Female Marines Now 0-26 On Officer Infantry Course

by Douglas Ernst.  Obviously, a sexist test.The failure of two Marine Corps officers to to pass the Jan. 8 first-day Combat Endurance Test of the infantry officer course brings the tally of female dropouts to 26. One more group of female officers will have a shot at graduation before the Marine Corps completes its integration experiment in June.    ... MORE

Holder Orders End to Some Policing For Profit Incentives

by Scott Shackford.   Federal asset forfeiture curbed. Big, huge news on the civil asset forfeiture front: Eric Holder is ordering an end to most of the Department of Justice’s Equitable Sharing Program. This is the program where the DOJ works with local law enforcement agencies for busts, and then the law enforcement agencies are permitted to  ... MORE

Andrew Napolitano: What Free Speech?

What exactly does free speech mean in France?   The photos of 40 of the world's government leaders marching arm-in-arm along a Paris boulevard on Sunday with the president of the United States not among them was a provocative image that has fomented much debate. The march was, of course, in direct response to the murderous   ... MORE

John W. Whitehead: From Neighborhood Cops to Robocops

The changing face of American police. “Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.” ― Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means  If 2014 was the year of militarized police, armored tanks, and stop-and-frisk searches, 2015 may well be the year of technologized police, surveillance blimps and       ... MORE

VIDEO: Andrew Napolitano - The First Jury Nullification

The Patriot Act Is Cannibalizing America’s Economic Edge

by Amit Patel.   You would think that when tech companies, the ACLU and the NRA unite for the same cause, the federal government would listen. That was not the case in this year’s USA FREEDOM ACT vote where the Senate voted against reforms that would stop the NSA from collecting phone metadata. The majority opinion prioritized protectionism  ... MORE

N D Lawmakers Recognize Checkpoints Invade Privacy

One state concerned with individual liberty.  Some North Dakota lawmakers say sobriety checkpoints are a nuisance, and an invasion of privacy. They want to do away with them, saying there is a better way to catch drunk drivers than pulling people over by random. The Republican sponsored bill would require police to have reasonable suspicion  ... MORE

VIDEO: 2014 - A Year Of Rescuing Liberty

Neil MacDonald: More State Power, Not Free Speech, Likely To Be The Actual We-Are-Charlie Result

Well, everyone must at least feel better now,    having chanted and declared for days that we're all Charlie. It was, or it seemed, a cry for freedom of speech, ringing outward from one of the world's first secular democracies. In reality, though, with all due respect to the sentiment behind it, Sunday's great march through the centre of Paris,  ... MORE

The IRS Customer Service Will Be Extra Bad This Year

by Lori Mongomery.   Taxpayers will face the worst levels of service in more than a decade from the Internal Revenue Service this filing season, with as few as 43 percent of callers getting through to an agent and then only after waits of 30 minutes or more, according to a report released Wednesday. In her annual report to Congress, National    ... MORE

Child Protective Services & The Child Snatching Business

by Rob Hustle.     Across the country, children are being taken from loving homes by government agencies collectively known as Child Protective Services. Although these agencies are supposed to protect children, they are actually the engine that drives a multi-billion dollar industry. This industry, which includes social workers, psychol- ... MORE

What Dallas's Murder Rate Can Teach Us About Policing

by Radley Balko.  Here at The Watch, we’ve praised Dallas Police Chief David Brown and his staff for the department’s community-oriented approach to policing, openness and transparency about excessive force, its rejection of law enforcement as a revenue generator, and its First Amendment-friendly approach to protest. Now, there’s some    ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Obscene Obedience

Study Finds Local Taxes Hit Lower Wage Earners Harder

by Patricia Cohen.   When it comes to the taxes closest to home, the less you earn, the harder you’re hit. That is the conclusion of an analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy that evaluates the local tax burden in every state, from Washington, labeled the most regressive, to Delaware, ranked as the fairest of them all. According to the  ... MORE

Jacob Sullum: Despite Stand Against the Terrorist's Veto, France Treats Offensive Words and Images as Crimes

Charlie Hebdo in the dock.       On Sunday, as more than a million people marched through the streets of Paris in support of the right to draw cartoons without being murdered, the French Ministry of Culture and Communication declared that "artistic freedom and freedom of expression stand firm and unflinching at the heart of our common European  ... MORE

VIDEO: Should College Athletes Be Paid?

SWAT Kills Man In ‘Drug Raid’ That Finds $2 Of Marijuana

One less pot smoker, America is safe!      Original story. Jason Westcott had no criminal record to speak of, and yet he died in a SWAT “drug raid” on his house which yielded only $2.00 in marijuana. It all started when a confidential informant lied to police about Westcott. That informant, who approached the Tampa Bay Times in July using   ... MORE

John Stossel: The Better Way

It's easy to "fire" a business that rips you off.   Just go to a different one. It's a lot easier to patronize another business than to get government to fix the problem. But bad businesses and the politicians they own, I mean influence, often don't want you to have that choice. I've written about how taxi companies don't like competition   ... MORE

Lessons For Winning Liberty In A World Of Statism

by Richard Ebeling. Friends of freedom often become despondent when it seems that every day brings another growth and intrusion of government over people’s lives. But there is no reason to be disheartened, because there are lessons for winning liberty – from the opponents of freedom. Let’s take the case of socialism. On March 14, 1883, a German philosopher living in exile in London passed away.   ... MORE