Equal Rights for the Disabled, Indeed by Scott McPherson January 1, 2005 ... a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government. — Thomas Jefferson, 1801 Of all the misunderstandings that exist in ...
The Myth of the Level Playing Field by Samuel Bostaph January 1, 2005 One of the catch phrases of the day is “a level playing field.” Some businessmen are using it to refer to the competitive situation in which they would prefer to be, but allege they are not for some reason. And, not surprisingly, the reason they usually give for not having “a level playing field” is that a competitor has ...
Government Can’t Run Schools Like Businesses by Thomas L. Johnson January 1, 2005 What this all boils down to is, are we trying to raise sheep — timid, docile, easily driven or led — or free men? If what we want is sheep, our schools are perfect as they are. If what we want is free men, we’d better start making some big changes. — John Holt, The Underachieving School Just ...
How the Enemy Combatant Label Is Being Used, Part 1 by Jesslyn Radack January 1, 2005 Part 1 | Part 2 On Monday, October 4, the Supreme Court declined to consider a petition filed by Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri. Al-Marri is perhaps the least well known of the three persons who have been held in the United States as enemy combatants. The decision was unsurprising yet still disappointing. Al-Marri, who has been waiting for nearly three ...
Book Review: Restoring the Lost Constitution by George Leef January 1, 2005 Restoring the Lost Constitution —The Presumption of Liberty by Randy E. Barnett (Princeton University Press, 2004); 366 pages; $32.50 Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words. The dust jacket of this superlative book shows the first page of the U.S. Constitution with numerous holes in it, as if words and passages had been cut out — a ...
“Buy American” Hurts Americans by Sheldon Richman December 29, 2004 President Bush has a plan to address the so-called trade deficit, which worries people so much. According to the wire services, Bush said, “People can buy more United States products if they’re worried about the trade deficit.” That will appeal to many Americans in a nationalistic fever. What could ...
“Our” Collective Goodness in the Tsunami Disaster by Jacob G. Hornberger December 29, 2004 Stung by the suggestion that “we” (please note the quotation marks) are stingy because “we” (quotation marks again) were sending only $15 million to the tsunami victims, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell immediately upped the ante with another $20 million in U.S. government assistance. Powell also made it clear that ...
The Federal Attack on the Dollar by Jacob G. Hornberger December 27, 2004 In the wake of unrestrained U.S. federal spending, U.S. conservatives are no longer talking so loudly about how they brought down the Soviet Union — by making it spend the nation into national bankruptcy. But the marketplace is speaking as loudly as conservatives once did, as reflected in ...
Limits on Chinese Imports Harm Low-Income Americans by Sheldon Richman December 22, 2004 President Bush has a nice little Christmas present for every family struggling to make ends meet: he announced the other day that he will make clothing more expensive in the coming year by imposing limits on cheap imports from China. This little favor to American textile and apparel interests ...
The Longest-Running War by Doug Bandow December 20, 2004 Joel Miller, Bad Trip: How the War on Drugs Is Destroying America; (Nashville, Tenn.: WND Books, 2004). Jeffrey A. Miron, Drug War Crimes: The Consequences of Prohibition; (Oakland, Ca.: The Independent Institute, 2004). War has become a centerpiece of American politics. The ...
Brady Wrong on Automatic Weapons by Benedict D. LaRosa December 20, 2004 During the campaign season, James Brady, former press secretary to President Ronald Reagan, criticized Illinois Republican senatorial candidate Alan Keyes for defending the right of Americans to keep and bear arms, including machine guns. Brady called Keyes’s stand an “insane” call for a return to “the Al Capone ...
Republicans Have Family under Attack by Sheldon Richman December 17, 2004 Anyone who still believes that the people and the government are the same thing ought to think about what a House-Senate conference committee refused to do recently. Thanks to Texas Congressman Ron Paul, the committee had the opportunity to strike a blow for the rights of parents and for ...