VIDEO: Police State Checkpoints - Your Papers Please!


Local government revenue scheme runs roughshod over individual liberty.

Government Power Rests on Violence and Coercion

by A. Barton Hinkle.    From police brutality to the events in Ukraine. “Ukrainian events have demonstrated,” writes Maria Snegovaya in The New Republic, “that control of violence is still at the very essence of the state.” She says Vladimir Putin’s aggression proves that Max Weber’s definition of the state—an entity with a monopoly on the     ... MORE

Alaska House Bill Promotes Jury Nullification

by Richard Mauer.       The last defense against unjust laws. A House bill promoting the notion that jurors can ignore Alaska's criminal code and let a lawbreaking defendant off the hook had a brief hearing Wednesday in the House Judiciary Committee, then was held for later. The bill, fostering "jury nullification," has been a bipartisan favorite of   ... MORE

VIDEO: William Binney - Inside NSA


From ReasonTV. See full interview here

Andrew Napolitano: Probable Cause Is Too Hard For NSA

Back to the days of general warrants.     The demise of individual liberty. Except for the definition and mechanism of proving treason, no area of the Constitution addressing the rights of all persons when the government is pursuing them is more specific than the Fourth Amendment. The linchpin of that specificity is the requirement   ... MORE

Crime Stats: Medical Pot Doesn't Lead To Crime

by Emily Badger.     Opponents of medical marijuana envision all kinds of insidious ways that legalizing the drug might lead to crime. Make marijuana more accessible, and more people will use it. If more people use it, more will tumble through the weed "gateway" to cocaine, or worse. Those people will then engage in crime to fund their    ... MORE

VIDEO: Why Are Our Politicians So Stupid?

Anti-Gun California State Senator Busted Running Guns

Hypocrisy on parade.          State Sen. Leland Yee, an outspoken advocate of gun control and open government, was arrested Wednesday on charges that he conspired to traffic in firearms and traded favors in Sacramento for bribes - campaign cash paid by men who turned out to be undercover FBI agents. Yee, a Democrat who represents half   ... MORE

He Cooperated With The Cops -- And Is Paying The Price

The ordeal of Mark Byrge.         When Mark Byrge had a minor traffic accident on a street in American Fork, Utah, he did the “responsible” thing by reporting the incident to the police. He has never stopped paying for that mistake. Within a few minutes of receiving Mark's call, a pair of American Fork cops arrived to document the damage   ... MORE

Jacob Sullum: Real Rights Vs. Fake Rights

Free birth control and unfree photographers.      According to The New York Times, a case the Supreme Court heard on Tuesday, involving a challenge to Obamacare's requirement that businesses pay for their employees' contraceptives, "pits religious liberty against women's rights." Similarly, last month's controversy over an Arizona bill    ... MORE

John Stossel: Bullies Rule

We're told government protects us,       but protectors quickly become bullies. Take the Food and Drug Administration. It seems like the most helpful part of government: It supervises testing to make sure greedy drug companies don't sell us dangerous stuff. The FDA's first big success was stopping thalidomide, a drug that prevented the    ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - America's War On Youth

Selwyn Duke: The Plan For Police Nullification

First persecutors or first protectors?     “I [sic] give my left n** to bang down your door and come for your gun,” said the cop. This statement, made by Branford, Ct., police officer Joseph Peterson in a Facebook conversation earlier this month, created quite a news-cycle firestorm. Internet commenters from Sacramento to Saratoga   ... MORE

Abby Wisse Schachter: The War On Fun

When safety becomes a god.     In 1859, the esteemed magazine Scientific American issued a warning about young people's "pernicious excitement" over a trendy game: chess. The shuffling of pawns and rooks was "a mere amusement of a very inferior character, which robs the mind of valuable time that might be devoted to nobler acquirements   ... MORE

VIDEO: The Game Of Thrones Must Be Stopped

EPA Wildly Expands Authority to Regulate Private Property

by Bridget Johnson.     The Environmental Protection Agency today unveiled its proposed rule to bring natural and man-made bodies of water big and tiny under the purview of the Clean Water Act, sparking accusations that the administration has embarked on an unprecedented breach of private property rights without scientific basis.     ... MORE

Warren L. Dean Jr: When ObamaCare Met Matt Drudge

White House gets schooled on how tax is paid.     Matt Drudge is correct. Last weekend we learned that after five long years in office, among the many things the White House does not know is how and when Americans pay their taxes. Since Team Obama likes taxes so much, you might think they would understand them, but no such luck.     ... MORE

John W Whitehead: A Military Plot To Take Over America

Fifty Years Later, Was the Mission Accomplished?       Director John Frankenheimer’s 1964 political thriller Seven Days in May is a clear warning to beware of martial law packaged as a well meaning and overriding concern for the nation’s security. Yet 50 years later, we find ourselves hostages to a government run more by military     ... MORE

Man Found Guilty Of E-Cig Law That Does Not Exist

by Jeff Sherwood.      Judge makes up law as he goes. On March 20, 2014, I brought you a story about the first man to ever get a ticket in the United States for using an electronic cigarette while driving. Today (Mar. 22), I had the opportunity to sit down and speak with the accused man, Jason Dewing, via a telephone conversation to get further         ... MORE

VIDEO: Fox News - ATF Assaults Fourth Amendment

Gallup Poll Predicts Democrat Midterm Wipeout

by Chriss Street.     The prospects of hope and change. According to the Washington Post, President Obama has been hammering at Democratic fundraisers for the past few months that his party always gets “clobbered in midterm elections.”  Although the midterm elections are usually regarded as a referendum on the sitting president's        ... MORE

Katie Kieffer: BEWARE Of No-Knock SWAT Attacks

Gun owners beware.        Squirt gun owners, that includes you. If a Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team SUSPECTS you of crime, you may receive a late-night visit from an armed SWAT team. That’s right, an armed and militant SWAT team could trot right through your front door as you slumber this summer. No-knock warrants are increasingly     ...  MORE

VIDEO: What To Do If Pulled Over For DUI


Knowing your rights makes for a better life.

