Daily Articles

Government Failure

by Sheldon Richman September 19, 2008

To hear the media pundits and presidential candidates tell it, you’d think Adam Smith has been president for the last eight years and, with a Congress full of free-market advocates, had enacted an agenda of full-blown laissez-faire. Had that been the case, we would not be in the mess we are in economically. Alas, it has not been the case. Politicians ...

Threatened by the Census Bureau

by Gary D. Barnett September 15, 2008

I just received an official letter from the U.S. Department of Commerce threatening me with prosecution and fines if I do not comply with its Economic Census. The letter came from the Office of the General Counsel/Office of the Chief Counsel for Economic Affairs in Washington, D.C., and was sent to ...

Secession and Slavery

by Scott McPherson September 12, 2008

An interesting commentary, “Lincoln, Secession, and Slavery” by Tibor Machan, published by the Cato Institute on June 1, 2002, was recently brought to my attention. I should say at the outset that I have long been a fan of Machan, and have the utmost respect for ...

McCain’s Self-Righteous Fakery

by Sheldon Richman September 10, 2008

If John McCain keeps up that self-righteous fakery about wanting to be our servant, were in for two rather tedious months until election day. First of all, he also says he wants to be our leader. How can he be both our leader and our servant? We know whats really going on here. The servant shtick is phony humility intended ...

The Government’s War on Money Laundering

by Gary D. Barnett September 3, 2008

As a provider of financial services, once again I am required to attest (i.e., declare to be correct and true or genuine), by using the Compliance Attestation System, that I have read and understand and agree to the third-quarter anti–money-laundering training information. I have no effective choice. I can’t disagree. I ...

Seven Years of Darkness, Tyranny, and Oppression

by Jacob G. Hornberger September 1, 2008

The year 1989 was a year of a great celebration. For that was the year that that hated and reviled symbol of tyranny, empire, and oppression, the Berlin Wall, came crashing down. Not only were the people of East Germany and Eastern Europe celebrating the demise of the Wall, so were ...

The Scope of Public Choice Theory

by Tibor R. Machan September 1, 2008

Prague, Czech Republic. In October 1985 (I think it was) Professor James Buchanan, now at George Mason University's Department of Economics, received the Nobel Prize in his discipline for his pioneering work — in collaboration with Professor Gordon Tullock — in what came to be called public choice theory. The ...

Habeas Corpus Barely Saved

by Sheldon Richman September 1, 2008

Once in a while the fading embers of freedom flare with defiant vigor. That happened in June when the U.S. Supreme Court sternly informed the Bush administration that it may not hold people suspected of being terrorists indefinitely without charge and without judicial review at its prison at Guantanámo Bay, Cuba. In a too-close-for-comfort 5-4 ruling, ...

Are Democrats Better on Privacy and Surveillance?

by James Bovard September 1, 2008

The Bush administration has probably illegally violated Americans’ privacy more than any presidency in at least a generation. Many Americans are understandably ready to throw out Republicans who trampled the Bill of Rights. But is the solution to elect a Democrat? Many liberals were shocked in July when putative Democratic Party presidential nominee Barack Obama ...

Private Roads Work

by Bart Frazier September 1, 2008

The issue of private roads stymies those who might otherwise be diehard libertarians. They can see how abolishing public education makes for better citizens and respects parental rights. They understand that Medicare, Social Security, and other government transfer programs are immoral abominations. They might even be so enlightened as to think that people should be ...

Habeas Corpus: The Bulwark of Our Liberties

by U.S. Supreme Court September 1, 2008

...We begin with a brief account of the history and origins of the writ. Our account proceeds from two propositions. First, protection for the privilege of habeas corpus was one of the few safeguards of liberty specified in a Constitution that, at the outset, had no Bill of Rights. In the system conceived by the Framers the writ had ...

Farewell to Privacy

by Ridgway K. Foley Jr. September 1, 2008

States act predictably. An obscure professional official mutters an apparently innocuous statement to a small and equally obscure audience during a holiday period. In this fashion, states pretend full disclosure while simultaneously cloaking a forthcoming policy from critical insight and thoughtful appraisal. Consider the chilling utterance of one Donald Kerr during the Veterans Day 2007 weekend. Kerr, the principal deputy ...