Explore Freedom

The Moral Case for Drug Freedom, Part 2

by Laurence M. Vance September 1, 2010

Part 1 | Part 2 Believers in a free society should challenge all laws on drug trafficking, drug manufacturing, drug sales, and drug use. They should object to the 750,000 arrests of Americans every year for marijuana possession. They should protest the incarceration of tens of thousands of Americans for drug-related offenses. They should contest the Harrison Narcotics Tax ... [click for more]

The Incessant Growth of Government Bureaucracy, Part 1

by Gregory Bresiger September 1, 2010

Part 1 | Part 2 The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, & government to gain ground. — Thomas Jefferson “It is far easier to introduce a government program than to get rid of it.” Those were the words of a former federal bureaucrat who had worked in World War II in the Office of Price Administration (OPA). ... [click for more]

America’s Peacetime Crimes against Iraq

by Anthony Gregory September 1, 2010

Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions by Joy Gordon (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), 359 pages. Between the Gulf War and the Iraq War, the United States enforced a comprehensive sanctions policy against the Iraqi people, under the auspices of the United Nations. Whereas the hot conflict of 1990 and the one that has run ... [click for more]

No Surprise at Obama’s Guantánamo Trial Chaos

by Andy Worthington August 31, 2010

Surprise is the last thing that anyone ought to feel on hearing the news that the Obama administration “has shelved the planned prosecution,” in a trial by military commission, “of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged coordinator of the October 2000 suicide attack on the USS Cole in Yemen,” as the Washington Post reported on Thursday, ... [click for more]

Persecuting a Conciliator

by Sheldon Richman August 25, 2010

If a YMCA or a YMHA were planned for 51 Park Place in Lower Manhattan, two blocks from the Twin Towers’ former site, who would have noticed? Instead, the equivalent of a Muslim Y (without the implied male exclusivity) is to be built there. What’s the big deal? There can be only one answer: Consciously or not, a majority of Americans ... [click for more]

Lawlessness Haunts Omar Khadr’s Blighted War Crimes Trial

by Andy Worthington August 24, 2010

On August 12, the U.S. administration’s intention to proceed with the war crimes trial of Omar Khadr, a Canadian who was just 15 years old when he was seized after a firefight in Afghanistan in July 2002, was temporarily delayed when Khadr’s military lawyer, Army Lt. Col. Jon Jackson, collapsed in the courtroom in ... [click for more]

None Dare Call It Tyranny

by Sheldon Richman August 16, 2010

If you want to know what tyranny is like, look around. The national government — specifically the executive branch — can do pretty much what it wants. It could bomb Iran tomorrow without a declaration of war from Congress. It can — and does — conduct secret wars and covert operations against countries that have done nothing to us. Of ... [click for more]

The Great Repeal Bill

by Wendy McElroy August 11, 2010

Legal and political trends in the United Kingdom often parallel or precede ones within the United States. For example, the politically correct crusades against smoking and child obesity raged in Britain prior to jumping the Atlantic. A particularly interesting trend is currently unfolding in the UK and, for once, its spread might bring welcomed change. The new coalition government is ... [click for more]

What They Do in Our Name

by Sheldon Richman August 10, 2010

Thanks to Wikileaks and heroic leakers inside the military, we now know the U.S. government has killed many more innocent Afghan civilians than we were aware of heretofore. We also know that American military and intelligence personnel roam Afghanistan assassinating suspected bad guys. Sometimes they kill people they later acknowledge weren’t bad guys at all. “Bad guys,” like “Taliban,” ... [click for more]

Guantánamo: A Mentally Ill Yemeni and a Minor Taliban Recruit

by Andy Worthington August 2, 2010

As of today, the results of the Guantánamo prisoners’ habeas corpus petitions stand at 38 victories for the prisoners against 15 victories for the government, after two recent rulings. On July 21, Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. granted the habeas petition of Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, a 34-year old Yemeni, while, in another courtroom, Judge Reggie Walton ... [click for more]

Leading Humanity Out of the Darkness, Part 3

by Jacob G. Hornberger August 1, 2010

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 The 40-year-old war on drugs has long been a favorite government program of both liberals and conservatives. It is a program by which statists have brought nothing but death and destruction to our nation and to people all over the world. It is impossible to count ... [click for more]

Is a Peace Movement Finally Awakening?

by Sheldon Richman August 1, 2010

What America needs most today is a peace movement, a broad-based coalition that opposes not only the American empire’s operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan (as well as less overt activities elsewhere), but also its attendant accretion of presidential power, which diminishes or eliminates civil liberties and the traditional protections accorded criminal suspects. Unfortunately, there have been impediments to the ... [click for more]