Don’t Forget The Jury’s Power To Rule On Moral Grounds

by James Weeks II.        In recent years, many people have fallen victim to government tyranny, everything from drug offenses to tax resisters. Historically, going back to the Magna Carta, it has been the job of the jury to stand in the way of government tyranny and judge the law as well as the case. Jury nullification was used to deny convictions  ... MORE

Steve Chapman: The Case For The "Right To Die"

A basic right of self-ownership. Life is a gift that can also become an intolerable burden. For those afflicted with terminal diseases, the grim approach of death is accompanied by what, for some, is the unbearable prospect of pain, confusion and helplessness. If death can't be avoided, they would like to decide how and when it comes. With them in  ... MORE

VIDEO: Milton Friedman, Pete Wilson - The Drug War

Jordan Richardson: A Serious Problem In Our Legal System

Justice is a result, not simply a process.       A life sentence. For Sharanda Jones, a first-time, nonviolent cocaine offender, it wasn’t sinking in. “I was numb,” she remembers. “I was thinking about my baby. I thought it can’t be real life in prison.” Having grown up in a disadvantaged family, Sharanda started working at the age of 14, later opening ... MORE

Matt Stevens: The Unintended Consequences Of Conserving Water: More Leaky Pipes, Less Revenue, Lots Of Bad Odors

A corrosive policy in more ways than one.  Under orders to slash water use amid a historic drought, cities and towns across the state saved about 75 billion gallons in July, eclipsing Gov. Jerry Brown's once-daunting order for a 25% reduction. But, in a paradox of conservation, water agencies say the unprecedented savings — 31% in July over July  ... MORE

VIDEO: Sorry Millionaires, Buyer Beware

Is Safety Just A Pretense? How One Police Dept Racked Up 1700 Citations Deploying Questionable DUI Checkpoints

by Angela Caputo.  On an unseasonably cool summer evening last year, Berwyn police officers stood at Ogden and East avenues eyeing cars as they crawled through a roadside check. The officers were working a special night DUI patrol, looking for bloodshot eyes, signs of drug use and vehicle violations like expired tags and broken lights, stopping vehicles   ... MORE

Andrew Napolitano: Is The Pope A False Prophet?

Holy man doesn't get the free market.     Congressman Thomas Massie, R-Ky., has invited me to the House of Representatives to watch Pope Francis address a joint session of Congress. This generous Methodist congressman has invited your traditionalist Roman Catholic columnist and cable TV guy to this grand event. I am going with joy because  ... MORE

Capitalism And Morality: Walter Williams Vs. Pope Francis

by Daniel J. Mitchell.  The Pope is divinely ignorant on economics. The biggest mistake of well-meaning leftists is that they place too much value on good intentions and don’t seem to care nearly as much about good results. Pope Francis is an example of this unfortunate tendency. His concern for the poor presumably is genuine, but he puts ideology ... MORE

Chris Cillizza: Just When You Thought The E-Mail Story Couldn’t Get Worse For Hillary Clinton …

Death by a thousand cuts.           After several weeks of relative dormancy, the story of Hillary Clinton's private e-mail server surged back into the news Tuesday night, with a trio of stories that suggest things are going to get worse before (or perhaps if) they get better for the former secretary of state's 2016 campaign. Here's what we learned:   ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Shortage Scares

Jacob Sullum: Rand Paul And 10 Heedless Hawks

A desperately needed alternative to mindless militarism. At a Q&A session in Dallas a year ago, Rand Paul expressed skepticism about whether the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) posed "a threat to our national security."   Hours later at another event in Dallas, the Kentucky senator said that if he were president he "would lay out the      ... MORE

Sorry Leftists, Your Swedish Utopia Does Not Exist

by Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein.    As a Swede living in the U.S., one of the most common reactions when I tell people where I am from is the question of why I would ever leave Sweden in the first place. Many Americans seem to truly believe that life in the Scandinavian countries is superior to that in virtually all other places on earth, and that  ... MORE

VIDEO: Marijuana Did Not Kill Carly Fiorina's Daughter


So what did? 

