LibertyPen

P. J. O'Rourke: They Hate Poor People

2012-01-27T08:11:00.000-08:00

The liberals' dirty little secret. On January 1, 2012, Maine became the first state to ban smoking in all low-income public housing. Twelve thousand poor people faced their New Year’s Day hangover without the solace of a Marlboro to accompany their aspirin and coffee. This, of course, was good. Just ask the high-minded, right-thinking progressive elites who, it’s ... MORE

John Merline: Obama Doing Good Job Creating Dependents

2012-01-27T06:30:00.000-08:00

Create a dependent and you have a constituant. If the Republican primaries are any indication, one big debate in the upcoming election will be whether President Obama is pushing the country into becoming a European-style welfare culture. Mitt Romney, for example, argues that "over the past three years, Barack Obama has been replacing our merit-based ... MORE

VIDEO: Thomas Sowell - A Closer Look At Discrimination

2012-01-27T06:02:00.000-08:00

Ethel C. Fenig: Politically Correct Weather Forecasts

2012-01-27T04:17:00.000-08:00

TV meteorologists pressured to sell climate change. The era of catching up on the weather forecast to plan what to wear is over. Now, in addition to watching the Doppler radar circling your area, if the grossly misnamed Forecast the Facts has its way you'll get your forecast learning if the skies in the next few days will be cloudy or sunny with a dose of ... MORE

Michael Tanner: A Redistributive State Of The Union

2012-01-27T03:03:00.000-08:00

Focus should be on creating wealth, not spreading it around. Shortly after President Obama was elected, NBC News interviewed a young woman from Detroit named Peggy Joseph. She explained that she was excited about Obama’s election because “I won’t have to worry about putting the gas in my car. I won’t have to worry about paying my mortgage.” ... MORE

VIDEO: 3 Supreme Court Decisions to Watch

2012-01-27T01:15:00.000-08:00

Energy Firms: Regulations Threaten Future Development

2012-01-27T00:07:00.000-08:00

A clarion call to end of the Department of Energy. Mid-market energy industry executives primarily from the oil and gas sector are optimistic about the potential for U.S. energy security but are worried that regulations could jeopardize the availability of those resources, according to a report released Jan. 25 by small and mid-market business lender CIT Group ... MORE

Monty Pelerin: The Welfare State & Political Self-Interest

2012-01-26T08:42:00.000-08:00

It's finally time to sink the Bismark. Otto, that is. The siren song of Socialism contains the seeds of destruction that now threaten the very foundations of civilization. Socialism as a disease progresses slowly, but it has been underway for more than a hundred years. The malignancy is now metastasizing. Unfortunately, ours are the generations that will ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: A Brass Age?

2012-01-26T08:08:00.000-08:00

This may be the golden age of presumptuous ignorance. The most recent demonstrations of that are the Occupy Wall Street mobs. It is doubtful how many of these semi-literate sloganizers could tell the difference between a stock and a bond. Yet there they are, mouthing off about Wall Street on television, cheered on by politicians and the ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Military Spending

2012-01-26T07:54:00.000-08:00

John Hayward: Buffett Cleans Up After Keystone XL

2012-01-26T04:39:00.000-08:00

The Sage of Obama is one lucky guy. When President Obama, who is normally a great proponent of “infrastructure” projects, made his bizarre decision to block the Keystone XL pipeline project, I wondered if he might have been induced to create those thousands of American jobs if the oil could be moved by his beloved high-speed rail. As it turns out, oil ... MORE

Richard Branson: Time To End The War On Drugs

2012-01-26T03:33:00.000-08:00

Findings from the Global Commission for Drug Policy. Just as prohibition of alcohol failed in the United States in the 1920s, the war on drugs has failed globally. Over the past 50 years, more than $1 trillion has been spent fighting this battle, and all we have to show for it is increased drug use, overflowing jails, billions of pounds and dollars of .. MORE

VIDEO: State of the Union 2012

2012-01-26T02:22:00.001-08:00

CATO Institute scholars respond to President Obama's State of the Union.

