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

September 26, 2017

In Venezuela, they were teachers and doctors. To buy food, they became prostitutes.

from Miami Herald: As Venezuela’s economy continues to collapse amid food shortages, hyperinflation and U.S. sanctions, waves of economic refugees have fled the country.
Economic Policy: Statism vs The Free Market

RT may soon be dropped by US providers, courtesy of McCain & Graham 

from RT: RT is a Russian news outlet and should be taken in context. The cellophane patriot McCain wants them censored, but that is not the values of the true American patriots who founded this land.
Indoctrination and Censorship

Walter E Williams: Not a Day Care

from Creator's Syndicate: Many colleges have become hotbeds of what might be labeled as enlightened racism. Students at the University of California, Berkeley created "safe spaces" for people of color.
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

There's nothing funny about Trump's troubling policing edicts

from Reason: The president is sending a message that law enforcement has more latitude now to bend and break the rules.
Police State America

Chicago’s awesome new soda tax produces predicted results

from HotAir: "The local retailers report that more than 4 in 10 local stores have seen a drop in beverage sales of at least 30%."
Regulation Nation

St Louis protests: Journalists say they were beaten and arrested by police while covering demonstrations

from Independent: Cops beat up the reporters who were chronicling their actions.
Police State America

Thomas Sowell: Football and Fallacies

This is a football story with both political and legal implications.

It was fourth down in a National Football League game, and the punting team came onto the field. The other team went into their formation to defend against the punt. Then somebody noticed that the man set to kick the punt was black.  ... MORE

VIDEO: Top Three Lies Of Feminism

Walter E Williams: Attacking Our Nation's Founders

Undermining the Constitution to gain greater control.  During Sen. Bernie Sanders' campaign visit to Liberty University, he told the students that our nation was created on racist principles. Students at a Christian-based university, such as Liberty, do not often hear the founders-as-racists argument. But it is featured at many other universities, ... MORE

VIDEO: Thought Police & Political Correctness In Academia

Walter E Williams: Campus Lunacy

Inmates running the asylum.  The American Council of Trustees and Alumni publishes occasional reports on what college students know. Nearly 10 percent of the college graduates surveyed thought Judith Sheindlin, TV's "Judge Judy," is a member of the U.S. Supreme Court. Less than 20 percent of the college graduates knew the effect of the Emancipation   ... MORE

Carey Welder: Nixon Advisor Admitted War On Drugs Invented To Crush Anti-War And Black Movements

A damning revelation comes to light.    In 1994, a former Nixon policy adviser admitted the War on Drugs was waged not to keep Americans safe, but to crush dissent. According to John Ehrlichman, who served time in prison for his involvement in the Watergate scandal, the Drug War was intended to disempower anti-war and black    ... MORE

Mary Ramirez: I’m Done Apologizing For Being White

And you should be too.   I’ve often been told I have no right to write about race. I’ve also been told that I pompously “think I have a right” to write about race just because I married a Mexican. And you know what? Often I find myself second guessing nine-tenths of what I say because, undoubtedly I’ll say something that someone somewhere will     ... MORE

Walter E Williams: Clinton And Sanders And Progressivism

The same Constitutional contempt as their predecessors. Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders seek to claim the "progressive" mantle. Both claim the other is not a true progressive. Clinton teased Sanders as being the "self-proclaimed gatekeeper for progressivism." Bernie Sanders said that Hillary    ... MORE

Walter E Williams: Sloppy Language And Thinking

Words mean things.      George Orwell said, "But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought." Gore Vidal elaborated on that insight, saying, "As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate." And John Milton predicted, "When language in common use in any country  ... MORE

VIDEO: Who Are the Racists: Conservatives or Liberals?

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

Walter E Williams: Blacks And The Confederacy

The War of 1861 was not about freeing slaves.      Last July, Anthony Hervey, an outspoken black advocate for the Confederate flag, was killed in a car crash. Arlene Barnum, a surviving passenger in the vehicle, told authorities and the media that they had been forced off the road by a carload of "angry young black men" after Hervey,     ... 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

Stephen Moore: The Grievance Generation

Whiny college students protest hurt feelings.     Remember the campus unrest in the 1960s? Whether you agreed with the students or not, they were protesting about things of great consequence — like civil rights, or the military draft, or the Vietnam War. They had chants like “hell no, we won’t go.” Those were the good old days. Now we are        ... MORE

Walter E Williams: Attacking Our Founders

History, without context, is of negligible value.      Many of my columns speak highly of the wisdom of our nation's founders. Every once in a while, I receive an ugly letter sarcastically asking what do I think of their wisdom declaring blacks "three-fifths of a human." It's difficult to tell whether such a question is prompted by ignorance or is the fruit  ... MORE

Robert Gore: The Best Novel Nobody Has Read

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin    is the most well-known American novel that nobody reads. Histories of the Civil War invariably mention its role in stoking abolitionist sentiment, and President Lincoln greeted Stowe as “the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war.” The book’s characters have become part of   ... MORE

Black, Gay Reporter Murders Straight, White Journalists — Media Blame The Gun

by Ben Shapiro.     On Wednesday, America met a deeply evil human being: Vester Lee Flanagan II, also known as reporter Bryce Williams. Williams murdered two people while they were live on air on WDBJ in Virginia: reporter Alison Parker, and cameraman Adam Ward. After the murders, he went on the run – and while he was on the run,   ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: Is The Civil War Over?

Ethnic grievance industry focused on the past.  In the wake of the recent murders in a South Carolina church, the killer's hope of igniting a race war produced the opposite effect. Blacks and whites in South Carolina came together to condemn his act and the race hate behind it. Some saw in the decision to remove the Confederate flag from   ... MORE