Many of us know by now that law enforcement agencies are not required by law to file reports on when the police kill someone. This under-reporting translates into the FBI data that is collected from the police departments to be inaccurate. But other organizations that I’ve mentioned before like Fatal Encounters and Killed by Police…

Democratic presidential candidate Lincoln Chafee is making waves with his odd foreign policy proposals — he’s put forth a daring plan to “Wage Peace”. The plan is daring only because it’s so rare for an American presidential candidate to make unconditional peace the cornerstone of his foreign policy. On Rhode Island Public Radio this week, one…

On July first, the Indiana based First Church of Cannabis, plans to hold a service in which members will  smoke marijuana. Last week, the church was granted tax exempt status by the IRS and members hope this will mean big donations. It also means the church can more credibly use Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, as…

Judge Katherine Forrest’s decision to lock up Ross Ulbricht for the rest of his life is a momentous tragedy. There were other tragic circumstances on display during Ulbricht’s trial, however. Submitted as evidence against the integrity of the Silk Road were stories of drug overdoses that were allegedly tied to products bought on the darknet…

In a piece at Reason (“Bernie Sanders: Don’t Need 23 Choices of Deodorant, 18 Choices of Sneakers When Kids Are Going Hungry,” May 26), Ed Krayewski took Sen. Bernie Sanders to task for saying in a recent MSNBC interview: “You can’t just continue growth for the sake of growth in a world in which we…

On May 25th a lawyer of Pirate Bay co-founder Fredrik Neij told a Swedish newspaper his client seeks to appeal the recent Stockholm District Court ruling which granted the Swedish government control over the company’s domain names “piratebay.se” and “thepiratebay.se”. For those who do not know, The Pirate Bay facilitates the online sharing of data…

The impending expiration of the USA Patriot Act is a matter of intense focus among civil libertarians; Rand Paul’s filibuster has been in the news, along with petition drives pressuring Congress not to vote for renewal. But it doesn’t really matter: Even if the legislation expires, the NSA will carry right on with domestic surveillance…

Every time I read a column by John Stossel, I think my estimation of him has fallen to its theoretical limit. And then I read the next one. For years, Stossel has tipped his hat to the idea that “pro-market” and “pro-business” are not the same thing. He occasionally gives an example of welfare for…

Following in the footsteps of my recent article “Come Take it, I Deere You” I’ve found through Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow that General Motors (GM) has also declared that you don’t really own what you buy. To be more specific, the software that makes up that vehicle is merely “licensed” to the owner of the…

The USA PATRIOT Act is set to expire June first, absent congressional action. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy has expressed opposition to renewing the act without reforms that would end or limit the National Security Agency’s bulk spying on the phone data of American citizens. While Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell seeks an extension for the…

A recent Gallup poll found that Americans agreed by a record 52-45 margin that the government “should… redistribute wealth by heavy taxes on the rich” (Matt Yglesias, “Americans want the government to ‘redistribute wealth by heavy taxes on the rich,’” Vox, May 5). The nos consistently outnumbered the yeses since the question was first asked…

As an anarchist, I avoid doing anything that expresses consent to being governed, or an endorsement of any government; I am therefore a principled ballot-spoiler. However, this time around I was secretly rooting for a Labour victory (or at least a Conservative defeat). The Conservative Chancellor has been sustaining and inflating the housing bubble, particularly…

As the Reason Foundation’s Emily Ekins wrote back in February, “A recent Reason-Rupe poll asked Americans to rate their favorability towards capitalism, socialism, a free market economy, and a government managed economy.” Quite unsurprisingly, of these choices, Americans most favored free markets, with almost 7 out of 10 respondents reporting a positive opinion of a…

Once again — this time using the Baltimore uprising as a pretext — Thomas Sowell has pulled out the template for his favorite column dismissing what he calls “the ‘legacy of slavery’ argument” and blaming black poverty on the Great Society (“The Inconvenient Truth About Ghetto Communities’ Social Breakdown,” National Review, May 5). As is…

On Monday (May 4), the City Council of Recife, Brazil, approved the urban plan authorizing construction consortium New Recife to develop a project of the same name in the area of the José Estelita Dock — which includes the construction of 13 skyscrapers that may reach 38 stories. In a concerted move to pass the…

In an April 24 speech, new “Intellectual Property” Czar Danny Marti confessed that the whole point of federal IP policy is to inflate nominal GDP and corporate profits by maximizing what monopolists are able to charge for stuff. He didn’t mean to state it that baldly, of course. But that’s what it amounts to —…

On May 3rd The Guardian posted a piece discussing a recently enacted statute, by the city of Madison, Wisconsin that would officially ban discrimination against atheists. The law passed with little publicity in early April, but has gotten significantly more attention since the Guardian’s report. The law explicitly includes non-believers in the city’s existing prohibitions…

Statists put forth some fairly ridiculous arguments regarding why the state must exist in the first place, from regulating simple business transactions to policing what we do in our personal lives. Out of all the regulations state-supporters say are “necessary,” the criminalization of drug use is the most detestable. People partake in many sordid vices,…

On April 29th, the US Supreme Court ruled that states could “prohibit judges and judicial candidates from personally soliciting funds for their campaigns”, in the case of, in the case of Williams-Yulee v. Florida Bar. Much has been made of Chief Justice John Roberts remarks: Politicians are expected to be appropriately responsive to the preferences…

In his call for the nationalization of police forces, Al Sharpton perfectly encapsulates the mainstream left — frequently dead on target in the diagnosis, yet prescribing a remedy that would only exacerbate the infection. The problems Sharpton identifies, persistent police abuse, unaccountability, and distance between the police and the policed, are the results of a…