Nick Gillespie: GOP - Go Young Or Go Home!

Party must channel their inner libertarian.    Earlier this year, Bobby Jindal, the GOP governor of Louisiana, surveyed the wreckage of Mitt Romney’s sad-sack presidential campaign and told his fellow Republicans that if they ever want to capture the White House again, “we must stop being the stupid party.” While Michele Bachmann’s    ... MORE

Matt Welch: Baseball's Steroid Collusion With The Feds

Partners in the public-shaming biz.    Tucked away inside ESPN's blockbuster report last night that Major League Baseball is preparing to hand out an unprecedented 20 or so steroid suspensions—including to Hall of Fame talent Alex Rodriguez and former Most Valuable Player Ryan Braun—as part of an agreement reached with a performance-enhancing  ... MORE

VIDEO: Fox News - Federal Contempt For 4th Amendment

CIA Chief: We'll Spy On You Through Your Dishwasher

by Spencer Ackerman.        More and more personal and household devices are connecting to the internet, from your television to your car navigation systems to your light switches. CIA Director David Petraeus cannot wait to spy on you through them. Earlier this month, Petraeus mused about the emergence of an “Internet of Things” — that is, ... MORE

The ObamaCare Gift To Planned Parenthood Clinics

by Paul Bedard.       Most of Planned Parenthood's 750 health and abortion clinics around the nation will be covered under Obamacare, imposing a new demand on insurers who want to participate in the health care exchanges that will provide insurance coverage to millions of Americans. While insurers currently cover doctors and health     ... MORE

VIDEO: How America Is Devolving To A Police State

The War On Pot Is Insanely Racist & Insanely Expensive

by Mike Riggs.    Across the United States--north, east, south, west--blacks are more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana possession. That's the conclusion of a new ACLU report that compares arrest data from 945 counties across the country. "In 2010, the Black arrest rate for marijuana possession was 716 per 100,000, while   ... MORE

Barry Farber On The Perils Of Making On-Air Bets

A debt paid and a lesson learned.      It may have been the best magazine cartoon – ever! Penguins are the only animals in tuxedos. Imagine an Antarctic ice cap with hundreds of tuxedoed penguins, and one penguin wearing a natty beret, a gold chain, sunglasses and a checkered vest while sporting a rhinestone-studded cigarette holder. A curious gaggle  ... MORE

Gene Healy: Obama's Flight From Responsibility

"Hey, don't look at me -- I'm just the president!"   That's the common thread in President Obama's response to his recent scandal eruptions, from IRS harassment of Tea Partiers to his Justice Department's spying on AP reporters. Like everybody else, Obama learns about these things via cable news, according to press secretary Jay Carney.   ... MORE

Twenty Years Of Non-Stop Regulation

by Wayne Crews & Ryan Young.   Twenty years ago saw the release of the first edition of Ten Thousand Commandments, an annual report that tracks the cost and scope of the federal regulatory state. It’s been a very busy two decades for Washington, with 81,883 new regulations hitting the books during that time. That’s a new regulation   ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - The Joys Of Deregulation

Poll: Americans Angry With DOJ's Intimidation Of Media

Federal tyranny is the only thing transparent.     The Internal Revenue Service scandal is just one hot-button issue that the Obama administration is facing. The other is the government investigating reporters. And new poll new numbers indicate, many Americans are not happy with the Justice Department snooping on the press, CBS    ... MORE

John Stossel: Austerity Myths

Honesty is the first step.    Europe's struggles prove that "austerity" fails! So say the Big Spenders. With a condescending sigh, they explain that Europe made deep cuts in government spending, and the result was today's high unemployment. "With erstwhile middle-class workers reduced to picking through garbage in search of food, austerity has      ... MORE

VIDEO: Internet Sales Tax Will Kill My Small Business

Eric Shawn: EPA's Bad Treatment Of Conservative Groups

It's not just the IRS.    A second federal agency is facing a probe and accusations of political bias over its alleged targeting of conservative groups.  The allegations concern the Environmental Protection Agency, which is being accused of trying to charge conservative groups fees while largely exempting liberal groups. The fees applied to Freedom   ... MORE

Thomas DiLorenzo: The Real LIncoln In His Own Words

What did Abe really believe about racial equality?      After writing two books and dozens of articles, and giving hundreds of radio and television interviews and public presentations on the subject of Lincoln and the political economy of the American "Civil War"over the past fifteen years, I have realized that the only thing the average American   ... MORE

4 Ways You've Been Totally Misinformed About Drugs

by Ted Hesson. Whether it's the legendary "this is your brain sunny-side up" commercial or the haggard face of one of Jesse Pinkman's meth-slinging homies, we've all seen what drugs can do to us. Apparently, TV occasionally doesn't tell the truth, according to Carl Hart, a neuroscientist at Columbia University. As a matter of fact, a lot of the things   ... MORE

Walter E Williams: Understanding Liberals And Progressives

Who can be easily manipulated by scare tactics?   In order to understand the liberal and progressive agenda, one must know something about their world vision and values. Let's examine some of the evidence. Why the 1970s struggle to ban DDT? Alexander King, founder of the Malthusian Club of Rome, wrote in a 1990 biographical          ... MORE

VIDEO: How To Rig A Majority Vote

Obama Administration: 10-Year Olds Ready For Sex

Hope and change for pre-teens.    If you’re a ten-year-old girl, the Obama Administration thinks you’re old enough to discuss anal sex, mutual masturbation, birth control, and “emergency contraceptives” that can cause early abortions.  A Department of Health and Human Services website, GirlsHealth.gov, offers all this information to girls from   ... MORE

Jacob Sullum: Obama's Cloak Of Invisibility

Secrecy and counterterrorism tactics.   When he was running for president, Barack Obama criticized George W. Bush’s expansive vision of executive power, saying, “I reject the view that the president may do whatever he deems necessary to protect national security.” The day after taking office in 2009, Obama declared that “my Administration    ... MORE

VIDEO: Don't Cops Have Better Things To Do


Cops resort to entrapment as a means to boost crime stats.

