Dan Walters: California Drivers Targeted As Cash Cows


Debt-creating politicians look to transfer misdeeds to the backs of motorists.   
California has 30-plus million motor vehicles and 24-plus million licensed drivers and auto travel is, like it or not, fundamental to life as we Californians know it. That's why we motorists are captive cash cows. Politicians know we must drive to live and therefore assume that no matter how hard they hit us, we'll pay up.  MORE

The CLASS Act Is No Class Act

Another big government tax is poised to assault your pocketbook.
In the coming months, the Department of Health and Human Services will be ironing out the details of the CLASS Act and submitting information to employers in preparation for enrolling their employees into the voluntary program in 2012. It will probably catch most businesses off guard, for it’s a provision of ObamaCare ...  MORE

VIDEO: Thomas Sowell - Varieties of Nothing


How politicians often disguise nothing as something to assuage public opinion.

Terry Paulson: Choice, Not Compromise

Individual rights were to supersede any government power.
Rep. Paul Ryan’s response to President Obama’s State of the Union provides a clue to the political battle that is coming: “The principles that guide us; they are anchored in the wisdom of the founders in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence and in the words of the American Constitution. They have to do with the importance of ... MORE

Amy Sullivan: Stay Classy, TSA

MALE TSA AGENT: "Hey, I thought she was mine! I was gonna do her!"
Ever since the TSA started putting back-scatter devices into use at selected airports last fall, I've been waiting to have the chance to opt out and register a one-woman protest against the machines. (Jeff Goldberg doesn't get to have all the fun.) However, most of my recent air travel has been with a tiny traveling companion,  ... MORE

VIDEO: Davy Crockett - Not Yours to Give


The lesson learned by Davy Crockett has been lost on today's Congress.

CBO: Obamacare Will Cost 800,000 Jobs

That's one number Democrats will not be able to fudge.
by Rick Moran. I feel for CBO director Doug Elmendorf. He is stuck between Democrats giving him fabricated Obamacare numbers to base his estimates on and his duty to give Congress accurate information. Yesterday, Elmendorf got it right. Testifying before the House Budget Committee, the Weekly Standard Blog relates the following ... MORE

Damon W. Root: Are We All Originalists Now?

On May 27, 1935, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously struck down the New Deal’s National Industrial Recovery Act for exceeding Congress’ lawful authority “to regulate commerce...among the several states.” In response, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt denounced the Court for adhering to the Constitution’s original meaning. “The country was in the horse-and-buggy age when that clause was written,” Roosevelt ...   MORE

VIDEO: Ayn Rand - Collectivized Ethics


Does society have an obligation to care for the poor and the less fortunate?

Justice Scalia's Timely Advice

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia offered the members of Congress who attended his "constitutional seminar" some timely advice: read The Federalist Papers. This advice, if heeded by members of the 112th Congress, would represent a welcome change in the priorities of our national legislature. From the defeated Phil Hare, who admitted he "didn't worry about the Constitution" to ... MORE

VIDEO: Hillary's Drug War Observation

Thomas Sowell: Undermining Allies

While everyone's attention seems to be focused on the crisis in Egypt, a bombshell revelation about the administration's foreign policy in Europe has largely gone unnoticed. The British newspaper The Telegraph has reported that part of the price which President Obama paid to get Russia to sign the START treaty, limiting nuclear arms, was revealing to the Russians the hitherto secret size of the British ...   MORE

David Harsanyi: Obama's Crony Capitalism

It's time to separate market and state.
When will you wing nuts stop referring to our economic restructuring as "socialism"? Winning the 21st century is all about business. This week, a pro-business Barack Obama implored the rent-seeking CEOs of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to look into their sinister hearts: "Ask yourselves what you can do for America ...  MORE

Ronald Bailey: The Unseen Consequences of "Green Jobs"

Will investing in clean energy harm the economy?
In his State of the Union speech a couple of weeks ago, President Barack Obama planned to “win the future” by, among many other things, having the federal government “invest” in “clean energy technology—an investment that will strengthen our security, protect our planet, and create countless new jobs for our people.” But  ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel's State of the Union


High debt, rampant spending and a government growing like a cancer.
What's a competent president to do?

Joseph Ashby: Investment in Decline

Pinning a nation's economic hopes on bridges to nowhere gets nowhere.
As the young year progresses, the dominoes of American decline continue to fall. From a White House soiree with Red China to President Obama's "investment"-plugging State of the Union to the Administration's response to Egypt's uprising a rudderless America is on full display.  If 2010 was the year of national legislative suicide ... MORE

Peter Suderman: Julius Genachowski, Internet Cop

Obama's top man at the FCC tries to regulate the Net. Robert McDowell becomes effusive when talking about the World Wide Web. “The beauty of the Internet is that it has been somewhat lawless,” says the Republican, one of five appointees who run the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The lack of government mandates, McDowell says, has made the Net “the greatest  ... MORE

VIDEO: Licensing Gone Wild: 82-Year-Old Barber Shut Down


Another example of tail-chasing bureaucrats creating more unemployment.

Thomas Sowell: The 'Judicial Activist' Ploy

Now that two different federal courts have declared ObamaCare unconstitutional, the administration's answer is to call the courts guilty of "judicial activism."  Barack Obama has a rhetorical solution for every problem. Remember the repeated claims of "shovel-ready" projects that needed only federal stimulus ...  MORE

Walter E Williams: A Killer Agency

Sam Kazman's "Drug Approvals and Deadly Delays" article in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (Winter 2010), tells a story about how the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's policies have led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans. Let's look at how it happens.  During the FDA's drug approval process, it confronts the possibility of two errors. If the FDA approves a drug that ...   MORE

Star Parker: Promote Freedom? Let's Start At Home

Watching the wave of unrest in the Middle East, there are lessons to consider regarding how we view the world and how we manage our lives here at home.  I’d call it getting perspective on what you can control and what you can’t.  It should be pretty clear that the upheavals in Tunisia and Egypt came as complete surprises.  No one predicted them.  Is this because no one was paying attention?  MORE