by Steven Greenhut. When my family moved from northwest Ohio to pricey Southern California, we could afford an entry level house but couldn’t also spring for private-school tuition for the kids. So we scoured the test-score databases, looking for those neighborhoods where home values were reasonable and public schools were tops. ... MORE
by A. Barton Hinkle. From police brutality to the events in Ukraine. “Ukrainian events have demonstrated,” writes Maria Snegovaya in
The New Republic, “that control of violence is still at
the very essence of the state.” She says Vladimir Putin’s
aggression proves that Max Weber’s definition of the state—an
entity with a monopoly on the ... MORE
Back to the days of general warrants. The demise of individual liberty. Except for the definition and mechanism of proving treason, no area of the Constitution addressing the rights of all persons when the government is pursuing them is more specific than the Fourth Amendment. The linchpin of that specificity is the requirement ... MORE
Hypocrisy on parade. State Sen. Leland Yee,
an outspoken advocate of gun control and open government, was arrested
Wednesday on charges that he conspired to traffic in firearms and traded
favors in Sacramento for bribes - campaign cash paid by men who turned
out to be undercover FBI agents. Yee, a Democrat who represents
half ... MORE
The ordeal of Mark Byrge. When Mark Byrge had a minor traffic accident on a street in American Fork, Utah, he did the “responsible” thing by reporting the incident to the police. He has never stopped paying for that mistake. Within a few minutes of receiving Mark's call, a pair of American Fork cops arrived to document the damage ... MORE
We're told government protects us, but protectors quickly become bullies. Take the Food and Drug Administration. It seems like the most helpful part of government: It supervises testing to make sure greedy drug companies don't sell us dangerous stuff. The FDA's first big success was stopping thalidomide, a drug that prevented the ... MORE
First persecutors or first protectors? “I [sic] give my left n** to bang down your door and come for your gun,” said the cop. This statement, made by Branford, Ct., police officer Joseph Peterson in a Facebook conversation earlier this month, created quite a news-cycle firestorm. Internet commenters from Sacramento to Saratoga ... MORE