Criminal Justice

Shot Down Like Dogs in the Street

by John W. Whitehead August 3, 2017

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned. —William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming” Things are falling apart. How much longer we can sustain the fiction that we live in a constitutional republic, I cannot say, but anarchy is being loosed ...

The FBI’s Forgotten Criminal Record

by James Bovard August 1, 2017

President Trump’s firing of FBI chief James Comey on May 9 spurred much of the media and many Democrats to rally around America’s most powerful domestic federal agency. But the FBI has a long record of both deceit and incompetence. Five years ago, Americans learned that the FBI was teaching its agents that “the FBI has the ability to ...

Policing for Profit

by John W. Whitehead July 27, 2017

Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner. The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principle — a mere counter in a grotesque and knavish game. If the right pressure could be applied ...

Not Guilty: The Power of Nullification to Counteract Government Tyranny

by John W. Whitehead November 4, 2016

“The people have the power, all we have to do is awaken that power in the people. The people are unaware. They’re not educated to realize that they have power. The system is so geared that everyone believes the government will fix everything. We are the government.”—John Lennon How do you balance the scales of justice at a ...

All the Ways You Can Comply and Still Die During An Encounter with Police

by John W. Whitehead October 4, 2016

“Police are specialists in violence. They are armed, trained, and authorized to use force. With varying degrees of subtlety, this colors their every action. Like the possibility of arrest, the threat of violence is implicit in every police encounter. Violence, as well as the law, is what they represent.”—Author Kristian Williams How do you protect yourself from flying ...

Killer Instincts: When Police Become Judge, Jury and Executioner

by John W. Whitehead August 12, 2016

Any police officer who shoots to kill is playing with fire. In that split second of deciding whether to shoot and where to aim, that officer has appointed himself judge, jury and executioner over a fellow citizen. And when an officer fires a killing shot at a fellow citizen not once or twice but three and four and five times, ...

Supreme Fashion Reject

by James Bovard January 1, 2016

“You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and truth,” the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen declared in his famous play An Enemy of the People.  Unfortunately, the justices on the Supreme Court of the United States — the sacred burial ground of Americans’ rights and liberties — are not members of Ibsen’s ...

Drivers, Beware: The Costly, Deadly Dangers of Traffic Stops in the American Police State

by John W. Whitehead July 30, 2015

“The Fourth Amendment was designed to stand between us and arbitrary governmental authority. For all practical purposes, that shield has been shattered, leaving our liberty and personal integrity subject to the whim of every cop on the beat, trooper on the highway and jail official. The framers would be appalled.”—Herman Schwartz, The Nation Trying to predict the outcome ...

The American Nightmare: The Tyranny of the Criminal Justice System

by John W. Whitehead July 23, 2015

  How can the life of such a man Be in the palm of some fool’s hand? To see him obviously framed Couldn’t help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land Where justice is a game. —Bob Dylan, “Hurricane” Justice in America is not all it’s cracked up to be. Just ask Jeffrey Deskovic, who spent 16 years in prison ...

The Libertarian Angle: Trial by Jury

by Jacob G. Hornberger May 12, 2015

Each week, FFF president Jacob Hornberger discusses the hot topics of the day. This week, the folly of the minimum wage. The Libertarian Angle airs weekly. Podcast here.

Eric Holder’s Leviathan-Loving Legacy

by James Bovard May 1, 2015

Last summer, Attorney General Eric Holder solemnly declared, “The name ought to be changed. It’s an offensive name.” Holder observed that despite the organization’s “storied history,” it could “increase their fan base” by changing their name — “if they did something that from my perspective that is so obviously right.” Unfortunately, Holder was referring to the name of the Washington ...

Cops and Donuts Don’t Mix

by James Bovard April 1, 2015

On a Sunday morning early last summer, I was driving south across the Potomac River to a hike in Fairfax County, Virginia. The previous night the hike leader posted online a map of the jaunt. It looked like a typical suburban stroll until I saw a Dunkin’ Donuts marked near the start point. As the Food and Drug Administration ...