Imperial Hopefuls by Sheldon Richman February 22, 2007 As the parade of presidential wannabes grows longer, the people paying attention this early are probably asking themselves, “Can I picture so and so as president?” This is a bad question on many levels. Politics, and presidential politics most especially, is little more than theater. The candidate who can create the right ...
Know When to Fold ’Em by Sheldon Richman February 17, 2007 Hawks such as Sen. John McCain who oppose Senate resolutions against the so-called troop surge in Iraq make a pernicious argument. Such a resolution “is basically a vote of no confidence in the men and women we are sending over there,” McCain said. “We’re saying, ‘We’re ...
Student Scholarships and Speakers Robert Scheer and Richard Ebeling by Jacob G. Hornberger February 16, 2007 As I pointed out in last weeks conference update, we have received a donation that enables us to give 5 free student admissions to our June 1-4 conference Restoring the Republic: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties. If you are a student and would like to attend the conference, please send us an essay on any aspect of foreign policy and ...
Freedom? Fat Chance! by Ralph R. Reiland February 16, 2007 Harper’s magazine reports that Americans burn an extra 938 million gallons of gasoline each year because we’re too fat. That estimate of how much the nation’s chubses are wasting in gas comes from a study by Sheldon Jacobson, professor of computer science at the University of Illinois and director of the ...
The Critical Dilemma Facing Pro-War Libertarians by Jacob G. Hornberger February 14, 2007 Also see: The Pentagon's Power to Arrest, Torture, and Execute Americans It Can't Happen Here The Islamo-Fascist Rationale for Abandoning Liberty The 9/11 attacks exposed a major fault line in the libertarian movement. On one side of the divide were those libertarians who contended that the 9/11 attacks were a direct consequence of U.S. foreign policy specifically the bad things that ...
Student Scholarships and Speaker Spotlights by Jacob G. Hornberger February 9, 2007 We have received a donation of $2,500 to cover five student scholarships for our June 1-4 conference Restoring the Republic: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties. If you are a student who would like to attend the conference, or if you would like to nominate a student to attend, ...
Restore a Republic before It’s Too Late by Jacob G. Hornberger February 5, 2007 The schedule for our big upcoming conference Restoring the Republic: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties on June 1-4 at the Hyatt Regency Reston in Reston, Virginia, is now online. The updated schedule contains the titles of all the talks by our 24 speakers. This stands to be one of the most exciting and important conferences in the ...
U.S. Hypocrisy on Iran by Sheldon Richman February 2, 2007 “It has been clear for some time that Iran has been meddling in Iraq,” says White House spokesman Gordon D. Johndroe. “We don’t believe that behavior, such as supporting Shia extremists in Iraq, should go unchallenged,” John Negroponte, the U.S. intelligence boss, added. Meanwhile, President Bush has authorized American ...
Tyranny and the Military Commissions Act by Jacob G. Hornberger February 1, 2007 In Star Wars, Episode 3, in response to the Senate’s grant of sweeping powers to Chancellor Palpatine, Padme declares, “So this is how liberty dies: with thunderous applause.” The same may be said about the Military Commissions Act (MCA) that was recently enacted by Congress — that this is how freedom ends, with or without the applause. Despite the fact that the ...
End the Other War, Too by Sheldon Richman February 1, 2007 The war in Iraq goes on, but we shouldn’t let it overshadow the war at home — one that frequently takes the lives of people who don’t deserve to die. It’s known as the war on drugs, but it’s really a war on people who themselves are not making war against anyone. Too often individuals ...
The Second Anniversary of Bush’s Worst Bosh by James Bovard February 1, 2007 Two years ago last month, Bush gave his second inaugural address. As I watched the speech on television, I and perhaps millions of other Americans struggled to answer the obvious question about the speech: Is it puerile or is it merely tripe? Bush was hailed throughout the greater Washington metropolitan area for ...
Executive Orders and the Decline of Law, Part 2 by William L. Anderson February 1, 2007 Part 1 | Part 2 The longest-lasting legacy of Lincoln is not the War Between the States or even the violent way in which slavery ended in the United States. Lincoln was able to use brute force to “settle” the various arguments regarding the centralization of political power in this country. As the late Shelby Foote said during an ...