Drug-War Tyranny in Its Purest Form by Jacob G. Hornberger December 14, 2012 Stephanie George, who is now 42 years old, has spent the last 15 years of her life in jail. That might turn out to be a short period of time, given that her sentence is life without parole. She has no hope of ever being released from jail. Her crime? Living in a ...
Don’t Forget Maher Arar’s Rendition to Syria by Jacob G. Hornberger December 13, 2012 President Obama has just announced that the U.S. government has decided to formally recognize the rebel group that is trying to oust Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad from power. The rebel group, however, seems not to be overly impressed with the president’s announcement. According to the
The Glory of Libertarianism by Jacob G. Hornberger December 12, 2012 Benjamin Franklin once said, “Where liberty dwells, there is my country,” inspiring Thomas Paine to reply, “Where liberty is not, that is my home.” We libertarians happen to have been born in what Paine described as his preferred home — a country in which liberty is not. We ...
How About We Just End Foreign Aid? by Jacob G. Hornberger December 11, 2012 American statists are wringing their hands in anxiety and fear over the impending “fiscal cliff” and debt ceiling. The problem, however, is that every statist has his own personal favorite government programs, either in the welfare state or the warfare state or both. Thus, whenever somebody suggests that some particular welfare-warfare state program ...
Winning in the War on Drugs by Jacob G. Hornberger December 10, 2012 The war on drugs provides a good example of the power of ideas. Twenty years ago, it was mostly libertarians who were challenging this war and calling for it to be ended. Today, people from all walks of life, including law enforcement officers and judges, are calling for an end to the horribly ...
Debt-Ceiling Scare Nonsense by Jacob G. Hornberger December 7, 2012 The New York Times is at it again, pounding on Republicans for not quickly agreeing to raise the debt ceiling once again. In an editorial this week, the Times said that Republican extortionist and blackmail-like intransigence was endangering economic progress ...
Leave Cuba Alone by Jacob G. Hornberger December 6, 2012 Following up on my blog post of December 4, entitled “It’s Time to End the War against Cuba,” the conservative Heritage Foundation published an article the same day entitled “Three Years as Cuba’s ...
Economic Liberty Is a Right, Not a Privilege by Jacob G. Hornberger December 5, 2012 A few days ago the New York Times carried an article entitled “How Capitalist Are the Cubans?” The article addressed the surge in private economic activity that is taking place within Cuba in response to a decision by the Cuban ...
It’s Time to End the War against Cuba by Jacob G. Hornberger December 4, 2012 When is enough enough? The U.S. military and the CIA have waged war on Cuba for more than 50 years. After a half-century of invasions, assassination attempts, terrorist attacks, and a cruel and inhumane economic embargo, it’s time to bring the entire sordid policy toward Cuba to an end. Not only has it ...
Thank the Troops? How About Apologizing Instead? by Jacob G. Hornberger December 3, 2012 Sometimes I wonder whether the profuse thanks that many Americans shower on the troops shouldn’t instead be an apology. After all, I think it’s a fair assumption that those who do the thanking were not among those who opposed the U.S. government’s invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, as libertarians did. Instead, ...
Enemy-Combatant Nonsense at the Wall Street Journal by Jacob G. Hornberger November 30, 2012 In an editorial this week entitled, “The Tea Party Goes to War,” the Wall Street Journal takes Republicans Rand Paul and Mike Lee and Democrats Dianne Feinstein and Max Baucus to task for proposing an amendment to the current defense authorization bill that would require the federal government to use the federal-court system established by the Constitution to prosecute ...
Grover Norquist is Partially Right by Jacob G. Hornberger November 29, 2012 Statists are ecstatic over the fact that a few Republican members of Congress are turning their backs on the no-tax-hike pledge they signed at the request of GOP activist Grover Norquist. Overjoyed by the fact that the welfare-warfare state might be able to plunder the American citizenry even more, the statists are overjoyed that the federal government might now ...