Steve Chapman: Dazed And Confused No More

A full 50% of Americans favor legalizing marijuana. Candidates running for president can easily wreck their campaigns with one serious misstep. Back in 1976, one Democrat said he favored getting rid of criminal penalties for marijuana use. Can you imagine how Americans of that primitive era reacted to his blunder? They elected him. Once in office, Jimmy Carter ... MORE

VIDEO: Understanding The Frustration With Government

Christopher Chantrill: Subsidies Have Consequences

The ruling class doesn't have a clue about business. To an Obami like Jay Carney, White House press secretary, the failure of corporate crony Solyndra is "just the way business works." You win some, you lose some. Only, of course, the way business works is that when you lose, it's supposed to be your money that gets lost. As Matthew Continetti points out, under ... MORE

REASON.COM: Find Your True Love!

A quiz to match you to your perfect GOP candidate. Not sure who to commit to in the Republican primary race? Let Reason help you out.  Picking a presidential candidate is like sorting through online dating profiles—nobody's quite right, but once a meet-cute is out of the question, the best you can hope for is to pick a mate out of a self-selected digital lineup. Thus our handy candidate ... MORE

James Wilson: Prohibit Prohibition

To prohibitionists of all kinds, the ends justify the means, even if those means include murder. I realized this while watching the Ken Burns 3-part documentary Prohibition, which debuted last week. During Alcohol Prohibition, the Federal State deliberately poisoned alcohol supplies to discourage drinking. As many as 10,000 died. The callousness of  ... MORE

War On Drugs Has Become War On The American People

by John W. Whitehead, Rutherford Institute. "On July 29, 2008, my family and I were terrorized by an errant Prince George's County SWAT team. This unit forced entry into my home without a proper warrant, executed our beloved black Labradors, Payton and Chase, and bound and interrogated my mother-in-law and me for hours as they ransacked our belongings…  ... MORE

VIDEO: Harry Browne - Economic Consequences

Randazzo & Stansel: The Upper-Class Entitlement

It's time to end the mortgage interest deduction. The federal income tax code is full of complicated deductions, credits, and loopholes, which together exempted $1.2 trillion from taxation in 2009. The single largest benefit, amounting to around 35 percent of the total, is the mortgage interest deduction. This longstanding incentive, which allows individual ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: Random Thoughts On The Passing Scene

The ponderings of a genius. Like so many people, in so many countries, who started out to "spread the wealth," Barack Obama has ended up spreading poverty. Have you ever heard anyone as incoherent as the people staging protests across the country? Taxpayers ought to be protesting against having their money spent to educate people who end up unable to say   ... MORE

Emily Schultheise: Ron Paul Announces Economic Plan

Only a radical plan will avert economic disaster. This afternoon, Congressman Ron Paul released his “Plan to Restore America,” which would cut $1 trillion in spending during the first year of the Paul administration. The plan “eliminat[es] five cabinet departments (Energy, HUD, Commerce, Interior, and Education), abolish[es] the Transportation Security Administration and  ... MORE

VIDEO: Occupy LA - The Pro-Government Protesters?

Destroying Value Is What Government Does Best

by Sheldon Richman. In Cleveland and other American cities homes are being demolished because five years after the housing bust there is nothing better to do with them. Therein lies a lesson in Austrian business cycle theory. In a world of uncertainty, waste — the destruction of value — is inevitable. Human action, which aims to replace inferior       ... MORE

Jacob Sullum: Read My Tea Leaves

Obama spits in the face of state law.  In their October 7 press release announcing "coordinated enforcement actions" against medical marijuana dispensaries, California's four U.S. attorneys use the adjective commercial to describe their targets eight times and refer to profit nine times, not counting two mentions of money and one of moneymaking. You might surmise ... MORE