Binyamin Appelbaum: Fed Sees Rates Staying Near Zero

2012-01-26T01:13:00.000-08:00

Bernanke favors keeping lid on boiling pressure cooker. The Federal Reserve said on Wednesday that it intended to hold short-term interest rates near zero “at least through late 2014,” extending its most basic and longest-running response to the financial crisis by at least another 18 months. The decision means that the Fed does not expect the ... MORE

John Stossel: The Real State Of The Union

2012-01-26T00:12:00.000-08:00

Chicken soup for the realist. Has Barack Obama learned nothing in three years? During his State of the Union address, he promised "a blueprint for an economy." But economies are crushed by blueprints. An economy is really nothing more than people participating in an unfathomably complex spontaneous network of exchanges aimed at improving their ... MORE

Jacob Sullum: How GPS Tracking Threatens Privacy

2012-01-25T09:29:00.000-08:00

The Fourth Amendment implications of new technologies. "If you win this case," Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer told Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben during oral argument in U.S. v. Jones last fall, "there is nothing to prevent the police or the government from monitoring 24 hours a day the public movement of every citizen ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Ron Paul And Rational Defense

2012-01-25T09:05:00.000-08:00

Ron Paul's defense strategy is challenged by Col. David Hunt.

A Barton Hinkle: Do We Need A Law To Make People Think?

2012-01-25T06:26:00.000-08:00

The picture painted of some legislators is grotesque. “I think people should make informed choices, and I think this bill would accomplish that.” So said Del. Mark Cole the other day about his bill to force anyone seeking a firearm or concealed-carry permit in Virginia to look at autopsy pictures of shooting victims. Autopsy pictures of gunshot wounds ... MORE

Jon Entine: Killing Drilling With Farcical "Science"

2012-01-25T04:44:00.001-08:00

Recognize this as a debate between science and ideology. The academic face of the anti-fracking movement — Cornell marine ecologist Robert Howarth — increasingly looks like he’s willing to turn science into farce. Last spring, the once-obscure professor became the go-to expert for anti-fracking journalists and lawmakers when he published a report ... MORE

VIDEO: Edgar the Exploiter

2012-01-25T02:22:00.000-08:00

Walter Russell Mead: The Once And Future Liberalism

2012-01-25T01:12:00.000-08:00

Beyond the dysfunctional ideals of liberalism. Writing about the onset of the Great Depression, John Kenneth Galbraith famously said that the end had come but was not yet in sight. The past was crumbling under their feet, but people could not imagine how the future would play out. Their social imagination had hit a wall. The same thing is happening today ... MORE

Charles Kadlec: Gingrich And The Gold Standard

2012-01-25T00:00:00.000-08:00

Did you know Newt wants to get back to sound money? The biggest under-reported story of the South Carolina primary is winner Newt Gingrich’s campaign promise to convene a gold commission to “look at the whole concept of how do we get back to hard money.” The only job of the Fed should be to “maintain the stability of the dollar because we want a ... MORE

Jesse Weed: Obama's Social Justice Capitalism

2012-01-24T07:40:00.000-08:00

Obama is not just motivated by kickbacks. Unlike the mercy-killing "vulture" capital firms, venture capital firms invest in start-up companies. Take a quick look at a venture capital firm like Atlas Venture Capital and you see a list of firms that are not exactly household names. The sole criterion venture capital firms use to select start-ups for initial financial ... MORE

Steve McCann: Self-Destruction Of The Mainstream Media

2012-01-24T07:17:00.000-08:00

A welcome sight to behold. For the past forty years the mainstream media has become increasingly liberal and more overt in promoting the policies of the Democratic Party. This evolutionary process reached its zenith in 2008 when the media were instrumental in Barack Obama being elected President. Many journalists dropped any pretense of objectivity and ... MORE