Thomas Sowell: Republicans And Blacks

School choice could be the key.        Recently former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice added her voice to those who have long been urging the Republican Party to reach out to black voters. Not only is that long overdue, what is also long overdue is putting some time — and, above all, some serious thought — into how to go about doing it.  ... MORE

Should Vaccines Be Mandatory? - A Libertarian Debate

by M. Welch, R. Bailey, J A. Singer & S. Reider.     Few issues divide libertarians so emphatically as government-mandated vaccinations against communicable diseases, as reason discovered after including anti-vaccine activist Jenny McCarthy in our "45 Enemies of Freedom" list (August/September 2013). That selection brought forth a      ... MORE

Is Obama Media Playing Dumb --- Or Are They Not Playing?

White House and media ignorance on display.     Administration misspeaks and reporters don't bother to investigate. A White House aide set off a stampede of liberal media criticism for Internet news pioneer Matt Drudge over Obamacare – but his critics don't seem to understand how small businesses pay taxes. The brouhaha started when     ... MORE

Walter E Williams: Bizarre Arguments And Behavior

Deceivers and control freaks.     Some statements and arguments are so asinine that you'd have to be an academic or a leftist to take them seriously. Take the accusation that Republicans and conservatives are conducting a war on women. Does that mean they're waging war on their daughters, wives, mothers and other female members of their  ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Military Budget Cuts


Guest: Ron Paul.

Steve Chapman: Why Obama Is Pandering Overtime

Vision of the anointed is just another job killer.     If you take an economics course, you may learn about the different events that can cause an increase in workers' pay. The demand for the product a worker makes may rise, causing the demand for workers to go up. The supply of workers may decline, causing employers to bid up wages to keep  ... MORE

Google, DuckDuckGo And Regulation Of Privacy

by Tim Worstall.     This piece about DuckDuckGo rather interested me, for it speaks to the argument that is being had over the regulation of privacy in both the US and the European Union. And while this isn’t entirely and wholly true it is in essence: the US has, in my opinion, taken the right view of that regulation. Leave it, largely, to the         ... MORE

VIDEO: Why Did Armed Officers Raid A Strip Club?

Families Move To Secure Medical Marijuana For Kids

by Lisa Bernard-Kuhn.      Moving to Colorado. The Bentons will move as soon as Addyson comes off the waiting list, which they hope will be October – leaving behind the home in Liberty Township, Ohio, that they built less than a year ago and the friends and family who have supported them. "It's so sad to know that Addyson won't be able to see     ... MORE

'Crazy Cave' Is Poster Child For Government Waste

by Daniel Bates.        No incentives for cost-saving innovation. Six hundred workers are processing government pension papers in an underground bunker entirely by hand in a staggering example of state inefficiency that is costing taxpayers millions. Staff at what has been dubbed the ‘Crazy Cave’ take up to 61 days just to deal with     ... MORE

The Boom In Smuggling To Avoid Cigarette Taxes

by Jonathan Berr.        Another government-provoked black market. More than half of the cigarettes sold in New York State are smuggled in from other places to avoid the Empire State's taxes on smokes, which have soared nearly 200 percent since 2006, according to a report issued by the conservative Tax Foundation. New York is the highest net    ... MORE

Hawaii Law Allows Cops To Have Sex With Prostitutes

by Mike Bertha.      The police lobbied hard. There is apparently an exemption in Hawaiian sex trafficking laws that allows for undercover police officers to have sex with prostitutes while on the job, in an effort to help them more effectively catch the bad guys, obviously. A new law would have done away with the exemption, but that new     ... MORE

VIDEO: Milton Friedman - Understanding Inflation

Barry Farber: My Fear Of GOP Overconfidence

This is miserable casting.     You’ve got no business expecting me to do Clark Gable’s work. But nobody else is doing it, and it must be done. In an early scene in “Gone With the Wind,” before the Civil War started, a big party was rocking Tara, the plantation inhabited by Scarlett O’Hara. In the library, a gaggle of Southern cadets from a military academy  ... MORE

Marijuana Research Hampered By Government And Politics

by Ariana Eunjung Cha.      Millions of ordinary Americans are now able to walk into a marijuana dispensary and purchase bags of pot on the spot for a variety of medical ailments. But if you’re a researcher like Sue Sisley, a psychiatrist who studies post-traumatic stress disorder, getting access to the drug isn’t nearly so easy. That’s because the    ... MORE

VIDEO: Government's War On Living Standards


Peter Schiff compares earnings and purchasing power from 1947. 

Baylen Linnekin: Big Brother Is Watching You Eat

Your betters say it's for your own good.      Just how far is the federal government willing to go to push Americans to make subjectively “healthy” food choices? Chillingly far, if the most recent meeting of the federal government’s Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) is any indicator. The DGAC is made up of fifteen academics,       ... MORE

Gun Tattoo Attracts Cops With Assault Weapons

Ink can be so threatening.     Michael Smith went outside shirtless after being awakened Tuesday morning, yelling at a tree removal company to get off his property. The workers thought they saw a gun in his waistband and called police. Smith, who’d gone back to bed, was awakened again minutes later — this time by Maine State Police  ... MORE