Amnesty International has drafted a proposal calling for sex work to be legalized worldwide. The proposal “reflects a growing body of research from UN agencies, human rights organisations, and social science which indicates that criminalisation, in its varying forms, exposes sex workers to increased risk of human rights abuses.” According to Amnesty, the policy is…

The Obama Administration finally responded this week to a two-year-old petition on Whitehouse.gov requesting the pardon of Edward Snowden. 170,000 signatures and a wave of anti-NSA public sentiment later, the White House formally refused the pardon alleging unspecified damage Snowden’s leaks inflicted on American national security. The White House response made no mention of any public…

After Sandra Bland was found hanging in her jail cell from an apparent suicide, her mental health immediately became the focal point of discussion by police and the media. According to law enforcement, Bland had attempted suicide within the past year, but was no longer suicidal. As recently as October, she’d listed herself as suffering from depression. Marijuana…

Rapper Tyler Okonma, better known as “Tyler the Creator,” made headlines July 27, when he announced via Twitter that he had been banned from playing shows in Australia. The Australian Department of Immigration has denied this, and states that Tyler’s visa is still under consideration. The alleged ban was blamed on the anti-sexism organization Collective Shout,…

David Cameron said Britain was in for “something special” when his Conservative Party won an outright majority this May. One wonders how much this government is going to make us miss the Liberal Democrat component of the previous coalition. The “Extremism Bill” Cameron recently announced is making Nick Clegg look pretty good right now. In…

At the Washington Post, Max Ehrenfreund argues (“Hillary Clinton’s top goal as president could be effectively impossible to achieve,” July 20) that Hillary Clinton may be hampered in her stated goal of raising middle class incomes and reducing economic inequality by factors beyond her control. These factors include forces such as “technological automation and globalization,”…

Anderson Cooper recently complained, on his July 22nd CNN show, that presidential candidate Donald Trump has thus far offered “not one shred of proof” for his repeated claim that “the Mexican government is behind the illegal immigration” and are “the ones pushing … these people over the border.” At which point Cooper’s guest Jeffrey Lord,…

President Obama’s recent gun control efforts exemplify the ableism and general discrimination inherent in progressive paternalism. In his latest attempt at gun control, Obama seeks to bar individuals who collect Social Security benefits and whose resources are overseen by “representative payees” due to “marked subnormal intelligence, or mental illness, incompetence, condition, or disease” from owning or…

On July 10th, Sandra Bland was pulled over by the police in Waller County, Texas for alleged improper signaling. The traffic stop escalated almost immediately when Bland refused the officer’s request to put out her cigarette and questioned him as to why he had pulled her over. Bland’s “defiance” culminated in her having her head…

Little more than a year after the death of Eric Garner at the hands of the NYPD, another man with a family and a case of asthma has been killed by a reckless police force. Troy Goode was visiting Mississippi for a concert. As many concert goers do, Goode got drunk. Goode’s wife, who was…

In the latest example of third-party payment processor crackdown on sex work, Visa and MasterCard have announced they won’t process payments to Backpage.com, a popular adult advertising site.  Of course second-wave radical feminists frame it as a “progressive” way to “make the average trafficker or pimp’s life more difficult.” But as Miss Andrie argues in…

On July 18th, Donald Trump enraged fellow Republicans by stating that Arizona Senator John McCain is “not a war hero.” Trump referenced McCain’s imprisonment by the North Vietnamese stating, “I like people that weren’t captured.” Americans like to think of all their armed servicemen as heroic, and this is especially true of McCain, a POW who was imprisoned…

In a July 10 article at Reason, David Harsanyi (“Bernie Sanders is the Future of the Democratic Party“) describes the rise of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders as “a completely predictable outcome of the Democratic Party’s trajectory,” and a portent of the party’s “socialistic future.” I’m more worried about what Harsanyi portends for the future…

A certain headline-grabbing Republican presidential candidate offered up his latest soundbite at a campaign event in Iowa on July 18 when he declared he “like[s] people who weren’t captured.” The reference was to Sen. John McCain, an ex-POW who spent five and a half years in a Vietnam prison camp. In America’s troop-worshipping society, there’s no greater offense than to disparage…

July 15 was the final day for FAO Schwarz’s iconic flagship retail store, a New York City fixture since 1870. What, exactly, closed the toy box? The immediate cause, increasing rent, was merely the last straw. The store’s approach was more and more out of step in an economy in which personalized service from Amazon.com-style warehouses is replacing brick-and-mortar retail…

Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant nationalism has positioned him far to the right of his fellow 2016 GOP hopefuls and has given him a serious boost in the polls. Such support for a man who made, and repeatedly defended, the patently racist claim that undocumented Mexican immigrants are “rapists” should serve as a clear indicator of the depth…

To the people of Greece. We at Center for a Stateless Society extend our sympathies for your recent disappointment from the Syriza government’s acceptance of the austerity regime imposed on you by the European Union. Unfortunately, movements that focus on capturing the state as the primary axis of struggle find themselves, not only not empowered,…

On July 13, President Obama announced that he will commute the sentences of 46 imprisoned individuals. Among them are several dozen drug offenders and a score of other nonviolent lawbreakers. Thirteen of them were serving life in prison. This is undeniably good news. Any victory, no matter how small, in the fight against the racist prison-industrial complex is worth celebrating. Obama’s…

The attacks on sex workers by paternalistic politicians and their armed enforcers at the local, state, and federal levels grow worse by the year. As of 2008, only two states — Nevada and Rhode Island — allowed individuals to buy and sell sex. In 2009, Rhode Island closed its legal loophole which allowed for paid…

If you watched Batman when you were growing up, chances are you saw him torture someone. If you watched Jack Bauer from the hit show 24, chances are even better that torture scenes were involved. And if you watched the Netflix show Daredevil, you probably saw it in almost every single episode. The problem with relying…