VIDEO: Top 3 Common Myths of Capitalism

2012-01-24T05:55:00.000-08:00

William Tucker: Environmentalism And The Leisure Class

2012-01-24T04:04:00.000-08:00

Keystone Cop Obama protects his environmental flank. This week President Obama handed down what may prove to be one of the most fateful decisions of his entire administration when he rejected the plan to build the Keystone XL Pipeline carrying oil from the tar sands of Canada to the refineries of Houston. The decision did not win him one new ... MORE

Ron Paul: TSA Part Of An "Out-Of-Control" Police State

2012-01-24T02:22:00.000-08:00

Candidate calls to abolish liberty-violating agency. Republican Senator Rand Paul was stopped at an airport on Monday for setting off an alarm and refusing a patdown, prompting his father, U.S. presidential candidate Ron Paul, to accuse security officials of being part of an "out of control" police state. In a harshly worded attack on the Transportation Security ... MORE

VIDEO: Can Govt Make Entrepreneurs Do Useless Things?

2012-01-24T01:27:00.000-08:00

Walter E Williams: Schools Of Education

2012-01-24T00:03:00.000-08:00

Time to get rid of academic slums. Larry Sand's article "No Wonder Johnny (Still) Can't Read" — written for The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, based in Raleigh, N.C. — blames schools of education for the decline in America's education. Education professors drum into students that they should not "drill and kill" or be the "sage on the ... MORE

Supreme Court Delivers Government Surveillance A Hit

2012-01-23T14:27:00.000-08:00

Warrant needed for GPS tracking. We finally have a victor in one of the most talked-about court cases of 2011. The Supreme Court issued its opinion [PDF] Monday in U.S. v. Jones, a case that asked whether the government needs a warrant to slap a GPS tracker on a suspect’s car. The Supreme Court was unanimous in its decision: The government lost. Privacy won. ... MORE

Andrew Foy & Brenton Stransky: 3 Problems With Ron Paul

2012-01-23T08:08:00.000-08:00

Ron Paul does not have the smile of Obama, the folksy likability of Romney or the carving wit of Gingrich. In fact, Ron Paul looks (and sounds) nothing like a Washington elitist. In our visual society we too often pick our politicians based on hair line and pearly whites and too seldom on the content of their character or value of their platform. No one who ... MORE

Neil Snyder: An ObamaCare Warning To Seniors

2012-01-23T06:49:00.000-08:00

You might not get that procedure. While I taught at the University of Virginia, I served for a while as associate dean. My dean at the time, Bill Shenkir, used a phrase that I thought was particularly helpful when we were contemplating major decisions: "Let's reduce the fog factor." By that he meant that we should always examine the ramifications of our ... MORE

VIDEO: Gold Rush - Government Job Killers

2012-01-23T06:14:00.000-08:00

Stephen Dinan: Arizona To Investigate Fed Gun-Running Op

2012-01-23T04:44:00.001-08:00

Heavy-handed feds get payback from state. Arizona's state legislature will open its own investigation into the Obama administration's disgraced gun-running program, know as "Fast and Furious," the speaker of the state House said Friday. Speaker Andy Tobin created the committee, and charged it with looking at whether the program broke any .... MORE

VIDEO: George Ought to Help

2012-01-23T03:33:00.000-08:00

Is democracy always moral? When is government force justified?

Gary North: Victory On SOPA: Lessons Learned

2012-01-23T01:27:00.000-08:00

"When we feel the heat, we see the light." - Senator Everett Dirksen. On Wednesday, January 18, the forces of liberty grained a major political victory over the entrenched meddlers in Congress. The owners of a handful of popular Internet sites joined together to protest SOPA/PIPA. They blacked out their sites and provided information on the threat to Internet ... MORE

Steven Greenhut: Jerry Brown's Failed Vision

2012-01-23T00:01:00.000-08:00

Fires cannot be extinguished with more flames. Years ago, after starting to report and editorialize on news events in an old factory city in Ohio, I was quickly dubbed a “negative” for pointing out the disastrous government spending, housing, and tax policies embraced by city leaders—policies that were keeping a nice place wretched. Anyone who made ... MORE

