Bob Barr, David Keene and Grover Norquist have called for civilian trials of terror suspects, and urged that the “scaremongering about these issues has to stop.”
There are problems with civilian trials, of course. Many detainees were freed by Bush’s extralegal system who would have likely been convicted and be sitting in prison right now. And [...]

“That government is best which governs not at all,”
Said Henry David Thoreau,
But what did he know?
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“Liberty:  not the daughter but the mother of order,”
Declared Pierre-Joseph Proudhon,
And then he passed on.
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“When the government is too intrusive, people lose their spirit,”
Noted Lao-tzu,
As I would, too.
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“Great men are almost always bad men,”
Declared Lord Acton
―some wisdom to act on.
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“Let [...]

Women’s rights were always a main argument behind invading and occupying Afghanistan. Now Malalai Joya, a female member of the Afghan Parliament, has called on Obama to withdraw:

Eight years ago, women’s rights were used as one of the excuses to start this war. But today, Afghanistan is still facing a women’s rights catastrophe. Life [...]

In a previous post, I noted how military bloggers are writing the “first pages of history.” Likewise, student bloggers are offering a place to speak out against the abuses on their campuses: from official racial segregation (in the name of Diversity) to expulsion for being pro-life and much more.
During the 1990s, many upscale universities had [...]

I’ve subscribed to Newsweek for more than 30 years.  I started subscribing in the 1970s, partly because I wanted a magazine that summarized the week’s news (plenty of choices there) and partly because Newsweek ran a monthly column by Milton Friedman.
When I started subscribing I didn’t notice what some might call a liberal bias in [...]

John Stossel (who’s leaving ABC to join the Fox Business Network) gave a well-received talk at my university yesterday titled “Freedom and Its Enemies.”  Several times during the talk he referred to himself as a libertarian.
Sometimes the libertarian label seems like a liability for people who are both (1) serious about substantially reducing the scope [...]

The White House is shrugging off the Republican electoral victories. But we know what the elections mean: The people are fed up with the march toward nationalization and socialism. Just like the 2006 elections were a repudiation of Bush’s war policy, yesterday marked public discontent with the Democrats’ war on the economy. This is all [...]

Last week, I spoke to a class at Idlewild Presbyterian Church on the economics of drug prohibition. My notes are below.  Cross-posted at Division of Labour.

A new political thriller from PBS, “Endgame,” provides the little-known, true back story of apartheid’s end in South Africa, with credit given to a for-profit mining company. Foreseeing that deteriorating conditions in South Africa would likely result in a total loss of their assets, Consolidated Goldfields initiated secret discussions between representatives of the [...]

The United States enacted its minimum wage law in 1938.  It didn’t cover all workers, and still doesn’t, but establishes a policy that in some cases government should abridge people’s freedom of contract to mandate a wage different from the one people might agree upon.  The “principle” appears to be that some wage levels are [...]