Daily Articles

Jose Padilla and the Military Commissions Act

by Jacob G. Hornberger October 16, 2006

Anyone who hoped that U.S. military detention of Americans accused of terrorism expired with the transfer of American citizen Jose Padilla from military custody to Justice Department custody have seen their hopes dashed by the Military Commissions Act that the president signed into law yesterday. Although the act limits to foreign citizens the use ...

Al-Qaeda in Federal Court

by Jacob G. Hornberger October 16, 2006

Ever since 9/11, U.S. officials have been telling us that the “war on terrorism” has made it necessary for the U.S. military to hijack America’s criminal justice system by taking suspected terrorists into military custody and punishing them, denying them the rights normally guaranteed to criminal defendants in the Bill of Rights. The feds have argued ...

Habeas Corpus: The Lynchpin of Freedom

by Jacob G. Hornberger October 11, 2006

In the recently enacted Military Commissions Act, Congress acceded to President Bush’s request to remove the power of federal courts to consider petitions for writ of habeas by foreign citizens held by U.S. officials on suspicion of having committed acts of terrorism. While it might be tempting to conclude that ...

It’s Not War

by Sheldon Richman October 9, 2006

Last weekend I watched my daughter Emily perform in a play about women who replaced men in factory jobs during World War II. The theme of “American Rosies” is that the war was such a dominant fact of life that these women were determined to participate. Going to work making military equipment was their best opportunity. The ...

Bush’s Signing Statement Dictatorship

by James Bovard October 9, 2006

President Bush has once again decreed that his personal pen is the highest law of the land. In a statement issued on October 4, 2006, he announced that he would ignore many provisions of the Homeland Security appropriations act he signed earlier in the day. His action vivifies that the rule of law now ...

The O’Reilly Fear Factor

by Jacob G. Hornberger October 2, 2006

It should come as no surprise that conservative Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly is praising the military-detention bill that President Bush recently got through Congress. In a commentary dated September 29, 2007, which was posted on the Fox News website, O’Reilly said that “the only downside for the president is that interrogation methods like water boarding ...

The Federal War on Gold, Part 3

by Jacob G. Hornberger October 1, 2006

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 It is impossible to overstate the significance of the Franklin Roosevelt administration’s confiscation of gold and its nullification of gold clauses in contracts. It is one of the most sordid episodes in American history. To get an accurate sense of Roosevelt’s actions, it would not be inappropriate to compare what ...

Beware Income-Tax Casuistry, Part 3

by Sheldon Richman October 1, 2006

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 In 1895, when the U.S. Supreme Court knocked out an income-tax law in Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co., the champions of income taxation in America suffered a big setback. To reiterate what I said in part two of this series, the Court, contrary to what many ...

A Legacy of Anti-Terrorist Failure in Lebanon

by James Bovard October 1, 2006

The Bush administration is fond of favoring tough measures against terrorists. With the Bush team cheer-leading all the way, Israel reinvaded Lebanon in July in response to Hezbollah’s seizure of two Israeli soldiers. Israel and Hezbollah had been exchanging bombs and missiles for months — actually, years — prior ...

Zoning’s Attack on Liberty and Property

by Bart Frazier October 1, 2006

One of the most coercive tools that public officials have at their disposal is zoning. City councils and county boards throughout the country use zoning regulations to dictate which uses are permitted and which are not on every parcel of land within their jurisdiction. While sometimes well-intentioned, zoning regulations nevertheless ...

Monopolies Versus the Free Market, Part 2

by Gregory Bresiger October 1, 2006

Part 1 | Part 2 Why do some think that successful firms are inherently evil? Why do many antitrust regulators actually believe that any firms that report consistently high profits should be under review by government officials? One part of the regulatory argument is ...

Lies and Myths about Opiates

by Randal Cousins October 1, 2006

Romancing Opiates: Pharmacological Lies and the Addiction Bureaucracy by Theodore Dalrymple (New York: Encounter Books, 2006); 146 pages; $21.95. This is a hugely important book. If it gets sufficient attention, it could be a major landmark in the ongoing campaign to introduce truth into the honesty-challenged issue of recreational drugs. Although written very much from a conservative point of ...