New Court Decision Could Restore Right To Carry In CA

California acknowledges the 2nd Amendment!     A procedural decision in a landmark Second Amendment case could spell the end for California laws restricting the issuance of permits to carry concealed handguns. The decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals would bar other law enforcement officials, including state Attorney    ... MORE

The FBI Is Openly Defending The Practice Of Lying And Deception In Order To Conduct Warrantless Searches

Feds attempt to dodge Constitutional constraints. The Justice Department says it's perfectly legal for the Federal Bureau of Investigation to cut Internet access of hotel rooms, pose as repairmen, and gather evidence of illegal activity—without a court warrant. The government said in a court filing late Monday that the Caesars   ... MORE

VIDEO: Thomas Sowell - Incentives Of Bureaucracy

Americans Now Understand Guns Make Homes Safer

by Jason Keisling & J.D. Tuccille.     "An armed society is a polite society" - Robert A. Heinlein. After Washington state voters passed an initiative imposing background checks on people willing to subject even their private and largely untraceable transaction to goverment scrutiny, opponents of self-defense rights proclaimed that they've found a ... MORE

FBI Report: Americans Less Violent, Except for Police

Violent crime lowest since 1978.    According to new FBI statistics released this week, violent crime rates in the US fell over 4% in the past year alone, bringing the amount of violent crimes lower than it has been in nearly 40 years. The statistics showed that there were an estimated 1.16 million violent crimes in the year of 2013, which is the      ... MORE

VIDEO: EconPop - The Economics Of Ghostbusters

Andrew Napolitano: Questions For The Nominee

A Constitutional Attorney General or another Eric Holder? Within hours of realizing that his party lost control of the U.S. Senate last week, President Obama nominated Loretta Lynch, the chief federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, N.Y., and an outstanding and apolitical professional, to be the next attorney general. The current   ... MORE

Regulating The Internet Hurts Entrepreneurial Freedom

by Ted Cruz.  Never before has it been so easy to take an idea and turn it into a business. With a simple Internet connection, some ingenuity and a lot of hard work, anyone today can create a new service or app or start selling products nationwide. In the past, such a person would have to know the right people and be able to raise substantial start-up    ... MORE

John Stossel - Democratic Delusions

Politics vs markets. When the Berlin Wall came down 25 years ago this week, people in the Soviet Bloc gained something even more valuable than a right to vote: a free market. Democracy is definitely better than taking orders from Communist dictators. But real freedom means doing what you choose as an individual, not waiting for the rest of   ... MORE

Over A Thousand People Are Killed By Police Every Year

by Joshua Krause. It seems like I can’t go a single day without hearing about someone being shot and killed by a police officer. It’s become so commonplace in America, that the news rarely makes national headlines unless police abuse is suspected; and sometimes not even then. Unless you follow organizations like Copblock, you’ll only hear about a  ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Zero Common Sense


Nitwittery, courtesy of the government school system.

Shaila Dewan: Cops Prompt Alert Dogs In Grab For Cash

Policing for profit and incentives for theft.   SEE THE VIDEO. A traffic stop along Interstate 40 is raising new questions about your constitutional rights. Among the questions: what happens to your right to say "no" to a search when police are looking for cash? The traffic stop occurred west of Nashville, along a stretch of interstate in    ... MORE

How Will Congress Respond to D.C. Marijuana Legalization?

by Jacob Sullum.       Of the three jurisdictions where voters approved marijuana legalization last week, Washington, D.C., is the smallest but the most symbolically potent. The prospect of legal marijuana in the nation's capital dramatically signals the ongoing collapse of the 77-year-old ban on a much-maligned plant. The passage of Initiative 71,  ... MORE

VIDEO: Does The Minimum Wage HURT Workers?

Net Neutrality: Toward a Stupid Internet

by Raymond C. Niles.       The Internet is an achievement of historic importance, arguably rivaling or exceeding the invention of the printing press in its capacity to spread human knowledge and entertainment to the farthest corners of the globe. With the introduction of his printing press in 1450,1 Gutenberg took the books from the hands of  ... MORE

U.N. Drug Warriors Challenge Sovereignty Of Americans

Have we become servants to world government?   Moves by some U.S. states to legalize marijuana are not in line with international drugs conventions, the U.N. anti-narcotics chief said on Wednesday, adding he would discuss the issue in Washington next week. Residents of Oregon, Alaska, and the U.S. capital    ... MORE

More Like A Banana Republic Dictator Than A Lame Duck

by Thomas Sowell.    Just what happened last week on election day? And what is going to happen in the years ahead? The most important thing that happened last week was that the country dodged a bullet. Had the Democrats retained control of the Senate, President Obama could have spent his last two years in office loading the federal judiciary   ... MORE

How Police Departments Target Which Assets to Seize

by Shaila Dewan.    See the Harry S. Connelly Jr. video! The seminars offered police officers some useful tips on seizing property from suspected criminals. Don’t bother with jewelry (too hard to dispose of) and computers (“everybody’s got one already”), the experts counseled. Do go after flat screen TVs, cash and cars. Especially nice cars.   ... MORE 

VIDEO: ObamaCare - Deception By Design

The Financial Costs of Illegal Immigration

from National Center For Policy Analysis.     Over the course of a lifetime, 11.5 million illegal immigrants granted amnesty would receive $9.4 trillion in government benefits after paying just $3.1 trillion in taxes. Many people believe that illegal immigrants receive little government welfare, but that is not the case, contends David Inserra,      ... MORE

