A Cancer Patient Faces the Chaos of the American Health-Care System by Rosalind Lacy MacLennan April 27, 2005 In mid December 2004, I stood up in the middle of my primary-care physician’s waiting room, and said, “I am carrying a weapon of mass destruction in my breast. I have breast cancer. I came here for treatment, not for cemetery care.” At last. The receptionist looked up. After two phone ...
Don’t Forget Roosevelt’s Attack on the Judiciary by Jacob G. Hornberger April 25, 2005 Republican attacks on the judiciary bring to mind what unquestionably was the fiercest attack on the independence of the federal judiciary in American history — the infamous “court-packing scheme” of Democrat President Franklin D. Roosevelt. While there certainly had been instances of government regulation and welfare prior to FDR’s ...
Pentagon Conduits by Sheldon Richman April 25, 2005 As we now know, thanks to the New York Times, the military-industrial complex is well represented in the daily television news coverage of the Iraq and Afghan occupations. Those former generals who seemed generously to have come out of retirement to provide disinterested analysis of the Bush administration’s military ...
Tear Down the Trade Walls by Sheldon Richman April 22, 2005 “Please tear down this wall,” the president said. No, it wasn’t President Reagan challenging Soviet President Gorbachev about the Berlin Wall in the 1980s. It was the Ukrainian president, Viktor Yushchenko, recently addressing a joint session of the U.S. Congress. Yushchenko was asking the senators and representatives to ...
Connect the Dots by Jacob G. Hornberger April 20, 2005 Pop quiz! Two questions! Exam Question No. 1: What two characteristics do the following things have in common? Social Security Medicare Drug War War on Terrorism War in Iraq Education Budget Deficit U.S. Dollar Can’t figure out the answer? Here are some clues: • Social Security is nothing more than a bankrupt welfare program, one that is funded ...
Solution to the Birth-Contol Controversy: Deregulate the Drugstores by Sheldon Richman April 15, 2005 Every now and then we are tested in our dedication to individual liberty. It’s happening again. Recently, Gov. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois issued an emergency ruling ordering pharmacists to fill prescriptions for contraception, including “morning-after” pills, despite their convictions against doing so. The ruling has the force of law for ...
Yes to Armor-Piercing Bullets for Civilians by Benedict D. LaRosa April 13, 2005 On March 3, Sens. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Jon Corzine (D-N.J), and Rep. Eliot Engel ( D-N.Y.) introduced the Protect Law Enforcement Armor Act in their respective venues to ban the new Five seveN pistol (FN 5.7) made by Frabrique Nationale Herstal, a Belgian arms manufacturer. Efforts ...
Regime Change Was an Immoral Excuse for War by Jacob G. Hornberger April 8, 2005 Far be it from me to attempt to explain why Pope John Paul II, who spoke out 56 times against President Bush’s War on Iraq, opposed the president’s war. But whatever his reasons were, he was right to do so because President Bush’s true reason for invading Iraq — regime ...
The Bill of Rights: Unenumerated Rights by Jacob G. Hornberger April 1, 2005 A common misconception among the American people is that their rights come from the Constitution. Even lawyers and judges are guilty of believing this, oftentimes suggesting that whether a right exists or not depends on whether it is listed in the Constitution. Law-enforcement agents read criminal suspects “their constitutional rights,” which ...
Beware Grand Inquisitors and Psychology Professors by Sheldon Richman April 1, 2005 For some people, there are a limitless number of reasons individual freedom is not the great good libertarians believe it to be. The “in” reason at the moment is that freedom to choose among a large number of options makes people unhappy. The leading theoretician among the choice-is-bad set is Barry ...
A High-Quality Problem by Jacob G. Hornberger April 1, 2005 Weve got a high-quality problem and we need your help. Recently our Internet Service Provider, which has hosted our website for many years, gave us 45 days to transfer our website, including our shopping cart, to another ISP. The reason? Our website has gotten so big that our ISP could no longer handle us. Not only was our website content ...
Uncle Sam’s Iron Curtain of Secrecy by James Bovard April 1, 2005 The Bush administration is subverting the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). On January 31, the People for the American Way publicly protested that the Justice Department claimed it would cost the group a minimum of $372,999 for the feds to search their files (in response to an FOIA request from the group) for cases in which the Justice Department ...