Daily Articles

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 ...

Dress Codes and a Free Society

by Laurence M. Vance May 1, 2013

At first glance, the idea of dress codes seems foreign to a free society. Actually, however, the case is just the opposite. That truth was manifest most recently at, of all places, a press conference held at the Capitol Hill Club in Washington, D.C., to announce the inauguration of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. As recounted ...

Obama, Union Buster?

by Wendy McElroy May 1, 2013

Organized labor has been a bedrock of President Obama’s political power. How far will he go to preserve support from this key Democratic constituency? On April 16, the United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers and Allied Workers (UURWAW) became the first union to officially call for the repeal of Obama’s signature legislation — the Affordable Care Act, also known as ...

National Defense, Foreign Policy, and Gun Control

by Jacob G. Hornberger May 1, 2013

One of the most popular mantras in the post–9/11 era involves praising the troops for “defending our nation” and “protecting our rights and freedoms.” But how many people ever really think about what those mantras really mean? Indeed, how many people ever give serious thought to what would happen to our nation and to our rights and freedoms if ...

Venturing into Mali

by Sheldon Richman May 1, 2013

Murray Rothbard once observed that it was getting harder and harder to use the reductio ad absurdum device to ridicule U.S. government policy. Things haven’t changed. Thanks to recent events, we may no longer use “Timbuktu,” a name associated with a far-off middle-of-nowhere location, in a reductio about U.S. interventionist foreign policy. The U.S. government has helped the French ...

How Drug-Courier Profiles Begot Terrorist Watch Lists

by James Bovard May 1, 2013

Friends of freedom have been chagrined over the past decade to learn that federal terrorist watch lists incorporate criteria — such as openly praising the Constitution or the Second Amendment — that put them in the crosshairs. More than a million names are now included on the catch-all terrorist watch list maintained by U.S. government agencies. The feds’ definition ...

Who Killed Greece?

by Anthony J. Papalas May 1, 2013

The Greek tragedy began in 1981 when PASOK, the Pan-Hellenic Socialist Party, won the national elections. Andreas Papandreou, who had been a member of the Greek Communist Party and had received his Ph.D. in economics at Harvard in 1942, founded and led PASOK. He had published significant scholarly works with a Keynesian slant and served as chairman of the ...