Theft-by-Government Continues Through Eminent Domain

by A. Barton Hinkle.      Three years ago Virginia residents passed a constitutional amendment to limit legalized theft through eminent-domain abuse. The amendment required that property be taken only for a genuinely public purpose. No longer could governments take one person's land and give it to somebody else for economic development.   ... MORE

Will Our Freedoms Survive Another Presidential Election?

by John W. Whitehead. Who needs bread and circuses when you have the assortment of clowns and contortionists that are running for the White House? Truly, politics in America has been reduced to a three-ring circus complete with carnival barkers, acrobats, contortionists, jugglers, lion tamers, animal trainers, tight rope walkers, freaks, strong men,  ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Trade With China

Richard Martin & Michael Reilly: The Problem With Biofuels

An expensive political boondoggle.   Last week the U.S. Navy, with its accustomed pomp and fanfare, launched its first carrier strike group powered partly by biofuel—in this case, a blend made primarily from beef fat. The biofueled warships form a central element of the Navy’s Great Green Fleet program to draw half of its power from clean     ... MORE

Trump Tramples Conservative Belief In Property Rights

a Washington Examiner editorial.     Margaret Thatcher, when she was British Prime Minister, used a simple formula to describe the economic freedoms due to a properly free people: "A man's right to work as he will, to spend what he earns, to own property, to have the state as servant and not as master." This was, in her view, "the British inheritance."  ... MORE

VIDEO: Ron Paul On The 2nd Amendment

Andrew Napolitano: Hillary Clinton's Nightmare

What if the FBI cannot be handled?   Hillary Clinton's nightmare is not the sudden resurgence of Bernie Sanders. It is the fidelity to the rule of law of the FBI. The recent revelations of the receipt by Clinton of a Special Access Program email, as well as cut and pasted summaries of state secrets on her server and on her BlackBerry nearly     ... MORE

Why Government Should Not Regulate The App Economy

by Iain Murray.        In Damon Runyon’s Broadway stories (and in the musical Guys and Dolls), a gambler named Nathan Detroit hosts New York’s oldest established floating crap game, presaging three functions of today’s app revolution. Thinking of the app market in such nontechnological terms shows us what is really happening today and lays bare the      ... MORE

Forecast Of Distrust With A Chance Of Revolution

by Glenn Reynolds.     When Americans have more faith in the military than the political class, democracy is in trouble. According to a recent Associated Press poll, the public lacks confidence in government. And by “lacks confidence,” I mean “really lacks confidence.” Specifically, “More than 6 in 10 respondents expressed only slight confidence — or   ... MORE

Jacob Sullum: Corny Crony Capitalism In Iowa

Only 2 candidates won't pander to ethanol lobby.    The "report card" from America's Renewable Future, a biofuel industry group, is not complicated. If you are a presidential candidate participating in Monday's Iowa caucuses and you support "the commonsense, bipartisan Renewable Fuel Standard," you get a "good rating," symbolized by a fuel    ... MORE

VIDEO: Donald Trump - Compromising With The Devil?

Jury Nullification Anyone? - Planned Parenthood-Linked Prosecutor Fuels Bias Charges Against Pro-Life Activists

by Valerie Richardson.      Pro-life groups cried foul over Monday’s criminal indictments against two Center for Medical Progress investigators because a prosecutor in the Harris County District Attorney’s office is also a Planned Parenthood board member. Lila Rose, founder of the pro-life group Live Action, called for a special prosecutor to review    ... MORE

NY Values: Big Apple To Make It Legal To Pee In Public

by Sylvia Van Peebles.    Of all the things one could think of that New York City needs more of, public urination doesn't immediately come to mind. But New York's City Council, which is so far left it almost collides with the right, is about to make it happen thanks to it's Speaker, a Puerto Rican nationalist who supports terrorists and rejects the       ... MORE

VIDEO: ObamaCare Is Buckling Under The Weight Of Reality

John Stossel: Running On Empty

Using tax dollars to buy votes in Iowa.      Cars run on fuel. Politicians run on votes, and they'll do almost anything to get them. That includes supporting mandates that force us to use ethanol, a fuel made from corn that Iowa farmers grow. They support ethanol because Iowa is the first state to vote on presidential candidates. Candidates     ... MORE

Oops Again? A Key Server Accidentally Gets Wiped By IRS

by Steve Sherman. It would be comical if it wasn't so corrupt. Another server has been “inadvertently” wiped of all of its key data at the IRS. What is it over there? Does Lois Lerner come in and give “tutorials” on server wiping? The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) saidFriday it erased a hard drive belonging to a former agency Senior official after a  ... MORE

Americans Hate The U.S. Government More Than Ever

By Aimee Picchi.  The reasons continue to grow. A handful of industries are those "love to hate" types of businesses, such as cable-television companies and Internet service providers. The federal government has joined the ranks of the bottom-of-the-barrel industries, according to a new survey from the American Customer Satisfaction Index.     ... MORE

The Congressional Budget Office Foresees A $30 Trillion Debt As A Result Of Looming Tax Hikes And Obamacare

by Stephen Dinan.     The federal government will be flirting with $30 trillion in debt within a decade, the Congressional Budget Office reported Monday, blaming an aging population, new spending and tax cuts approved on Capitol Hill, and the growing burden from Obamacare for erasing the progress Washington had made over the past few years.     ... MORE

VIDEO: Rand Paul - A Message Of Opportunity

Thomas Sowell: Do Emotions Trump Facts?

