Faith in Freedom by Jacob G. Hornberger September 11, 2009 Whenever libertarians suggest that America’s socialist programs should be immediately repealed, rather than reformed or gradually reduced, statists inevitably react with shock and horror. The statists feel that Americans could never survive if their welfare-state dole was suddenly ended. What would happen if public schooling, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, farm subsidies, education grants, income ...
Plaxico Burress’s Doomsday Weapon by Jacob G. Hornberger September 10, 2009 The inanity of gun control is manifesting itself in the case of former New York Giants’ wide receiver Plaxico Burress. Thanks to New York City’s strict gun laws, which carry a mandatory minimum sentence, Burress is facing 3 1/2 years in the penitentiary. Burress, who had an expired concealed carry permit issued by the State ...
The Intellectual Paralysis of Statists by Jacob G. Hornberger September 10, 2009 A standard liberal argument for opposing the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan is that if the federal government wasn’t spending so much money over there, it could afford to pay for a national health-care program. Conservatives look at it the other way around. If Barack Obama wasn’t spending so much money on federal welfare, the ...
Public School Indoctrination by Jacob G. Hornberger September 9, 2009 Yesterday, I blogged about the indoctrination that is an inherent part of any government school system, whether in Cuba, the U.S., England, North Korea, or any other country. Government officials have a vested interest in ensuring a citizenry that accepts the official version of things and a citizenry that is compliant, obedient, and supportive ...
Is Obama’s Speech Indoctrination? by Jacob G. Hornberger September 8, 2009 You can always count on conservatives for injecting a bit of humor, albeit unintentionally, into any national political debate. The latest example involves their railing against President Obama’s plan to deliver a speech to the public-school students of America. The conservatives are calling the president’s speech “indoctrination.” Why is that funny? No, not for ...
Enough Is Enough in Afghanistan by Jacob G. Hornberger September 4, 2009 As Americans are gradually discovering, the 8-year occupation of Afghanistan is about opposing the Taliban’s attempt to regain political power, not about capturing or killing Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Thus, the occupation is about empire. That’s the way empires operate — placing their people into positions of power in foreign countries. The idea is ...
Who Won World War II? by Jacob G. Hornberger September 3, 2009 Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is embroiled in a tiff with the Poles over World War II. Like U.S. interventionists, Putin takes the position that World War II constituted a great victory for the Soviet Union, the United States, and the Allied Powers. They defeated Nazi Germany, after all, saving Poland and the ...
A Need for Some Soul-Searching by Jacob G. Hornberger September 2, 2009 Close your eyes, let your mind roam, and imagine the following: You are living in a country where the government has the power to round up whomever it wants, incarcerate them for as long it is wants, deny them due process and a trial, and torture them. The government is attacking and occupying other ...
Jaycee Lee Dugard and the Drug War by Jacob G. Hornberger September 2, 2009 An interesting question arises in the case of Phillip Garrido, the man who allegedly kidnapped 11-year-old Jaycee Lee Dugard, raped her, and kept her captive for almost 20 years: Did the drug war play a role in this horrible event? Having previously been convicted of kidnapping and rape, Garrido had been released from a federal ...
Hornberger’s Blog, September 2009 by Jacob G. Hornberger September 1, 2009 Wednesday, September 30, 2009 Free Speech Loses Out in Kahre Case by Jacob G. Hornberger A federal judge has ruled against the ACLU’s motion to quash a subpoena that federal prosecutors had issued against the Las Vegas Review Journal in the Robert Kahre legal-tender/tax resistance case in Las Vegas. During the trial (see my commentaries on the Kahre case here , ...
Torture Works. Just Ask U.S. POWs from the Korean War by Jacob G. Hornberger August 31, 2009 An August 29 Washington Post article entitled “How a Detainee Became an Asset” details how the CIA’s “harsh interrogation techniques” caused Khalid Sheik Mohammed to become a CIA “asset,” meaning that he sung like a canary, confessed his crimes, disclosed everything he knew, and cooperated with the CIA. Well, there you have it. ...
Prosecute the Torturers by Jacob G. Hornberger August 28, 2009 It’s interesting to see conservatives calling for the U.S. Attorney General to ignore evidence that people have knowingly violated federal criminal laws against torture. Aren’t conservatives usually the law-and-order crowd in this country? The argument that conservatives are making for ignoring violations of federal criminal law seems to be that because the suspected criminals ...
