The FISA Court is a government rubber stamp mechanism. The federal government submitted 1,745 applications in 2011 to a secret intelligence court to investigate -- mostly through wiretapping -- suspected cases of terrorism and espionage, a 10.5 percent increase over the year before, according to a Justice Department report ... MORE
Overcriminalization in America. You’ve been invited to participate on a new game show called Do You Know the Law? Two wrong answers eliminate you. “Why not?” you say to yourself. “I know as much law as the next person. What’s the worst that could happen: embarrassment?” The first panelist correctly answers the question, “Can you steal your neighbor’s car?” ... MORE
Personal medicine or population medicine? Which will be for you? Personal medicine starts with you and your doctor discussing what is the best care for you. After considering long-term medical effects as well as financial costs, you and your provider decide what to do. Population medicine means that some panel, committee, or group determines what it ... MORE
Another day means more waste, fraud or abuse. Occupy Wall Street protesters are reminiscent of writer R. Emmett Tyrrell’s criticism of radical feminists: They don’t know what they want, but they want it very badly. On May Day, the protesters tied up the streets of Oakland, San Francisco, and elsewhere. They are mad as hell and they are not ... MORE
And, that includes agriculture. I once saw a very conservative member of Congress, someone I respect and with whom I have worked on many issues, tell a room full of free-market activists that he considers himself 99 percent free market capitalist and 1 percent socialist – when it comes to agricultural subsidies. This is a pretty common mentality in ... MORE
Completely dependent on government. Quick, hide under the covers. The nation’s storyteller, Barack Obama, unveiled a frightening new fable on the Internet intended to scare women away from supporting fiscal conservatives in November. But as is increasingly common with Obama’s social-media propaganda initiatives, “The Life of Julia” immediately ... MORE
Petition to establish a passenger bill of rights. Forget the Fed, for now – Sen. Rand Paul wants to shut down the TSA. The Kentucky Republican is drafting legislation to end the Transportation Safety Administration and to establish a passenger bill of rights, according to a spokesman from his office. When those bills hit, they'll likely be accompanied by a deluge of ... MORE
Despair is setting in. The economy added 115,000 jobs in April -- much less than expected and not enough to keep up with natural population growth. The unemployment rate fell to 8.1% because another 522,000 adults quit looking for work and are no longer counted. In the weakest recovery since the Great Depression more than four-fifths of the reduction in ... MORE
"A prosecutor ... may receive absolute immunity from suit for acts violating the Constitution in order to advance important societal values." -Elena Kagan, Solicitor General, 2009 After the Civil War, Congress passed several civil rights laws, including one allowing anyone whose said rights had been violated to sue those ... MORE