June 6, 2020

From 9/11 to COVID-19, it’s been a perpetual state of emergency

fromTheRutherfordInstitute: "Freedom from servitude comes not from violent action, but from the refusal to serve. Tyrants fall when the people withdraw their support.” —Étienne De La Boétie, The Politics Of Obedience
Police State America

Joe Biden basically admits libertarians were right all along: cops shouldn't have military gear

fromReason: Biden voted for the 1997 bill that created the Pentagon's 1033 program, which allows surplus military gear to be passed along to local cops. It took 23 years, but he finally changed his opinion.
Police State America           Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

Policing for profit: How civil asset forfeiture has perverted American law enforcement

fromAmmo: Asset forfeiture is having devastating consequences: In 2014 alone, law enforcement took more stuff from American citizens than burglars did.
Police State America

The state’s priority is protecting itself, not you

fromLibertarianInstitute: The state is far more punitive against those that threaten the comfort and authority of government institutions and workers than they are against crimes against citizens.
Police State America

The lockdowns are now a scandal

fromNationalReview: Last week, the media, politicians, and many experts decided that every argument they made for destroying the lives of millions of people in America could be deferred to advance a preferred political cause.
The Government is Not Us

Lockdown supporters embraced wildly wrong COVID-19 projections that fit their preconceptions

fromReason: The episode illustrates the perils of confirmation bias on both sides of the debate about disease control measures.
Police State America           Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

January 11, 2018

British National Health Service cancels 50,000 surgeries

fromDailyWire: British single-payer system forced to ration care for tens of thousands.

Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market       Regulation Nation

VIDEO: Eugene Volokh - Threats to Academic Freedom

fromLibertyPen/YouTube: Law professor and columnist Eugene Volokh looks at troubling trends against academic freedom at American college and universities.

Indoctrination and Censorship

How the government hides secret surveillance programs

fromWired: Cops can determine a suspect’s precise location, outgoing and incoming calls, and even listen-in on a call or see the content of a text message using a device called Stingray.

Government is Watching Every Move You Make

As the Clinton Foundation scandal deepens, the media yawn

fromInvestors: Any voters outside the Clinton bubble who negotiated their way around the "who cares?" media in 2016 could clearly see that the Clintons have filled a 50-car train with scandal baggage over the decades.

Media Bias on Parade

Just Say No to Jeff Sessions — Ron Paul

fromPatriotRising: Sessions’ usurpation of state marijuana laws is the type of federal intrusion into state issues usually opposed by conservatives. Sadly, too many conservatives are willing to sacrifice individual liberties for the war on drugs.

The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange      The Government is Not Us

NSA surveillance bill would legalize loophole that lets FBI spy on Americans without a warrant

fromTheIntercept: With major NSA surveillance authorities set to expire later this month, House Republicans are rushing to pass a bill that would reauthorize existing powers and codify into law some practices that critics have called unconstitutional.

Government is Watching Every Move You Make

October 28, 2017

The war on standards: illiterate teachers edition

from PowerlineBlog: The New York Board of Regents eliminated a requirement that aspiring teachers in the state pass a literacy test to become certified. Why? Hispanic and black candidates had a harder time passing it than whites.
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

Feds crack down on new national security threat: unlicensed massages

from Reason: American police are currently obsessed with enforcing exactly which body parts can be massaged and by whom.
Regulation Nation

The myth of natural monopoly

from Mises: The very term "public utility" is an absurd one. Every good is useful to the public, and almost every good may be considered necessary. Any designation of public utility is completely arbitrary and unjustified. — Murray Rothbard
Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

🎬  Ayn Rand - How to Rule Mankind

from LibertyPen: The guiding philosophy of the left revealed in one four minute video (excerpt from the Fountainhead).
The Government is Not Us

Chuck Grassley calls for special counsel in Uranium One scandal

from Breitbart: Given that Mueller was the head of the FBI a the time, he really shouldn't be heading an investigation that involves looking into the FBI's actions.
Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

Arrested, cuffed, raped, and Brooklyn DA sees a consent question?

from NY Times: The relationship between security and liberty is often described as a balancing act. This act can’t take place if we’re not informed about the technology used to safeguard our security.
Police State America

October 26, 2017

At long last, Hillary Clinton is the focus of 2 investigations

from USA Today: No pay for play? Funny how once she lost the election, donations to the Clinton Foundation completely dried up. Finally, a serious look into corruption surrounding the Clinton Foundation.
Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

Can the Feds prosecute foreigners if their actions are legal where they are?

from Creators: From Judge Napolitano: "This is all about power and the fiction of universal jurisdiction — a fiction the Framers thought they had buried. It needs to be buried again."
Justice is a Result, Not Just a Process

John Stossel: A Private Military

from Creators: We've fought in Afghanistan for 16 years now. Are we making progress? After 9/11, we invaded, overthrew the Taliban, killed Osama Bin Laden and — stayed. Afghanistan is now America's longest war, ever. President Trump's solution is to send several thousand more soldiers. Erik Prince says he has a better idea.
Defense Versus The War Machine

🎬  Cop caught on video breaking into elderly man's home, stealing cash & prescription drugs

from TheFreeThoughtProject: In America, police can legally break into your home and steal your property even if you are innocent, a practice is known as civil asset forfeiture. However, in the video below, a cop was arrested because he did not receive approval from his superiors before stealing from an innocent person.
Police State America

Big data meets Big Brother as China moves to rate its citizens

from Wired: The Chinese government plans to launch its Social Credit System in 2020. The aim? To judge the trustworthiness – or otherwise – of its 1.3 billion residents. Could this be coming to country near you?
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

