Obama Proposes Swift Execution of Alleged 9/11 Conspirators by Andy Worthington June 8, 2009 In a leak that seems designed to gauge public opinion — and that of lawyers and other relevant parties around the world — anonymous officials in the Obama administration have told the New York Times about a proposal, in draft legislation to be submitted to Congress, which, as the Times put it, “would clear the way for detainees facing ...
Terrorism Is a Crime by Sheldon Richman June 2, 2009 Contrary to the U.S. government’s position, acts of terrorism are crimes that have little in common with acts of war. The terrorists whom Americans worry about are not trying to overthrow the U.S. government or conquer and occupy the United States. Instead, they are trying to obtain vengeance for U.S. government intervention in the Middle ...
Gold and Freedom, Part 3 by Jacob G. Hornberger June 1, 2009 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt were the two presidents most responsible for the abandonment of sound money in the United States. These two U.S. presidents opened the floodgates to the monetary debauchery under which today’s Americans have suffered for their entire lives. In waging war to prevent ...
Blame Republicans for Big Government by Sheldon Richman June 1, 2009 Government power is growing, and unless President Barack Obama and the majority in Congress have a libertarian epiphany, it will continue to grow for years. Obama’s 2010 budget will come in at more than $3.4 trillion, with a deficit of well over $1 trillion. Though the deficit will decline — if the administration’s dubious projections ...
A Child At Guantánamo: The Unending Torment of Mohamed Jawad by Andy Worthington June 1, 2009 In all the recent hysteria about the supposed dangers posed by the remaining 240 prisoners at Guantánamo, it has been easy to forget that sensible appraisals of the number of individuals with any meaningful connection to terrorism have long indicated that no more than a few dozen of those still held should be regarded as any kind of significant ...
The Post–9/11 Roundup of Innocents, Part 2 by James Bovard June 1, 2009 Part 1 | Part 2 In the weeks after the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration constantly misrepresented how much power it was seeking over aliens. In a September 25 speech to FBI agents, Bush declared, “We’re asking Congress for the authority to hold suspected terrorists who are in the process of being deported until they’re deported.... We believe it’s ...
The Unemployment Racket by Laurence M. Vance June 1, 2009 Americans have many options when it comes to insurance. They can freely get health insurance, life insurance, cancer insurance, dental insurance, disability insurance, homeowners’ insurance, renters’ insurance, parcel-shipping insurance, et cetera. Although auto insurance is required by state laws, it is still obtained from a private insurance company of one’s choosing. One can even get insurance at the blackjack ...
Roosevelt’s Crusade against Gold by Jim Powell June 1, 2009 Early in the New Deal, Franklin Roosevelt became convinced that to get America out of the Great Depression, the federal government must gain total control over money. The Federal Reserve seemed to have been powerless during the contraction, so Roosevelt asserted the power of the presidency. He began demonizing gold. Why gold? For centuries, people have viewed gold as the ...
Hamilton’s Betrayal by George Leef June 1, 2009 Hamilton’s Curse: How Jefferson’s Archenemy Betrayed the American Revolution — and What It Means for America Today by Thomas J. DiLorenzo (Crown Forum 2008); 232 pages. There is a tendency among Americans to think of the nation’s Founders as a group of wealthy white men who owned property, didn’t like ...
Not another Runaway Entitlement Program by Jim Powell May 27, 2009 We have had more than seven decades of experience with entitlement programs, since Franklin Delano Roosevelt introduced the first big one in 1935. Now Barack Obama is pushing another big entitlement program — government-run health care. We don’t need to rely on his promises, since we can reflect on our ...
Guantánamo and the Many Failures of U.S. Politicians by Andy Worthington May 26, 2009 In the summer of 2002, as Jane Mayer described it in her book The Dark Side, “The CIA, concerned by the paucity of valuable information emanating from , dispatched a senior intelligence analyst, who was fluent in Arabic and expert on Islamic extremism, to find out what the problem was.” After interviewing a random sample of two dozen ...
Socialism: Faith Trumps Reality by Ralph R. Reiland May 21, 2009 Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman got it right about a lot of things, but he was overly optimistic when he wrote in 1990 that socialism was dead. “Ten years ago, many people around the world believed that socialism was a viable, even the most promising, system for promoting material prosperity and human freedom,” wrote Friedman. ...