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…

New Hampshire was Feeling the Bern in the Democratic Primary last night. The Associated Press called a win for social democrat Bernie Sanders late Tuesday night, an expected victory, but one of few for the upcoming primary season, as Hillary is largely predicted to win the Democratic nomination. The contentious fight between Clinton and Sanders…

This past week demonstrated with blinding clarity that 1) Republicans, contrary to their rhetoric, oppose individual liberty, and 2) the establishment news media really couldn’t care less about the presidential candidates’ views. After the last Republican debate, the media continued its obsession with the reality-TV and horse-race sides of the election. News readers, correspondents, and…

Bernie Sanders wants to stay on message. So his presidential campaign has focused on economic issues. The American economy is rigged, Sanders says, in the interests of the wealthy and well connected. Banks and Wall Street brokerage houses get what they want at the expense of everyone else. The government should step in on the…

Anarchist characters are a rarity on television. (Sorry, the “Sons of Anarchy” aren’t actually anarchists.) But the CW’s popular show “Arrow,” based on the DC Comics character Green Arrow, recently introduced a new character, Lonnie Machin, whose outlook is explicitly presented as anarchist. So how does Machin’s anarchism manifest itself? Well, he’s only appeared in…

A recent study conducted by The National Registry of Exonerations found that in 2015 there were a total of 149 people who were exonerated for a myriad of reasons. The exonerations revolved around convictions that were based on police misconduct, false confessions and in some cases, the fact that no crime had occurred. In addition,…

I see no point splitting hairs over whether Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio is the more egregious warmonger. Both love the bloody and costly U.S. empire. Both believe in American exceptionalism. (Rubio arrogantly calls for a “New American Century.”) Both want to make war in the Middle East (and beyond) and “stand behind Israel,” though…

In an editorial at the New England Journal of Medicine (“Data Sharing,” Jan. 21), Dan Longo and Jeffrey Drazen have coined an interesting new term: “research parasite.” In theory, the authors say: Data sharing is beautiful. But when you get down to all the practical details, it turns out to be one of those beautiful…

Last week president Obama put an end to the use of solitary confinement on youth locked up in the federal prison system. In an op-ed announcing a series of executive actions the president cited the particular psychological harms that young inmates face when being placed in solitary confinement. He rightly points out that a life in…

In a recent article at FEE, “Walmart, Pepsi Rescue Flint from Government Failure,” Jeffrey Tucker celebrates the generous donation of 6.5 million bottles of water Walmart, Coke, Pepsi, and Nestle have made to the schoolchildren of Flint, Michigan to ameliorate their ongoing water crisis. Tucker takes this contribution as evidence of a general trend: “In…

Back in August 2014 a man named Michael Brown was shot by a police officer, Darren Wilson. Brown was unarmed and found himself in the hostile climate that exists between people of color and the police. His resulting death was the spark that lit the fire. Protests for #BlackLivesMatter began in earnest, people rallied for…