Daily Articles

The Fraud of Physician-Assisted Suicide

by Sheldon Richman June 23, 2004

Freedom is so little understood in this “land of the free” that it is often confused with its opposite. Case in point: Oregon’s 1994 Death With Dignity Act, which a federal appeals court recently shielded from attack by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft. The law permits what has come to ...

Examining Reagan’s Record on Free Trade

by Sheldon Richman June 21, 2004

The following article originally appeared in the May 10, 1982, issue of The Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones and Company, Inc. Reprinted by permission. Hardly anyone was surprised when the Reagan administration imposed quotas on sugar imports last week. This is at once remarkable and understandable. It’s remarkable because Mr. Reagan wants to be known as a free-trader. Indeed, ...

Reagan’s WMD Connection to Saddam Hussein

by Jacob G. Hornberger June 18, 2004

Given all the indignant neoconservative “outrage” over the financial misdeeds arising from the UN’s socialist oil-for-food program during the 1990s, when the UN embargo was killing untold numbers of Iraqi children, one would think that there would be an equal amount of outrage ...

Our Elective Monarchy

by Sheldon Richman June 16, 2004

One of the myths Americans live by is that they rejected monarchy when the British left involuntarily in the late 18th century. Had a Martian been visiting the United States last week, he never would have believed it. Witnessing the state funeral and worshipful wall-to-wall cable-television coverage, our Martian would have sworn that Ronald Reagan had been the king ...

Thinking about Tomorrow

by Jacob G. Hornberger June 9, 2004

The debacle in Iraq might well provide a watershed period in the history of our country a period in which the American people engage in deep reflection on the problems facing our nation and reevaluation of them, not only in foreign affairs but in the domestic arena as well. Oftentimes, crises provide the impetus for people to turn introspectively ...

Kerry: An Echo, Not a Choice

by Sheldon Richman June 7, 2004

In 1964 an incumbent president, Lyndon Johnson, was faced by a challenger, Barry Goldwater, who offered “a choice, not an echo.” In 2004 an incumbent president, George W. Bush, is faced by a challenger, John Kerry, who offers an echo, not a choice — a mere variation on a theme. That’s ...

The Padilla Doctrine Doesn’t Infringe on Freedom — It Destroys It

by Jacob G. Hornberger June 4, 2004

Critics of the federal government’s two-year incarceration of accused terrorist Jose Padilla without charges or trial correctly point out that the government has violated Padilla’s right to counsel and his rights to due process of law, habeas corpus, and jury trial, all of which are guaranteed by the U.S. ...

Government Is Not “Us”

by Sheldon Richman June 2, 2004

“America is not what’s wrong with the world. I read all this stuff — people hate us, people don’t like us. The fact of the matter is, people line up to come into this country every year because it’s better here than other places, and because they respect the ...

Our Media-Outreach Campaign

by Jacob G. Hornberger June 2, 2004

Our nation is in deep trouble morally, economically, and politically. Practically everything in which the federal government has embroiled itself for the last several decades is in crisis education, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, inflation and the dollar, welfare, government spending, the drug war, and, of course, foreign policy. Is there any good news in all this? You bet there is, ...

The Nationalization of the American People

by Jacob G. Hornberger June 1, 2004

With military manpower shortages arising out of the war in Iraq, there is talk in the air that the federal government might reinstitute the draft, most likely sometime after the November election. Such a prospect should cause every American to reflect not only on the moral and philosophical relationship of the ...

Did Business Want Campaign-Finance “Reform”?

by Sheldon Richman June 1, 2004

It didnt take long for the sponsors of the latest campaign-finance reform (translation: free-speech prohibitions) to complain that their law is being circumvented. Senators John McCain (Republicrat) and Russell Feingold (Demoblican) are infuriated that private groups are using (gasp!) unregulated money to influence an election and their law doesnt seem to be able to stop it. The McCain-Feingold law, also ...

Terrorism Debacles in the Reagan Administration

by James Bovard June 1, 2004

Many Americans are unaware of the dark side of U.S. foreign policys past. Some conservatives think that Ronald Reagans foreign policy began and ended with the thwarting of the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, there were many other U.S. actions during his reign that did not reflect favorably on the U.S. governments devotion to human rights. There were few common-places that offended ...