Pentagon Learns About the Sixth Amendment by Jacob G. Hornberger July 30, 2004 The Pentagon is learning that things work differently here in the United States than they do in Iraq. In this country, when the judiciary issues an order, the Pentagon is required to obey it. That’s why the government is now permitting Ali Saleh al-Marri to meet ...
Should We Have Faith in the Government? by Sheldon Richman July 30, 2004 Ever since the attacks of 9/11, unsanctioned alternative explanations of what happened and why have been in ample supply. What are the American people to make of these explanations? That depends on the alternative offered. My purpose here is not to lend credence to any of them, but rather ...
Spreading the Word by Bart Frazier July 23, 2004 Date: July 23, 2004 To: Friends and Supporters of The Future of Freedom Foundation From: Bart Frazier, program director Subject: FFF Op-Ed Program Most of you associate FFF with our Email Update. Every day you get the best news culled from the internet addressing issues ...
Free Martha! Free Bobby! by Sheldon Richman July 21, 2004 The U.S. government has moved closer to nabbing two prized catches. Martha Stewart has been sentenced to five months in prison, five months under house arrest, and a $30,000 fine for lying about noncriminal activity. She will remain free while appealing her convictions. Former world chess champion Bobby ...
Exactly How Has Bush’s War Made Us Safer? by Jacob G. Hornberger July 19, 2004 President Bush claims that his war on Iraq has made Americans safer. His primary rationale is that by removing from power a foreign dictator who was supposedly bent on acquiring weapons of mass destruction, Americans are safer as a result. Unfortunately for the American people, however, Bush’s reasoning is both ...
Padilla, Hamdi, and Rasul: Charge Them or Release Them by Jacob G. Hornberger July 16, 2004 Now that the Supreme Court has ruled that Yaser Hamdi and Shafiq Rasul (and other Guantanamo detainees) are entitled to seek habeas corpus relief in U.S. federal district courts to challenge their detention by U.S. military officials, the question naturally arises: What relief should the federal district courts ...
War Is No Blank Check by Sheldon Richman July 14, 2004 “A state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation’s citizens.” Those words from Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor are music to the ears of every friend of freedom. That line is a direct slap at President George ...
The Draft Is Fascist by Sheldon Richman July 9, 2004 A former speechwriter for President Richard Nixon thinks his old boss made a mistake when he ended the military draft in the early 1970s during the war in Vietnam. Noel Koch reports that Nixon himself came to believe he erred and “ that the draft be restored.” Well, that’s too bad. ...
Government by Euphemism by Sheldon Richman July 2, 2004 People live by political euphemisms. Sometimes they die by them, as when civilians are bombed in the name of liberating them. There are less lethal euphemisms, but since all of them embody dishonesty (the word euphemism itself is a euphemism), they all have bad consequences. Those that do not kill may merely make us poorer and less free. Most politicians ...
The Bill of Rights: Freedom of Speech by Jacob G. Hornberger July 1, 2004 When the Constitution was being proposed to our American ancestors in 1787, many people expressed the concern that the document failed to specify the fundamental rights of the people that would be immune from assault by federal officials. The response to that argument was that since the Constitution expressly restricted the government to specified, enumerated powers, and since those powers ...
Why Do Libertarians Ignore the Therapeutic State? by Sheldon Richman July 1, 2004 It’s a truism that libertarians care about liberty. For libertarians, liberty belongs to the individual. Groups are free only in the sense that each member is free. A group free to coerce its members is, in the libertarian worldview, a contradiction in terms. This position is straightforward, and it ought to be uncontroversial. Facts and ...
Torture as Due Process by James Bovard July 1, 2004 After 9/11, the word of the president was supposedly the only protection that the rights and liberties of the American people needed. After 9/11, President Bush granted himself unlimited, unchecked power over anyone in the world suspected of being a terrorist. The Supreme Court, in a series of rulings on June ...