Conor Friedersdorf: The Principled Realism Of Rand Paul

We should try it for a change.      Senator Rand Paul distinguished himself among Republicans this week by championing a more careful, pragmatic response to ISIS than any other primary candidate. So far, it hasn’t won him much support. The rise of the terrorist group has divided the GOP in an interesting way. Its neoconservative wing,        ... MORE

NYT Columnist Wants A Minimum Drinking Age For Soda

by Guy Bentley.    Busybodies minding your own business. A New York Times columnist has proposed the government introduce a minimum age for buying soda and card kids who try to buy Coca-Cola at the local store. In wide-ranging discussion with Luckypeach.com, food journalist and New York Times opinion writer Mark Bittman attempted to equate    ... MORE

VIDEO: Barack Obama - The Legacy Of Hope And Change

Make Economic Freedom America's New Year's Resolution

by Veronique de Rugy.    It's Christmas time again, and with it come the dreams of better times. Families struggling with the consequences of the most recent recession will be happy to know that there is a simple way to improve their lives and keep or make more money in the process. It's called economic freedom, and the United States used to be very  ... MORE

Paris Agreement: Another False ‘Turning Point’ On Climate

by George Will.     History, on the “right side” of which Barack Obama endeavors to keep us, has a sense of whimsy. Proof of which is something happening this week: Britain’s last deep-pit coal mine is closing, a small event pertinent to an enormous event, the Industrial Revolution, which was ignited by British coal. The mine closure should not,       ... MORE

VIDEO: History Of Police Militarization

High Court To Take Up Warrantless Alcohol Testing

by Sam Hananel.   The Fourth Amendment to have its day in court. The Supreme Court will decide whether states can criminalize a driver's refusal to take an alcohol test even if police have not obtained a search warrant. The justices on Friday agreed to hear three cases challenging laws in Minnesota and North Dakota that make it a crime for people   ... MORE

Reclaiming The Christmas Spirit: Ten Great Christmas Movies To Help You Shake The Police State Blues

by John W. Whitehead.      What a turbulent year it’s been. For those of us who have managed to survive 2015 with our lives intact and our freedoms hanging by a thread, it has been a year of crackdowns, clampdowns, shutdowns, showdowns, shootdowns, standdowns, knockdowns, putdowns, breakdowns, lockdowns, takedowns,   ... MORE

Jacob Sullum: Mass Shooting Delusions

Those "common-sense gun safety laws.      Two days after the massacre in San Bernardino, Marco Rubio said something that most gun control supporters probably thought was outrageous. The Florida senator, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, told CBS News "none of the major shootings that have occurred in this country  ... MORE

Conservatives Should Oppose Massive Collection Of DNA

by Bob Barr.   We all know that many citizens have become accustomed to surrendering all manner of personal information to whoever asks for it. Many have seen television ads with actors depicting individuals who gleefully send DNA samples to some corporation that will tell them whether their ancestors wore lederhosen, or kilts. In this        ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Generational Whine Vs. Free Speech

A. Barton Hinkle: To Reduce Inequality, Cut Red Tape

Regulation = upward redistribution of wealth.  A "considerable portion of America's exploding inequality," writes Steven Teles, "has been generated by government itself... While the state is sometimes the friend of those working to produce a more egalitarian society, it is just as often the tool of those who would entrench inequality." Exhibit A:    ... MORE

Damon Root: Donald Trump Vs. Clarence Thomas

Trump loves Kelo. Justice Thomas does not.    Speaking before a crowd in South Carolina this weekend, Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump spoke out about his least and most favorite Supreme Court justices. As the Associated Press reports, Trump attacked Chief Justice John Roberts "while praising Associate Justice Clarence Thomas   ... MORE

VIDEO: Climate Change For Dummies (Or Snow Job In Paris)

Christopher Ingraham: One Of The Biggest Arguments Against Marijuana Legalization Is Falling Apart

Drug use continues a decade-long drop.     America's high school students are using drugs and alcohol at or near the lowest levels on recordaccording to federal data released Wednesday. The 2015 Monitoring the Future Survey, conducted by the University of Michigan and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)        ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: Attacking the Truth: Part II

Merely applying the laws.       The case currently before the U.S. Supreme Court, involving racial double standards in admissions to the University of Texas at Austin, has an Alice-in-Wonderland quality that has been all too common in other Supreme Court cases involving affirmative action in academia, going all the way back to 1978. Plain        ... MORE

Top White House Drug Official: War On Drugs Is A Failure

by Alex Mierjeski.   That makes it unanimous. The nation's top drug official went on CBS' "60 Minutes" Sunday night and proclaimed the old War on Drugs a failure. Michael Botticelli, who serves as the director of the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy, also said he wants to reform and refocus U.S. drug policy. When asked by "60 Minutes"  ... MORE

A Missouri Town Demands Substantive Due Process

by George Will.   Is this the future? If Pagedale, Mo., is a glimpse of the future, the future is going to be annoying. Pagedale might represent the future of governance unless some of its residents succeed in their lawsuit against their government. If they do, it will be because they successfully invoked the principle of substantive due process. Pagedale is  ... MORE

VIDEO: Rand Paul - Protecting The Fourth Amendment

Katie Kieffer: Santa Baby, Bring Me Coal

Solar on the naughty list. I want coal for Christmas, and not because I’ve been a naughty girl. I want coal so I can affordably power up the high-tech toys Santa is bringing me, including an electronic butler who cleans and cooks and a modern, coal-fired steam locomotive that will allow me to bypass the TSA Snooper Troopers when I travel       ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: Attacking The Truth

They just can't take the inconvenient truth.  Among the many sad signs of our time are the current political and media attacks on Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, for speaking the plain truth on a subject where lies have been the norm for years. The case before the High Court is whether the use of race as a basis for admitting students  ... MORE

VIDEO: How Big Should Government Be?

