Daily Articles

Illegal Surveillance: A Real Security Threat

by James Bovard February 27, 2006

Americans seem to have forgotten why the Founding Fathers prohibited government from spying on them. Public opinion polls show that a rising percentage of Americans approve of the warrantless National Security Agency wiretaps of Americans that Bush ordered. But such blind faith in government simply ignores the lessons of U.S. history. When the feds have ...

The Conservative Reform Game

by Jacob G. Hornberger February 20, 2006

Here we go again. The reform game. In the wake of the federal government’s disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is unveiling “reforms” that will ensure that such federal disasters never happen again. Yawn! Just more standard conservative “reform” claptrap. This is par-for-the-course ...

Conservative Nonsense in the War on Drugs

by Jacob G. Hornberger February 17, 2006

Conservatives never cease to fascinate me, given their professed devotion to “freedom, free enterprise, and limited government” and their ardent support of policies that violate that principle. One of the most prominent examples is the drug war. In fact, if you’re ever wondering whether a person is a conservative or a libertarian, a good litmus-test question is, How do ...

Self-Deception about Medical Care

by Sheldon Richman February 15, 2006

Sloppy thinking can make intelligent people say stupid things. Take Christine Cassel. She has been a physician specializing in geriatric medicine for 30 years and recently published Medicare Matters, a brief against privatization of the huge, brittle government program. Interviewed recently on National Public Radio, she made this argument for public support of ...

Why They Hate Us

by Jacob G. Hornberger February 13, 2006

When U.S. officials condemn the violence arising out of the anti-Mohammed cartoons published by the European press, they fail to recognize that the anger in the Middle East goes a lot deeper than the adverse reaction to the cartoons reflects. For example, read the transcript of the federal court sentencing ...

Bush Speaks Nonsense on Energy

by Sheldon Richman February 10, 2006

Despite the bravado in his State of the Union address, President Bush actually admitted that his efforts in the Middle East are destined to fail. Here’s what he said: “America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world.” He then unveiled billions of dollars in new ...

Where Are the Isolationists?

by Sheldon Richman February 6, 2006

President Bush’s State of the Union address was one odd speech indeed. Besides his silly statement about our being “addicted to oil” and his messianic declarations in response to the “call of history,” he referred to isolationism four different times. Who favors isolationism? That of course depends on what it means. The ...

The Separation of Economy and State

by Jacob G. Hornberger February 1, 2006

Hardly a week goes by without some free-market think tank or foundation’s publishing an analysis of some government program, pointing out its inevitable “waste, fraud, and abuse” and then issuing what has become a standard bromide: “The system needs reform.” This game is, of course, endless because all government ...

Is “the Environment” a Collectivist Idea?

by Sheldon Richman February 1, 2006

No issue has been more prominent the last several decades than “the environment.” Almost every day a new environmental “threat” arises, spelling the end of life as we know it, if not literally. We are being poisoned by polluted water and air; man-made carcinogens hide in our food; our ozone protection from the sun is eroding. And then there’s ...

The Most Absurdities per Kilo

by James Bovard February 1, 2006

The war on drugs has produced more absurdities per kilo than any other federal policy. Drug warriors have had high-profile belly flop after belly flop. Yet most of the media and the vast majority of American politicians continue to treat this war with deference, if not reverence. One of the biggest farces of the George W. Bush-era war on drugs ...

Democracy, Hypocrisy, and U.S. Foreign Policy

by Jacob G. Hornberger February 1, 2006

After singing the praises of democracy all over the world, not to mention bombing, killing, and maiming people in the name of spreading it, the overwhelming win in Palestinian elections by Hamas, which U.S. officials have labeled a terrorist organization, is reminding U.S. officials that democracy sometimes produces results that are ...

The Progressive Era, Part 1: The Myth and the Reality

by William L. Anderson February 1, 2006

Part 1 | Part 2 One of the most enduring set of myths from U.S. history comes from the political and social developments in what is called the “Progressive Era,” a period lasting from the late 1800s to the end of World War I. (Of course, one could argue, convincingly, that the Progressive Era never has ended.) ...