After Copenhagen: The Myth of Civilized Censorship

by Brendan O'Neill. Hate speech laws legitimize violence against those who offend. The two recent acts of censorship-by-murder in Europe—first at the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris, and then at a free-speech debate in Copenhagen—have put the continent's political classes in a pickle. For as much as European rulers want to, and do, condemn the brutal    ... MORE

Killing Jobs & Closing Doors — A Minimum-Wage Warning

by Michael Saltsman.  NY needs to take note of SF. Couples across the country spent Valentine’s Day watching the rom-com “You’ve Got Mail,” where Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan fight over customers as his bookstore behemoth threatens to gobble up her neighborhood Shop Around The Corner. That storyline resonated with viewers in 1998, and     ... MORE

VIDEO: Thomas Sowell - Minimum Wage Exploitation

A Search Engine That Brings The Dark Web To Light

by Mark Stockley.      The Dark Web is reflecting a little more light these days. On Monday I wrote about Memex, DARPA's Deep Web search engine. Memex is a sophisticated tool set that has been in the hands of a few select law enforcement agencies for a year now, but it isn't available to regular users like you and me. There is another search engine  ... MORE

Pedro Gonzales: How To Teach Kids About Socialism

Reality therapy for the young.  It used to be that if you wanted to teach kids about capitalism, you’d tell them to open a lemonade stand. By producing a product, marketing it, and selling it, they would get a small taste of what it is like to run a business. But now telling your kids to open a lemonade stand is the best way of teaching them about      ... MORE

VIDEO: Free Will And Human Dignity - A Love Story

Mark Cuban Says Net Neutrality Will ‘Fuck Everything Up’

by Dawn Chmielewski. Billionaire investor and ABC “Shark Tank” star Mark Cuban unloaded on the Federal Communications Commission’s plan to fundamentally change how it oversees the open Internet. “That will fuck everything up,” said the voluble Cuban in remarks Wednesday at the Code/Media conference at The Ritz-Carlton, Laguna Niguel, Ca.  ... MORE

Global Warming Protest Postponed Due To Cold Weather

by Michael Bastach.   A propaganda fail at Yale. Yale anti-fossil fuel campaigners have indefinitely postponed a protest that was set for this weekend due to “unfavorable weather conditions and other logistical issues.” Fossil Free Yale, a group pushing the university to divest itself from fossil fuels, told the Yale Daily News that frigid, snowy  ... MORE

How The Supreme Court Enabled Policing For Profit

by Evan Bernick. Ignoring a vital principle of a just government. At this point, the only people defending the notorious and noxious practice of civil forfeiture are those that stand to gain from seizing Americans' property. Policymakers across the political spectrum have expressed outrage at the way in which civil forfeiture, which enables the government   ... MORE

Are Guns About To Become Off-limits In California?

by Pete D'Amato. Lefty politicians plot to neuter the 2nd Amendment. California's requirement of 'microstamping' technology means that no guns manufactured after 2013 have been sold in the state, known as having some of the strictest gun control laws.  Now gun-rights groups are hoping that a federal judge will overturn the provision that gun    ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - The Knockoff Economy

Vermont Could Be Next State To Legalize Recreational Pot

by Matt Ferner.     Vermont could become the first state in history to legalize recreational marijuana via state legislature with a new bill submitted Tuesday that aims to end prohibition of the plant. Senate Bill 95 would legalize the possession, use and sale of recreational marijuana in the state for those 21 and older. Adult residents could possess   ... MORE

Questions Over Missing Cash After Warrantless Search

by Kumi Tucker.     A local attorney says Albany police broke the law when they went into her client's apartment without a warrant.  Her client says he is now missing thousands of dollars in cash.  Attorney Cheryl Coleman's client, Joshua Horne, was arrested on a drug charge in June. She says police took his keys and then used them to get    See video  ... MORE

VIDEO: The Strategy Behind ISIS Brutality


The tactics of Daesh.

Gilbert Ross: The Madness Of The War On E-Cigs

Corruption + distorted facts = clampdown on vaping.    Is it mass insanity, or something even darker, that has led America’s public-health leaders to engage in a mass assault on electronic cigarettes? To put this in perspective, their target is not smoking, our number-one preventable health problem, but a product that could prove to    ... MORE

John Stossel - No Gatekeepers

Crowdsourcing works.   For years, people assumed encyclopedias had to be created by professionals.   Then Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales attempted to create an encyclopedia without central planners.   That sounded like a terrible idea to the old gatekeepers — people who hired experts to carefully fact-check and edit every encyclopedia    ... MORE

Program That Enables America To Spy On EVERY Home Computer In The world Is Uncovered By Outraged Russia

by Reuters reporter and Chris Spargo.   America caught violating everyone's privacy. The National Security Agency has figured out how to hide spying software deep within hard drives, allowing them to monitor and eavesdrop on the majority of the world's computers - even when they are not connected to the internet. The Moscow-based security  ... MORE

Businesses Find Ways To Cope With Minimum Wage Hikes

by Chris Kirkham.    Low-skill workers, consumers pay the price. When the minimum wage in San Jose went from $8 to $10 an hour in 2013, Adolfo Gomez started sending kitchen staff at his Mexican restaurant home early. His mother and brother handled the extra work. In Albuquerque, Myra Ghattas told cooks and hostesses to come in later when the  ... MORE