THE HILL: Dems Propose Regulating Oil Company Profits

2012-01-20T09:11:00.000-08:00

Tyrants seek to limit degree of success. Six House Democrats, led by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), want to set up a "Reasonable Profits Board" to control gas profits. The Democrats, worried about higher gas prices, want to set up a board that would apply a "windfall profit tax" as high as 100 percent on the sale of oil and gas, according to their legislation. The bill ... MORE

Infowars: Google Is Already Using SOPA-Like Censorship

2012-01-20T07:41:00.000-08:00

Publicly, Google opposes internet censorship. Despite Google’s much-heralded support for the anti-SOPA movement, the web giant is already enforcing SOPA-like policies of its own, blacklisting legitimate websites from its news aggregator and following government orders to remove material from its search results and You Tube. As major Internet giants ... MORE

VIDEO: Daniel Hannan - A Warning To America

2012-01-20T07:13:00.000-08:00

Richard Ralston: The Year To Save American Medicine

2012-01-20T05:11:00.000-08:00

Government's power grab will be reversed or expanded. During the coming year, the threat to freedom will proceed on multiple fronts. Each will require specific action. We are rapidly running out of time to prevent the destruction of the quality, availability and freedom of American medicine, and our best and last chance is upon us. In March 2012 ... MORE

Why U.S. Gun Sales Are Shooting Through The Roof

2012-01-20T03:33:00.000-08:00

by Frank Miniter. If James Anthony Bailey and P.T. Barnum had seen the Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade Show (SHOT Show) they just might have conceded their “Greatest Show on Earth” needed more guns, sideshows and characters. Because come one, come all, the SHOT Show has no comparison on Earth and, in fact, is especially interesting this year because gun ... MORE

VIDEO: Crisis of Capitalism, The Critique

2012-01-20T01:11:00.000-08:00

Victor Davis Hanson: Civilization In Reverse

2012-01-20T00:01:00.000-08:00

The signs are all around us. In Greek mythology, the prophetess Cassandra was doomed both to tell the truth and to be ignored. Our modern version is a bankrupt Greece that we seem to discount. News accounts abound now of impoverished Athens residents scrounging pharmacies for scarce aspirin -- as Greece is squeezed to make interest payments to the ... MORE

John Stossel: Don't Trust Your Instincts

2012-01-19T07:29:00.000-08:00

Simple answers are satisfying, but often wrong. Simple answers are so satisfying: Green jobs will fix the economy. Stimulus will create jobs. Charity helps people more than commerce. Everyone should vote. Well, all those instinctive solutions are wrong. As Friedrich Hayek pointed out in The Fatal Conceit, it's a problem that in our complex, extended economy ... MORE

Kurt Nimmo: NYPD Deploys Body Scanners On City Streets

2012-01-19T06:25:00.000-08:00

Citizens get routine virtual pat-downs to walk sidewalks. NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly told CBS in New York his department is looking to deploy Terahertz Imaging Detection scanners on the street in the war on “illegal guns.” Kelly said the scanners would be used in “reasonably suspicious circumstances” and intended to cut down on the number ... MORE

VIDEO: Defend Our Freedom To Share

2012-01-19T06:13:00.000-08:00

Learn the truth about the pernicious effects of SOPA and PIPA.

Ben O'Neill: Doing Your Own Thing

2012-01-19T05:48:00.000-08:00

The proper vision of liberty includes responsibility. The idea of a society where people are free to "do their own thing" is an appealing one. It is implicit in the slogan "live and let live," which has been adopted by many libertarian groups, and it is also an idea that was central to the Marxist idea of liberation from the alienation of labor under capitalism (which is ... MORE

VIDEO: Associated Press Called Out On Ron Paul Lies

2012-01-19T02:22:00.000-08:00

Francis Rooney: The Importance Of Freedom

2012-01-19T01:11:00.000-08:00

From where American exceptionalism came. The recent deaths of Vaclav Havel, first president of the Czech Republic and worldwide defender of human freedoms, and Kim Jong-Il, supreme leader of Stalinist North Korea, give cause for reflection on the important values of freedom and liberty. Their deaths occurring within a day of each other is mere ... MORE