John Stossel: Government - Here To Help!

Government does everything, just nothing well.    Government wants you to think it helps you at every turn. Every time you make a decision, a purchase, government wants to be there, looking essential. But it's a trick. Most government "help" creates new problems. Students once went to private banks to get college loans. Banks, since they   ... MORE

Judge Rules Nobody Owns "Happy Birthday To You"

by Ted Johnson.       A federal judge ruled on Tuesday that the lyrics to “Happy Birthday to You” are not protected by copyright, concluding that Warner/Chappell Music does not hold a valid claim to the song. It raises the prospect that royalties will no longer be collected from public performances of the song in movies, TV shows and other         ... MORE

Katie Kieffer: Only Obama Will Shut Down Gov't

Never accept their premise.  Government shutdowns are not cancer and today I’ll show why we must stop taking the bait. Indeed, I’ll show why we will lose elections if we are unwilling to shut down the government in order to protect human life and reform immigration policy. CNN’s Dana Bash did not speak much during last week’s        ... MORE

Greg Corombos: 'Most Expensive Regulation In History' - New Obama Power Grab Set To Kill 1.4 Million Jobs

Obama, the job killer, strikes again.   The Obama administration is just weeks away from imposing a new ozone particulate standard that manufacturers say will cripple jobs and productivity in the U.S. and leave some firms and industries clinging to life. The National Association of Manufacturers released a study suggesting the standard would    ... MORE

VIDEO: Rand Paul - On Abortion

Frank Newport: Gallup Poll Reveals That 51% Of Country Still Fail To See Government As An Immediate Threat

Half the country is oblivious to lost liberty.    Almost half of Americans, 49%, say the federal government poses "an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens," similar to what was found in previous surveys conducted over the last five years. When this question was first asked in 2003, less than a third of Americans held    ... MORE

North Carolina Teen Prosecuted For Taking Naked Selfie

by Tara Culp-Ressler.  Gov't figures a little prison time should fix him. A 17-year-old in North Carolina struck a plea deal last week to avoid serving jail time on felony sex offender charges. His crime? Taking a nude photo of himself. The photo in question was discovered when the teenager’s cell phone was searched during a wider investigation   ... MORE

VIDEO: 4 Steps You Can Take Right Now To Nullify The Fed

Marijuana Legalization: Disaster or Catastrophe?

by Jacob Sullum.    Drug warriors are desperate to make repeal of pot prohibition look like a mistake. In 2012 Coloradans approved Amendment 64, which legalized marijuana for recreational use, by avote of 55 percent to 45 percent. Last February a Quinnipiac University poll found that 58 percent of Colorado voters supported that decision, while 38   ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: The Left Has Its Pope

The Pope is unwittingly calling for more poverty.  Pope Francis has created political controversy, both inside and outside the Catholic Church, by blaming capitalism for many of the problems of the poor. We can no doubt expect more of the same during his visit to the United States. Pope Francis is part of a larger trend of the rise of the political  ... MORE

California Prosecutors Protect Policing For Profit Practices Allowing Gov't To Seize Property From Innocent Citizens

Law enforcement has better lobby than the citizens. A powerful last minute lobbying effort by a well-connected law enforcement group was more than enough to defeat a bipartisan bill in California last week that would have restricted police from seizing – and keeping – cash and property from innocent citizens. Passing the law, ... MORE

Walter E Williams: Liberal Reasoning - Idiotic or Dishonest?

