Jail John Ashcroft by Jacob G. Hornberger August 11, 2003 U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema is expected to issue a critical sanction any day in the federal criminal case prosecution of Zacharias Moussaoui, who is charged with having conspired to participate in the September 11 terrorist attacks. The order arises out of the government’s refusal to comply with the judge’s order that the government produce ...
Are Military Tribunals Worth Dying For? by Jacob G. Hornberger August 6, 2003 Despite the fact that the U.S. government so far is not applying military tribunals to U.S. citizens, the stakes have now gone up for the American people. What began as a life-and-death issue for the federal government’s detainees at Guantanamo Bay has now been converted into a life-and-death issue for the American people. For al-Qaeda ...
Private Roads and the Economics of the Environment by Scott McPherson August 6, 2003 In the interest of battling automobile-created air pollution, environmentalists call for more public transportation — more buses and commuter trains and the higher taxes needed to fund them — to get people out of their cars. Granting, for the sake of discussion, that air quality is as poor as ...
The Gun-Control Tide Is Turning by Scott McPherson August 4, 2003 Advocates of the right to keep and bear arms have modest reason to celebrate these days. The state of Alaska recently became the second state, after Vermont, to allow citizens to carry concealed firearms without a permit or any of the restrictive measures, such as fingerprinting or background checks, ...
Classical Liberalism and World Peace by Richard M. Ebeling August 1, 2003 Since the end of the First World War in 1918, the world has been in search of international order and global peace through the political method of international organization. The League of Nations was seen as the great hope for world peace and security. Its failure in the years between the two world wars was taken ...
There is No Freedom in Iraq, Part 2 by Jacob G. Hornberger August 1, 2003 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Most Americans are familiar with the political and civil aspects of liberty. They include such rights as freedom of speech and expression, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, the right to vote, and the right to petition public officials for redress of grievances. They also include important procedural protections in ...
Two Great Books by Sheldon Richman August 1, 2003 Libertarians love books. They hunger for reading material and are always eager to hear of new works dealing with the broad and deep subject of individual liberty and its social and economic implications. In my opinion, two books in particular belong on every libertarian’s shelf. I mean this literally because these are books that libertarians will want to consult often. One, ...
The Greatest Ignorance of the Greatest Number by James Bovard August 1, 2003 The specter of an ignorant or indifferent populace has long haunted democracy. Montesquieu wrote in 1748, The tyranny of a principal in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy. James Madison warned, A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue ...
The Abolitionist Adventure, Part 2 by Wendy McElroy August 1, 2003 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 On August 31, 1831, a Virginia slave named Nat Turner instigated a slave revolt in which a slave owner and his family were killed. Eventually, the victims of Turner’s band exceeded 50. The South exploded with fear and rage, with many blaming Northern abolitionists, especially William Lloyd Garrison. A Virginia paper called ...
Book Review: Defend America First by Richard M. Ebeling August 1, 2003 Defend America First: The Antiwar Editorials of the Saturday Evening Post, 1939–1942 by Garet Garrett (Caldwell, Idaho, 2003); 285 pages; $13.95. It has now long been taken for granted by the American citizenry that the president of the United States, in his role as commander in chief, has the authority and power to send American armed forces into harm’s ...
Reimporting Drugs Is OK, But It Misses the Point by Sheldon Richman July 30, 2003 The U.S. House and Senate have approved bills to legalize the reimportation of U.S.-manufactured prescription drugs from Canada and elsewhere. Here’s a case of Congress doing something right for the wrong reason. It’s right because the U.S. government has no business telling the American people what they may and may ...
Is “Bambi” Libertarian? by Scott McPherson July 25, 2003 Many libertarians are labeled amoral or immoral because they refuse to allow ethics to impinge upon politics. For libertarians, government exists not to make people do what are generally perceived as good things so much as it exists to keep them from doing genuinely bad things to other people. ...