STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
Showing 3801 - 10 of 10
May 06, 2015
In theory, profit-seeking colleges ought to deliver better service at a lower price than state-run institutions. Some probably do, but a tangled web of political influence and regulatory interference makes it hard to know. The Corinthian College's bankruptcy fi ...
May 06, 2015
“In a democratic society,” observed Oakland police chief Sean Whent, “people have a say in how they are policed.” Unfortunately, if you can be kicked, punched, tasered, shot, intimidated, harassed, stripped, searched, brutalized, terrorized, wrongfully ...
May 06, 2015
Washington continues to drive Europe toward one or the other of the two most likely outcomes of the orchestrated conflict with Russia. Either Europe or some European Union member government will break from Washington over the issue of Russian sanctions, thereby ...
May 05, 2015
If you've been dying to know whether the Chinese yuan was at fair value, you can finally rest easy. The IMF says it's almost there. This leaves another question, though. By what authority does the International Monetary Fund decide a currency's value is "fair" ...
May 05, 2015
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe spoke before a joint session of the U.S. Congress on April 29, 2015 and offered his "eternal condolences to the souls of all American people that were lost during World War II," but never directly said that he was sorry for Im ...
May 04, 2015
Ask a traditional small-government conservative to define government's appropriate role, and most will list police as a necessary function. We need them to maintain order and stop evildoers. Yet history shows that societies around the globe managed to maintain ...
May 04, 2015
Apologists for the National Security Agency (NSA) point to the arrest of David Coleman Headley as an example of how warrantless mass surveillance is necessary to catch terrorists. Headley played a major role in the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack that killed 166 p ...
May 02, 2015
Surveillance is nothing new. In fact, it goes back some seven thousand years. Then, as now, it quietly destroyed productive modes of life. Furthermore, it was fundamental in setting one class of people (rulers) above all other people (the ruled). This two-class ...
May 02, 2015
The story of Robert Bates has covered the news wire for the past two weeks. A sting gone bad, with a "pay for play" volunteer reserve officer fatally shooting the subdued suspect. These facts have been known for some time, along with the details of the sting: a ...
May 01, 2015
Politicians like Al Gore have made millions whipping crowds into a frenzy over "Climate Change," the newer term for what they once called "Global Warming." Whether or not one believes the world is in peril, fossil fuels are certainly not pleasant. No one enjoys ...
May 01, 2015
GMO opponents have claimed for years that ubiquitous GMO produce such as corn and soy may have detrimental effects on our health. And in 2013, a group of researchers set out to prove it. The peer-reviewed study, which was published in the Journal of Organic Sys ...
April 30, 2015
The program described in this article is one of the less-intrusive dragnets Edward Snowden exposed, but it is nonetheless unacceptable. Supposedly, it does not give the government the content of phone calls, only the "metadata" such as date, time, location, num ...
April 30, 2015
If you value privacy and want to encrypt your cellphone to keep hackers and other snoops from rifling through your personal business then you are aiding terrorists. At least that's what the top prosecutor in New York City said recently when discussing new encry ...
April 30, 2015
The term "Fifth Column" came into popular use in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s and thereafter as socialism and fascism were sweeping into conflict to take over the nations of the West. It means a group of guerrillas, activists, intellectuals, etc. who work ...
April 29, 2015
Publishers like nothing more than to attack censorship. They are right to do so; government attempts to suppress knowledge are always repugnant. Too often, however, the resistance turns into self-righteousness. The NYT leans in that direction when it reports th ...
April 29, 2015
Every day a new story comes out about something awful a police officer has done. And 99% of the time, nobody seems to care. The death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Maryland is just the latest in a constant barrage of public atrocities committed by men in govern ...
April 29, 2015
A standing army – something that propelled the early colonists into revolution – strips the American people of any vestige of freedom. How can there be any semblance of freedom when there are tanks in the streets, military encampments in cities, Blackhawk h ...
April 28, 2015
Property rights are the cornerstone of a free society. They were already under attack long before John Deere started computerizing farm tractors. Usually the attackers are from some level of government, but large corporations are joining the fun. It's official: ...
April 28, 2015
You may not have noticed it when out buying things in the marketplace in the context of your personal budget, but according to the Wall Street Journal (April 24, 2015) the world is awash with too much stuff. We seemingly have too much of, well, almost everythin ...
April 27, 2015
We have to agree with Mr. Adler on one point. Replacing Administrator Leonhart with an animated Canadian Mountie would be a disservice to our country. If we must tolerate agencies like the DEA, they should at least have three dimensional, American management. I ...
April 27, 2015
A mother who uses medical marijuana to treat a chronic illness had her son taken from her recently after the child spoke up at his school about the health benefits of cannabis. On April 13, respected investigative journalist Ben Swann broke the heartbreaking st ...
April 27, 2015
One of the great ironies of American politics is that most politicians who talk about helping the middle class support policies that, by expanding the welfare-warfare state, are harmful to middle-class Americans. Eliminating the welfare-warfare state would bene ...
April 26, 2015
In a nutshell, people think the financial crisis is in our past. It is not. It is in our future. That was the overture to the opera, the beginning. This thing is far from over. It is the people who didn't understand that crisis that are the ones who think we ha ...
April 25, 2015
Violent overlordship, as we mentioned last week, is not eternal and in fact did not exist for long periods of time. In this week's segment we will describe its beginnings. It is important in our time to understand this. If rulership is eternal and inevitable, a ...
April 25, 2015
In 1970 country singer Lynn Anderson had a hit recording of a Joe South song that opened with the line: I beg your pardon. I never promised you a rose garden. I often think of that song in connection with the libertarian philosophy. You may be asking: for heave ...
