Dear Graduates: Tyranny Is Right Around The Corner

by Andrew Napolitano.     A few weeks ago, President Obama advised graduates at Ohio State University that they need not listen to voices warning about tyranny around the corner, because we have self-government in America. He argued that self-government is in and of itself an adequate safeguard against tyranny, because voters can be    ... MORE

Barry Friedman: Guns, Pot And States Rights

Regulation is not prohibition.   Kansas recently adopted a so-called "Second Amendment Protection Act." The law provides that Kansans can ignore any federal law that attempts to regulate guns in Kansas if the guns in question were made in Kansas and stay there. It would apply, for example, to a federal ban on assault weapons. Yet more      ... MORE

VIDEO: Walter E Williams - Economics And Personal Liberty

Phyllis Chester: The Crisis Of Individualism

A death knell for free thought?   Suddenly, the price of speaking one’s mind has gotten very high. You may agree on every issue save one; dare to share your independent or dissident view—and you might shut down the conversation or lose all your friends. Since this kind of censorship and self-censorship has been going on for some    ... MORE

Washington Times: Another Crony For The Cabinet

The puppet show continues.    President Obama’s choice of Hyatt hotel heiress Penny Pritzker as secretary of commerce, to be taken up Thursday by the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, puts Democrats on the panel between that famous rock and a hard place. Like the loyal soldiers they are, the panel’s 13     ... MORE

VIDEO: What Libertarians Mean By "The Free Market"

OAS To Whitehouse: High Time To Consider Legalizing Pot

by Tim Padgett.   On the Latin American street, the Organization of American States has always borne a reputation, often undeserved, as Washington’s lackey. But the OAS, based in Washington, just sent the western hemisphere a message the White House would rather not hear: It’s time to seriously discuss legalizing marijuana as one means   ... MORE

Shikha Dalmia: The Conservative Welfare State

Ann Coulter is no friend of liberty.          Conservative crank Ann Coulter has made a career out of bad manners, so it was no surprise when she slammed her libertarian hosts at the annual International Students for Liberty confab in February as “pussies.” That was almost a compliment, compared to “drunks” and “horny hicks,” two other terms    ... MORE

Gene Healy: Should Obama Be Impeached?

We've had too few impeachments in American history.   You may be appalled about IRS inquisitions for Tea Party groups and dragnet subpoenas for investigative reporters, but what's really outrageous, according to some commentators, is that a couple of Republicans recently dared to use the "I-word"—"impeachment."         ... MORE

Barry Farber: Put Your Money On 'Distancing'

Barack who?      OK, all of you who share my shameful habit of writing history before it happens: It’s time to lay the money on your favorite square. Will all the hydra-headed horrors whip-lashing the Obama White House spend themselves out splashing against a Democratic seawall in the Senate, and the media-corps awaken in the middle of the night   ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Long Live The Porcupine

Moral Bias At The New York Times

by Tibor R. Machan.   The headline said it all: “Confusion and Staff Troubles Rife at I.R.S. Office in Ohio.” No mention of mendacity, of evil, of meanness, of vice, Nada. For liberals their own pals are never morally amiss. They may make mistakes, be confused and have troubles. But guilty of malpractice never! Only Republicans and others who    ... MORE

Ralph Benko: The Rise Of Rand Paul

What it means for the libertarian movement.    Libertarianism, thanks, among other factors, to the emergence of leading presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul, is coming to the fore.  It is presenting itself in fresh, less eccentric, and increasingly attractive ways.  Moderate libertarianism may be capturing the fancy of an overtaxed,   ... MORE

VIDEO: IRS Scandal Not Limited To Low-Level Employees

Senator Uses Oklahoma Tornado To Pimp Her Carbon Tax

by Michael Bastasch.    California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer blamed the tornado that devastated Oklahoma on global warming during a Senate floor speech Tuesday, using the opportunity to push her own plan to tax carbon dioxide emissions. “This is climate change,” Boxer said. “This is climate change. We were warned about extreme    ... MORE

Obama's War Against The Free Press Gets Creepier

by J.D. Tuccille.      Perhaps the most chilling aspect of the U.S. Department of Justice "investigation" of Fox News chief correspondent James Rosen isn't the intrusive tracking of his movements and contacts — although that's disturbing enough — but the basis for the criminal charges he may ultimately face. At its heart, the allegation     ... MORE

The IRS Targeted Conservatives Because It Could

by Peter Suderman.    The opening day excuse for the IRS targeting conservative groups requesting tax exempt status was that the IRS was facing an unusual influx of applicants. But that turns out not to have been the case. Applications for tax exempt 501 groups didn’t surge in 2010. In fact, the number of applicants was down in every category from   ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: Undoing The Brainwashing

Help your student out.  This time of year, as college students return home for the summer, many parents may notice how many politically correct ideas they have acquired on campus. Some of those parents may wonder how they can undo some of the brainwashing that has become so common in what are supposed to be institutions of higher    ... MORE

VIDEO: Tom Sowell - Why The Left Wants Judicial Activists

Garrett Quinn: The Free State Project Grows Up

Libertarians are changing the face of New Hampshire.   In 2001 a Yale doctoral student named Jason Sorens published an essay in the small webzine The Libertarian Enterprise, lamenting the failure of libertarian efforts at the ballot box. “Nothing’s working,” he wrote, because libertarians are scattered. The only way to have a real  ... MORE

