Daily Articles

Head Start, Food Stamps, and Libertarians

by Laurence M. Vance January 30, 2013

New reports were recently published about the effectiveness of two long-standing and familiar government programs: Head Start and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly and still informally known as food stamps. There is nothing unusual about that. Such reports are issued all the time by agencies in the government and organizations outside of it. Few ever read them, ...

Mali: Here We Go Again

by Sheldon Richman January 28, 2013

In testimony before Senate and House committees, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton enthusiastically endorsed increased U.S. intervention in Africa. When government officials seem incapable of learning obvious lessons from the recent past, maybe their incentive is not to learn but to keep doing the same destructive things. President Obama’s inaugural speech contained this line, which has gone quite ...

Who Will Protect Us from Our Protectors?

by Tim Kelly January 28, 2013

It didn’t take long for the megalomaniacs and opportunists in Washington to exploit the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, as a pretext for another attempt to annul the Second Amendment and expand their power. Never one to let a good crisis go to waste, President Obama signed a series of executive actions expanding federal gun control, all while flanked by children ...

TGIF: Government Undermines Social Cooperation

by Sheldon Richman January 25, 2013

I should know better than to take seriously the insipid words of presidential speechwriters, especially those who composed an inaugural address. Still, I can’t let some of the words President Obama read at Monday’s inauguration pass without comment. For example, Obama said this: Preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action. For the American people can no more meet ...

A Hollow Inauguration

by Andy Worthington January 25, 2013

On January 11, the 11th anniversary of the opening of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo, I was in Washington D.C., with human rights groups, lawyers, anti-torture groups (mostly religious), and other concerned persons, calling on Barack Obama to fulfill the promise he made to close the prison when he took office in 2009. It was my ...

The Jacob Hornberger Show: January 20, 2013 (video)

by Jacob G. Hornberger January 23, 2013

The One Good Thing That Happened During Obama’s First Term

by Laurence M. Vance January 23, 2013

It has been said that every president makes you nostalgic for his predecessor. This has been true since John Adams signed into law the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798. But since the election of Barack Obama in 2008, I think I have heard it said more often than usual. Although I am not the least bit nostalgic for any ...

Jail Time for Hurting Someone’s Feelings?

by Scott McPherson January 22, 2013

It may fairly be said that there is a special place in hell for anyone who makes fun of a disabled person. Should there also be a place for him in jail? Apparently so. On November 28 a municipal judge in Canton, Ohio, sentenced William Bailey to 30 days in jail after Bailey pleaded no contest to criminal charges of disorderly ...

Three Reasons Why the Charges against Bradley Manning Should be Dropped

by Tim Kelly January 22, 2013

A military judge has rejected a request to dismiss all charges against U.S. soldier Bradley Manning, who stands accused of passing secret material to the whistle-blower website WikiLeaks. Judge Denise Lind said there was no prosecutorial misconduct, ruling out the dropping of all 22 counts against Manning. The judge, however, did acknowledge Manning’s mistreatment at the hands of the U.S. ...

Did the Government Drive Aaron Swartz to Suicide?

by Sheldon Richman January 21, 2013

In Les Misérables, an obsessed French police officer, Javert, relentlessly pursues Jean Valjean, a man who represents no danger to society but whose minor infraction brought down the wrath of the brutal government, including 19 years of hard labor and lifetime parole. America, too, has its Javerts. Zealous and ruthless federal prosecutors have the power to torment people for trivial ...

The Tension within American Exceptionalism

by Wendy McElroy January 21, 2013

The concept of American exceptionalism is a key foundation of American freedom and militarism, individualism and imperialism. The meaning of the term seems to be elastic, changing through time and depending upon the purpose of each speaker. It has suffered a fate similar to the word “liberalism” in drifting far from its historical roots. What is American exceptionalism? One of the ...

TGIF: What’s Need Got to Do with It?

by Sheldon Richman January 18, 2013

Recent public-policy debates have taken an ominous turn. Proponents of new government impositions increasingly justify their proposals by asserting that the individuals who would be adversely affected should not complain because they do not need whatever the government action would deny them. We've heard this during debates over both higher taxes on upper-income people and gun control. Those favoring higher ...