Explore Freedom

Don’t Let Aurora Shooting Curtail Right of Self-Defense

by Sheldon Richman July 23, 2012

The shooting in the Aurora, Colorado, movie theater has incited the usual debate over guns. One side says tighter gun restrictions could have prevented the horrible incident that night. The other responds that more guns in the hands of law-abiding people might have prevented it. While the theater chain prohibits firearms, it is hard to say that the alleged shooter, ... [click for more]

Obama, Romney Rhetoric Risks Trade War

by Sheldon Richman July 20, 2012

When economic times are bad, animosity is directed at foreigners: “They’re taking our jobs!” So it’s unsurprising that the presidential campaigns feature charges and countercharges about outsourcing, the employment of foreign labor by American companies. This is a dangerous game because it sows the seeds of trade war. Economists understand the benefits of the division of labor. If you and ... [click for more]

Uncle Sam Is a Sugar Daddy

by Laurence M. Vance July 19, 2012

When the government of a foreign country tells companies in a particular industry how much of its product it can sell; guarantees minimum prices; provides nonrecourse loans; restricts imports of foreign product; buys up excess product; and seeks to stabilize, support, and protect the industry, it is denounced as socialism or central planning. But when the same thing occurs in ... [click for more]

Bagram: Still a Black Hole for Foreign Prisoners

by Andy Worthington July 19, 2012

In March 2009, three foreign prisoners seized in other countries and rendered to the main U.S. prison in Afghanistan, at Bagram airbase, where they had been held for up to seven years, secured a legal victory in the District Court in Washington, D.C., when Judge John D. Bates ruled that they had habeas corpus rights. In other ... [click for more]

U.S. Honors Deal to Release Convicted Bin Laden Cook from Guantanamo to Sudan

by Andy Worthington July 13, 2012

Getting out of Guantánamo is such a feat these days (with only three men released in the last 18 months) that it is remarkable that Ibrahim al-Qosi, a Sudanese prisoner who agreed to a plea deal at his war-crimes trial in Guantánamo in July 2010 guaranteeing that he would be freed after two years, has been repatriated as ... [click for more]

The Two Little Cities Who Can’t

by Wendy McElroy July 12, 2012

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is stomping its jackboot down on two little towns that straddle the Arizona-Utah border. The Civil Rights Division has brought an unprecedented and vague federal religious discrimination lawsuit against the cities and their utility companies (PDF). In its June 21 announcement, the DOJ stated, “This is the first lawsuit by the ... [click for more]

Government Shows Itself Impotent on Economy

by Sheldon Richman July 11, 2012

It should finally have dawned on the American people that the politicians who presume to guide the economy have no bloody idea what they’re doing. We’re long past the time when knowledge of economics was required to see that the government is impotent when it comes to creating economic recovery. If you want evidence of that impotence, just look ... [click for more]

Why the War on Drugs Should Be Ended

by Laurence M. Vance July 10, 2012

The War on Drugs is a monstrous evil that has ruined more lives than drugs themselves. Taking drugs harms the person who partakes, but not those who abstain; the War on Drugs harms everyone, even those who abstain from taking drugs. Yet the Drug War enjoys bipartisan support in Congress, is supported by the majority of Americans, is cheered by ... [click for more]

Big Pharma and Crony Capitalism

by Wendy McElroy July 9, 2012

A friend just experienced a terrible drug problem. Not with illegal drugs, but with a prescription from her doctor. Her eighty-year-old memory sometimes stumbles, and so, without diagnostic tests, the doctor prescribed a potent Alzheimer medication. Within a week, I received phone calls from her about two men and a woman who were breaking into her house repeatedly despite carefully ... [click for more]

The United States in Talks to Return the 17 Afghan Prisoners in Guantánamo

by Andy Worthington July 6, 2012

Earlier this year, there was much discussion in the U.S. media about the possibility that, as part of negotiations aimed at securing peace in Afghanistan, the United States would release five high-level Taliban prisoners in Guantánamo to Qatar, where they would be held under a form of house arrest. Those plans came to nothing, but last week the [click for more]

Socialized Medicine Is Here to Stay

by Laurence M. Vance July 3, 2012

The Supreme Court heard 65 cases this term, but waited until the very end of the term to issue its ruling in the case regarding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, more popularly known as Obamacare. The main issue was the constitutionality of the “individual mandate” that every American not covered by Medicaid, Medicare, or health insurance must purchase ... [click for more]

Supreme Court’s Word Game Saves Obamacare

by Sheldon Richman July 2, 2012

The Supreme Court decision upholding the health-insurance mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) has an Alice-in-Wonderland feel to it. As Lewis Carroll wrote in Through the Looking Glass, “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” Chief Justice ... [click for more]