Daily Articles

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 ...

The Birth Pangs of Rosemary’s Baby

by Jacob G. Hornberger August 2, 2006

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice employed an interesting metaphor to describe the death and mayhem in Lebanon. She said that the world was witnessing the “birth pangs of a new Middle East.” Why is that an interesting metaphor? Well, she’s obviously referring to a pregnant woman’s labor pains and the ...

The Federal War on Gold, Part 1

by Jacob G. Hornberger August 1, 2006

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Given the rising price of gold and the fact that federal spending is totally out of control, the prospect of gold confiscation and criminalizing the private ownership of gold by federal authorities inevitably rears its ugly head. There are few things that federal big spenders hate more than gold. ...

Beware Income-Tax Casuistry, Part 1

by Sheldon Richman August 1, 2006

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 For many opponents of the income tax the name Brushaber is magical. It comes from Frank R. Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad Co., the 1916 U.S. Supreme Court case that upheld the 1913 income-tax law passed under the Sixteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That income-tax opponents would ...