Walter E Williams: Black Education

In my "Black Education Disaster" column (12/22/10), I presented National Assessment of Educational Progress test data that demonstrated that an average black high school graduate had a level of reading, writing and math proficiency of a white seventh- or eight-grader. The public education establishment bears part of the responsibility for this disaster, but a greater portion is borne by black students and their parents, ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: Spilled Milk

The EPA's quest to protect citizens from milk spills (at great expense).
Despite the old saying, "Don't cry over spilled milk," the Environmental Protection Agency is doing just that.   We all understand why the Environmental Protection Agency was given the power to issue regulations to guard against oil spills, such as that of the Exxon Valdez in Alaska or the more recent BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico .... MORE

National I.D.? No, its worse. Much worse.

A system more about control than about security.

I have spent the last few years learning everything I possibly can about biometrics, RFID and the systems and policies our government is using to stealthily lock us into a national ID. Actually, it’s worse than a national ID, it’s international. The whole thing is complicated .... MORE

VIDEO: Thomas Sowell - The Limits of Power

A subtle lesson about incentives that both the president and the people would do well to understand.

Steve Chapman: Should We Ban Walking While Wired?

Some people with power lack judgment about its proper limits. 

You've had the experience of walking along and negotiating around someone who is walking slowly, weaving or bumping into other pedestrians for an obvious reason: He or she is talking on a cell phone, listening to an iPod or texting on a Blackberry.  And you've had the natural, inevitable response to this annoyance:   MORE

How Do You Shut Down the Internet in a Whole Country?

To silence dissidents, the Egyptian government made a move Jan. 28 that has no precedent: It turned off the Internet nationwide. How did they do it — and could the same thing happen here? According to David Clark, an MIT computer scientist whose research focuses on Internet architecture and development, a government's ability to control the Internet depends ....  MORE

Rand Paul: End All Foreign Aid

 
Tea Party favorite and freshman Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) may have crossed a "third rail" of politics by suggesting that the federal government zero out all foreign aid — including even foreign aid to Israel, America's largest foreign aid recipient over the past 30 years.  MORE

California Bill Would LImit Firings of Medical Pot Users

Californians who use medical marijuana outside of work would be protected from job dismissal due to pot use under a bill that been introduced by State Sen. Mark Leno, (D-San Francisco). he bill, SB129, would make it illegal for an employer to consider either a worker's status as a registered patient or a positive drug test when making hiring and firing decisions.   MORE

Man Versus The State

Economist Walter E Williams reflects on his long career battling big government and advocating for the moral superiority of liberty.

On May 29, 1963, Private Walter E. Williams of the U.S. Army's 30th Infantry Division wrote a letter to President John F. Kennedy denouncing the pervasive racism of the American government ...  MORE

VIDEO: Ayn Rand - The Pursuit of Happiness

Ayn Rand elaborates on Thomas Jefferson's famous phrase.

Overlords and The Internet

After Egypt, will U.S. get 'Internet Kill Swith'?
With reports of Egypt's government completing shutting down the Internet  in the country, talk about an "Internet kill switch" bill in the U.S. has reemerged. Could it happen here?  The bill in question is the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010, a cyber-security measure introduced in June by Sen. Joseph Lieberman.  MORE

CATO Institue: The Case for Gridlock

No action is better than bad action.
In the wake of the 2010 elections, President Obama declared that voters did not give a mandate to gridlock. His statement reflects over a century of Progressive hostility to the inefficient and slow system of government created by the American Framers.  MORE

Economics: The Triumphant Return of Friedrich Hayek

NEWS FLASH: Government spending does not stimulate economic growth
Last year the consensus opinion was that we are all Keynesians now. Virtually everyone in the commentariat believed that John Maynard Keynes’s solution for the Great Depression—heavy government spending to resuscitate the economy—   MORE

VIDEO: Porker of the Month January 2011

No budget deficit is gonna ruin the spending plans of these three.

Jeffrey Lord: Animal Farm Comes to Arizona

 

"Some animals are more equal than others."  -- George Orwell in Animal Farm

Talk about irony.
For the most unexpected of reasons, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, a supporter of Obamacare, may well become a popular symbol of the reason to repeal it.  MORE