Regulation Policy & Welfare

Marry and Let Marry

by Sheldon Richman May 3, 2004

President George W. Bush has amply demonstrated that he is a stranger to the U.S. Constitution. He’s meddled in education, about which the Constitution has not one word. He aspires to give taxpayers’ money to religious groups doing social work, despite the First Amendment’s barrier to state entanglement with ...

Privatize the Airwaves!

by Sheldon Richman April 26, 2004

The Federal Communications Commission has begun a new crackdown on “indecency” on radio and television. While the baring of Janet Jackson’s breast during the Super Bowl halftime show created a stir, the FCC has mainly focused on “shock-jock” radio. Someone called Bubba the Love Sponge lost his ...

Roads, Cars, and Responsibility

by Scott McPherson April 7, 2004

In the 1995 hit film French Kiss, actress Meg Ryan said she preferred to get around “as nature intended: in my car.” Though rarely stated so explicitly, this attitude sums up the typical American’s approach to travel. As anyone living in the Washington metropolitan area can attest, the result ...

Rebuilding America: Domestic Policy

by Jacob G. Hornberger April 1, 2004

Almost everything the federal government has touched for the last several decades is in crisis. The war on drugs: failure and destruction. Social Security: fraudulent and bankrupt. Foreign policy: led to 9/11 and massive assaults on civil liberties. Medicare and Medicaid: caused health-care costs to soar. Education: public schooling is worse than ever. Monetary policy: a plunging dollar in ...

President Bush Owes Martha Stewart a Pardon

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 31, 2004

In my March 24 article, “I Don’t Remember,” I pointed out that President Bush and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice had to be lying when they said that they could not remember the September 12, 2001, meeting with former U.S. Counterterrorism Chief Richard A. Clarke. Recall that ...

Martha Down Under: Kangaroos in the Courtroom

by Candice E. Jackson March 15, 2004

For all of the supposed high drama the Martha Stewart case produced, in the end, it was all quite anticlimactic. According to Time Magazine’s version of the trial and verdict : Stewart was caught in a simple lie, the evidence so compelling ...

Martha Stewart Case: Where’s the Victim?

by Sheldon Richman March 10, 2004

We live in a topsy-turvy world. People may ask politicians to give them some of the loot taken from the taxpayers — and no one is even suspected of wrongdoing. Yet if someone’s stock sale piques the curiosity of government investigators armed with vague legal concepts such as insider ...

The Wrongful Conviction of Martha Stewart

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 10, 2004

So what’s wrong with the criminal conviction of Martha Stewart? She lied to federal officials, right? And it’s against the law to lie to federal officials, right? So what’s the problem? From the standpoint of the U.S. Justice Department, there is, of course, no problem at all. The law ...

Derivative Crimes and Federal Injustice

by William L. Anderson March 1, 2004

One of the common complaints levied against criminal justice in the United States is that criminals often are acquitted because of “legal technicalities.” For example, defendants who seem to be guilty find charges dismissed because police did not properly inform them of their “Miranda Rights,” or evidence that clearly demonstrates guilt is kept from legal proceedings because of the ...

The Government Doesn’t Belong in Television

by Scott McPherson February 6, 2004

Any material element or resource which, in order to become of use or value to men, requires the application of human knowledge and effort, should be private property — by the right of those who apply the knowledge and effort. — Ayn Rand, “The Property ...

I’ll Take Free Choice

by Sheldon Richman February 1, 2004

Intellectuals who disdain the common man’s freedom never run out of rationalizations for government control. In a recent New York Times op-ed touting his book, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, psychology professor Barry Schwartz criticized political reforms aimed at expanding choice. He argued that “for many ...

Price Controls Can Be Deadly

by Jacob G. Hornberger December 12, 2003

Who would ever dream that the economic fallacies to which U.S. officials subscribe could turn deadly? Yet that’s what recently happened in Baghdad, where an American GI was shot dead while guarding long lines of angry and disgruntled consumers at a gasoline station in Baghdad. Why are there long lines ...