look to capitalize on changing voter attitudes to replicate their recent successes in Colorado and Washington state. The legalization question is coming before voters in very different areas of the country, both politically and      ... MORE

Death Penalty For Man Who Defends Self In No-Knock Raid?

State wants to kill him for protecting his home.    Prosecutors will seek the death penalty against a man charged in the shooting death of a veteran Killeen police officer. Marvin Louis Guy, 49, has been indicted for capital murder in the shooting death of police Detective Charles “Chuck” Dinwiddie, 47, and is named in indictments charging     ... MORE

VIDEO: What We Saw At The Atlas Shrugged III Debut


LibertyPen recommends this movie.

DAILYMAIL: Cops Beat Up Terminally Ill Man -- Wrongly Assuming He Was Intoxicated While Taking Care Of His Kids

Who is the public servant?   The cops or the citizen who recorded them. You decide. Police officers in West Virginia brutally arrested a 39-year-old father of two who they say appeared intoxicated and was handling his kids roughly while walking them to the park. But his outraged family denies that 39-year-old Jeffrey Bane was under the        ... MORE

Hans-Herman Hoppe: Ethics of Entrepreneurship and Profit

A saga of corrupted profits.   In the most fundamental sense we are all, with each of our actions, always and invariably profit-seeking entrepreneurs. Whenever we act, we employ some physical means (things valued as goods) — at a minimum our body and its standing room, but in most cases also various other, “external” things — so as to divert ... MORE

Rand Paul Would Repeal Every Obama Executive Order

He just needs to get elected.    In front of a boisterous pub crowd of young voters here, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) ripped into President Obama over executive overreach and even vowed to repeal “all previous executive orders” in one of his first acts as president, should he run. Paul’s comments came to the New Hampshire chapter of      ... MORE

Claire Wolfe: The State Of Freedom In America

The world is becoming less free.     In the Middle East and Africa, Islamist fanatics try to bring back the Dark Ages. Europe stagnates under new layers of regulation imposed by the EU. In the United States, a president who disdains the messy art of political deal-making increasingly seeks to rule by executive order and bureaucratic fiat.        ... MORE

VIDEO: George H Smith - The American Right To Resistance

Civil Forfeiture Laws Should Meet Same Fate As Jim Crow

by George Leef.   One of the greatest political philosophers, Frederic Bastiat, wrote that the law should exist to protect life, liberty, and property, but unfortunately is often perverted into a means of “legal plunder.” In other words, the law is used to legitimize the use of force to deprive people of their wealth. A recent Washington Post article  ... MORE

Jury Nullification Works In New Hampshire Marijuana Case

When a jury finds punishment is unjust.   Jury nullification is a weapon that most American citizens don’t know they have. During a jury trial, a jury can find the defendant guilty, not guilty, or they can nullify the entire trial if they think the punishment is unfair. This is exactly what happened recently in New Hampshire, where a Rastafarian man   ... MORE

VIDEO: Andrew Klavan - New Danger On College Campuses


The insidious evil known as MICROAGGRESSION.

Eli Lehrer: Hiking the Minimum Wage Won't Help the Poor

Doing more harm than good.    The ground has been shifting in the battle over the minimum wage. With President Obama's proposal to hike the national minimum from $7.25 to $9 an hour stalled in Congress, local labor activists have been aiming even higher, getting behind a vastly higher minimum wage of $15 an hour. The proposals are    ... MORE

Senate Democrats Fail to Amend the First Amendment

by Jacob Sullum.       A constitutional amendment that would have given Congress and state legislatures broad powers to suppress political speech in the name of "democratic self-government" and electoral "integrity" died a deservedly ignominious death in the Senate today. A motion to consider the proposed amendment, known as SJR 19,   ... MORE