C4SS Feed 44 presents Ryan Calhoun‘s “Bland, McKenna, and the State’s Psychiatric Weapon”  read by Thomas J. Webb and edited by Nick Ford. It’s clear McKenna’s death was no accident, just as a woman who dies as a result of her husband beating her is no accident. McKenna’s physical condition leaves no doubt that her…

Presidential contender and “progressive” hero Bernie Sanders has been rightfully criticized for his support of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. The act, also known as the “Biden Crime Bill,” dramatically increased police presence and funding, banned “assault weapons,” and created strict new sentencing guidelines. Somehow Sanders has managed to escape criticism for…

C4SS Feed 44 presents T.J. Scholl‘s “Even Cops Should Have the Right to Make an Honest Living” read by Thomas J. Webb and edited by Nick Ford. Radical feminists and other social critics often point out that the pressures of capitalist androcentrism blur the line between free choice and force, resulting in marginalized women being…

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…

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…

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…

There have been more (and more. and more…) bodies piled up by cops in the US since Ferguson. Feels like there’s a new one every day. Latest life extinguished in police custody being talked about is Sandra Bland: pulled over in Texas for trying to move out of the way of a police vehicle without…

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…

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…

Hanging upside-down, swinging like a pendulum and naked, the grimacing face of the female victim from Rihanna’s new (NSFW) “Bitch Better Have My Money” music video seems to be the face that has launched a thousand think-pieces. In seven disturbing minutes, Rihanna takes revenge on her dodgy (white) accountant by kidnapping his (white) wife, stripping her,…

Mercoledì 17 giugno, un uomo armato ha ucciso nove membri della Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, storica chiesa nera di Charleston, nella Carolina del Sud. Dopo esser rimasto seduto in chiesa per quindici minuti, l’uomo ha urlato epiteti razzisti e poi ha aperto il fuoco. Dopo questo crimine così evidente, rivolto contro i neri in…

Images circulated, in the aftermath of Dylann Roof’s racially motivated mass shooting at the historically black Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, included not only numerous pictures of Roof brandishing the Confederate battle flag but one of him squatting over a rumpled U.S. flag and trampling it underfoot. His disrespect to Old Glory suggests that he…

On Wednesday, June 17th, a shooter murdered nine members of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, a historically Black church in Charleston, South Carolina. After sitting in church for about an hour, the gunman made racist comments before opening fire. After what was clearly a crime directed toward Black people because of their race, President Barack…

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…

Harriet A. Washington. Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present (New York: Anchor Books, 2006). There has been considerable controversy over the ethics of using knowledge — even to save lives — that was obtained from Nazi medical experimentation on death camp inmates. Unfortunately far…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Cory Massimino‘s “Ron Paul: Thick or Thin?” read by Christopher B. King and edited by Nick Ford. And what is underlying this respect for human rights? Paul rightfully says it’s tolerance, “…liberty is liberty and it’s your life and you have a right to use it as you see fit.” In other words, the…

This weekend I had the pleasure of attending Students For Liberty’s New Orleans Regional Conference. It was a delightful event, featuring a talk by C4SS’s own Roderick Long along with many other radical, principled, and insightful speakers. One of the most interesting presentations was by Maggie McNeill, a retired sex worker who blogs at The…

It’s well known that the United States has the largest prison population on Earth. It’s less obvious why this is the case. To truly understand mass incarceration, we should examine what caused America’s prison population to grow so dramatically over the last several decades. The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and…

Mandatory minimum sentences have been receiving a fair bit of scrutiny lately, largely due to the efforts of Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM). And rightly so. Mandatory minimums remove discretion and context from sentencing, resulting in grossly unjust and wildly disproportionate sentences for minor offenses. Moreover, they’ve caused some troubling shifts in who has discretionary…