John W. Whitehead: The Wolf Is Guarding The Hen House

The government’s war on cyberterrorism. Nothing you write, say, text, tweet or share via phone or computer is private anymore. This is the new normal in America today. A process which started shortly after 9/11 has grown into a full-fledged campaign of warrantless surveillance, electronic tracking and data mining, carried out by federal agents who have been given carte blanche access to the vast majority of electronic communications in America. Their methods completely undermine constitution safeguards, and yet no federal agency, president, court or legislature has stepped up to halt this assault on our rights. 
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IRS May Broaden Rule To Police Political Nonprofits

by Hillary Flynn and Rachael Bade.   The IRS may broaden a looming controversial rule to police political nonprofits to include political parties and political action committees, the IRS chief said Wednesday. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said the agency may expand a yet-to-be-released rule governing 501(c)(4), “social welfare” groups, to   ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Communism Vs Capitalism

Abigail Hall: Comply Or Die - Trends In Modern Policing

A fundamental problem we can't ignore.     Every time a police officer is killed in the line of duty, it makes local, if not national headlines. Though always shocking, the number of law enforcement fatalities has remained fairly steady over the years. According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, 165 police   ... MORE

GOP Senators Rip FCC's Net Neutrality Decision

by Grant Gross.    Ted Cruz: "An abuse of its authority." The U.S. Federal Communications Commission's new net neutrality rules could open the door to rate regulation and could drive some small broadband providers out of business, some Senate Republicans said Wednesday. Some Republican members of the Senate Commerce, Science and    ... MORE

VIDEO: Wealth Protection In An Economic Madhouse

Nick Sibilla: The DEA's Version Of Stop-and-Frisk

Seizing cash without warrants is legalized theft.  Federal drug agents may be racially profiling and unjustly seizing cash from travelers in the nation’s airports, bus stations and train stations. A new report released by the Office of the Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Justice examined the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)’s        ... MORE

Andrew Napolitano: What If Hillary Doesn't Care?

Do Democrats even care?     What if Hillary Clinton's emails were hacked by foreign agents when she was the secretary of state? What if persons claiming to have done so are boasting about their alleged feats on Internet websites and in chat rooms traditionally associated with illegal or undercover activities? What if this is the sore underbelly of an    .... MORE

The Death Of Free Speech On College Campus

by A. Barton Hinkle.    One of the truly delightful things about college is that it allows earnest young people to try out all sorts of ridiculous ideas without causing much lasting harm. After graduation, most will grow up and learn how to laugh at their prior selves. (The rest will become professors.) Let’s hope the undergrads and grad students      ... MORE

EPA Wants To Monitor How Long Hotel Guests Shower

by Elizabeth Harrington.  The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wants hotels to monitor how much time its guests spend in the shower. The agency is spending $15,000 to create a wireless system that will track how much water a hotel guest uses to get them to “modify their behavior.” “Hotels consume a significant amount of water in   ... MORE

VIDEO: All Of The Ways Big Brother Is Watching YOU

Jeanne Sahadi: The New Debt Ceiling: $18113000000000

The suspense -- or rather, the suspension -- is over.  The U.S. debt ceiling has been reset at $18.113 trillion, the Treasury Department said Tuesday. That new limit on public debt is about $1 trillion above where it stood in February 2014, when lawmakers decided to "suspend" the ceiling through this past weekend. That cool trillion reflects how ... MORE

We’re Asking The Wrong Question About Police Shootings

by Radley Balko.  The video below depicts the fatal police shooting of 38-year-old Jason Harrison in Dallas last year. Harrison’s mother had told the police that her son had been making threats, and that he was “bipolar schizo.” Police officials have previously said the body camera video backs up the officers’ accounts of self-defense, showing a fast-    ...  MORE

VIDEO: Andrew Breitbart On Clarence Thomas

Should Hotel Registries Be Open To Warrantless Searches?

by Rory Little.  How does requiring a warrant interfere with surprise police searches of hotel guest registers? The first case argued Tuesday morning, City of Los Angeles v. Patel, was about whether a Los Angeles ordinance that requires motel operators to allow the police to examine hotel guest registers, without seeking a warrant first, is     ... MORE

John Stossel: Chicago Fray

Money can't buy you love, but ...  Rahm Emanuel, current mayor of my old hometown, Chicago, is not a gentle soul. But he's smarter than his big-spending predecessor, Richard M. Daley, and the union pawn, Jesus "Chuy" Garcia, who becomes the new mayor if he beats Emanuel in a run-off election April 7. Emanuel was the tough Obama chief of staff  ... MORE

The Staggering Cost Of Embedded Regulation: $15K Per U.S. Household, Annual Economic Impact = $1.8 Trillion

by D. Brady Nelson.    What you don't see can hurt you. Perhaps due to it not being as readily quantifiable as government taxation, debt, welfare, and money creation; regulation has too often been superficially dealt with. In many ways, the largely “hidden tax” of regulation is a bigger threat to liberty, economy, and morality than other weapons of   ... MORE

One in Three Americans Hide Data From Government

by J.D. Tucille.    And you should too. My cell phone is encrypted. It also contains two apps—TextSecure and RedPhone—for conducting secure communications. All I really need in addition is something worth keeping secret, unless a few notes for articles and photographs of my kid and my dogs make the cut. Still, it gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling to    ... MORE

VIDEO: Unconstitutional Domestic Spying

EPA Targets Backyard Burger And Wiener Roasts

by Paul Bedard.   The Environmental Protection Agency has its eyes on pollution from backyard barbecues. The agency announced that it is funding a University of California project to limit emissions resulting in grease drippings with a special tray to catch them and a "catalytic" filtration system. The $15,000 project has the "potential for   ... MORE

