Daily Articles

As Judges Kill Off Habeas Corpus for the Guantánamo Prisoners, Will the Supreme Court Act?

by Andy Worthington November 28, 2011

When it comes to Guantánamo, the prisoners held in the Bush administrations experimental prison have mostly been abandoned by those who should have acted on their behalf in all three branches of government the executive branch, Congress, and the judiciary. In June 2004, for a brief moment, George W. Bush's excesses were checked by the Supreme Court, which took the ...

Central Planning at the Federal Reserve

by Sheldon Richman November 25, 2011

While it is understandable that inflation hawks keep a close watch on the Federal Reserve’s money-creation activities, an equally worrisome Fed activity is taking place right under their noses. Whether or not the Fed is expanding the money supply, it has undoubtedly moved into a new activity under cover of addressing the financial crisis and recession: central planner of ...

Criminalizing Your Internet Profile?

by Wendy McElroy November 23, 2011

The New American (15/11) states, The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is backing a controversial component of an existing computer fraud law that makes it a crime to use a fake name on Facebook or embellish your weight on an online dating profile such as eHarmony. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), a 25-year-old law that mainly addresses ...

War with Iran Would Be Madness

by Sheldon Richman November 23, 2011

President Obama's refusal to rule out military action against Iran and GOP contender Mitt Romney's recent threat of war against Iran should appall anyone who believes, with the free-market liberal Ludwig von Mises, that not war, but peace, is the father of all things. If the U.S. government or its client state Israel were to attack Iran, all hell ...

Drug-Sentencing Disparities

by Laurence M. Vance November 22, 2011

As many as 12,000 inmates in federal prison could soon be released early including 1,800 who are eligible for immediate release thanks to the U.S. Sentencing Commissions vote earlier this year to provide retroactive application of the Fair Sentencing Act that was passed by Congress last year. The new policy took effect on November1. Does that mean that murderers and ...

GOP Debate Reveals Depraved and Deluded Political Class

by Tim Kelly November 21, 2011

The most recent GOP foreign policy debate revealed the depraved and deluded state of Americas political class. There was a time when U.S. presidents sought plausible deniability for things like torture and assassination; now such sordid practices are openly supported by candidates seeking the country's highest elected office. Several candidates were asked their opinion regarding waterboarding. Herman Cain said that ...

The EEOC’s Forgotten Racial Racketeering

by James Bovard November 21, 2011

Few federal agencies have a more brazen history of trampling due process and basic fairness than the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. From the time the EEOC was created in 1965, it has continually stretched its power and sought to win by legal intimidation. Its latest shenanigans need to be judged in light of its early bureaucratic racketeering. The 1964 Civil ...

It Costs $72 Million a Year to Hold Cleared Prisoners at Guantánamo

by Andy Worthington November 18, 2011

Last week, the exorbitant expense of maintaining the Bush administrations war on terror prison at Guantánamo was revealed in the Miami Herald, where Carol Rosenberg explained that Congress provided $139million to operate the prison last year. With 171 prisoners still held, that works out to $812,865 per prisoner nearly 30times as much as it costs to keep a ...

Industrializing Human Suffering

by Wendy McElroy November 16, 2011

Is Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain guilty of sexually harassing women? Only the people directly involved know for sure. But so many high-profile cases of alleged sexual abuse have crumbled under scrutiny for example, Dominique Strauss-Kahn's alleged rape of a New York City maid that some skepticism is called for. Indeed, the presumption of innocence offered to ...

Thank You for Your Service

by Rich Schwartzman November 16, 2011

It was another Veterans Day without me wearing the display cap with my old chevrons and campaign ribbons. I put that cap together in the mid-1980s to help me deal with survivors guilt. I had spent 16 months in Southeast Asia, but I was at U-Tapao in Thailand, not a base in Vietnam. U-Tapao was a major B-52 base where ...

Nanny State Disapproval: Manipulating Your Diet through Taxation

by Fergus Hodgson November 15, 2011

Twenty-six states intrude on our nutritional decisions by taxing soda at a higher rate than other groceries, and seventeen states do the same for candy. As if that were not bad enough in the land of the free, legislators continue to push for new and heftier taxes in this realm, with new soda taxes pending in fourteen states. A new ...

Drug Testing for Welfare Benefits

by Laurence M. Vance November 15, 2011

Lawmakers in dozens of states are considering proposals to require drug testing of welfare recipients. In these days of budget tightening, states are looking for ways to balance their budgets without raising taxes. The drug-testing requirements are supposed to save the states money, since they will cause some families to be prohibited from receiving welfare benefits. The proposed measures seem ...