The Relentless March Of The U.S. Police State

by Robert Higgs.    Jonathan Turley, a professor of law at George Washington University, wrote recently: An authoritarian nation is defined not just by the use of authoritarian powers, but by the ability to use them. If a president can take away your freedom or your life on his own authority, all rights become little more than a discretionary grant subject   ... MORE

Jackee Coe: Arizona Police State Is A Danger To Drivers

4,371 arrested in a month; more than 30,000 citations.  Nearly 4,400 people statewide were arrested on suspicion of DUI between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve by officers participating in regional saturation enforcements, according to the Arizona Governor’s Office of Highway Safety. Officers arrested 4,371 people between Nov. 24  ... MORE

VIDEO: Santa Claus arrested by Capitol Police

Arrested for being nice. Passing out chalk to children will not be tolerated.

William N Grigg: Merely Being Arrested Can Ruin You Life

So why an epidemic of unnecessary arrests?  “You never have a ‘right’ to resist arrest,” insists Des Moines-based attorney Harley Erbe (who is wrong, of course). There are two reasons why Mundanes must immediately submit to “commands” issued by the state’s costumed enforcers, Erbe explains: “First, officers’ safety is a paramount    ... MORE

NY Times Editorial: California And The Fourth Amendment

State takes to seizing DNA without a warrant.  On Wednesday, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is scheduled to reconsider whether California violates the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against searches and seizures by requiring police to take DNA samples from people arrested but not yet convicted of felonies.  ... MORE

The Silent But Deadly War On Drugs

by Gretchen Burns Bergman. The War on Drugs, which began the year that my first son was born, has wreaked havoc on our families for over 40 years, because it isn't really a war against drugs. It is a war against our own people, and it has stealthily eaten away at the fabric of our lives for decades. These punitive and discriminatory drug war strategies      ... MORE

Walter E Williams: Educational Lunacy

Taming the barbarians. If I were a Klansman, wanting to sabotage black education, I couldn't find better allies than education establishment liberals and officials in the Obama administration, especially Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who in March 2010 announced that his department was "going to reinvigorate civil rights enforcement." For Duncan, the civil  ... MORE

Are Teenagers Big Children Or Small Adults?

by A. Barton Hinkle. America can’t make up its mind. This should not be surprising in a nation of 314 million people, half of whom can’t make up their minds about what to have for dinner. But dinner is inconsequential. How we treat children is not. And when it comes to the treatment of children, society’s approach is wildly incoherent. Last week the Supreme   ... MORE

Touré: Marijuana Should Be Decriminalized

How much more tail-chasing do we require? New York Governor Andrew Cuomo wants to change New York’s laws to decriminalize marijuana. New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly have rushed to agree. Cuomo’s proposed change is a repudiation of Bloomberg’s stop-and-frisk program, which has arrested more than 400,000   ... MORE

Thomas Kaplan: Plan To Limit Marijuana Arrests In NYC

A grain of sanity infiltrates the big apple. The New York Police Department, the mayor and the city’s top prosecutors on Monday endorsed a proposal to decriminalize the open possession of small amounts of marijuana, giving an unexpected lift to an effort by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to cut down on the number of people arrested ... MORE

 

Ethan Nadelmann: Obama's Hypocritical War On Marijuana

Good for ye, but not for me.    A forthcoming biography on President Obama is making headlines, with new details about the president smoking marijuana with his teenage friends in Hawaii. David Maraniss' book, Barack Obama: The Story, describes Obama as a marijuana enthusiast: "When a joint was making the rounds, he often elbowed his way in, out of turn   ... MORE

This Memorial Day, Freedom Is Dying Before Our Very Eyes

by Andrew Napolitano.   What if Memorial Day reminds us of times when we had more freedom? What if freedom is dying right under our eyes? What if the memory of the past is more fulfilling than the reality of the present? What if the federal government could write any law, regulate any behavior and tax any event, no matter what the Constitution   ... MORE

Jim Holt: Results Lead To Questions On DUI Checkpoints

3,279 motorists detained, 3 drunk drivers arrested. Checkpoints set up to intercept drunken drivers are still worthwhile — despite only three impaired driving arrests made out of more than 3,600 motorists stopped during three recent checkpoints, local sheriff’s officials said Tuesday. Monthly since March, deputies with the Santa Clarita    ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Camera Shy Or A Power High?

Some public servants don't want their service to be public.