VIDEO: Milton Friedman - Government Creates Inflation

DWI Checkpoints Work, But Are They Constitutional?

by Erin Schultz.   Last week, we asked a few local bar owners how DWI task force checkpoints affected their business over the summer, and reader reaction to the piece ranged from vehement support of the checkpoints to questioning if they are Constitutional or not. Here are a few comments generated from the issue. Feel free to chime   ... MORE

Matt Welch: Obama's Weak Endorsement Of Free Speech

Shame on "those who slander the prophet of Islam."  Today, President Barack Obama delivered four pretty good paragraphs to the United Nations about the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, and the underlying principles of free speech and tolerance-of-minority-viewpoints it reflects. In the as-prepared transcript  ... MORE

VIDEO: Remy - Imagine (There's No YouTube)

Christopher J. Conover: Study Finds US Slips In Freedom

Overspending, overregulation impedes freedom.    Health care policy can be tricky to navigate. One reason stems from the difficulty of measuring its intangibles — differences in the quality of life, for example, or the social value of extending life for a few days. A new report from Canada's Fraser Institute has does the hard work of putting a number on a     ... MORE

Cyberbullying Law Threatens Student Speech In N.C.

by John K. Ross.     This summer, prompted by complaints from teachers, North Carolina legislators passed a law criminalizing student-on-teacher cyberbullying. The measure creates a Class 2 misdemeanor—on par with simple assault or resisting arrest and punishable by up to 60 days in jail or a $1,000 fine—for students who use computers with       ... MORE

Julian Sanchez: Our Dishonest Debate Over NSA Spying

Secret FISA court rules the Fourth Amendment be damned. The House of Representatives recently signed off on another five years of sweeping warrantless surveillance by the National Security Agency, voting by a wide margin to extend the controversial FISA Amendments Act of 2008. But the debate on the House floor showed that the law’s   ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: Obama Vs. Obama

Obama 2 pulls the curtain on Obama 1.     Many voters will be comparing Mitt Romney with Barack Obama between now and election day. But what might be even more revealing would be comparing Obama with Obama. There is a big contrast between Obama based on his rhetoric ("Obama 1") and Obama based on his record ("Obama 2").     ... MORE

VIDEO: Jeffrey Rosen - The Destruction Of Privacy

Eyder Peralta: 2012 SAT Reading Scores Lowest In 40 Years

Based on 1.7 million test scores. NPR's Claudio Sanchez brings us this bit of bad academic news: The class of 2012 scored the lowest average SAT reading score since 1972. A bit of good news is that math scores were up. Claudio filed this report for our Newscast unit: "Writing, too, is down nine points since the SAT introduced a writing section in 2006.  ... MORE

Juror Says Religion Not A Factor In Nullification Decision

A system coming down on peaceful men isn't right.     It wasn’t Douglas Darrell’s Rastafarian religion that persuaded a Belknap County Superior Court jury to acquit him of growing marijuana recently, according to a woman who served on that jury. “It was the fact that the system was coming down on a peaceful man, and it wasn’t right,”     ... MORE

VIDEO: Reality Check: What is QE3?


And What It Means For You and The U.S. Economy

E Spitzer: We Must Defend Even The Ugliest Free Speech

-- Especially when there are riots. At the annual meeting of the U.N. General Assembly this week, plenty of voices will be heard, including that of the hateful president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and not one of those voices will be censored. Rarely has the value of free speech been so threatened. The arc of the unfortunate story is now well-told:    ... MORE

Ira Stoll: Obama's Fact-Challenged Tax Claim

Where are the “fact-checkers” when you need them?   On CBS News’s “60 Minutes” Sunday night, President Obama said, “Taxes are lower on families than they've been probably in the last 50 years. So I haven't raised taxes.” As of Monday morning, neither the Washington Post’s Pinocchio-awarding Fact-Checker, nor the Annenberg Public Policy ... MORE