USA Today Editorial: Policing For Profit Perverts Justice

Ferguson, Mo., is not the only guilty municipality.  Most people have never heard the term "policing for profit," but they've certainly seen it in action. Speed traps on roads that run through small towns have long generated money for the local governments. Big cities also police for profit. Washington, D.C., raked in $92 million in ticket revenue   ... MORE

VIDEO: Police Shoot, Kill 80-Year-Old Man In His Own Bed, Don't Find The Drugs, Then Lied About The Events

Bruce Walker: Reclaiming Legislative Power

Too many laws created by bureaucrats.  The power to make laws rests wholly in Congress – at least that is what the Constitution says.  Yet who makes the “laws” in our federal system today?  Vast amounts of legislative power have been “delegated” to independent federal regulatory agencies like the Federal Communications Commission or to the  ... MORE

Zero Tolerance For Common Sense: Kid Was Expelled And Charged For Bringing Pot To School, Even Though He Didn't

by Robby Soave.  Administrators at a middle school in central Virginia suspended a sixth-grader last September for one-year after discovering a marijuana leaf and a lighter in his backpack. The sheriff's department became involved as well and filed drug possession charges against the 11-year-old boy. Months later, prosecutors had to drop the     ... MORE

Why Government Doesn't Like Individual Property Rights

by Laura Lundquist.   Government serves agencies, not people. More than two dozen Republican legislators are cosponsoring a bill intended to strengthen private property rights by prohibiting state agencies from taking any action that might affect a person’s enjoyment of their property. But several agencies and attorneys say that could have negative  ... MORE

Bruce E. Levine: 8 Reasons Young Americans Don't Fight Back: How The United States Crushed Youth Resistance

From anti-establishment to obedient sheep. Traditionally, young people have energized democratic movements. So it is a major coup for the ruling elite to have created societal institutions that have subdued young Americans and broken their spirit of resistance to domination. Young Americans—even more so than older Americans—appear to have  ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Cool Commies

A Slow-Motion Accident Right Before Our Eyes

by Michael Hausam. Seattle's minimum wage chickens coming home to roost. The city of Seattle is providing the nation the economic-planning equivalent of a Funniest Home Video face-plant compilation movie. And it promises to be a doozy. Except for in this case, the face-plant is occurring to an entire city’s population and there’s no hope for a big cash   ... MORE

Walter E Williams: Selma And Voting Rights

Today's problem not about discrimination.  March 7th was the 50th anniversary of "Bloody Sunday," the first attempt by black protesters to march from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery to demand voting rights. Their march was brutally halted by Alabama state troopers acting under the orders of Gov. George Wallace. The protesters weren't     ... MORE

VIDEO: A Time For Truth

Thomas Sowell: Ruinous 'Compassion'

Killing jobs with kindness.      It is fascinating to see brilliant people belatedly discover the obvious — and to see an even larger number of brilliant people never discover the obvious. A recent story in a San Francisco newspaper says that some restaurants and grocery stores in Oakland's Chinatown have closed after the city's minimum      ... MORE

How Weed Will Eventually Become Legal In The U.S.

by Josh Voorhees. A trio of high-profile senators this week unveiled a package of drug reforms that would effectively end the federal war on medical marijuana once and for all. The bill, from Republican Rand Paul and Democrats Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand, wouldn’t legalize medical weed across the country, but it would remove ... MORE

Tim Dunkin: Bake Us A Cake Or We'll Murder Your Children

Modern liberalism is fundamentally illiberal.   The evidences for this can be clearly seen all around us. There are hardly any basic areas of the liberty of the individual which today's progressives – in both parties – haven't trampled in their on-going efforts to destroy America That Was and replace it with a progressive utopian version in which individual  ... MORE

Income Tax Makes States Radioactive To Sports Stars

by Travis H. Brown.     Add Ndamukong Suh to the ever-growing list of professional athletes who are bidding farewell to their high-tax home state in favor of sunnier economic climates. Suh – considered one of the top-two players in free agency this season – is leaving Detroit for Miami. By doing so, the defensive tackle will give himself a significant tax    ... MORE

VIDEO: Johann Norberg: Economic Freedom In Chile

Seattle Restaurants Closing Ahead Of $15 Minimum Wage

“It’s not a political problem; it’s a math problem.”   Seattle’s $15 minimum wage law goes into effect on April 1, 2015. As that date approaches, restaurants across the city are making the financial decision to close shop. The Washington Policy Center writes that “closings have occurred across the city, from Grub in the upscale Queen     ... MORE

Matthew Boyle: Rand Paul Blows Away Liberal Black Audience With Conservative Message & Founder's Vision

Kentucky senator hits it out of the park at Boise State. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) was a hit speaker on the campus of Bowie State University on Friday, earning several rounds of applause and a standing ovation for the conservative message he delivered to a predominantly liberal audience at the historically black university—part of an    ... MORE

VIDEO: Mistrust Of Government Is A Beautiful Thing

Policing For Profit Makes Residents Victims

The practice of legalized theft slithers into the light.     Most people have never heard the term “policing for profit,” but they’ve certainly seen it in action. Speed traps on roads that run through small towns have long generated money for the local governments. Big cities also police for profit. Washington, D.C., raked in $92 million in ticket  ... MORE

Sports Stadiums Throw Taxpayers For A Loss

by Steve Chapman.     It's a play fake that never fails. Since 1995, Los Angeles has been an anomaly: a huge city with lots of sports fans that has exactly as much professional football as Billings, Montana. This week, Angelenos got a bit of good news: They still aren't getting an NFL franchise. A corporation called AEG announced Monday that it    ... MORE