A very convenience understanding at minimum.    Many people argue that liberals, socialists and progressives do not understand basic economics. I am not totally convinced about that. Take the law of demand, for example, one of the fundamental principles of economics. It holds that the lower the cost of something the more people will  ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - The Military Market

Hillary Clinton's CNN Interview: 9 Questions, 0 Answers

by Tom S. Elliott.    Watch the video montage. This past Thursday, Wolf Blitzer managed to score a 14-minute interview with Hillary Clinton, during which he was free to wrest as many answers from the press-shy candidate as he could. The number of answers she actually gave? Zero. Hillary bobbed, weaved, ducked, dodged, and ultimately avoided      ... MORE

FBI Refuses To Cooperate In Clinton Email Server Probe

by Stephen Dinan. More government stonewalling.    The FBI refused to cooperate Monday with a court-ordered inquiry into former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s email server, telling the State Department that they won’t even confirm they are investigating the matter themselves, much less willing to tell the rest of the government ... MORE

VIDEO: Pope Francis Doesn't Understand Economics

America Has Way Too Many Overseas Military Bases

There are 800 bases in foreign countries.  With the U.S. military having withdrawn many of its forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, most Americans would be forgiven for being unaware that hundreds of U.S. bases and hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops still encircle the globe. Although few know it, the United States garrisons the planet     ... MORE

Police State America: Video Shows Austin Cop Arbitrarily Arresting A Man For Eating A Hamburger In His Parked Car

by Grant Stern.      Cops making up the law as they go. This recently recorded arrest in Austin, Texas shows the five stages of police deciding to falsely arrest a citizen who contacted PINAC News and wishes to be called “Rick”. The YouTube video’s original caption to the video at the bottom of this story says it all: “Bought a burger and pulled over to have a  ... MORE

John Nichols: Rand Paul Offered Reasonable Alternatives On Foreign Policy, Drug Reform, And Mass Incarceration

Kentucky senator not parroting establishment line.     Donald Trump does not like Rand Paul. In the weirdest non sequitur of a often-incoherent second Republican presidential debate, the billionaire front-runner for the party nomination declared, "Rand Paul shouldn't even be on this stage. He's number 11. He's got 1 percent in the polls.      ... MORE

Katie Zezima: Donald Trump's Plan Calls For Nationwide Concealed Carry And An End To Government Gun Bans

Gun control "a total failure."   Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump -- who said he has a concealed carry permit -- called for the expansion of gun rights Friday, including making those permits applicable nationwide. In a position paper published on his website Friday afternoon, Trump called for the elimination of gun and magazine bans,    ... MORE

VIDEO: 2016 GOP Candidates - The Liberty Rankings

Ahmed Mohamed's Ordeal IS The Case For School Choice

by Nick Gillespie.  The story of Ahmed Mohamed, the Texas 9th-grader who was handcuffed and arrested after bringing a homemade clock to MacArthur High to show a teacher, is enraging. As Reason's Robby Soave has noted, xenophobia and zero-tolerance policies created a stew more toxic than anything ever served in a school cafeteria. In my new   ... MORE

25% Do Not See Widespread Corruption In Goverment

Political blindness strikes one in four.    Three in four Americans (75%) last year perceived corruption as widespread in the country's government. This figure is up from two in three in 2007 (67%) and 2009 (66%). While the numbers have fluctuated slightly since 2007, the trend has been largely stable since 2010. However, the percentage of   ... MORE

VIDEO: Learn Liberty - Why We NEED Academic Freedom

Obama Chooses Openly Gay Man To Lead The Army

by Greg Jaffe.      Political correctness has covered a lot of ground in 4 years. President Obama, in a historic first for the Pentagon, has chosen to nominate Eric Fanning to lead the Army, a move that would make him the first openly gay civilian secretary of one of the military services. Fanning, 47, has been a specialist on national security issues for more    ... MORE

Scott Sumner: Milton Friedman Saw The Euro Crisis Coming

He predicted Europe's current problems 17 years ago.  Among the general public, Milton Friedman is mostly remembered for the libertarian views outlined on his PBS show Free to Choose.   Among economists, he is best known for his monetarist position on Fed policy. What's less well known is that he was also a soothsayer,         ... MORE