Greg Beato: The Gun Explosion

Why the firearms boom is good news for our economy.  In a February 2012 fund-raising appearance, President Barack Obama expressed his desire to keep America’s assembly lines humming. “I want to make sure the next generation of manufacturing isn’t taking root just in Asia or Europe,” he told a crowd of supporters. “I want it taking root in  ... MORE

Michael Bargo Jr: A Battle Democrats Cannot Afford To Win

Actions speak louder than words. There is one project that liberals never complete -- a task that is talked about all the time, especially during campaigns, but for some reason just can't get done. It is "making the rich pay their fair share" of taxes.  Somehow, even though President Obama and his party found the time to write ObamaCare and a huge plan of ... MORE

VIDEO: James Delingpole - Don't Fear Global Warming

Lee A. Helig: Watching the Watchers

Somehow, we knew this day would come. Congress and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are partnering with legislation and execution of the deployment of unmanned aerial vehicles for use by law enforcement agencies across the country. Recent advancements in reducing the weight, size and related costs of sophisticated aerial  ... MORE

Andrew Napolitano: A Government Of Waste

A vast, lawless wasteland.  What can we learn from allegations against a half-dozen supervisors in the Government Services Administration for wasting, and perhaps stealing, taxpayer dollars on foolishness in Las Vegas, and against a dozen Secret Service agents for dangerously procuring prostitutes in Cartagena, Colombia, while there to prepare for a   ... MORE

VIDEO: Too Much Copyright

John Stossel: The Economy Needs No Conductor

We spend too much time waiting for orders   —and money—from Washington. The collapse of the housing bubble gave politicians a license to do what they wanted to do all along: spend. The usual checks on extravagance, weak as they are, were washed away. Budgets? We’ll worry about that later. Inflation? We’ll worry about that later. As I point out ... MORE

F. Vincent Vernuccio: Compulsory 'Free' Speech

How unions turn the meaning of words upside down.   What is free speech? Is it the right to speak out and give money to causes, politicians and push ideas? Is it the ability to keep silent and not support that with which a person disagrees? Or is it the power of a group to force its individual members to fund political causes and candidates they do ... MORE

Steve Chapman: Mixing Ignorance And Democracy

Mindlessly exercising a right.  This is an election year, which means all of us will spend the next few months carefully following the campaigns, finding out all we can about the candidates' proposals and pondering what issues are most vital for the nation's future. Just kidding. Most of us wouldn't do that if you Tased us to within an inch of our lives. In fact,     ... MORE

Dunn & Milloy: EPA's Faulty Science Can Be Stopped

Time to rein in unreliable, irresponsible and outrageous claims. United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-sponsored and funded "human health effects science" research is unreliable and makes irresponsible and outrageous claims about how air pollution causes thousands of deaths. Then the EPA claims that it can prevent those deaths with its     ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Rethinking The Drug War

Janet Levy: Shredding the Constitution

Public servants have morphed themselves into masters. The U.S. Constitution, which has guided American society for over two centuries, inspiring nations worldwide and serving as a model for governance, is under serious threat today. Ironically, that threat comes from the very individuals charged with protecting the Constitution -- federal, state, and local  ... MORE

Crony Capitalism & The Expansive Central State

by Charles Hugh Smith, Of Two Minds.   Crony capitalism arises when an expansive Central State dominates the economy.The Central State can then protect crony-capitalist perquisites, cartels, quasi-monopolies and financialization skimming operations of the sort which now dominate the U.S. economy's primary profit centers.  If we step back, the larger ... MORE

VIDEO: Let The Private Space Race Begin

Kevin Glass: Tax Code Cost Taxpayers $228 Billion

So says the latest new study. The National Taxpayers Union put out a policy paper looking at the increasing complexity in the tax code and came up with some shocking results. Americans spent over six billion hours filing their taxes this year and used professionals to figure the tax code out for them at an alarming rate. The study, "A Taxing Trend: The Rise In ... MORE

Leonard Pitts Jr: Obama Off Base On Drug Legalization

Is Obama anti-Black? If President Obama had a son, he would look like Trayvon Martin. So the president famously said. And the president's son would thereby find himself at significantly greater risk of running afoul of the so-called "War on Drugs" than, say, a son of George W. Bush. Depending on what state he lived in, a Trayvon Obama might be 57 times more   ... MORE

Jacob Sullum: From Hackers To Slackers

How to prosecute almost anyone with a computer.   If you are reading this column online at work, you may be committing a federal crime. Or so says the Justice Department, which reads the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) broadly enough to encompass personal use of company computers as well as violations of fine-print website rules that    ... MORE

Holman W. Jenkins Jr: The Inequality Obsession

Do we want to persuade the rich to report less income?  If it were learned that the car driven by the average American is 10 times more likely to burst into flames than the car driven by the richest 1%, what should the policy response be? Should it be to mandate that cars driven by the rich burst into flames more often? Income inequality is a strange obsession, at least ... MORE

VIDEO: FOX NEWS - Spy Gear For Repressive Regimes

Richard Epstein: Term Limits For Judges

Why should politicians in robes be treated differently?     In Federalist No. 78, Alexander Hamilton famously argued that the federal courts were “the least dangerous” branch of government. What he did not understand was that they also proved, over time, to be the worst constructed. The problems here start at the top and work their way down to the  ... MORE

3 Crucial Things About The Apple Antitrust Case

by Yaron Brook and Don Watkins. Just when Apple was introducing its latest iPad, the government announced that Apple was among six companies being investigated over ebook pricing. As that investigation appears to be nearing its conclusion, here are three things everyone needs to know about the case. 1. The government is targeting voluntary agreements  ... MORE

VIDEO: How To Look At The 2012 Election

Washington Times: Making Tax Day Worse

Dems push more expensive and complicated system. Americans who thought Tax Day was bad this year could find it far worse next year. Tuesday happens to be Tax Freedom Day, the date by which taxpayers have earned enough to pay off Uncle Sam and start earning for themselves. This occasion will fall even later next year if President Obama succeeds ... MORE

Could The Rats Be Fleeing A Sinking Ship?