Michael Tanner: GOP Should Heed Ron Paul

2012-01-19T00:01:00.000-08:00

They can't afford to lose small government voters. The warnings are coming from the unlikeliest of places. First Sarah Palin tells Fox News that “the worst thing that the GOP establishment can do is marginalize Ron Paul and his supporters.” Then that sentiment was echoed by Sen. Jim DeMint, speaking on The Laura Ingraham Show, when he warned ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: The Wealth Creation Disparity

2012-01-18T10:06:00.000-08:00

An ignored disparity. With all the talk about "disparities" in innumerable contexts, there is one very important disparity that gets remarkably little attention -- disparities in the ability to create wealth. People who are preoccupied, or even obsessed, with disparities in income are seldom interested much, or at all, in the disparities in the ability to create ... MORE

TSA Sort Of Admits Wrongdoing In Granny Strip Searches

2012-01-18T07:23:00.000-08:00

The colostomy bag should be the agency's icon. In an about-face, the feds have admitted wrongdoing in the cases of two elderly women who say they were strip-searched at Kennedy Airport by overzealous screeners. Federal officials had initially insisted that all “screening procedures were followed” after Ruth Sherman, 89, and Lenore Zimmerman ... MORE

VIDEO: Andrew Napolitano - What Is The Establishment?

2012-01-18T06:45:00.000-08:00

Anthony Gregory: The Indecency Of The FCC

2012-01-18T04:45:00.000-08:00

Authorities overriding freedom of expression and speech. The Supreme Court this week heard oral arguments in FCC v. Fox. In this important first amendment case, the Judges will determine whether to enact significant limitations to the Federal Communication Commission’s power to censor the airwaves. The proximate issue concerns FCC’s ... MORE

VIDEO: Can Government Solve the Paradox of Choice?

2012-01-18T03:33:00.000-08:00

Gary Johnson: It's Time To End The War On Drugs

2012-01-18T01:26:00.000-08:00

The most basic property right is self-ownership. As President I will stop one of the biggest wastes and frauds ever perpetrated on the American people – the trillion dollar war on drugs. While falsely promising us a safer, more sober society, the war on drugs is bankrupting our state and local coffers and costs the Federal government $15 billion dollars per year. That’s five ... MORE

Andrew Canfield: Going For Individual Liberty

2012-01-18T00:05:00.000-08:00

Because Washington creates more problems than it solves. This Republican primary season has proven quite promising for believers in governmental restraint. The landscape appeared bleak for conservatives alienated by the cable news partisanship and tiresome talk radio echo chamber. It was safe to assume America was set for another bland ... MORE

Investors Business Daily: Fed Looks To Print More Money

2012-01-17T08:37:00.000-08:00

More Fed meddling won't help. The media have busied themselves with touting the big economic rebound they see brewing in the U.S. We hope they're right. But if they are, why is the Federal Reserve getting ready to print even more money? The media argument goes like this: After years of struggling, the economy is finally churning out jobs. Last month ... MORE

Sheldon Richman: Opposing Imperialism Is Not Isolationism

2012-01-17T08:35:00.000-08:00

What Ron Paul's critics refuse to admit. When pundits and rival politicians call Ron Paul an “isolationist,” they mislead the American people—and they know it. They know it? How could they not: Ron Paul is for unilateral, unconditional free trade. He believes any American should be perfectly free to buy from or sell to any person in the world. In that ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Libertarians In Charge

2012-01-17T07:34:00.000-08:00

James A. Bacon: Victimhood Has Its Privileges

2012-01-17T04:44:00.000-08:00

The quest of Obama's justice department. The U.S. Justice Department is ever-vigilant against signs of “voter suppression” these days, most recently blocking - on the grounds that it would hurt blacks - a South Carolina law that would require voter identification. But the voting rights of some minorities, it appears, are more worth protecting than ... MORE

RT: New Act Allows Government To Strip Citizenship

2012-01-17T03:36:00.000-08:00

Ever expanding government powers. When Barack Obama inked the National Defense Authorization Act on New Year’s Eve, the president insisted that he wouldn’t use the terrifying legislation against American citizens. Another new law, however, could easily change all of that. If the Enemy Expatriation Act passes in its current form, the legislation ... MORE

VIDEO: Pelosi's Double Standard on the Minimum Wage

2012-01-17T01:26:00.000-08:00

Socratic interviewer Jan Helfeld exposes the irrationality of a liberal icon.

