Daily Articles

From Press Room Raids to Indictments, Anything Goes When the Government Piles On

by John W. Whitehead August 23, 2023

“When players are piled on top of each other after a mad scramble for a loose ball, it’s a free-for-all. There are no rules. Anything goes. That’s because there’s nobody in the pile to monitor what’s going on.”—Mike Thomas, sports editor What is playing out before our eyes right now should be familiar to any fan of ...

Have Religious Conservatives Lost Their Minds?

by Laurence M. Vance August 17, 2023

Although the phrase “separation of church and state” does not appear in the Constitution, the concept is based on the First Amendment, which reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, ...

Legalize Prostitution

by Walter Block August 7, 2023

If two unmarried consenting adults have sexual relations with each other, in all states but one (Mississippi) they violate no law. Such an act might be considered immoral by some, but that doesn’t mean that it should be a criminal offense. If the man pays the woman for sex with dinners, a movie, flowers, etc. again there is no crime ...

Republicans Miss the Point on Government Regulations

by Laurence M. Vance August 4, 2023

First, they came for our incandescent light bulbs and gas stoves, and now, they are after our water heaters and dishwashers. Back in 2007, President George W. Bush signed into law the Energy Independence and Security Act. Among other things, it required greater efficiency for light bulbs, which effectively began the phase-out of the incandescent light ...

To Cure Healthcare, We Need to Kill Government Involvement

by Robert E. Wright August 1, 2023

Most Americans need not have seen the recent headline announcing that Connecticut healthcare insurers seek to raise premiums by over 20 percent to realize that America’s healthcare system is badly broken -- overly expensive and insufficiently healthful. What they have yet to fully grasp is that it’s almost entirely the government’s fault. Instead, many applaud socialized medicine, ...

A Pox on Many Houses in Ukraine

by Jacob G. Hornberger August 1, 2023

When Russia invaded Ukraine, it immediately became an easy decision for today’s interventionists. Their position was both simple and simplistic: Ukraine is a sovereign and independent country. Russia initiated a war against Ukraine by invading the country. Therefore, Russia is bad and should be condemned. Moreover, the U.S. government, as well as NATO, should come to Ukraine’s defense by ...

Macaulay and My 75-Cent Epiphanies, Part 1

by James Bovard August 1, 2023

Part 1 | Part 2 Fearing that my writing style was becoming anemic, I recently sought a literary booster shot from my bookshelves. Happily, a dozen volumes of Thomas Macaulay awaited me. Macaulay made history mesmerizing, and I have been captivated by his speed, grace, and wit for 40 years. Nobody would mistake my shelf of Macaulay books for leather-bound ...

“Tax Expenditures” Is a Misnomer

by Laurence M. Vance August 1, 2023

The April 18 deadline for Americans to file their 2022 income tax returns had hardly passed before House Republicans began to talk about reviving three tax breaks for businesses that had lapsed or begun to phrase out under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) that the Republican-controlled Congress passed, and President Trump signed into law, in 2017. The TCJA The ...

George Goschen on Laissez-Faire and the Dangers of Government Interference

by Richard M. Ebeling August 1, 2023

The counterrevolution against the classical liberalism of the nineteenth century has been at work for more than 150 years. In the 1840s, 1850s, and 1860s, the triumph of a philosophy of individual rights and liberty, impartial rule of law, private property, freedom of trade and enterprise domestically and in international relations, and attempts to mitigate, if not end, wars ...

There Is No Right to a Religious Accommodation

by Laurence M. Vance July 19, 2023

Overshadowed by the Supreme Court decision in the case of Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College that struck down affirmative action programs at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina — which was decided on the same day — was the court’s ruling in ...

Uncle Sam, War Criminal

by Ted Galen Carpenter July 18, 2023

U.S. officials invariably stress their commitment to human rights and are extremely quick to condemn other countries for alleged violations. However, Washington’s conduct too often makes a mockery of that supposed commitment. The latest examples of such hypocrisy are two aspects of U.S. policy regarding the Russia-Ukraine war, both involving the provision of highly controversial weapons to ...

Why Not Equalize Beauty, Talent, and Intelligence?

by Walter Block July 12, 2023

A basic premise of the “progressive” (actually, regressive) left is that the rich have too much money and the poor have too little. Therefore, they say, it is justified to take wealth away from the former and give it to the latter. The typical means leftists use to accomplish this is to adopt a steeply progressive tax ...