Walter E Williams: Educational Fraud

Perpetuating the damage.    It would be unreasonable to expect a student with the reading, writing and computing abilities of an eighth-grader to do well in college. If such a student were admitted, his retention would require that the college create dumbed-downed or phantom courses. The University of North Carolina made this   ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel, "I Hope Rand Paul Is 2016 Nominee"

Iowa Highway Seizure Exposes Evil Asset-Forfeiture Laws

by Robert O'Harrow Jr.   How government allows itself to steal. The two men in the rented red Nissan Altima were poker players traveling through Iowa on their way to Las Vegas. The police were state troopers on the hunt for criminals, contraband and cash. They intersected last year on a rural stretch of Interstate 80, in a seemingly routine traffic     ... MORE

ObamaCare Enrollment Estimates Lowered By A Third

4 million fewer enrollments than predicted. The Department of Health and Human Services expects ObamaCare enrollments through the federal and state exchanges to come in between 9 million and 9.9 million by the end of 2015, according to CNBC, far lower than the most recent estimate released by the Congressional Budget Office in April of  ... MORE

Government Is Not Us Dept: When Public Servants Attack

Momentum To Legalize Marijuana In California Is Growing

by Kurtis Alexander.   After Tuesday’s election, just one piece of the West Coast remained unwelcoming to recreational pot: California. But with voters in Oregon and Alaska legalizing the use and sale of marijuana — joining Washington and Colorado in inviting retail spreads of cannabis-infused teas and brownies and joints — advocates see fresh    ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - The Gun Violence Myth

Tyrannical Governing Body Placed Under Citizen's Arrest

by Phil Rogers and Patrick McCraney.   In a highly unusual move, the leader of a Downstate watchdog group placed an entire park district board under a citizen's arrest for failing to allow public comment and violating a state disclosure law. Public boards are used to facing angry crowds, but most have never dealt with what happened at one   ... MORE

Jim Hightower: Rabid Florida Police SWAT At Barbers

Barney Fifes on steroids.     When it comes to policing an area, the good people of Orange Country, Florida are lucky, because they’ve got the astonishing law-enforcement team of DBPR and OCSO on the beat, eager to stop any possible criminal activity. Consider just one example of the truly-incredible vigilance of this dynamic policing duo.     ... MORE

VIDEO: IRS Rules Burn Marijuana Policy

How San Francisco's Progressive Policies Hurt The Poor

by Scott Beyer.    In recent years, a contradiction has unfolded in San Francisco. On the one hand, the city continues to practice progressive economic policies. But rather than helping its poor and middle-class—as such policies are advertised as doing—these groups in San Francisco have become more unequal, downwardly mobile, and altogether     ... MORE

Jacob Sullum: Cannabis and Capitalism - The Horror?

The people's initiatives. Three marijuana legalization initiatives were on the ballot last week, and all three won.  That's a better outcome than I was expecting. I was surprised when voters in Colorado and Washington approved legalization two years ago, and I was surprised again when voters in Alaska, Oregon, and Washington, D.C.,     ... MORE

Election 2014: Victories And Defeats For Individual Rights

by Ari Armstrong.     If the victorious Republicans follow through on their campaign promises—for example, many promised to work toward repealing or defunding ObamaCare—election day will have been a net win for advocates of individual rights, despite the passage of some rights-violating ballot measures. Consider some of the relevant       ... MORE

How To Serve A Warrant: 1972 Versus Today

by Lt. Harry Thomas.     This past week I was over on Officer.com trying to convince some hot-headed, patriot-hating young cops that the Constitution is actually the law of the land. I failed. One of them refers to open carriers as “attention whores.” I was denounced as a traitor to law enforcement for insisting that gun owners actually have rights    ... MORE

VIDEO: Tolerance, Humility And Libertarianism

McConnell Will Back Rand Paul For President

by Alex Pappas.  Soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says he will back fellow Kentuckian Rand Paul for president if the libertarian-leaning Republican decides to run. “I’m a big supporter of Rand Paul,” McConnell told the Lexington Herald-Leader. “We’ve developed a very tight relationship, and I’m for him.”Pressed by the        ... MORE

Will The Supreme Court Redeem Itself On ObamaCare?

by Damon Root.    ObamaCare goes back on trial. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed today to rule on the Obamacare case King v. Burwell, which asks whether the text of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act forbids the granting of tax credits to individuals who purchased insurance on health care exchanges operated by the federal government.  ... MORE

VIDEO: Are We In The Final Days Of Marijuana Prohibition?

Why Cops Can Seize Your Property Even If You're Innocent

by Erin Fuchs. In a Philadelphia suburb last year, cops seized the home of a couple who had never been charged with a crime. Their son had allegedly dealt heroin out of the house, and cops said the home could be seized because it was tied to illegal activities. Markela and Chris Sourovelis — who owned the house — said they had no knowledge ... MORE

Jed S. Rakoff: Why Innocent People Plead Guilty

And why does the system promote such?     The criminal justice system in the United States today bears little relationship to what the Founding Fathers contemplated, what the movies and television portray, or what the average American believes. To the Founding Fathers, the critical element in the system was the jury trial, which served   ... MORE