Patrick Brennan: Public-Employee Unions Gone Wild

The expectation of retirement at 47. Terry List, a teacher in Saginaw Township, Mich., has a depressing lesson for her students: “I would not recommend to my pupils to become a teacher in Michigan.” What’s discouraging her? A proposed pension-reform bill in Michigan would derail her plans to retire — at age 47. After these rapacious reforms, List  ... MORE

Steven Greenhut: How Big Government Is Killing California

Bad destination for entrepreneurs, free spirits and dreamers. The new USC study pointing to a much-slower population growth rate in California has been greeted by demographers and urban planners as good news, in that it supposedly gives our state’s leaders a little breathing room to plan better for the future. The rate of growth has slowed to ... MORE

Eric Peters: 'Your' Car Won't Be After 2015

After a certain point, it's not paranoia. The latest brick in the wall is the predictably named "Moving Ahead For Progress in the 21st Century Act," also known as Senate Bill 1813. (See here for the full text of the bill itself; the relevant section is 31406.) This legislation -- already passed by the Senate and likely to be passed by the House -- will impose a legal        ... MORE

John Stossel: The Assault On Food

Instinct tells us to fear poison.   If our ancestors were not cautious about what they put in their mouths, they would not have survived long enough to produce us. Unfortunately, a side effect of that cautious impulse is that whenever someone claims that some chemical — or food ingredient, like fat — is a menace, we are primed to believe it. That makes it   ... MORE

VIDEO: Milton Friedman - Stimulus and Inflation

Deroy Murdock: CAFE Standards Kill

In a crash, MPG is a small consolation. As Washington keeps yanking money from Americans’ wallets, car prices are set to rise beyond the reach of low-income drivers. And from there, things grow deadly. At fault is a regulatory regime called Corporate Average Fuel Economy, commonly called CAFE standards. Congress mandated these rules in 1975, during a   ... MORE

Glenn Greenwald: Obama Justice And Medical Marijuana

Crackdown justification must heard to be believed.   President Obama gave an interview to Rolling Stone‘s Jann Wenner this week and was asked about his administration’s aggressive crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries, including ones located in states where medical marijuana is legal and which are licensed by the state; this policy is directly    ... MORE

VIDEO: Using Regulation As Protection From Competition

Howard Rich: Son Of SOPA

Another clear and present danger to our liberty.    Having failed earlier this year to foist an Orwellian kill switch on Internet free speech, Congress is now peddling a kinder, gentler piece of “cybersecurity legislation.” However, Washington’s latest attempt to play Big Brother on the Internet poses an equally clear and present danger to our     ... MORE

Ronald Bailey: Can Censorship Stop Bioterrorism?

Open science is the best defense to flu attack.    In January, the U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) recommended that the journals Nature and Science restrict publication of controversial new research relevant to the transmission of avian flu between humans. The fear: Would-be bioterrorists may be combing the pages of  ... MORE

Jacob Sullum: Self-Defense Under Attack

A blind disregard for the evidence.   Critics of Florida's self-defense law object to its recognition of a right to "stand your ground" in public places, which eliminated the duty to retreat from an assailant. Yet many of these critics seem to believe they have a duty to stand their ground and never retreat, using George Zimmerman's shooting of Trayvon    ... MORE

Can Fully Informed Juries Help Cannabis Prohibition?

by Allen St. Pierre, NORML Executive Director.    Of the many numerous peaceful and constitutionally-respectful means employed for decades by which cannabis law reformers have been to try to bring about about an end to Cannabis Prohibition laws, one of the most benign, yet most powerful arrows in the activist’s quiver is jury nullification–whereby   ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - The Mystery Of Happiness