Americans can sleep easier now that the US military has wiped out 150 more “terrorists.” US airstrikes over Somalia targeted al-Shabab militants, who were, according to Pentagon spokesperson Captain Jeff Davis, planning “offensive operations.” Davis neglected to elaborate on what “offensive operations” were planned by the group. He did say that they had been monitoring…

Neither Bernie Sanders, the self-described democratic socialist, nor Donald Trump, the self-described terrific businessman, knows squat about economics. If their polices were enacted, regular working people would be harmed. This is most clear with trade. Sanders and Trump are flaming protectionists, which means they peddle perhaps the oldest, most-thoroughly discredited economics doctrine ever spoken. (An…

On Facebook, Doug Henwood — author of Wall Street and editor of the Left Business Observer — recently pointed to the U.S. Arpa-E agency’s development of an advanced storage battery as an example of the “public sector” outperforming the “private sector” (March 3 at 10:48AM).  “While VC is funding the world’s first stabilized action camera,”…

Nancy Reagan died on March 6, 2016 at the age of ninety four. She leaves behind a destructive legacy that will likely be with us for some time — Just Say No. Her unfortunate contribution to the War on Drugs seldom gets the negative treatment it deserves. The Just Say No campaign is often looked at as…

The Donald Trump phenomenon is indeed the creature of the Republican establishment, but there’s more to it than that. For decades the Republican leadership (committed to corporate privilege and costly empire) encouraged a base of jingoists, protectionists, nativists, and other “politically incorrect” types, whom it then largely took for granted. The leadership wanted their votes,…

There are many ways to handle the epidemic of over-crowding in prisons. We could start by ending the war on drugs — one of the major culprits. As part of drug war reform, non-violent drug offenders should cease being imprisoned. We could also address racial discrimination and its many contributions to the problem. From there, we…

This week, Lyn Ulbricht attended the International Students For Liberty Conference and graced attendees with a presentation on the appeal of her son Ross Ulbricht’s sentencing in the Silk Road trial. Lyn’s presence and tireless advocacy for her son and for the preservation of our rights is a blessing in the face of our unaccountable…

For centuries there’s been a myth at the heart of English political culture: Before the Norman Conquest and the imposition of feudalism, Anglo-Saxon England was an idyllic land governed by “the good laws of King Edward the Confessor,” where free juries protected the ancient rights of Englishmen, and everyone was as good as anyone else…

In most American political discourse, freedom and equality are treated as inversely related:  that is, economic freedom can only be increased at the expense of raising inequality, and economic equality can only be increased at the expense of reducing economic freedom. But at Stumbling and Mumbling blog, Chris Dillow (“Inequality against freedom,” Feb. 23) shows…

Supervised injection sites (SIS) are not a new phenomenon. State-designated locations at which recreational intravenous drug users may legally shoot up, while under the supervision of medical professionals, have been prevalent throughout Europe for over two decades. The concept of SIS first garnered widespread public attention in the United States in 2003 when North America’s…

Content Warning: Brief mentions of suicide, rape and general discussions of transphobia. Recently there’s been laws among several states that unfairly target the trans community, most notably in South Dakota. South Dakota not only has a bill that targets the transgender community in public schools, but has had this bill passed in both the House…

When are crimes against humanity “arcane references”? When the United States government commits them. According to Politico (Michael Crowley, “Sanders once urged abolishing CIA,” Feb. 22), in a debate with Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders “befuddled some viewers with an arcane reference to a 1953 U.S.-backed coup in Iran, which Sanders called an example of America’s…

Marco Rubio and Hillary Clinton both want the U.S. government to set up a “safe zone” in Syria to care for refugees from the raging civil war. You may assess their judgment by noting that Secretary of State Clinton and Sen. Rubio also pushed for bombing and regime change in Libya, which was crucial in spreading bin…

Alas, Donald Trump has backed off from his charge that the Bush administration lied the country into war against Iraq, telling a CNN town-hall broadcast Thursday night that he doesn’t know why Bush invaded. “I’m not talking about lying. I’m not talking about not lying,” he said. “No one knows why we went into Iraq.”…

Donald Trump, for all his obnoxious demagoguery, is adding value to the presidential campaign by calling former President George W. Bush to account for 9/11 and the Iraq war, which set in motion the growth and spread of al-Qaeda and the rise of the Islamic State. Former U.S. rulers rarely face consequences for the horrible…

Despite everything the academic power structure and its allies in the U.S. Justice Department could do to Aaron Swartz — including driving him to suicide — the enemies of information freedom in academia have been in steady retreat ever since. Back in 2011, in his Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto, Swartz defined his revolutionary goal as…

Senator Bernie Sanders describes his campaign for president as a “political revolution.” His appeal comes from his unpolished outsider status, the challenge he presents to the political establishment, and his critique of an economy rigged in favor of well-connected corporate interests. Senator Sanders has in some instances admirably opposed corporate welfare. For example, for years…

At Reason, Nick Gillespie (“Donald Trump, Jeb Bush, Eminent Domain, and the Keystone XL Pipeline,” Feb. 7) offers a welcome bit of thoughtful discussion of the Keystone XL pipeline project insofar as it involves the issue of eminent domain. To be sure Reason has published a few pieces in recent years that mentioned both eminent…

Content Warning: Discussions of rape and sexual abuse After over two decades of abuse, Julia Tutwiler Prison, located in Montgomery Alabama, will close. After almost two decades of prison guards sexually assaulting, abusing and raping inmates, Tutwiler prison will be closed. After nearly two decades of investigations, reformist legislature, promises on the part of the…

In a recent commentary (“Economic Inequality,” January 2016), venture capitalist Paul Graham defends inequality on the grounds that it’s not necessarily the result of a zero-sum game. In fact, he says, it’s usually not. He accuses “the most naive” critics of growing levels of economic inequality of starting out from “the pie fallacy: that the…