Daily Articles

Washington’s Continuing Shame in Syria

by Ted Galen Carpenter June 19, 2023

Recent news reports indicate that the Biden administration is orchestrating an agreement between two insurgent groups in northeastern Syria to continue preventing the national government of Bashar al-Assad from regaining control of that region. If true, Washington’s conduct in Syria has reached a new low in terms of basic decency. Normally, there would be much to admire ...

Republicans Miss the Point on Mortgage Fee Hike

by Laurence M. Vance June 16, 2023

Back in January, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) announced that mortgage fees for some borrowers would increase beginning May 1, while other borrowers would see their fees decrease. The FHFA is an independent federal agency that “was established by the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 (HERA) and is responsible for the effective supervision, regulation, ...

The Emergency State’s Plot to Override the Constitution

by John W. Whitehead June 13, 2023

“Rule by indefinite emergency edict risks leaving all of us with a shell of a democracy and civil liberties just as hollow.”—Justice Neil Gorsuch We have become a nation in a permanent state of emergency. Power-hungry and lawless, the government has weaponized one national crisis after another in order to expand its powers and justify all manner of ...

Conspirators for the Constitution

by John W. Whitehead June 8, 2023

“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”— George Orwell Let’s be clear about one thing: seditious conspiracy isn’t a real crime to anyone but the U.S. government. To be convicted of seditious conspiracy, the charge levied against Stewart Rhodes who was sentenced to 18 ...

The Korean War Was a Senseless Waste of American Lives

by Laurence M. Vance June 6, 2023

The remains of an American soldier were laid to rest on Memorial Day at the Andersonville National Cemetery in Georgia after a police car with lights flashing escorted the casket to the cemetery. What made this funeral service so unique and so tragic is that Pfc. Luther Herschel Story was killed on September 1, 1950, during ...

The Real Lessons from the Iraq War, Part 1

by Jacob G. Hornberger June 1, 2023

Part 1 | Part 2 Twenty years ago — March 19, 2003 — the U.S. government launched its invasion and war of aggression against Iraq. It was a deadly intervention, one that resulted in the deaths and injuries of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people and thousands of U.S. soldiers. The invasion and resulting occupation also succeeded in destroying ...

The Iraq War Was a Systematic Atrocity

by James Bovard June 1, 2023

Media coverage of the twentieth anniversary of the start of the Iraq War mostly portrayed the war as a blunder. There were systematic war crimes that have largely vanished into the memory hole, but permitting government officials to vaporize their victims paves the way to new atrocities. On the eve of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, former First Lady Barbara ...

Jeremy Bentham, Usury Laws, and the CFPB

by Laurence M. Vance June 1, 2023

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments in a case that challenges the constitutionality of the funding of the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), “a 21st century agency that implements and enforces Federal consumer financial law and ensures that markets for consumer financial products are fair, transparent, and competitive.” The agency was created by the Dodd-Frank ...

Celebrating Adam Smith on His 300th Birthday

by Richard M. Ebeling June 1, 2023

Three hundred years ago, on June 5, 1723, one of the most important and influential thinkers in modern history, Adam Smith, was born in the small Scottish village of Kirkcaldy. There are few individuals who it can be said have left as lasting and as positive a legacy on humankind as Adam Smith. He authored only two books, The Theory ...

How Evil Are Politicians? Part 2

by George Leef June 1, 2023

Part 1 | Part 2 How Evil Are Politicians?: Essays on Demagoguery by Bryan Caplan (Bet On It Books, 2022) Caplan follows up on that observation with a devastating point about the calculating political mindset. Suppose that a politician had to choose between a populace of nothing but independent, self-supporting individuals or one with a large percentage of envious layabouts ...

No, It Is Not Possible to be an Imperial Libertarian

by Ted Galen Carpenter May 31, 2023

There have been a distressing number of occasions in which someone has said to me that they embrace libertarian principles and positions—“except for foreign policy.”  That stance has usually translated into loyal support for the U.S. government’s militarized approach to world affairs during the Cold War and throughout the period since the collapse of the Soviet Union.  ...

Rein in the FBI

by John W. Whitehead May 26, 2023

“One of the creeping hands of totalitarianism running through the democracy is the Federal Bureau of Investigation… Because why does the FBI do all this? To scare the hell out of people… They work for the establishment and the corporations and the politicos to keep things as they are. And they want to frighten and chill ...