The tragic chaos in Ferguson, Missouri following the shooting of an unarmed teenager and massive protests has prompted a discussion police power and how far it should extend. For the anarchist, the answer is simple: police power shouldn’t exist. “But what would you do with all the psychopaths and violent people?” This is perhaps the…

In a recent piece in the New York Times, Paul Krugman arraigns libertarians for “living in a fantasy world,” telling us that there is usually a “very good reason” for bureaucrats to substitute their judgment for our own. When one asserts that he is opposed to an untrammeled free market, all he is really saying…

On August 12, Brazil’s largest news program, Jornal Nacional, interviewed presidential candidate Eduardo Campos. Of his 15 minutes replying to questions, he spent at least 10 of them touting the presence of his family in the state apparatus. He filled the remaining time with banalities such as “we can’t give Brazil up.” The following morning, Campos’s private jet crashed…

Ferguson, Missouri is — pardon the unintended pun — a moving target. Events keep taking erratic directions, superseding comment as fast as it’s written. So I’ll open with context as of this writing: After a week of combat in the streets, governor Jay Nixon has ordered Missouri’s National Guard out to, as his office says in a statement, “help restore peace…

Hot Air Weekend Editor Jazz Shaw believes that pointing out police militarization – not just in Ferguson, Missouri but everywhere – is “a rather rapid rush to judgment and lacking in larger context.” He is flabbergasted that “one local disturbance has turned into a national demand to defang the police.” And he wants everyone to…

Twenty cents of real (roughly 8 cents of a dollar) brought millions of people onto the streets in Brazil in July 2013. Those twenty cents channeled all popular dissatisfaction, directed all anger to the streets and showed the government’s ineptitude in dealing with the Brazilian people’s problems. Only twenty cents. An increase in the bus fare from R$…

Well, that didn’t take long. The morning after The New York Times Magazine publishes the Gray Lady’s most charitable and understanding in-depth treatment of libertarianism since the modern movement’s emergence in the 1970s, Paul Krugman had ready his obligatory harrumphing dismissal. Getting into his economic-wonk comfort zone as quickly as possible, Krugman perfunctorily brushes past the entire…

In an article that will no doubt make “progressive” hearts go pitty-pat (“The 1% May Be Richer Than You Think, Research Shows,” Bloomberg, August 7), Jeanna Smialek suggests that top 1%’s wealth is far greater even than official statistics indicate — and that because so much of that wealth is hidden in offshore tax havens government efforts to…

In his visit to Brazil, neuroscientist Carl Hart was asked what he thought about the word “Cracolandia,” used to describe the location where crack addicts gather in several cities in the country. Hart replied, “With that name we are … showing to society how to vilify specific groups of people.” Which is obviously true. When we talk…

On August 7th, President Obama announced his authorization of targeted strikes over Iraq in order to quell the ongoing Islamic State offensive. Just as important are the statements his administration has made through the actions that followed. The bombs actually started to fall on Friday, announcing without words that the US government’s policy of actively managing Iraqi affairs from afar…

U.S. bombs fall on Iraq yet again, in strikes authorized by Barack Obama against the militant Islamist group Islamic State, which has taken over a chunk of the country. Between this and the deployment of US military “advisers,” the memory of Obama’s campaign criticizing war in Iraq on his way to office has grown a…

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s recently released long-term predictions for the global economy through 2060 (Paul Mason, “The best of capitalism is over for rich countries — and for the poor ones it will be over by 2060,” The Guardian, July 7), economic growth will stagnate to something like two-thirds its present level…

According to a recent story at Shareable by Kelly McCartney and Sarah Baird (“Pennsylvania Seed Library Investigated by Department of Agriculture,” August 7), the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture is investigating an heirloom seed library as a possible vector of attack by “agricultural terrorists.” Libraries for sharing traditional and heirloom seed varieties are a growing phenomenon nationwide, intended…

Convicted in 1994 of sexually assaulting a young boy, John Henry Skillern of Texas once again finds himself incarcerated and awaiting trial, this time for possession and production of child pornography. Skillern’s arrest comes courtesy of Google. Few, I expect, will shed tears for Skillern with respect to his alleged sexual predations. Nonetheless his case once more…

“Anti-government types” are often accused of not caring about poor people because we suggest that communities and charities can help them better than government can. This claim seems vindicated when considering the numerous ways governments both create poverty and harm the poor. The homeless are especially victimized by government laws. According to the most recent findings, on a…

It is easy to see moral irony in the arguments of those who support Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s government in the ongoing dispute against a group of so-called vulture funds, led by the highly litigious Elliot Associates. Anyone even slightly familiar with the corrupt shenanigans of Fernandez, her late husband — former president Nestor Kirchner — and their…

Another water crisis is making national headlines. This time ground zero is in the mid-west. More than 400,000 people in and around Toledo, Ohio cannot drink water from their taps due to high levels of the dangerous toxin microcystin in the public drinking supply. The cause of this disaster is particularly concerning, however, as it is not the…

In the ongoing debate over the crony capitalist “Export-Import” bank, job statistics get thrown around a lot. On its website, the bank boasts that “Ex-Im Bank’s mission is American jobs,” claiming to have “supported 1.2 million private-sector, American jobs since 2009, supporting 205,000 jobs in 2013 alone.” Economist Veronique de Rugy points out that these job numbers…

A man, an American citizen, sits in his car as a U.S. Border Patrol agent insists that he roll down his window. He refuses. Agents use battering rams to smash the windows. Still, the driver refuses to leave his car, so he is hit with a Taser from two sides. He screams. It would be…

The gender identity of a large part of the population is not very surprising in social interactions, since it, for the most part, corresponds to their genders assigned at birth. But we should not forget that transgender communities continue to fight for self-determination of their own genders. Gender identity is not always correspondent to gender assigned…