Daily Articles

Hidden Government

by Sheldon Richman September 1, 2006

Americans pride themselves on “self-government.” But when significant policies are undertaken without their notice, much less consent, self-government is a cruel hoax. Reporting by Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker and other sources indicate that the Bush administration actively helped the Israeli government plan an attack on Lebanon. When it ...

The Perils of Emergency Power

by James Bovard September 1, 2006

The New York Times reported on June 23 that President Bush invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to justify warrantless searches of Americans and other peoples financial data. According to Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levey, the U.S. government may have conducted hundreds of thousands of warrantless searches of Americans and others personal financial data. The Bush administration used broad ...

The New Deal and Roosevelt’s Seizure of Gold: A Legacy of Theft and Inflation, Part 2

by William L. Anderson September 1, 2006

Part 1 | Part 2 The monetary system of the United States at the time of the Depression could not sustain inflation very long because the country was on a gold standard. If people sensed that the government was printing too many paper dollars, by law they could redeem those dollars from the government’s store of gold. Moreover, ...

Monopolies versus the Free Market, Part 1

by Gregory Bresiger September 1, 2006

Part 1 | Part 2 Market domination that has been achieved in the private sector through efficiency and consumer satisfaction is a phenomenon of a free-market economy. Even without any competition, such a business can never take customers for granted because of the possibility that new entrants will ...

The Eminent-Domain Origin of Shenandoah National Park

by Bart Frazier September 1, 2006

The establishment of Shenandoah National Park in 1926 is one of the greatest abuses of eminent domain in our country’s history. With the Commonwealth of Virginia condemning the entire area and removing more than 450 families, many by force, the park would eventually encompass 196,000 acres. After people were evicted, Virginia transferred the property to the federal government and ...

A Century of Interventionism and Regime Change

by Anthony Gregory September 1, 2006

Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq by Stephen Kinzer (New York: Times Books, 2006); 400 pages; $27.50. Since September 11, the U.S. government has overthrown the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq. Most Americans appear to think of these actions as defensible in principle ...

Conservatives and the Courts

by Sheldon Richman August 23, 2006

It is always amusing to watch conservatives react to court decisions they don’t like. They were firmly in character last week when Federal District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruled that the Bush administration broke the law and violated the Constitution when it began wiretapping, without warrants, international phone calls between Americans and “suspected terrorists.” She’s ...

Iraqis Are Ingrates

by Jacob G. Hornberger August 21, 2006

Poor President Bush. According to the New York Times, the president is frustrated by the lack of public support ... in Iraq. Apparently he’s lamenting that thousands of Iraqis were recently demonstrating in the streets in favor of Hezbollah and chanting, “Death to Israel! Death to America!” Those darned ...

DEA Snake Oil

by Jacob G. Hornberger August 18, 2006

Don’t ever suggest that federal bureaucrats are not smart. Take, for instance, the DEA, the federal agency that has the responsibility of waging the war on drugs, a war that has obviously failed to achieve its objective after 30 years of warfare, not to mention all the collateral violence that the drug war has ...

Polarization Needed

by Sheldon Richman August 16, 2006

When Sen. Joseph Lieberman lost his Connecticut Democratic primary to an anti-war candidate, he used his concession speech to decry the politics of polarization. This was hypocritical because the war hawks, Lieberman included, have gone far in suggesting that criticism of the war policy is tantamount to assisting terrorists. But even if no hypocrisy were involved, the abhorrence of polarization ...

Why Do They Hate Us?

by Jacob G. Hornberger August 9, 2006

You’ll recall that immediately after the 9/11 attacks, U.S. officials declared that the attacks had been motivated by the terrorists’ hatred for America’s “freedom and values.” That refrain produced the “war on terrorism” and, more recently, the “war on radical Islamo-fascism.” Nonsense, said libertarians. The anger and hatred that Arabs ...

Mr. Bush, Are You There?

by Sheldon Richman August 4, 2006

If President Bush is trying to convince us that he hasnt the slightest understanding of the Middle East, then hes doing an outstanding job. Every statement he makes and this goes for his secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, too is soaked in ignorance. Any American who is paying attention should be shuddering to think that this man is running ...