Terrorism! Crime! Deadly storms! Hillary Clinton! We reporters focus on bad news, but at year's end, let's remember what went right. 2015 was a better time to be alive than most any prior point in history. The rich got richer. Some people think that's a problem, but why? Do rich people sit on their piles of money and cackle about how rich ... MORE
What The War On Smoking Tells Us About The Drug War
by Danielle Allen. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. In January 1964, the Beatles first broke onto the Billboard chart with “I Want to Hold Your Hand”; by June, Ringo Starr had collapsed from tonsillitis and pharyngitis. In January , the surgeon general announced
that scientists had found conclusive evidence linking smoking to ... MORE
Protection For Cops Who Kill Unarmed Civilians
"We don't second guess police officers." A grand jury's decision not to indict an officer who killed a
12-year-old holding a toy gun sheds light on a criminal-justice system
that gives fairly broad deference to police officers' version of events. As Business Insider's Natasha Bertrand reported, the prosecutor in the case of the 12-year-old said, ... MORE
Glenn Greenwald: Those Demanding Free Speech Limits To Fight ISIS Pose A Greater Threat To United States Than ISIS
Because the essence of America is freedom. In 2006 – years before ISIS replaced Al Qaeda as the New and Unprecedentedly Evil Villain – Newt Gingrich gave a speech in New Hampshire in which, as he put it afterward, he “called for a serious debate about the First Amendment and how terrorists are abusing our rights – using them as they once ... MORE
TSA Will Stop Accepting Driver's Licenses From 9 States
by Nick Gillespie. The last time we took notice of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), it was to inform you that the unpopular, expensive, and ineffectual outfit had decided it could force travelers on domestic airline flights to go through full-body scanners. Previously, TSA had allowed folks to submit instead to a full-body pat-down. ... MORE
Labels:
airport,
bureaucracy,
California,
government,
identity,
licensing,
transportation,
travel,
TSA
DOJ Suspends Asset Forfeiture Equitable Sharing
by Mikayla Hellwich. Police currently take more of citizens’ assets than thieves do. The Department of Justice released a memorandum addressed to local, state, and tribal law enforcement agencies Monday to announce that the equitable sharing program for asset forfeiture funds has been temporarily suspended due to financial considerations. ... MORE
Thomas Sowell: Remembering 2015
The lessons we should have learned. How shall we remember 2015? Or shall we try to forget it? It is always hard to know when a turning point has been reached, and usually it is long afterwards before we recognize it. However, if 2015 has been a turning point, it may well have marked a turn in a downward direction for America and for ... MORE
Labels:
civilization,
deception,
dishonesty,
Hillary Clinton,
Iran,
ISIS,
Islamic state,
police,
terrorism
John W. Whitehead: What’s In Store For Freedom In 2016?
You might want to sit down for this. As I illustrate in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People,
we in the emerging American police state find ourselves reliving the
same set of circumstances over and over again: egregious surveillance,
strip searches, police shootings of unarmed citizens, government spying, ... MORE
Labels:
crime,
debt,
drones,
government,
police state,
privacy,
raids,
spying,
surveillance,
SWAT,
tactics
John McAfee Enters Libertarian Party Presidential Race
Anti-virus pioneer throws his hat in the ring. John McAfee is the
70-year-old founder of the antivirus software firm that bears his name
(though he has not been actively involved with it since 1994, and the
company was bought by Intel in 2010).
He's also a colorful world adventurer who has been candid about his
extreme exploits in ... MORE
Lu Wang: 2015 - The Year Nothing Worked
Stocks, bonds, cash go nowhere. Worst year for asset allocation funds since 1937. The idea behind asset allocation is simple: when one market struggles, it’s OK because an investor can jump into another that is thriving. Not so in 2015. In fact, if you judge the past year by which U.S. investment class generated the largest return, a case can be ... MORE
Micah J Fleck: New York’s “Misgendering” Law Is Wrong
Another slap at free speech. The Republic just published a very informative report on a new civil rights guideline that could end up with NYC citizens facing hefty fines for what is being called “misgendering.” The idea, as the original news story explains, is that calling a trans person the wrong pronoun or title is now seen as a civil rights violation. ... MORE
Jacob Sullum: The Puzzling Persistence Of Pee Tests
A favorite tactic of control freaks. Slate columnist Daniel Engber, who was recently "shocked" to discover that workplace drug testing is still a thing, wonders: What's up with that? He finds, as I did back in 2002, that there's little evidence drug testing is a sound investment for employers: As was the case 30 years ago, testing has no solid base of evidence, ... MORE
Labels:
drug war,
employee,
employer,
individual liberty,
marijuana,
obligation,
privacy,
prohibition
Steven Greenhut: Regulation A Sure Bet For Fantasy Games
California's option destroyers never sleep. "Fantasy sports"
has come a long way from the office football pool. Instead of passing
around photocopied spreadsheets and collecting a few bucks from cubicle
mates, players now go to sophisticated web sites, where they can make
daily wagers—and not just trudge through a long sports season ... MORE
Labels:
busybody,
California,
gambling,
harassment,
nanny state,
politicians,
recreation,
regulation,
skill
Was 2015 A Bad Year For Campus Free Speech?