Michael Barone: Obama Thumbs Nose At Founders

2012-01-17T00:07:00.000-08:00

An election on the Founders' vision? Of course President Obama is not concentrating on campaigning, White House press spokesmen assured us — as the president headed off to Chicago for three fundraisers and a drop-in at his campaign headquarters, two days after a high-roller fundraising choked off traffic five blocks from the White House, with the assistance of ... MORE

Katie Kieffer: Capitalism (That's What I Want)

2012-01-16T11:03:00.000-08:00

Bullies rule society when need is the basis of morality. The Beatles once rocked America with their cover version of “Money (That’s What I Want).” Today, I’ll rock you with my version. Capitalism don't get everything it's true. What it don't get I can't use. Now gimme capitalism (that's what I want). Anti-capitalist sentiment is creeping into American culture ... MORE

Micheal Snyder: The American Economic Recovery Is A Lie

2012-01-16T07:05:00.000-08:00

24 stats say America's economic future is not bright. Beware of bubbles of false hope. Right now there is a lot of talk about how the U.S. economy is improving, but it is all a lie. The mainstream media can be very seductive. When you sit down to watch television your brain tends to go into a very relaxed mode. In such a state, it becomes easy to slip ... MORE

VIDEO: Clifton L Ganus Jr - The Virtue Of Profits

2012-01-16T06:33:00.000-08:00

William Tucker: The Ultimate Individual Mandate

2012-01-16T03:33:00.000-08:00

Fines dished out for failing to buy the nonexistent. Peering ahead at the worst possible outcomes of Obamacare five years from now, imagine that individuals were being fined by the Department of Health and Human Services for failing to buy health insurance -- even though insurance companies have withdrawn from the market and aren't offering it ... MORE

VIDEO: Government Turns Tax Dollars Into Green Waste

2012-01-16T01:21:00.000-08:00

Sheldon Richman: How Liberals Distort Austrian Economics

2012-01-16T00:11:00.000-08:00

Lame campaign to discret the Austrian school. When a presidential candidate declares, as Ron Paul has, “We’re all Austrians now,” it’s inevitable that his critics would try to discredit him—whether they understand what he’s talking about or not. That’s what Matthew Yglesias does in his Slate piece “What Is ‘Austrian Economics’?” I recommend the piece because it's ... MORE

Deroy Murdock: America Slides In Economic Freedom Index

2012-01-13T08:11:00.000-08:00

U.S. struggles to stay in the top ten. Good news! On economic freedom, America is in the global Top 10. Bad news: America is No. 10 — one blond hair ahead of Denmark. According to the 18th annual Index of Economic Freedom, released Thursday by the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal, Hong Kong enjoys the earth’s freest economy. The Chinese ... MORE

Richard N. Weltz: Government Just Messes Things Up

2012-01-13T07:36:00.000-08:00

How's all that government meddling working out for ya? Back in the heyday of the old Soviet Union an agricultural commissar from the Ukraine was summoned to the Agricultural Ministry in Moscow to report on the year's potato crop. "Ah, Comrade Minister," said the commissar, beaming, "If all the potatoes harvested this year were put into a single pile .... MORE

VIDEO: Thomas Sowell - Markets & Minorities

2012-01-13T06:57:00.000-08:00

Patriot-News: What Separates Ron Paul From The Pack

2012-01-13T04:35:00.000-08:00

Only Paul seeks to minimize the role of the state. At a recent GOP debate, the presidential candidates were asked what they would be doing on a Saturday night if they weren’t running for president. The responses were typically safe and predictable, mostly having to do with watching sports, but one brave soul said he would be reading an economics textbook. ... MORE