More hope and change may be coming.    Those of us who like to believe that human beings are rational can sometimes have a hard time trying to explain what is going on in politics. It is still a puzzle to me how millions of patriotic Americans could have voted in 2008 for a man who for 20 years — TWENTY YEARS — was a follower of a preacher who  ... MORE

Mike Hume: Should Anything Be ‘Beyond A Joke’?

Intolerant conformism is no laughing matter.      Comedy, it seems, is no laughing matter these days, caught up in one controversy after another over the acceptable limits of humor. Last week it was the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo that was in the firing line again, accused of racism by everybody from the Queen of Jordan to    ... MORE

VIDEO: Is Capitalism Moral? Defending The Free Market

Thomas Sowell: The Demand For Villains

Racism is a convenient rationale.    The latest tempest in a teapot controversy is over a lack of black nominees for this year's Academy Awards in Hollywood. The assumption seems to be that different groups would be proportionally represented if somebody were not doing somebody else wrong. That assumption carries great weight in far more     ... MORE

How Long Could The U.S. Go Without Electricity?

by A. Barton Hinkle.      The power is still out, and things are getting scary. The house is so cold you can see your own breath. Some of the food in the refrigerator is good, but there's no way to cook it. The water is still running, barely, but it smells bad and tastes worse. The grocery store is open, but it's only taking cash—which you can't get, because the   ... MORE

"The Libertarian Case For School Choice"

by Nick Gillespie.      Reason is proud to once again be involved with National School Choice Week, which celebrates school choice broadly defined. Over the next week or so, over 16,000 events in every state in the country will champion the growth and variety of programs that bring more options to more students and parents (and teachers, too).       ... MORE

Jury-Nullification Activist Delivers In-Your-Face Defense

by Bob Unruh.     A Michigan man charged with felony obstruction of justice and jury tampering for handing out a leaflet on jury nullification in front of a courthouse contends the local prosecutor’s objection to the contents of his material doesn’t make his actions a crime. Keith Wood, a former pastor, was arrested Nov. 24 on the orders of Mecosta   ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Regulation Nation

Daniel Holtzclaw And The Limits Of “Community Policing”

by Victoria M. Massie. At the sentencing last week of Daniel Holtzclaw — the 29-year-old former Oklahoma City police officer convicted on 18 counts of rape and sexual assault of African-American women in the neighborhood he was assigned to patrol — District Attorney David Prater told the media: “I think people need to realize that this is not a ” ... MORE

The Shoes Are Raining Down In Hillary’s E-Mail Mess

VIDEO: Ayn Rand - Money and Morality (1976)

Walter E Williams: Education Insanity

The problem is not money.       Some credit Albert Einstein, others credit Benjamin Franklin, with the observation that "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing year after year and expecting different results." Whomever we credit, he was absolutely right. A perfect example of that insanity is education in general and particularly black     ... MORE

Pentagon Holds Gala Celebrating 25 Years Of Bombing Iraq

cut from the Onion.    Bringing together the many civilian leaders and military strategists who helped them reach such a historic milestone, Pentagon officials held a lavish black-tie gala Sunday at which, sources said, they commemorated 25 years of the United States bombing Iraq. Hundreds of active-duty and retired military officers, high-   ... MORE

Taxpayers And Property Rights Win In Rams Move To LA

by Raymond J Nhan.      Eminent domain and public funded statia. Recent news of the Los Angeles Rams is a win-win-win for the NFL and taxpayers in Los Angeles and St. Louis. Though citizens of the Gateway City may feel differently right now, they just avoided a massive waste of taxpayer funds and a series of eminent domain abuses. And the   ... MORE

Oakland’s Minimum Wage Is Up, Wal-Mart Is Out

by Leah Jessen.     How that workin' out for ya? A minimum wage of $12.55 an hour in Oakland, Calif., may be the culprit for a Wal-Mart store’s closure. Last Friday, Wal-Mart announced it will close 269 stores globally—including 154 locations in the United States—impacting about 10,000 associates here at home. “The minimum wage in the city of    ... MORE

VIDEO: Hillary Clinton Shows Why Politicians Are Hated

Flint Lead Poisoning: The Anatomy Of Government Failure

by Shikha Dalmia.         In the simple morality tale that is modern mainstream liberalism, government spending leads to good things and cutting government spending leads to bad things. So when news broke that Flint, Michigan’s, water system was laced with lead and may have poisoned up to 2 percent of city residents, including 23 children, they      ... MORE

Wall Street Journal: American Tax Dollars For The Mullahs

Tehran gets more cash while its U.S. victims get nothing.  Ali Khamenei congratulated Iran’s diplomats on Tuesday for making the “front of arrogance and bullying”—that would be the U.S.—retreat. Iran’s Supreme Leader has good reason to be happy. Having preserved the core of his nuclear capabilities, his regime is now on the receiving    ... MORE

VIDEO: Rand Paul On How To Win Iowa And The Presidency

5 Ways We Know Al Gore Ran A Global Warming Racket

from Investor's Business Daily.    Fraud: Ten years ago Monday, Al Gore said we had only a decade left to save the planet from global warming. But Earth has been doing just fine. Why do we listen to this man? While preening at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2006 during the premiere of his “An Inconvenient Truth” fib-umentary, Gore    ... MORE

Lawsuit Challenges Obama’s Move To Restrict Gun Sales

by Natalie Johnson.     More abuse of executive action. A conservative lawyer and activist has filed the first federal court challenge to President Barack Obama’s executive actions to restrict firearm ownership, arguing that the president’s moves violate the Constitution. Larry Klayman, a former U.S. Justice Department lawyer who heads the       ... MORE