Thomas Sowell: Abstract Immigrants

One to ignore the facts of life.     One of the many sad signs of our times is the way current immigration issues are discussed. A hundred years ago, the immigration controversies of that era were discussed in the context of innumerable facts about particular immigrant groups. Many of those facts were published in a huge, multi-volume 1911 study     ... MORE

David Bittle: TSA = Thousands Standing Around

The enormous apparatus isn’t making us safer.    Not long ago while walking through the airport, the following announcement caught my attention: “Will the person who forgot their hearing aids please return to the Transportation Security Administration security checkpoint to reclaim them.” It took me a moment to absorb entirely the irony of the   ... MORE

The Health, Security & Privacy Concerns Of Smart Meters

by Alyssa Edes.    Utilities across the country are installing so-called smart meters in homes and businesses to allow them to better track and manage energy use by their customers, aiming to increase efficiency, lower costs, and reduce pollution. But the advanced meters, which use wireless and digital technologies to send frequent consumption  ... MORE

Scott Lazarowitz: Slavery Or Freedom

Escaping the shackles of statism.  Have you ever thought about the morality or legitimacy of politicians forbidding you to have a vegetable garden in your own front yard, or buying or selling raw milk, or merely having a lemonade stand without a local bureaucrat’s permission? You see, when the armed bureaucrat is arresting the peaceful raw milk    ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Regulation & The Small Entrepreneur

Another Obama Assault On Free Speech

by Robert Spencer.   The Obama Administration’s latest assault on the freedom of speech is so audacious that it leaves me speechless – and that’s the idea. According to Politico, Bill Killian, the Obama-appointed U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee, “is reportedly vowing to use federal civil rights statutes to clamp down on offensive    ... MORE

Former Mexican President Fox Wants Marijuana Legalized

Prohibition creates a violent world.       A former Latin American president has once again said that drugs should be legalized. This time it was Vicente Fox who was the president of Mexico from 2000 to 2006. Fox was in Seattle on Thursday, as a guest speaker for Don Pellicer, a new company that wants to set up marijuana stores in Washington    ... MORE

VIDEO: Homeland Security And Government Paranoia

How Obama Is Embarrassing Democrats & Independents

by Kate Kieffer.   Democrats are blushing. And not because Anthony Weiner is back on Twitter, direct-messaging pretty young girls. Vice President Joe Biden has long held the title of “Liberal Loose Cannon.” But Biden is such a grand hugger and hand-shaker that Democrats still let him work the crowds, crossing their fingers that he won’t say   ... MORE

Sasha Goldstein: Obama's Culture Of Corruption

IRS misconducted was prompted by White House.  President Obama's administration, fronted by a "paid liar" of a spokesman, has created an anti-conservative atmosphere that led to IRS scrutiny of right-leaning organizations, top Republicans said Sunday. "The culture of the president calling Tea Party groups terrorists and tea-baggers,  ... MORE

Roads Have Become Revenue Generating Surveillance Grid

by Michael Snyder.   What do speed traps, parking tickets, toll roads, speed cameras and red light cameras all have in common?  They are all major revenue sources for state and local governments.  All over America today there are state and local governments that are drowning in debt. Many have chosen to use "traffic enforcement" as a way to raise  ... MORE

Mark Baisley: IRS, State And DOJ: The Three Stooges

A peak at our slapstick government.       The recent testimonies before Congress have been reminding me of something for weeks and I just figured out what that is.  I call it 90-degree humor; the kind of joke that starts out in one direction, then takes a sudden left turn, leaving you fallen-over laughing. For instance: “If you were to line up every   ... MORE

VIDEO: Walter E Williams - The State Against Liberty

San Diego Mayor Urges Jurors To Nullify Feds Law

The jury box is our last stand against tyranny.    The Mayor of San Diego is encouraging jurors of an upcoming medical marijuana case to reject the prosecution’s argument, which rests on the fact that marijuana is banned at the federal level. The feds arrested Ronnie Chang of San Marcos in 2009 for operating a medical marijuana dispensary. He   ... MORE

Government Is Addicted To Crackpot Scare Tactics

by Steven Greenhut.    “As many as 100,000 crack babies are born every year,” reported the Los Angeles Times in an overheated 1990 article echoing the results of a Department of Health and Human Services study. The feds were calling for a massive influx of tax dollars to fund social programs to help a new generation of Americans born to mothers   ... MORE

VIDEO: Nanny Of The Month - May 2013


Busybodies minding your own business.

Jaana Woiceshyn: The Value Of Free-Market Competition

It is wrong to interfere with voluntary exchange.  In Canada, like most everywhere in the world, the markets are not free. For example, the Canadian government has targeted some key industries in which it restricts competition and foreign competition in particular: financial services, transportation, natural resources, and     ... MORE

Stephen Moore: What Would Milton Friedman Say?

Unlimited immigration and a welfare state don't mix.    One of the fascinating sideshows of the immigration debate within the Republican Party and the conservative movement is the debate about where the late Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman stood on the issue. The blogosphere is abuzz with varying interpretations of what    ... MORE