Free Speech on the Ropes by James Bovard January 1, 2006 The First Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech.” The Founding Fathers could have done nothing to make it clearer that the government has no right to gag the American people. However, in recent years, the Constitution is proving little or no barrier ...
Crippling Competition, Part 2 by Scott McPherson January 1, 2006 Part 1 | Part 2 Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn’t done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity. There is no standard of personal dignity except independence. —Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead A truly free society ...
Democracy versus Freedom by Jarret B. Wollstein January 1, 2006 Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and conflict; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. James Madison, fourth president of the United States and primary Framer of the U.S. Constitution Politicians and ...
Speaking of Inflation by Stu Pritchard January 1, 2006 Discussions about inflation remind me of a drink I bought in a Shanghai bar in 1948. I kept tossing rubber-banded stacks of paper money, Chinese National Currency (CNC), onto the bar. Finally, the bartender shrugged and said, “That’s enough.” I once told that story to Dr. Norbert Einstein, an economist in Seattle and a distant cousin to Albert. Standing ...
Book Review: Wilson’s War by George Leef January 1, 2006 Wilson’s War: How Woodrow Wilson’s Great Blunder Led to Hitler, Lenin, Stalin & World War II by Jim Powell (Crown Forum, 2005); 352 pages; $27.50. Although most conventional liberal historians, blinded by their adulation for politicians who embrace “progressive” causes, continue to ...
More Drug-War Victims by Sheldon Richman December 28, 2005 Opponents of the so-called war on drugs (it’s a war on people) have long cautioned that enforcement of victimless-crime laws is by nature a mockery of justice. We have a vivid example in Cory Maye. You haven’t heard of Cory Maye? Few people have, despite the best efforts of blogger-journalist Radley Balko (TheAgitator.com). Maye, 25, ...
Bush’s Secret Surveillance State by Anthony Gregory December 26, 2005 The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place ...
Nation-Building Is Now Job One by Sheldon Richman December 21, 2005 “Stability operations are a core U.S. military mission that the Department of Defense shall be prepared to conduct and support. They shall be given priority comparable to combat operations....” With that sentence the Bush administration, through Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, has declared that it is formally in the nation-building business, reports ...
A Message to Our Readers by Jacob G. Hornberger December 19, 2005 Dear Friends of FFF, As you may know, Freedom Daily contributor Doug Bandow was the subject of a Business Week story last week, which detailed payments he had received from Washington, D.C., lobbyist Jack Abramoff in return for writing a number of op-eds favorable to Abramoffs clients. The revelations in the ...
Britain’s Gun-Control Folly by Scott McPherson December 16, 2005 A former Texas police officer is causing a stir in jolly Old England. After leaving his job in Garland, Texas, and moving with his British wife and their three children to Reading, Ben Johnson took a job as a British bobby — and had the audacity to suggest that he might ...
Cindy Sheehan’s War by Samuel Bostaph December 14, 2005 Not One More Mother’s Child, by Cindy Sheehan (Koa Books, 2005); 204 pages; $15.00. On August 3, 2005, a former youth minister in Vacaville, California, was at home watching a television report of the deaths of 14 more U.S. Marines in Iraq. Her eldest son, whom she deeply loved, had been killed ...
The Emperor Has Spoken by Sheldon Richman December 12, 2005 It’s a measure of the imperial nature of the modern American presidency that George W. Bush misstates the truth even as he defends himself against the charge that he misstates the truth. It takes extraordinary disrespect for the American people to look them in the eyes and say that Congress had ...