Rachael Williams: In Defense Of Libertarians

2012-01-13T03:13:00.000-08:00

A truly limited government is not extremism. Throughout the primary election season there's been a group unfairly villainized by the rest of the Republicans. Not the establishment (they can't be villianized enough for giving us McCain and trying to keep folks like Rand Paul from getting elected in 2010) -- I mean libertarians. Republicans like to villainize libertarians ... MORE

VIDEO: Who's Lethal? Police or Tasers

2012-01-13T01:33:00.000-08:00

Jennifer Lynch: Are Drones Watching You?

2012-01-13T00:01:00.000-08:00

Drones catching on as new police state tool. Today, EFF filed suit against the Federal Aviation Administration seeking information on drone flights in the United States. The FAA is the sole entity within the federal government capable of authorizing domestic drone flights, and for too long now, it has failed to release specific and detailed information on .. MORE

Charles Hurt: Obama's Naked Thuggery

2012-01-12T07:43:00.000-08:00

Liberals getting high on the elixir of power. After all these years it took a great constitutional scholar who had spent a life cloistered in academia and street work to utterly rape our most cherished Constitution. This business of bypassing the Senate to pick “recess” appointments to positions most Americans have never heard of may ... MORE

David Harsanyi: The GOP's Creative Destruction

2012-01-12T07:16:00.000-08:00

Venture socialism is empathetic. Venture Capitalism is useful. Yes, it's true that unlike some Republicans, Democrats don't "enjoy firing people." They enjoy "investing" your money in exploding electric vehicles, bullet trains, and other highly unprofitable but morally satisfying economic misadventures. Venture socialism is certainly empathetic. ... MORE

VIDEO: A Version Of Mitt For Everyone

2012-01-12T05:00:00.000-08:00

Two reasons to pick Ron Paul. We know Gingrich is. We don't know Romney.

Washington Times: The Free Market's New Frontier

2012-01-12T04:25:00.000-08:00

America’s adventuresome spirit is not dead yet. President Obama, the naysayer in chief, may have grounded NASA’s government-issued astronauts, but space entrepreneurs are making plans to tank up and take off on their own. Last month, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen announced he is investing $200 million of his own fortune in a startup space ... MORE

Jonah Goldberg: Romney's Authenticity Problem

2012-01-12T03:03:00.000-08:00

Enthusiasm for the GOP frontrunner is lacking. Mitt Romney is the most improbable of presidential candidates: a weak juggernaut. He is poised to sweep every primary contest — a first for a non-incumbent. And yet, in Republican ranks there’s an abiding sense that he should be beatable — and beaten. It’s not that Romney doesn’t have fans. His events in New ... MORE

VIDEO: The Demonization Of Capitalism

2012-01-12T01:17:00.000-08:00

A concern citizen speaks out on the widespread ignorance about capitalism.

Christopher Chantrill: Bad News On Unemployment

2012-01-12T00:01:00.000-08:00

The labor force is not growing. Conservatives are anxious to see bad news in the drop in the headline unemployment rate to 8.5 percent. Yes, it's fabulous that employment is finally turning upwards, but the labor force isn't expanding as it should in a healthy recovery. The following two charts using data from the Household Survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics ... MORE

John Stossel: Champions Of Freedom

2012-01-11T07:54:00.000-08:00

Who will fight for individual liberty? It's election season, and so once again people look for heroes. Is Ron Paul one? Maybe. He's fought a long, lonely battle to limit the power of government. As government grows, I yearn for champions of freedom who fight back. Rep. Paul has done that. But it's a mistake to look for heroes in politics. It's too ugly a business. My ... MORE

VIDEO: Andrew Napolitano - Does The Constitution Matter?