Congressional retirements highest since 1996. Rep. Ed Towns' (D-NY) retirement announcement "makes him the 25th House retirement of this cycle. Add in the 10 Senate retirements, and you've got the most combined retirements since 1996, when Democratic lawmakers retired in droves after the Republican Revolution of 1994 (and many    ... MORE

Veronique de Rugy: Taxation, American Style

The tax code is more progressive than you think.   Americans often tout the contrast between the bloated, tax-funded welfare states of the Old World and our leaner, cheaper government. But the data reveal that the U.S. may be closer to Europe than we think. Contrary to common belief, the American tax system is more progressive than those of  ... MORE

Scott Holleran Movies: The Hunger Games

A LibertyPen movie recommendation.    In mythology, Diana was a huntress who set upon the woods with bow and arrows, precision in her aim and a desire to protect youth and life. Essentially, The Hunger Games, based on the book by Suzanne Collins and the third highest-grossing movie debut ever, is a version of Diana’s story. It is not fast and flashy. It is slow ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Regulation vs Opportunity

Thomas Sowell: Mixing And Matching

Should central planners decide who lives where? Apparently the soaring national debt and the threat of a nuclear Iran are not enough to occupy the government's time, because the Obama administration is pushing to force Westchester County, N.Y., to create more low-income housing, in order to mix and match classes and races to fit the government's    ... MORE

Walter E Williams: Good Economists

Reality isn't always pretty.     It's difficult to be a good economist and simultaneously be perceived as compassionate. To be a good economist, one has to deal with reality. To appear compassionate, often one has to avoid unpleasant questions, use "caring" terminology and view reality as optional. Affordable housing and health care costs are terms with ... MORE

VIDEO: Simplifying the Tax Code

Matt Welch: 5 New Ways The IRS Is Screwing America

Dumb disclosure laws, xenophobic banking regs, and worse.   As the nation staggers toward the April 17 tax-filing deadline—otherwise known as National Crash Your Car Day—the immovable object of a debt-financed $3.8 trillion federal budget is incentivizing the irresistible force of rapacious government to scrounge for any and all spare change in the country's ... MORE

Bruce Walker: The Decline Of Greenism

Americans are waking up to the green con game. An April 9 Gallup Poll shows that since 2006, radical environmentalism has been losing influence in America. Gallup results are even more dramatic when viewed over the last couple of decades; worry about water pollution dropped from consuming 72% of Americans in 1989 to perturbing 46% in March 2011; worry about air  ... MORE

Katie Kieffer: Sippin' On Coal And Rum


Coal fuels our standard of life.     Me: “I'll take a ‘Coal and Rum.’” Bartender: “What's that?” Me: “I'm protesting the EPA.” Bartender: “Got it. Awesome. Your drink is on the house.” Coal is my lifestyle. Coal allows me to turn darkness into light at the flip of a switch. Coal allows me to brew a cup of coffee, toast a bagel and pour a glass of  ... MORE

Juan Prada: Latin America Breaks Ranks On Drug War

When will America acknowledge the failure?     Latin American countries are rightfully fed up with fighting Washington’s war on drugs. In the four decades since President Richard Nixon declared the war on drugs, its battles have been fought predominantly in Latin American nations, leaving behind a trail of death and corruption while failing to    ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Why ABC Sucks And Other Stuff

Nat Hentoff: Sweet Land Of Liberty

We can't hide from the National Security Agency.    How many Americans know that as of September 2013, all of us engaged in any form of communication will be subject -- with the approval of President Barack Obama and the silence of Congress -- to continuous tracking and databasing by the National Security Agency? As I reported here last week, the  ... MORE

Andrew Napolitano: What If The Constitution Is Rejected?

Frightening questions prompt unwelcome visions.      What if the government never took the Constitution seriously? What if the same generation - in some cases, the same individuals - who wrote in the First Amendment, “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech,” also enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts, which made it a ... MORE

VIDEO: 12 Terrible Colleges for Free Speech - 2012


Three cheers for ole Indoctrinate U.

David Sirota: How The Drug War Hurts Everyone

From Wall Street to Oakland, it is beyond futile.    Something as massive and amorphous as America’s War on Drugs can be difficult to imagine in concrete terms. This web of failed policies is so huge, so persistent and so deeply woven into the fabric of our nation that it’s hard to envision an alternative — or even appreciate what the conflict is currently ... MORE

Daniel Simmons: The Illogic Of EPA Carbon Regulations

President Obama is getting what he hoped for in 2008—higher energy prices. By having his Environmental Protection Agency, known as the EPA, implement regulations that contribute to higher energy prices through new burdens on power plants, the agency is now effectively responsible for numerous plant closures and the cancellation of new power plants ... MORE