September 27, 2017

When the government declared war on the First Amendment

from Reason: It all started with President Woodrow Wilson a hundred years ago.
Individual Liberty: America's First Principle

Mel Brooks: Political correctness 'is the death of comedy'

from CNS News: Blazing Saddles could not be made today. Too many snowflakes might melt.
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

The coming war on business

from NY Times: So much more than the title suggests. A great article to explain how racism has polluted an otherwise worthwhile move to embrace traditional American principles.
The Government is Not Us

Brazil’s latest outbreak of drug gang violence highlights the real culprit: the war on drugs

from The Intercept: Legalization is their answer. "The data show that, judged by virtually every metric, the Portuguese decriminalization framework has been a resounding success.”
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

John Stossel: Entrepreneur saves free college courses from government ban

from Reason: An internet entrepreneur saved 20,000+ free online college lectures after the government declared them illegal.
Indoctrination and Censorship

California considers following China with combustion-engine car ban

from Bloomberg: This makes sense -- but only in explaining where California's goofy Governor Brown gets his guidance.
Economic Policy: Statism vs The Free Market

Thomas Sowell: The Left and the Masses

The greatest moral claim of the political left is that they are for the masses in general and the poor in particular. 

That is also their greatest fraud. It even fools many leftists themselves. 

... MORE

Juries Should Rein In Prosecutors With Too Much Power

by Glenn Harlan Reynolds, Washington Post.    If there’s strong evidence that you’ve committed a crime, there’s still hope. Despite the evidence, those responsible for convicting you may choose to let you go, if they think that sending you to jail would result in an injustice. That can happen through what’s called “prosecutorial discretion,” where  ... MORE

Jurors Need To Take The Law Into Their Own Hands

by Paul Butler, Washington Post.  I learned about jury nullification while serving as a prosecutor in the District in the 1990s. As a rookie, I was warned that in nonviolent drug cases, it would be tough to get a conviction, no matter how strong my evidence was. The experienced prosecutors explained that the African American jurors “didn’t    ... MORE

Severin Johnson: Smartphone App Allows Citizens To Use Each Other For Emergency Services Instead Of Police

Given the danger of calling for police assistance.  We live in a world where we are forced to pay for services that are unreliable, corrupt and brutal. We are taught from a young age that you pick up the phone and dial 911 at the first sign of trouble. But sadly, we increasingly see the responders to our pleas for help showing up and making matters  ... MORE

Richmond California Establishes A New Low By Paying Criminals Up To $1000 A Month Not To Shoot People

by Jennifer Cruz.  A San Francisco suburb has taken an unconventional approach to fighting crime by essentially paying a sort of monthly salary to ex-cons in exchange for them staying out of trouble and helping others to do the same. The program, known as Operation Peacemaker Fellowship, targets some of the most violent offenders in Richmond,     ... MORE

Stephanie Slade: 'Drug Users Need Treatment,' Says President Obama. Not So Fast, Says Dr. Carl Hart

The vast majority of drug users are not addicts.  "For too long we've viewed drug addiction through the lens of criminal justice," President Obama said yesterday at a conference in Atlanta. "The most important thing to do is reduce demand. And the only way to do that is to provide treatment—to see it as a public health problem and not a  ... MORE

Anti-Party Law Turns Innocent Kids Into Criminals

by Steven Greenhut.   Orange County Republican Party Chairman Fred Whitaker got into GOP politics because of his “belief in individual liberty, limited government and a free market,” according to the party’s website. His recent actions as an Orange councilman, however, show too little regard for liberty, governmental limits or the Constitution’s     ... MORE

Andrew Napolitano: What If The FBI Is Onto Hillary Clinton?

And the Democrats are not.   What if Hillary Clinton is in legal hot water and she knows it but won't admit it? What if she has decided to go on the offensive and make her case that she did nothing unlawful with her emails that contained state secrets? What if the essence of her defense is that other secretaries of state used non-secure email devices    ... MORE

Legal Pot Causes Drug Cartel Revenues To Plummet

by Oscar Pascual. free market 1 black market 0. Marijuana legalization may have accomplished what the War on Drugs has failed to do — put the squeeze on Mexican drug cartel activity. The U.S. Border Patrol has released 2015 data showing that the number of marijuana seizures throughout the southwest U.S./Mexico border has fallen to the   ... MORE

Gun Control Politician Sent To Prison For Gun Trafficking

Hypocrisy taken to new level.      A federal judge sentenced former California state senator Leland Yee on Wednesday to five years in prison after he acknowledged in a plea deal that he accepted thousands of dollars in bribes and discussed helping an undercover FBI agent buy automatic weapons from the Philippines. Senior District Court Judge    ... MORE

VIDEO: Ted Cruz - Gun Violence In America

VIDEO: Judge Napolitano - Hillary Should Be Indicted

Mike Hopper: The Federal Government Is Launching A Criminal Investigation Into Chipotle, And It’s A Bad Sign

Criminalizing mistakes.   Law enforcement is a growth industry. 2015 was full of high-profile safety cases. Blue Bell Ice Cream had to take all of its products off the shelves after several cases of listeria, Chicago-based Aspen Foods recalled over 2.5 million pounds of frozen chicken over salmonella concerns, and, most recently, Chipotle saw cases of   ... MORE

Frank Parlato: It's Time You Understood Jury Nullification

Justice is a result, not simply a process.   Jury nullification is the term used when a jury – or even a single juror – votes to acquit a criminal defendant who is technically guilty, but who juror(s) do not believe deserve punishment. It occurs in a trial when a jury reaches a verdict contrary to the judge’s instructions. It occurs when a single juror  ... MORE

Julia Vitullo Martin: Drunk With Power

How Prohibition led to big government.       If they think about Prohibition at all, most Americans probably accept Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter’s conclusion that it was a farce, a “ludicrous caricature of the reforming impulse,” an ineffective albeit financially costly moral crusade imposed on a reluctant populace. Decades   ... MORE

At Least 1,340 Clinton Emails Contained Classified Material

by Anita Kumar.       She had claimed zero. At least 1,340 emails that Hillary Clinton sent or received contained classified material, according to the State Department’s latest update from its ongoing review of more than 30,000 emails. The State Department released a new batch of 3,007 pages of Clinton’s emails after 1:30 a.m. Friday in response to a court ... MORE

Hillary Clinton Could Face Criminal Indictment

by Sarah Westwood.    A former U.S. attorney thinks Hillary Clinton could face a criminal indictment from the FBI within the next 60 days. Joe DiGenova, a Republican U.S. attorney appointed by President Reagan, said Clinton's "biggest problem right now" is the open FBI investigation into the contents of her private emails. "They have reached a critical   ... MORE

Walter E Williams: Unappreciated Tax On The Poor

High risk neighborhoods are taxing themselves.  A few years ago, BET had a commentary titled "Where Are the Grocery Stores in Black Neighborhoods?" One wonders whether anyone thinks that the absence of supermarkets in predominantly black neighborhoods means that white merchants do not like dollars coming out of black hands.      ... MORE

Jesse Walker: 2015 - The Year In Fear

Exaggerating fear for political purposes.     We live an age of unprecedented danger. The country is being battered by a nationwide crime wave. Subversives are waging a guerrilla war on cops. ISIS threatens the very existence of the United States, and its agents are infiltrating the homeland through our porous southern border. Even when the   ... MORE