2012-01-11T07:40:00.000-08:00

Roger L. Simon: Ron Paul Defends Romney & Capitalism

2012-01-11T07:10:00.000-08:00

Texas congressman is a rare breed: politically honest. I admit I have been critical of Ron Paul in the past, and still am regarding foreign policy, but I admire his forthright honesty in defense of Mitt Romney today. That’s a rare thing for a politician, particularly in the thick of the fight, but Paul seems to be a man who means what he says, good, bad or ... MORE

A. Barton Hinkle: Rationing Speech To Minimize Thought

2012-01-11T03:11:00.000-08:00

Why liberals favor campaign season censorship. Liberals are nearly united against Citizens United. This means they are nearly united in favor of censorship. But that has not stopped the Supreme Court decision from being roundly denounced by everyone with progressive DNA – from the elderly solons at The New York Times to the youthful idealists of ... MORE

VIDEO: 3 Reasons We Should Cut Defense Spending

2012-01-11T01:13:00.000-08:00

Attention conservatives!

NY Times: Companies Fined For Not Using Unavailable Fuel

2012-01-11T00:03:00.000-08:00

Goofy green government strikes again. When the companies that supply motor fuel close the books on 2011, they will pay about $6.8 million in penalties to the Treasury because they failed to mix a special type of biofuel into their gasoline and diesel as required by law. But there was none to be had. Outside a handful of laboratories and workshops, the ingredient ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: Kodak And The Post Office

2012-01-10T08:37:00.000-08:00

Why government works so poorly. The news that Eastman Kodak is preparing to file for bankruptcy, after being the leading photographic company in the world for more than a hundred years, truly marks the end of an era. The skills required to use the cameras and chemicals required by the photography of the mid-19th century were far beyond those of ... MORE

Pedophiles To Be Given Disability Pay In Bankrupt Greece

2012-01-10T08:23:00.000-08:00

Peeping Toms and pyromaniacs to also cash in. Greek disability groups expressed anger Monday at a government decision to expand a list of state-recognized disability categories to include pedophiles, exhibitionists and kleptomaniacs. The National Confederation of Disabled People called the action "incomprehensible," and said pedophiles are now ... MORE

VIDEO: America CAN Change Its Direction

2012-01-10T07:04:00.000-08:00

In 1940, Charlie Chaplin unwittingly made a pitch for Ron Paul.

Bob Aldelmann: Each Chevy Volt Costs Taxpayers $250,000

2012-01-10T04:45:00.000-08:00

Green policy = wasting the green from citizen wallets. The Mackinac Center for Public Policy just released a study showing that by the time all federal and state loans, grants, subsidies, and tax credits are figured in, each Chevy Volt costs taxpayers upwards of $250,000. James Hohman, the center’s assistant director of fiscal policy, counted a total of 18 ... MORE

Walter E Williams: In Greed I Trust

2012-01-10T03:03:00.000-08:00

Have a second look at greed. Last week's column started off asking: "What human motivation gets the most wonderful things done?" The answer is that human greed is what gets wonderful things done. I wasn't talking about fraud, theft, dishonesty, special privileges from government or other forms of despicable behavior. I was talking about people trying ... MORE

VIDEO Obama's Stunning Abuse of Power

2012-01-10T01:17:00.000-08:00

Tony Newman: Juries May Declare Peace In The Drug War

2012-01-10T00:06:00.000-08:00

Liberty's last stand may take place in the jury room. Should juries vote "not guilty" on low-level marijuana charges to send a message about our country's insane drug policies? Jury nullification is a constitutional doctrine under which jurors can acquit defendants who are technically guilty but don't deserve punishment. As law professor Paul Butler wrote recently ... MORE

TIME: Regulating the Net Tops Congress' New Year Agenda

2012-01-09T09:07:00.000-08:00

This anti-piracy law is a pretense for tyranny. When Congress gaveled for the year in December, opponents of two Internet-censoring piracy bills cheered. Their efforts seemed to have blocked the legislation’s movement. But when Congress comes back later this month, it already has a first order of business: regulate the net. The House Judiciary ... MORE

VIDEO: Milton Friedman - Questions For The Professor

2012-01-09T07:09:00.000-08:00

On income disparity, minimum wage, school vouchers, health costs and more.