by Robby Soave. Are easily-offended students and their allies within the university
bureaucracy ushering in a new era of censorship on American college
campuses? Even President Obama is worried that excessive political correctness is stifling legitimate debate at universities. Still, it’s hard to say whether the situation on campuses is truly ... MORE
Michael Thomsen: Legalizing Weed Isn’t Enough
Permit marijuana use in public. Recreational marijuana use has been legal in Seattle since 2012, but I still felt like I was getting away with something when I walked into a dispensary there this fall. There was a bouncer waiting behind a roped-off entryway on the otherwise quiet Capitol Hill side street. He passed my driver’s license through a ... MORE
Labels:
alcohol,
behavior,
cannabis,
crime,
drug war,
marijuana,
prohibition,
racism,
victimless crimes
Our Presidents Are Beginning To Act Like Kings
by Charles C. W. Cooke. If the passage of time were a reliable guarantor of increasing human freedom, we would expect history to look a little different than it does. In school, we would have learned that the Englishmen of Charles I’s reign were better off than their Elizabethan grandparents; that the colonists implicated by the Declaratory ... MORE
Labels:
executive,
executive order,
executive power,
Obama,
oligarchy,
politics,
presidency,
tyranny
Justin Gardner: A Federal Judge Just Shamed The DEA For Fabricating Sham Cases Trying To Justify War On Drugs
Entrapment, law enforcement's favorite tool. Since the War on Drugs began in earnest under Nixon and Reagan, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has ruined millions of lives for nonviolent, victimless behavior. The DEA’s drug crusade is not limited to the homeland either, as it also has sole responsibility for pursing international ... MORE
Walter E Williams: Misleading And Using Blacks
Sacrificing blacks in the name of diversity. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia ran headlong into the leftist meat grinder by questioning whether college admission of blacks with academic achievement levels significantly lower than the rest of the student body is beneficial to blacks. His question came up during oral arguments ... MORE
Labels:
academic,
achievement,
college,
diversity,
education,
Justice Scalia,
quotas,
race,
standards
David Harsanyi: Admit It. You Just Want Your Own Dictator
Leaders are unsavory, dangerous, and unAmerican. This incessant clamoring by voters and punditry for better "leaders" and
more "leadership" is one of the most unsavory, dangerous and
un-American tendencies in political discourse. When Donald Trump was asked last week by Joe Scarborough what he made of
an endorsement from ... MORE
Mike Reid: The Hitchhiker’s Guide To Charity
Economic principles can save your life. His gaze flicked over my backpack. “You have to put that in the back,” he said. “I don’t know if you have a knife in there.” If I knew then what I know now, I would never have gotten into that blue Pontiac. By that time, I’d hitchhiked thousands of miles with hundreds of different drivers, and they were almost ... MORE
Labels:
charity,
choice,
economics,
incentives,
information,
intimidation,
motivation,
weapons,
wisdom
Mandatory Minimums Don't Prevent Crime
by Kristie Eshelman. You would think that the threat of longer sentences should reduce the amount of crimes being committed. After all, it’s a basic law of behavior that people respond to incentives, so harsher punishments should serve as a deterrent to potential criminals. Unfortunately, decades of experience have taught us that this ... MORE
Walter Block: Why You Should Want Blackmail To Be Legal
Blackmail would diminish real crime. At first glance it is not hard to answer the question, "Is blackmail really illegitimate?" The only problem it would seem to pose is, "Why is it being asked at all?" Do not blackmailers, well, blackmail people? And what could be worse? Blackmailers prey on people's dark, hidden secrets. They ... MORE
DOJ Suspends Abusive Asset Forfeiture Program – For Now
by Ilya Somin. On Monday, the Justice Department suspended its abusive “equitable sharing” asset forfeiture program, which incentivizes state and local governments to seize the property of criminal suspects – including many who have never even been charged with any crime, much less convicted. The program enables state law enforcement ... MORE
Veronique de Rugy: The Government Wasted Tons Of Money On 'Shrimp Fight Club' And A Million Other Things
Waste, fraud, abuse, and monkeys on hamster wheels. In honor of the release of the new Star Wars movie, Sen. Jeff Flake
(R-Arizona), subtitled this year's "Wastebook" as "The Farce Awakens."
The latest edition of this annual report details 100 spending
programs—totaling $108.5 million—that are a complete waste of your
money. ... MORE
Labels:
accountability,
CBO,
entitlements,
government,
nitwittery,
programs,
research,
spending,
waste
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