Daily Articles

Ford’s Legacy: Lawless Government

by James Bovard March 1, 2007

The death of former President Gerald Ford unleashed a tidal wave of bathos and political bunkum across the land. Ford was far more exalted in death than he had been during his time in office. Slate’s Timothy Noah critically noted, Within the narrow confines of Permanent Washington — the journalists, lobbyists, and congressional lifers who are the city’s avatars ...

An Open Letter to High-School Students: Pay Attention to Government

by Bart Frazier March 1, 2007

To every high-school student in this country between the ages of 15 and 18, this letter is to you. If there is ever something that you should take the time to learn about, it is government. Why? — you ask. If your idea of government is endless babbling by old congressional ...

Funding Leviathan, Part 1

by Laurence M. Vance March 1, 2007

Part 1 | Part 2 The federal leviathan is fed by taxes. According to the Congressional Budget Office, during the federal government’s most recent fiscal year (FY 2006), which ended on September 30, 2006, total revenues were approximately $2.403 trillion. Most of this revenue was, of course, raised as a result of taxes confiscated from the American ...

Public-Access TV: Fascism in Action

by Scott McPherson March 1, 2007

Imagine a public-access aisle at your local grocery store. The store would provide the goods it can profit from on other aisles, but there would be a special aisle where certain merchandise would be offered because the local government required it to be offered. Local residents would go to city council meetings and produce petitions signed by their neighbors saying ...

The Active Authoritarianism of Teddy Roosevelt

by George Leef March 1, 2007

Bully Boy by Jim Powell (Crown Forum, 2006); 329 pages, $27.50. Most historians rank Teddy Roosevelt as one of America’s great or near-great presidents. That is mainly because he is regarded as a “progressive” — a trustbuster, a proponent of government regulation of the ...

The Pentagon’s Power to Arrest, Torture, and Execute Americans

by Jacob G. Hornberger February 28, 2007

Also see: “The Critical Dilemma Facing Pro-War Libertarians” “It Can't Happen Here” “The Islamo-Fascist Rationale for Abandoning Liberty” The president and the Pentagon now wield the omnipotent power to arrest, torture, and execute any American they label an “enemy combatant.” It is impossible to overstate the significance of this power. ...

Stop Them!

by Sheldon Richman February 26, 2007

What is going on in America? The Bush administration’s own National Intelligence Estimate says the situation is so bad in Iraq that the term “civil war” is inadequate to describe it. A government inspector confirms what we already knew: that serious doubts about Iraq’s putative weapons of mass destruction and ...

Imperial Hopefuls

by Sheldon Richman February 22, 2007

As the parade of presidential wannabes grows longer, the people paying attention this early are probably asking themselves, “Can I picture so and so as president?” This is a bad question on many levels. Politics, and presidential politics most especially, is little more than theater. The candidate who can create the right ...

Know When to Fold ’Em

by Sheldon Richman February 17, 2007

Hawks such as Sen. John McCain who oppose Senate resolutions against the so-called troop surge in Iraq make a pernicious argument. Such a resolution “is basically a vote of no confidence in the men and women we are sending over there,” McCain said. “We’re saying, ‘We’re ...

Student Scholarships and Speakers Robert Scheer and Richard Ebeling

by Jacob G. Hornberger February 16, 2007

As I pointed out in last weeks conference update, we have received a donation that enables us to give 5 free student admissions to our June 1-4 conference Restoring the Republic: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties. If you are a student and would like to attend the conference, please send us an essay on any aspect of foreign policy and ...

Freedom? Fat Chance!

by Ralph R. Reiland February 16, 2007

Harper’s magazine reports that Americans burn an extra 938 million gallons of gasoline each year because we’re too fat. That estimate of how much the nation’s chubses are wasting in gas comes from a study by Sheldon Jacobson, professor of computer science at the University of Illinois and director of the ...

The Critical Dilemma Facing Pro-War Libertarians

by Jacob G. Hornberger February 14, 2007

Also see: The Pentagon's Power to Arrest, Torture, and Execute Americans It Can't Happen Here The Islamo-Fascist Rationale for Abandoning Liberty The 9/11 attacks exposed a major fault line in the libertarian movement. On one side of the divide were those libertarians who contended that the 9/11 attacks were a direct consequence of U.S. foreign policy specifically the bad things that ...