Walter E Williams: Our Timid Military Leaders

Sending the weaker sex to battle.    This month, President Barack Obama's defense secretary, Ashton Carter, decreed that there will be 220,000 combat military jobs offered to women — including in Army special operations forces and the Navy SEALs. He said, "They'll be allowed to drive tanks, fire mortars and lead infantry soldiers into combat ... MORE

Thomas Sowell’s Christmas Gift Recommendations

by Thomas Sowell.     People who want to buy Christmas gifts, without having to confront the crowds at the local shopping mall (or shopping maul) can take a load off their feet by buying books or movies on the Internet, while sitting in the comfort of their own homes. In addition to old standbys like gorgeous coffee table books of Ansel Adams’      ... MORE

Man Charged With A Felony For Passing Out Jury Right Flyers Demands The Names Of These 'Tampered Jurors'

by Bob Unruh.       Defending a First Amendment assault. A lawyer representing a Michigan man accused of jury tampering for handing out brochures about the concept of jury nullification – essentially jurors voting their conscience no matter their instructions from prosecutors and judges – now wants to talk to potential jurors who may have been in the   ... MORE

How Cops Turn Young, Low-Level Drug Offenders Into "Confidential Informants," A Job That Might Kill Them

by Jacob Sullum.    Drug war draftees. On November 22, 2013, his 20th birthday, Andrew Sadek sat down across a table from Richland County Sheriff's Deputy Jason Weber at the Law Enforcement Center in Wahpeton, North Dakota. It was the day after cops had searched Sadek's dorm room at the North Dakota State College of Science, finding "an orange  ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Bias In The Ivory Tower

Drug Czar Wants More $ To Spend On Taking Your Stuff

by Nick Gillespie.       The Washington Post reports that the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) wants more money "to identify assets, prosecute cases and 'manage the massive paper flow associated with forfeiture.'"   Asset-forfeiture, in which law enforcement seizes property, cash, and goods that it says is connected to drug      ... MORE

Guess What Marijuana Is Being Blamed For Now

by Sean Willliams.       We're less than three weeks away from the calendar ticking over to a new year -- a year that very well could be the most important for the marijuana industry to date. We can certainly look back on some of the milestone events within the marijuana industry over the past two decades and argue that they've been pivotal        ... MORE

VIDEO: Why We NEED Academic Freedom

Scott Shackford: The Middle Class Is Shrinking!

Because They’re Getting Rich!   Success is seen as a disaster when you care more about income inequality than mobility. "The American Middle Class is Losing Ground," is the title of Pew Research Center's new report on income inequality. That headline informed the headlines that other media outlets have settled on as well. The Los Angeles  ... MORE

That Obamacare Penalty Will Be Bigger Than You Think

by Dan Mangan. The stick's getting a lot bigger — but it's not clear that many more people will choose the carrot as a result. Households that opt to go without health insurance in 2016 are set to get hit with an average Obamacare fine of $969. That is 47 percent higher than the average $661 penalty per uninsured household for this year, a new analysis  ... MORE

Montana Man Walks Thanks To Jury Nullification

From the Tenth Amendment Center. In Montana, citizens rendered a marijuana law unenforceable through jury nullification. Recently, a man was arrested for possessing a small amount of marijuana, but the judge could not find one single person willing to sit on a jury and convict him. Unable to seat a jury, the judge was forced to give up and offer ...  MORE

William N. Grigg: Police Chiefs Across The US Admit Armed Citizens, Not Cops, Is The Best Deterrent Against Terrorism

“If you’re a terrorist, you want unarmed citizens."      If you want to be protected from potential terrorist attacks like the recent massacre in Paris, and suspected domestic terrorist incidents such as the murder of three people at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood facility and fourteen more at an office party in San Bernardino, you    ... MORE

VIDEO: Trey Gowdy - Infringement Of The 2nd Amendment

Jerry Brown Pimps 'Coercive Power of the State' In Paris

by Rob Nikolewski.     For the public good as determined by political elites. California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) raised some eyebrows while attending the United Nations Climate Summit in Paris, proclaiming the "coercive power of the central state" is needed to promote good public policy, specifically when it comes to a cleaner environment.     ... MORE

Please Don't Say Radical If You Mean Violent

by Sheldon Richman.   It's about time someone challenged the phrase radical Islamic terrorism. The most objectionable part is the word radical, since it is now popularly associated with aggression—violence against innocents—as an acceptable means to politico-religious ends. But nothing about the word radical implies approval of aggression or        ... MORE

VIDEO: Ayn Rand On Love And Happiness


with Mike Wallace.

California Climate Policies Chilling Housing Growth

by Steven Greenhut. The California Supreme Court's decision late last month to reject a nearly 6,000-page environmental report for a proposed development north of Los Angeles will not only delay or possibly kill a new suburban community. It will make it much more difficult for developers anywhere in California to build large-scale housing projects.     ... MORE

Politically-Correct Food Keeps Poisoning Its Customers

by Roberto A Ferdman and Abha Bhattarai. Chipotle became the darling of the fast-food world by attracting millennials, blue-collar workers and even whole families with its promise of high-quality, sustainably sourced Mexican-inspired cuisine. But a series of food poisonings and other challenges are threatening its reputation and underscoring the  ... MORE