🎬  Trey Gowdy - Comey's Testimony Does Not Add Up

from LibertyPen: The FBI confirms that James Comey drafted his public statement about the results of the Hillary Clinton investigation months before it was completed. Dozens of witnesses had not yet been questioned, including Hillary herself.
Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

October 21, 2017

Federal court ponders Constitutionality of prostitution ban

from Reason: "Why should it be illegal to sell something that you can give away for free?"
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

USA Liberty Act won’t fix what’s most broken with NSA internet surveillance

from EFF: The bill doesn’t end the practice of “backdoor searching,” when government agents — including domestic law enforcement — search through the NSA-gathered communications of Americans without any form of warrant from a judge.
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

Republicans officially give up trying to cut spending

from Reason: After all that fuss from 2009 onward, Rand Paul is the last Republican left objecting to the continued growth of government.
Economic Policy: Statism vs. The Free Market

DHS pays police millions to ticket and prosecute motorists

from MassPrivatei: Police pull over more than 50,000 drivers on a typical day, more than 20 million motorists every year. So why do they need more money still?
Police State America

50 state study shows that more requirements lead to less jobs

from Will-Law: States with more burdensome licensure requirements (fees, training hours, exams, and age requirements) had significantly lower employment in the ten professional occupations.
Regulation Nation

The media blackout of Clinton-uranium scandal senate probe

from CNS News: Media bias is currently “on full display,” Media Research Center President Brent Bozell warned Thursday as network news continued to ignore the Senate probe into the Clinton-Uranium scandal.
Media Bias on Parade

🌟Jim Cardoza: Why Hillary Clinton is Flashing a Devilish Smile

"Certainly, one does not need 20-20 vision to see warts on Donald Trump. They are neon. He is brash, arrogant, far too glib, frequently insulting and routinely defensive. Unlike a polished politician, he hasn’t learned to measure his words and shroud his intentions. But while he is admittedly flawed in a myriad of ways, he does present two very under-appreciated qualities in the era of FBI cover-ups, secret domestic surveillance and other hidden agenda schemes."

Exposed: FBI Director James Comey’s Clinton Foundation Connection

FBI DIRECTOR DISCOVERED ON THE TAKE FROM THE CLINTON FOUNDATION

A review of FBI Director James Comey’s professional history and relationships shows that the Obama cabinet leader — now under fire for his handling of the investigation of Hillary Clinton — is deeply entrenched in the big-money cronyism culture of Washington, D.C. His personal and professional relationships — all undisclosed as he announced the Bureau would not prosecute Clinton — reinforce bipartisan concerns that he may have politicized the criminal probe. 

... MORE

RELATED: Hillary and the FBI - A Conspiracy to Obstruct Justice

147 FBI Agents Conduct Hillary Clinton Email Investigation

by Chris Cillizza.    About halfway through Robert O’Harrow’s terrific — and terrifically detailed — WaPo piece on the origins of Hillary Clinton’s email problems, there is this paragraph: One hundred forty-seven FBI agents have been deployed to run down leads, according to a lawmaker briefed by FBI Director James B. Comey. The FBI has accelerated  ... MORE

Famous Icons Of Faith

At Least 1,730 Clinton Emails Contain Classified Material

by Anita Kumar.    The campaign is gaining steam. At least 1,730 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 1,116 pages of Clinton’s emails Friday evening in response    ... MORE

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

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

Cartoon: Hillary's Personal Emails

VIDEO: Judge Napolitano - Hillary Should Be Indicted

Andrew Napolitano: Two Smoking Guns

The FBI investigation of Hillary.  The federal criminal investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's failure to secure state secrets was ratcheted up earlier this week, and at the same time, the existence of a parallel criminal investigation of another aspect of her behavior was made known. This is the second publicly revealed expansion of  ... MORE

Harper Neidig: FBI Expands Investigation Of Clinton

Sunshines shines on Clinton Foundation.    The FBI has expanded its investigation of Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server during her time as secretary of State to determine whether her Clinton Foundation work violated public corruption laws, according to Fox News. The report is based on accounts by three unnamed sources. "The agents are   ... MORE

A Dispiriting Final Speech From An Out Of Touch President

A Washington Examiner editorial.        What makes for a credible public voice? A key ingredient is truth. The crucial difference between Winston Churchill and Baghdad Bob was not their nations' respective fortunes in war. It was that Churchill was open with the British public about the difficulties his nation faced. He could have tried      ... MORE

From Whitewater To Benghazi: A Clinton-Scandal Primer

by David A. Graham.      Amid all the scandals related to the Clinton family, Bill Clinton’s sex scandals were supposed to be a dead letter. After all, the former president weathered impeachment proceedings in the late 1990s—in fact, Hillary Clinton’s popularity soared at the time. As those events receded, Bill Clinton became one of the most popular  ... MORE

Alexander Hendrie: Impeach IRS chief John Koskinen

Halt the tax agency’s partisan scheming.    After revelations that the Internal Revenue Service was restricting political speech and targeting conservative and tea party groups, John Koskinen was appointed to head the agency, promising reform and transparency. These promises never came to fruition. Instead of admitting fault, Mr. Koskinen’s IRS   ... MORE

Andrew Napolitano: Why Is Hillary So Unhappy?

Her own worst enemy is hiding in the mirror.    Why is Hillary Clinton so unhappy? According to her, when she and her husband left the White House, they were dead broke. Yet they left with a truckload of valuable furniture, dinnerware and flatware that was the property of the federal government, for which they were never prosecuted.      ... MORE