Daily Articles

What’s Wrong with Public Schools?

by Sheldon Richman March 25, 2005

The following is an excerpt from Chapter 2 of Separating School & State: How to Liberate Americas Families (1994) by Sheldon Richman. Its time to admit that pubic education operates like a planned economy, a bureaucratic system in which everybodys role is spelled out in advance and there are few incentives for innovation and productivity. Its ...

Rule of Law Damaged by Schiavo Bill

by Sheldon Richman March 23, 2005

The events surrounding the life of Terri Schiavo are tragic enough. Now congressional Republicans and President Bush have made things worse. In one weekend they disabled federalism, the separation of powers, and the rule of law. These principles were embraced by the Founding Fathers because they tend to ...

Why Save Social Security? Revisited

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 18, 2005

My article “Why Save Social Security?” generated so much email, both pro and con, that I thought I would share some of the comments with you, along with my response to some of the points made by them. Email supporting repeal “Please continue this attack to eliminate this ...

Social Security’s Malign Premise

by Sheldon Richman March 18, 2005

Take note of the sheer panic displayed by the left-socialist opponents of President Bush’s Social Security proposal. We can divine some significant information from that reaction. The president’s suggestion (no detailed proposal has been offered yet) would not give individuals anything like the control over their own incomes ...

Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri: Charge Him or Release Him

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 16, 2005

When U.S. citizen Ahmed Abu Ali was recently returned to the United States to face criminal charges for terrorism, after some two years of detention in Saudi Arabia without being charged with a crime, he told U.S. Magistrate Liam O’Grady that he had been tortured by Saudi officials. Judge O’Grady ...

Democracy May Be Breaking Out, But Is Freedom?

by Sheldon Richman March 14, 2005

Virtually everyone from President Bush to the New York Times sees democracy on a roll. Afghanistan, Iraq, the Palestinians, and Saudi Arabia (men, not women) have had elections. Egypt could be next. Is something really happening in that part of the world? Perhaps. The real question is, what is happening? People are ...

The IRS vs. Ragnor Danksjold

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 14, 2005

The feds are very upset with Walter Anderson, whom they’re accusing of being the “biggest tax cheat in American history.” They say he evaded taxes on $450 million in income, although he can’t be all bad because in 1998 he paid $494 in income taxes. So, the feds are now going ...

Government’s Social Security Mess

by Sheldon Richman March 11, 2005

It’s hard to say how the debate over Social Security will turn out. Considering that the system rests on the three-legged stool of the welfare state — coercion, deception, and paternalism — it’s hard to see a case for anything but abolition and the individual right to control one’s ...

Why Save Social Security?

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 11, 2005

In their desire to reform or save Social Security, some advocates of free enterprise display a reluctance to openly call for the repeal or dismantling of Social Security or even to suggest that their Social Security reform plan would gradually tend in that direction. For example, the conservative Heritage Foundation, ...

Murder or Ouster for Chavez?

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 7, 2005

According to CNN, unnamed U.S. officials have branded the charge of Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chavez, that the U.S. government plans to oust him from office through assassination as “ridiculous.” Ridiculous? Maybe those particular unnamed U.S. officials aren’t familiar with a government organization known as the Central Intelligence ...

The Padilla Ruling Is a Victory for Freedom

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 2, 2005

As I have been writing for the past two years, it is impossible to overstate the importance of the Jose Padilla case. The power assumed by the U.S. military and the Bush administration in the Padilla case constitutes what is arguably the most ominous and dangerous threat to the ...

The Bill of Rights: Bail, Fines, and Cruel and Unusual Punishments

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 1, 2005

Like the Sixth Amendment, the Eighth Amendment deals with the administration of criminal justice. The Eighth Amendment reads as follows: Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. This is how bail works: When federal officials arrest someone suspected of having committed a crime, they are required to take him promptly ...