Last week in Michigan, Elijah Woody was arrested for openly carrying his gun. Thankfully Woody was not shot dead, but his story highlights the inequality of gun rights for certain groups in the United States. If he was a white man, the cops probably would not have stopped him. If they had, and the white man had…

It’s a common observation that polls can produce virtually any response desired, depending on how the questions are worded. Emily Ekins, ostensibly reporting on the political and economic attitudes of millennials (“Are Millennials Far Left on Economics? No,” Reason, August 18), displays almost total conceptual incoherence in framing the results of a Reason-Rupe poll of “millennials” (young Americans age…

Florida’s Department of Corrections recently fired 32 guards after years of alleged corruption in the prison system with at least four related inmate deaths. Union officials call the mass layoff a “Friday night massacre.” Now that’s one massacre I can get behind. Reporters digging deeper into the prison records found multiple incidents of abuse and so-called…

Heather Cox Richardson’s call to “Bring Back the Party of Lincoln” (New York Times, September 3), based on her forthcoming book To Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party, demands a package deal that not only never was, but could never be. In Richardson’s fantasy the Republican Party before the ascendance of Reagan “opposed the control of government by…

The Keystone XL pipeline is something no libertarian can support if consistency with free market principles matters. But that doesn’t stop a lot of right-leaning self-proclaimed libertarians from instinctively defending it — after all, anything that promotes fossil fuel use and gets environmentalists bent out of shape has to be “libertarian,” right? Thus A. Barton Hinkle’s “Get…

The UN is back in the news with preparations for the opening of the 69th General Assembly session. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon highlights the importance of the UN’s mission in this “time of turmoil.” But maybe we should take a closer look at what that “mission” is. The avowed purpose of the UN is to maintain…

The “No” outcome of the referendum asking Scotland’s voters the question “should Scotland be an independent country?” is a Pyrrhic victory for the United Kingdom. “Yes” netting 44.7% of the tally undermines a 300-year consensus and the devolution of substantial political power to Scotland is already conceded. Such a near-tie is far more problematic for an existing political system struggling…

Dan Friedman (“The MOOC Revolution That Wasn’t,” TechCrunch, September 11),  expresses no little disappointment over the way online college courses measure up to initial hopes over the past few years. In terms of course completion and even viewing entire lectures, he says, “that revolution fizzled.” But it fizzled for good reason. The predominant online course model has…

According to New York Times columnist Joe Nocera (“Criminal Card Games,” September 16), Home Depot’s security breach — the latest in an ongoing series of extensive exposures of customer financial information from large retailers — explains “why the federal government needs to get involved. With the banks and retailers at loggerheads, only the government has the ability to…

American criminal law takes a nuanced view of murder, creating several punishable degrees of it. First degree murder is generally defined as premeditated. The murderer has a plan to kill and takes sufficient time to map out his crime. Second degree murder involves the killer who hasn’t necessarily taken the time to plan out his crime,…

With another fall election season picking up steam, The New Yorker’s Sam Wang wonders whether the 2014 election will “be a wave or a ripple.” A wave, Wang says, occurs when “one party makes massive gains and overturns the existing power dynamic.” But notwithstanding Wang’s intended point, the “existing power dynamic” in the United States…

National Public Radio (NPR) led its “Week in Politics” program of September 12 off with analysis of US president Barack Obama’s address to the nation on the Islamic State. Various journalists and talking heads discussed the fundamentals of Obama’s speech — was it strong enough, will it get the job done, just who is ISIS anyway? Afterward, I realized the United…

Burger King’s announced purchase of Canadian fast food chain Tim Hortons, and its plans to relocate its headquarters to Canada to take advantage of the lower corporate income tax rate, were followed by predictable liberal cries of outrage over BK’s lack of “patriotism.” It’s “unpatriotic,” critics say, for the company to take advantage of taxpayer-funded…

Though many Americans know that prisoners often work while behind bars, the conditions under which they toil may be less than clear. Fortune magazine made waves this summer when it reported that “[p]rison labor has gone artisanal,” revealing a multimillion dollar business that puts convicts to work making everything from specialty motorcycles to goat cheese sold at…

Jandira Magdalena dos Santos vanished after having an illegal abortion on August 26. She could feel the danger as it approached. Her last text message to her husband Leandro Brito Reis read: “Honey, they asked me to turn off my phone, I’m panicking, pray for me!” Two hours after getting the message, Leandro sent one…

When I tuned in to US president Barack Obama’s televised speech on his plans for war against the so-called “Islamic State,” I expected exactly what we got — a bland sundae of pseudo-patriotic drivel topped off with some whipped cream of big bucks for the military-industrial complex and the cherry of regime change in Syria. What I didn’t expect was…

In early September, Reuters reported on a new Federal Reserve survey showing widening wealth and income gaps in the United States. “All of the income growth,” Reuters reports, “was concentrated among the top earners …  with the top 3 percent accounting for 30.5 percent of all income.” The Fed survey will no doubt disconcert those…

On the liberal wing of American politics, US Senator Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) success in capturing the love of millions is astounding. Her image as savior of indebted workers and unheard voices in America strikes a note with those concerned about reduced class mobility, and rightly so. Consider Warren’s speech introducing emergency legislation to allow refinancing of student loans….

The vast Sonoran Desert of the American Southwest lies in the political territories of California and Arizona and reaches south into Mexico. Its arid landscape is home to human industry and a complex ecosystem full of unique flora and fauna, mesas, canyons, arched rocks and other processes of deep time. It is thus governed by two competing forces: Political…

People who vote for politicians such as Brazilian presidential candidate Aecio Neves, as well as many of his party’s supporters (the Social Democracy Brazilian Party, PSDB), are often dumbfounded when they find out how unappealing ideas of “efficiency” in the public sector, “management shock,” and “professionalization” in government are to a large sector of the population. It’s…