Abolish the IRS — and the Income Tax with It by Sheldon Richman May 16, 2013 The Internal Revenue Service has been caught engaging in political profiling while processing applications for tax-exempt status. In this case it was against organizations with “tea-party” or “patriot ” in their names and other right-wing groups. Next time it could be libertarian or left-wing antiwar and pro-civil-liberties groups. No dissenter can ever rest assured he is safe from the
Crises and Opportunities by Jacob G. Hornberger May 16, 2013 The following 7-minute speech was delivered to 240 people at a meeting of the Charleston Meeting, a prestigious monthly discussion club in Charleston, South Carolina. Other speakers were U.S. Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C), Congressman Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.), Congressman-elect Mark Sanford (R-S.C.), Jim Capretta (American Enterprise Institute), Alex Nowrasteh (Cato Institute), Ken Abramowitz (New York financial planner), and Mark Mix ...
Obama’s Bid for Unilateral Power over Elections by Wendy McElroy May 14, 2013 “I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how.” — Joseph Stalin (1923), as quoted in The Memoirs of Stalin’s Former Secretary by Boris Bazhanov. To glimpse the political future of America, turn off the news, ignore public statements from officials, and ...
The Libertarian Angle: May 13, 2013 by Future of Freedom Foundation May 13, 2013 The Libertarian Angle features FFF vice president Sheldon Richman and president Jacob Hornberger. The Libertarian Angle airs weekly.
TGIF: No Intervention in Syria by Sheldon Richman May 10, 2013 If after the debacles in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya (dare I say Vietnam?) some people still want the U.S. government to intervene — further — in the war inside Syria (but fueled by outsiders), we must conclude, not that they can’t learn the lessons of recent history, but that they won’t because doing so would be contrary ...
The Calling: The Problem with Political Heroes and Villains by Steven Horwitz May 9, 2013 It’s sometimes hard to tell the coverage of politics from the coverage of sports. People seem to root for political parties as though they were sports teams, cheering Team Red or Team Blue on to victory with the same passion they bring to the Super Bowl. Individual team members are followed with the same intensity as are star players ...
A Modest Gun-Safety Proposal by Sheldon Richman May 8, 2013 The problem with the advocates of “gun-safety” laws is that they don’t think big enough. They favor expanded background checks, greater monitoring of those stigmatized as “mentally ill,” and a ban on the manufacture of scary-looking semiautomatic rifles and high-capacity magazines. But we know these measures would not have prevented the horrible shootings that have occurred in recent years. The ...
Gay Sex, Raw Milk, and a Free Society by Laurence M. Vance May 7, 2013 Although gay sex and raw milk have nothing to do with each other, they have everything to do with individual liberty, private property, and a free society. The governor or Montana recently signed into law a bill to strike unconstitutional language from a law on the books that criminalized sexual acts between two people of the same sex. However, he ...
The Libertarian Angle: May 6, 2013 by Future of Freedom Foundation May 6, 2013 The Libertarian Angle features FFF vice president Sheldon Richman and president Jacob Hornberger. The Libertarian Angle airs weekly.
TGIF: Criminal Government by Sheldon Richman May 3, 2013 “A nonpartisan, independent review of interrogation and detention programs in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks concludes that ‘it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture’ and that the nation’s highest officials bore ultimate responsibility for it.” So began a page-one story in the New York Times that should have ...
Eloquent but Unconvincing: President Obama’s Response to the Guantánamo Hunger Strike by Andy Worthington May 3, 2013 On Tuesday, Barack Obama gave his first detailed response to the prisonwide hunger strike that has been raging at Guantánamo for 12 weeks, responding to a question posed at a news conference by CBS News correspondent Bill Plante. He asked, “As you’re probably aware, there’s a growing hunger strike at Guantánamo Bay among prisoners. Is it any ...
The Calling: In Defense of Complex, Global, Fast Living by Steven Horwitz May 2, 2013 In the wealthy Western world, many of the products we buy come from the far reaches of the earth, made by people we don’t know, with inputs about which we are ignorant. The increased number and variety of consumer products give us a range of choices that would boggle the minds of earlier generations. And technology enables us to ...