April 24, 2015
Fractional reserve bankers love money. They don't love cash, in part because it reduces their ability to pyramid loan on top of loan and create new money from which they can extract interest. They have always had to tolerate its existence. Now, with the growing ...
April 23, 2015
Monsanto and the other genetically modified seed companies insist their products are safe. A substantial number of consumers have their doubts. The number is large enough to have enticed GMO-free food companies to step up their offerings. Alternatives are often ...
April 22, 2015
In our last commentary on police shootings (see Police Deserve No Sympathy Until the Blue Line Breaks), we said police officers are not different from ordinary citizens. This may not be true in Tulsa. At least one deputy sheriff there cannot hear gunshots fired ...
April 22, 2015
We have entered into a particularly dismal chapter in the American narrative, one that shifts us from a swashbuckling tale of adventure into a bone-chilling horror story. As I document in my new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, "we the ...
April 21, 2015
Parents around the United States are rallying in support of the mother and father of the so-called "free-range" kids, the ten-year-old and six-year-old brother and sister, who were dragged into the national spotlight this year due to the harassment the family h ...
April 21, 2015
In spite of the great advances in reducing poverty and increasing the freedom and dignity of hundreds of millions of people around the world, the political and cultural climate virtually everywhere around the world is one of anti-business and anti-capitalism. Y ...
April 20, 2015
For once, at least, President Obama put his finger on the serious consequences of an ill-conceived government policy. Just look what he told David Simon. The war on drugs is creating "harder criminals" who are unemployable and often offend again. "What we're do ...
April 20, 2015
Last week two prominent Ukrainian opposition figures were gunned down in broad daylight. They join as many as ten others who have been killed or committed suicide under suspicious circumstances just this year. These individuals have one important thing in commo ...
April 19, 2015
Nobody wants to run on a slogan of 'Vote for me and I will make you take that bad-tasting medicine that will eventually work.' So people want to pretend, 'Yes, just vote for me and I will cut taxes, eliminate waste, fraud and abuse, and the economy is going to ...
April 18, 2015
Throughout this book, we will generally address specific cultures, to some extent reinforcing the idea that cultures are the natural order of humanity. We will do this because the mass of humanity has indeed organized itself in this way and because it is far mo ...
April 18, 2015
MEMPHIS, TN—In a momentous sequence of events, an area man announced Thursday that libertarianism is "totally out of touch with common people" while simultaneously endorsing Hillary Clinton for president. This logic-bending feat was performed by college stude ...
April 17, 2015
Edward Snowden and other privacy advocates urge all citizens to encrypt all communications routinely. This, they say, will force the National Security Agency to abandon its "collect it all" practice. We don't know if that is true or not. We do know that Apple's ...
April 17, 2015
Our government bankers print money today like loons in an asylum spew absurdity. Glib media shills lure us every night into a disgraceful indolence. And our corporations lust like spoiled children after mega-billions of illicit lucre. Cataclysm is coming. No on ...
April 16, 2015
TIME invited several top police officials to weigh in on the "lesson" in the recent incident in South Carolina in which a police officer, who has since been charged with murder and is facing life in prison, shot an unarmed, 50-year-old man who was running away ...
April 16, 2015
"An apple a day keeps the doctor away," goes the old adage. But with the advent of genetically modified apples courtesy of our friendly neighbors to the north, many health-conscious Americans worry that soon the opposite might be the case. Here's the story in a ...
April 15, 2015
And so it begins. Rand Paul is a "sideshow" whose "crankiness" suggests he is "still getting a handle" on running for the White House. NYT writes as if these are problems. The opposite is closer to the truth. Dr. Paul the Younger faces an uphill battle if he ho ...
April 15, 2015
What does it mean to "consent" to something? Thanks to the increasing, if often misplaced concern over sexual assault and rape, this important question is being posed now more than ever. One recent article went viral by aptly comparing sexual consent to offerin ...
April 15, 2015
The American people remain eager to be persuaded that a new president in the White House can solve the problems that plague us. Yet no matter who wins this next presidential election, you can rest assured that the new boss will be the same as the old boss, and ...
April 14, 2015
Science, according to scientists, is about facts and evidence. These brave truth seekers prove their hypotheses with rigorous experimentation, and then share the newfound knowledge to make the world better. That's the theory. Reality is different. Scientists ar ...
April 14, 2015
April 15th is the day that every American is expected to have filed their federal income tax form. Some of us may have done it long before the deadline, some of us will wait until just before the stroke of midnight on April 15th and some of us may be filing for ...
April 13, 2015
Limited government advocates may find a certain emotional satisfaction in proposals like that of Rep. Brattin. If we must have programs like food stamps, let's at least attach some reasonable restrictions. Taxpayers shouldn't have to shower luxury items on thos ...
April 13, 2015
Militarism and military spending are everywhere on the rise, as the new Cold War propaganda seems to be paying off. The new "threats" that are being hyped bring big profits to military contractors and the network of think tanks they pay to produce pro-war propa ...
April 11, 2015
We have no good way of knowing how the few and scattered humans on earth migrated at the end of the ice age. We have only a limited and fuzzy idea of where they came from and how they moved. What can be deduced from the available information is that three gener ...
April 10, 2015
Immigration is one of those subjects you hope to avoid at holiday family gatherings. Most everyone has an opinion, many feel strongly about their opinion and few will even consider they might be wrong. Emotional and cultural baggage further complicate the subje ...
April 09, 2015
The argument over same-sex marriage overlooks a key question: Why does the State define who can and can't marry? Marriage was originally a religious concept in Western culture, during a time when the modern concept of Church and State as separate spheres was fu ...