Obama Scandals Bring MSNBC To 7-Year Low

by Dominic Patten.  The scandals of the Obama administration seem to be hurting not just the White House but MSNBC as well, while Fox News Channel has just scored its second-best week of the year. After double-digit gains during last year’s presidential election, May 13-17 saw the progressive-aligned “Lean Forward” news network hit new lows    ... MORE

VIDEO: Parking Regulations Driving Away Business

Cal Thomas: Tyranny Is No Longer 'Lurking'

It has become a fact of life. Given last week's revelation that the IRS targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, it's worth recalling President Obama's Ohio State University commencement address. The president decried "voices" warning "that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner." It's no longer lurking. It's here.    ... MORE

DOJ Leaked Docs To Smear Fast & Furious Whistleblower

by Matthew Boyle.   The Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General published a new report Monday that confirms former U.S. Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke leaked a document intended to smear Operation Fast and Furious scandal whistleblower John Dodson. The DOJ IG said it found “Burke’s conduct in disclosing the Dodson memorandum     ... MORE

Ira Stoll: The IRS v. The First Amendment

Whatever happened to "Congress shall make no law"?   Of all the discouraging news in the scandal involving President Obama’s Internal Revenue Service, the most illuminating is that one of the things that triggered additional scrutiny from the IRS for groups applying for tax-exempt status was any plan for “educating on the constitution   ... MORE

Walter E Williams: We Are The Idiots

Why do we listen to them?    Dr. Henry Miller, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and Gregory Conko, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, in their Forbes article "Rachel Carson's Deadly Fantasies" (9/5/2012), wrote that her 1962 book, "Silent Spring," led to a world ban on DDT use. The DDT ban was responsible for the loss   ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - High Times For Liberty In Colorado

Thomas Sowell: Wimps Versus Barbarians

Bet on the barbarians.  An all too familiar scene was enacted on the campus of Swarthmore College during a meeting on May 4th to discuss demands by student activists for the college to divest itself of its investments in companies that dealt in fossil fuels. As a speaker was beginning a presentation to show how many millions of dollars    ... MORE

Sheldon Richman: Abolish The IRS

(and the income tax with it)    The Internal Revenue Service has been caught engaging in political profiling while processing applications for tax-exempt status. In this case it was against organizations with “tea-party” or “patriot ” in their names and other right-wing groups. Next time it could be libertarian or left-wing antiwar and pro-civil-liberties  ... MORE

VIDEO: The Truth About The Gun Show Loopholes

IRS And AP Scandals Cast A Big Chill On Free Speech

by Michael Barone.    Chilling effect. That's the term lawyers and judges use to describe the result of government actions that deter people from exercising their right of free speech. There have been plenty of examples in the past 10 days. The Obama administration's Justice Department issued a sweeping demand for two months of   ... MORE

Steve Chapman: Obama Is Not Nixon

Are babies like snakes because some have rattles?   "The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know," said Harry Truman, who made it his task to absorb a lot of it. Many people who have not followed his example are not averse to using what little they do know, with the inadvertent effect of exposing how much they have to  ... MORE

Obama's Scandals Reveal The True Face Of Government

by Steven Greenhut.   The Obama administration has gotten itself into a fix between its contradictory stories about the Benghazi incident, reports of the IRS targeting conservative groups, and the Justice Department’s grabbing of phone records from AP reporters. There are few things more fun to watch than arrogant political leaders -- folks   ... MORE

Did IRS Illegally Seized 60 Million Health Records?

That is what a California lawsuit claims.      A lawsuit filed in California accuses the Internal Revenue Service of illegal seizure of 60 million electronic health care records belonging to 10 million Americans. The suit filed in the Superior Court of San Diego by Robert Barnes, a Malibu lawyer representing a corporate client named John Doe   ... MORE

VIDEO: Fox News - Using IRS As A Weapon

Scott Holleran: A Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy

Based on what we know.    Years ago, Hillary Clinton, speaking as the president’s wife, went on NBC’s Today Show and complained of what she called a “vast right-wing conspiracy” without citing evidence. She said there was a conspiracy to discredit her husband over the scandal of his having an affair with an intern. It turned out that there was a    ... MORE

Stop The Imperialization Of America With Nullification

by Danny De Gracia, Washington Times.       Some say that President Barack Obama has been having a tough month, rocked by the scandals of Benghazi whistleblowers, IRS harassment and the Associated Press records probe. I say baloney. No matter what egregious offense or incompetence by the federal government erupt into public    ... MORE

VIDEO: West Wing Weak - A Busy Week In Washington

Bill O'Reilly: What Happened, Mr. President?

Why all the stonewalling?  It hasn't been a great week for the Obama folks, as the scandal du jour tour has firmly taken hold. Every day it seems another federal agency is exposed as having intimidated, snooped, covered up or gone to Vegas on the taxpayer dime. Zimbabwe is even making fun of us. On Jan. 21, 2009, in remarks welcoming his   ... MORE

John Cassidy: A.P. Scandal Raises Spectre Of Big Brother

A reminder that the government is NOT us.   If the three-strikes rule were in effect, President Obama would be heading for the dugout, bat in hand. First the alleged Benghazi cover-up, then the kerfuffle about the I.R.S. targeting conservative groups, and now the revelation that earlier this year the Justice Department secretly seized two     ... MORE