Biden the Bogus Benevolent Dictator by James Bovard November 1, 2022 On July 4, President Biden declared, “Liberty is under assault ... rights we assumed were protected are no longer.” Biden, however, was referring solely to a few Supreme Court decisions he deplored, not to the federal supremacy he championed for almost 50 years in the Senate and the White House. Though Biden took office preaching the need for “unity,” he increasingly rules like an elective dictator, relying on executive orders and dubious decrees. The Constitution is not permitted to impede the president from any action that might temporarily increase his approval ratings by one or two percentage points. Biden’s arbitrary actions are thrilling some of his supporters. Many of the protestors who denounced Trump during his presidency were not opposed to dictators per se; they simply wanted different dictates, and Biden is doing his best to satisfy their demands. Mandates for all On his first day in office, Biden issued an executive order compelling people to wear face masks any time they ...
Freedom of Conscience by Laurence M. Vance January 1, 2023 Libertarian philosopher and historian George H. Smith (1949–2022), in his collection of essays titled Freethought and Freedom, incisively remarked that “without freedom of conscience no other freedoms are possible.” It is my contention that freedom of conscience is under attack right now — in the third decade of the twenty-first century — more so than at any other time in history. Freedom of conscience is not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution. The closest thing to it is found in the First Amendment, which reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” The “establishment” and “free exercise” clauses of the First Amendment are generally thought of as protecting the freedom of religion, which is sometimes identified with the freedom of conscience. Related to ...
The Jackboots Of The Virus Patrol by David Stockman April 20, 2020 Say what? It seems that the mainstream politicians and commentariat have gone so far off the deep-end on the Covid-19 that it takes a pair of socialists from south of the border to clear the air. That’s right. We are referring to Mr .Lopez-Gatell, Mexico’s minister of health and pedigreed PhD epidemiologist from John-Hopkins and his boss, President Obrador, a true blue socialist that the Bernie Bros would wet their cargo pants over. ALMO, as they call the latter, is not drinking the Covid Cool-Aid. His flagrant rebuke of the Yankee virus patrol has left the US left-wing media sputtering (e.g. Slate: “ALMO goes off the Rails”), suggesting that he is wallowing in self-doubt because his poll ratings have dropped from spectacular to very strong, and that in the process he is dangerously undermining his allegedly more sensible health minister. Not so fast, however. While Lopez-Gatell has called for social distancing and other sensible measure, Mexico has not gone into anything like Lockdown ...
Doctors With Hacksaws by David Stockman May 27, 2020 It started in sheer madness on March 13 when the Donald was persuaded to declare a national emergency by his camarilla of dopey doctors. Their stay-at-home guidelines were absolute folly because by then it was obvious that the new Wuhan virus strain mainly attacked the aged, infirm and those already afflicted with serious cardiovascular, respiratory, renal and diabetes/obesity ailments, not ...
Conservative Hypocrisy on Foreign Aid by Laurence M. Vance January 5, 2021 After initially threatening to veto it, Donald Trump signed into law a $2.3 trillion, 5,593-page spending bill that no member of Congress had read. The “Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021” (H.R.133), which is a combination of twelve annual funding bills, COVID-19 relief, and pounds and pounds of pork, passed the House in two separate votes ...
Statist Blindness on Iran by Jacob G. Hornberger January 6, 2021 A January 3 op-ed in the Los Angeles Times advocates that the Biden administration partially lift U.S. government sanctions on Iran to enable Iran to buy Covid vaccines. The op-ed is written by John W. Lambert, a former professor at the U.S. Navy Academy and a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for Iran, and ...
Biden’s Rescue Act Targets Americans’ Freedoms by James Bovard June 1, 2021 Since the 1800s, surly Americans have derided politicians for spending tax dollars “like drunken sailors.” Until recently, that was considered a grave character fault. But Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act shows that inebriated spending is now the path to national salvation. It was a common saying in America in the 1930s that “we cannot squander our way to prosperity.” ...
Abolish OSHA by Laurence M. Vance January 25, 2022 The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) should be abolished. But it should not be abolished because of anything to do with COVID-19. In response to President Biden’s national strategy to combat COVID-19 by vaccinating the unvaccinated, on November 5, 2021, OSHA issued an “Emergency Temporary Standard” (ETS) requiring that businesses with 100 or more employees either ...
It’s Up to Them by Laurence M. Vance August 1, 2022 President Joe Biden has done it again. He’s committed another gaffe. But this comes as no surprise since he acknowledged during a stop on his book tour in 2018 that he was “a gaffe machine,” and has not stopped proving the truth of that statement ever since. In late December of last year, Biden spoke with state governors on a ...
Merle Haggard and the Lost “Free Life” by James Bovard June 1, 2024 “Is the best of the free life behind us now?” Merle Haggard asked in a haunting 1982 country music hit song. Nine years earlier, Haggard had scoffed at potheads and draft dodgers in a White House performance of his song “Okie from Muskogee” for President Richard Nixon. But reflecting widespread loss of faith in the American dream ...
The Government Pressured Tech Companies to Censor Users by John W. Whitehead September 13, 2024 “Internet platforms have a powerful incentive to please important federal officials, and the record in this case shows that high-ranking officials skillfully exploited Facebook’s vulnerability... Not surprisingly these efforts bore fruit. Facebook adopted new rules that better conformed to the officials’ wishes, and many users who expressed disapproved views about the pandemic or COVID–19 vaccines were ...
A Federal Mask Mandate? by Jacob G. Hornberger July 22, 2020 The Democrat governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, has come out with an op-ed in the New York Times today calling for a federal nation-wide mandate requiring people to wear masks. She says that that’s the way to save lives from Covid-19. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, Whitmer fails to provide any constitutional justification for such ...