VIDEO: Kennedy - Assets Seized By IRS

Thomas Sowell: Glib, 'Happy Talk'

Presidential ignorance is not bliss.    When Alfred E. Neuman said "What me worry?" on the cover of Mad magazine, it was funny. But this message was not nearly as funny coming from President Barack Obama and his National Security Advisor, Susan Rice. In a musical comedy, it would be hilarious to have the president send out his "happy talk" message  ... MORE

Walter E Willliams: Shame

Poetic victimization is politically correct.  Today's liberals are not racists, but they often behave that way. They would benefit immensely from considering some of the arguments in award-winning scholar Dr. Shelby Steele's forthcoming book, "Shame: How America's Past Sins Have Polarized Our Country." Steele, a senior fellow at the Hoover    ... MORE

VIDEO: Three Things To Know About Bitcoin

Montana Poised To Ban Government License Plate Cameras

by J.D. Tuccille.      Cops in Big Sky Country aren't happy about it, but Montana lawmakers look ready to ban the use of license plate cameras by government agencies to track motorists' movements. The legislative move comes after a stream of revelations of local, state, and federal tracking and databasing of Americans' movements by car, without cause  ... MORE

Congressman Blasts San Francisco Medical Pot Prosecutions

by David Downs.  Calling out the feds. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher blasted San Francisco’s local U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag Sunday, saying she was “breaking the law” in her attempts to seize major Bay Area dispensaries Harborside Health Center and Berkeley Patients Group. The libertarian-leaning Republican from Huntington Beach has      ... MORE

John W. Whitehead: Creepy, Calculating and Controlling

All of the ways Big Brother is watching you.    None of us are perfect. All of us bend the rules occasionally. Even before the age of overcriminalization, when the most upstanding citizen could be counted on to break at least three laws a day without knowing it, most of us have knowingly flouted the law from time to time. Today, however,    ... MORE

Sheldon Richman: The Inherently Humble Libertarian

Libertarianism has humility baked in.   You would think that the advocates of a philosophy of political economy that embraces spontaneous social order, bottom-up rule-making based on peaceful voluntary exchange, and even competing polycentric law at least at some level would be safe from the charge of conceit. How conceited can   ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Cops And Cameras

Jacob Sullum: 'Drugged' Drivers Who Aren't

What if the risk ratio is statistically insignificant?   Last year, during a congressional hearing on the threat posed by stoned drivers, a representative of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) was asked how many crash fatalities are caused by marijuana each year. "That's difficult to say," replied Jeff Michael, NHTSA's  ... MORE

Democrats Seek Relief From Obamacare Penalties

by Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar.     Politicians fear the ugly truth. The official sign-up season for President Barack Obama's health care law may be over, but leading congressional Democrats say millions of Americans facing new tax penalties deserve a second chance. Three senior House members told The Associated Press that they plan to strongly    ... MORE

VIDEO: Don't Mess With The Internet

Tammy Bruce: FCC, FEC Look To Ruin The Internet

The left lifts its boot toward the free flow of information. We knew this was coming. Within the last couple of weeks, both the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Election Commission declared their intention to regulate the Internet. Fascists always explain their actions as efforts to either make something more efficient, ... MORE

Scott Shackford: One Way To Deal With DUI Checkpoints

Police aren’t happy about it.   Warren Redlich, back in 2010, was the Libertarian Party candidate for governor of New York (Nick Gillespie even highlighted him on the blog here). Needless to say, he didn’t win. But Redlich is back in the news getting publicity for his method of dealing with police DUI checkpoints in Florida (where he lives now) while     ... MORE

Police State America: Public Servants Or Public Masters?

Andrew Napolitano: A Worthless Piece Of Paper

No document can defend itself.  President George W. Bush was fond of saying that "9/11 changed everything." He used that one-liner often as a purported moral basis to justify the radical restructuring of federal law and the federal assault on personal liberties over which he presided. He cast aside his oath to preserve, protect and defend the     ... MORE

VIDEO: Walter E Williams - Fraudulent Education Of Blacks

John Stossel: Spontaneous Order

Most of life happens without a central planner.     Yet people think we need one. Suppose you'd never seen a skating rink, and I told you that I want to lay down some ice and charge people money to strap sharp blades on their feet. They will zip around on the ice — young and old, skilled and unskilled. My only rule: Go counter-clockwise.   ... MORE

Walter E Williams: Fairness And Justice

What you need to know about them.     Oxfam reports that the richest 1 percent of people in the world own 48 percent of the world's wealth. Many claim that we should be alarmed by income inequality because it hampers upward mobility. Others argue that because income is distributed so unevenly, justice and fairness require income     ... MORE

VIDEO: Would You Let Your Kids Walk All Alone in NY City?

J.D. Tuccille: Check Out On Your Own Terms

Tragic or self-empowering?     Every couple of years, some well-intentioned scribbler pens a hand-wringer about the national tragedy of suicide among the elderly. "Suicide rate for elderly men is alarming," noted Dennis Streets in the Chatham Journal last month. "Suicide rates are high among the elderly," cautioned Paula Span in a 2013 New York   ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: Measles, Vaccines And Autism

Vaccines don't cause autism. The current controversy over whether parents should be forced to have their children vaccinated for measles is one of the painful signs of our times. Measles was virtually wiped out in the United States, years ago. Why the resurgence of this disease now? The short answer is that false claims, based on other false claims,  ... MORE