Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott recently cracked down on cabinet and parliamentary members within his own Liberal Party over their disunity on the same-sex marriage issue. The crackdown came after Australia’s Coalition blocked a conscience vote on same-sex marriage. Nearly half of Abbott’s frontbench were in favor of the conscience vote, placing them in direct…

Once again, a telecommunications corporation — this time Verizon — is emptying its customers’ pockets, with government help. Must be a day that ends in “y.” In the past, New Jersey heavily subsidized the construction of DSL lines, in the form of excess customer rates, on the condition that they would continue to provide DSL…

Contrary to mainstream classical political economy, which treated the “original accumulation of capital” as the result of thrift, saving and reinvestment on the part of the capitalist, Marx argued in the first volume of Capital that capitalism — as opposed to simple market exchange — was founded on the separation of the peasantry from their…

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbot denies that his government seeks to impose restrictions on the sale of Vegemite, Australia’s popular yeast-based sandwich spread. Allegations of such a ban arose after Australia’s Indigenous Affairs minister Nigel Scullion made headlines calling the spread’s use in home-brewing a “precursor to misery” in certain dry counties with large aboriginal populations….

On August 7th, movie theater shooter James Holmes was sentenced to life in prison. At the sentencing hearing, Holmes’s mother pleaded that he was a sweet, innocent boy whose mental illness haunted him and eventually turned him into a murderer. From Columbine to Charleston, every time a white man opens fire, mental illness is the…

On July 26th, 35 of Bill Cosby’s rape victims came forward to discuss their rapes and the culture that ignored their cries for help. A serial rapist going uncharged for years due to celebrity is indicative of a deeper cultural problem — one that treats rape as an innocent mistake rather than a violent crime….

On July 31st, Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) introduced the Conserving Ecosystems by Ceasing the Importation of Large Animal Trophies Act (CECIL), crudely named after the slain lion whose death, at the hands of a Dallas dentist, sparked great outcry. The Act seeks to place further restrictions on the import and export of endangered wildlife or the…

Bernie Sanders thinks open borders are a “right-wing proposal” that “would make everyone in America poorer.” Sanders’s comments not only display a shocking ignorance of the economics of immigration, but also a disappointing, racist, xenophobic tendency among the mainstream left. While Sanders also thinks we have a “moral responsibility” to “work with the rest of…

In their July 20th Breitbart article, Milo Yiannopoulous and Allum Bokhari refer to the growing network of resistance to “social justice warriors” in the entertainment industry as “cultural libertarianism.” It’s a powerful term and intuitively appealing to supporters of a free society. Extending scepticism of “big government” to what the authors call “cultural authoritarianism” seems…

Russia may have finally caught up with the rest of the world’s governments in cracking down on ridesharing services like Uber. Russia’s Federation of Car Owners (FAR), like any good oligarchy, has complained to Russian state authorities that “rogue” elements such as Uber, Gett, and Yandex represent a “threat to society.” Exactly what kind of…

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…