So, January 25-31 is “National School Choice Week.” Break out the bubbly! The event, put on annually by a coalition of lobbying groups, advertises itself as “an unprecedented opportunity, every January, to shine a positive spotlight on the need for effective education options for all children.” I’m sure most “school choice” advocates firmly and honestly support that goal. Unfortunately, their…

On Saturday, January 17, the Yellow Stone River, perhaps the most celebrated aquatic system in North America, was heavily contaminated by nearly 1200 barrels of oil. Al Jazeera America reports the leak’s environmental damage stretches from the river to surrounding farmland in Glendive, Montana. Particularly, the report tells the story of Dena Hoff, now experiencing…

On January 14 the US Department of Justice announced that the Joint Terrorism Task Force had disrupted the latest “domestic terrorism plot” — this time by “a Cincinnati-area man … to attack the U.S. Capital and kill government officials.” House Speaker  John Boehner immediately cited the disrupted plot as evidence that Congress should think carefully before refusing…

Last week’s bloody events in Paris demonstrate yet again that a noninterventionist foreign policy, far from being a luxury, is an urgent necessity — literally a matter of life and death. A government that repeatedly wages wars of aggression — the most extreme form of extremism — endangers the society it ostensibly protects by gratuitously making enemies, some…

The US Supreme Court’s announcement on January 16 that it will decide the constitutionality of state-level bans on same-sex marriage has elicited the predictable whining about judicial activism. The Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins pleads “there is nothing in the Constitution that empowers the courts to silence the people and impose a nationwide redefinition of…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “State Justice Failed Michael Brown. People’s Justice is Just Getting Started.” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. The consequences for cops who draw public attention due to their extreme levels of brutality, in this new age of citizen journalism, is instructive. The people are more than happy to administer…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Chad Nelson‘s “The Inherent Flaw of the Criminal Justice System” read by Dylan Delikta and edited by Nick Ford. The protesters who utter such concerns about the validity of a state prosecution of a police officer have their finger on an issue that market anarchists have long recognized. Government checks and balances are a…

Buone notizie per tutti! La polizia di New York è in sciopero. La settimana scorsa, gli arresti sono crollati del 66% rispetto alle previsioni annuali, mentre le multe per gli automobilisti sono giù del 94%. Risultato: New York non è finita nel caos. Non c’è stato lo spara spara per le strade. Non c’è stato…

Re-elected New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s inaugural address was built around the purported necessity of big government since “there is no small solution to big problems.” Cuomo’s exemplar of a big government solution success story from New York state history: The Erie Canal. But that megaproject was not just a prototype for the industrial age’s spectacular engineering…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Christiaan Elderhorst‘s ““Civilized” War is Permanent War” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. A number of ideas have been put forward to mediate the amount of innocent victims. Technology philosopher Christine Boshuijzen cites technologically impaired military officials as a reason for civilian deaths. Doctoral student Dieuwertje Kuijpers calls for more democratic…

Good news, everyone! The police of New York City are on strike. Over the past week, arrests rate have dropped by 66% versus annual expectations, with traffic enforcement down 94%. As a result, New York did not rip itself apart in a wave of disorder. People were not executed on the street. Society did not collapse. This poses a…

Partisan combatants have quickly taken up sides in the public debate over US president Barack Obama’s preemption of a wedding planned by two US Army captains at a course at which he wanted to golf. Obama’s defenders stress that the White House was unaware of the planned wedding until after scheduling the president’s game. They…

I live in Chicago, where police abuse is a disheartening daily reality, concentrated almost entirely in black communities, ruining lives, splitting up families. The white professionals I know live in good neighborhoods, ensconced either in downtown high-rises or out in the suburbs, safely away from the violence but hearing enough about it to casually blame…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “Surprise: The Drug War isn’t about Drugs” read by Dylan Delikta and edited by Nick Ford. Perhaps the biggest joke is that the War on Drugs is fought to reduce drug use. No doubt many people involved in the domestic enforcement side of the Drug War actually believe this, but the left…

Sulla scia della rivolta di Ferguson, Barack Obama ha chiesto centinaia di milioni di dollari per armare la polizia di videocamere da installare sulla divisa. Questo, pensa lui, è un modo di responsabilizzare la polizia. E ha ragione. Aumenta la “responsabilità” che già si vede nella giustizia locale. Rende la polizia responsabile agli occhi del…

The recent trajectory of events leading up to the shooting of NYPD officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, and the nationwide police backlash afterward, have made it clearer than ever how police feel about the public they supposedly protect and serve: they’re terrified of us. For more than twenty years, the Drug War and associated…

On Saturday, the Guantanamo Bay detention camp released four of its 136 uncharged detainees from custody. Six years late, Barack Obama is inching closer towards keeping his promise: “I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantanamo, and I will follow through on that.” But as for the pledge to restore habeas corpus that accompanied his making an anti-Guantanamo…

In the wake of an uprising in Ferguson, Barack Obama requested hundreds of millions of dollars to arm the police with cameras. This, he thought, was a way of holding police accountable. And he was right, it feeds into the system of “accountability” already in place in local justice systems. It holds them accountable to…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Ryan Calhoun‘s “Jon Stewart, Jester for the Warfare State” read by Erick Vasconcelos and edited by Nick Ford. The difference between Carlin and Stewart is that Carlin was not beholden, he kept nothing as sacrosanct and by the time of his death had at one point offended the sensibilities of every demographic on the…

The Colbert Report‘s windup completes its namesake’s shift from the gadfly who tore into George W. Bush at an official White House event to the court jester who gave softball publicity to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. It is thus the perfect symbol of the evolution of American liberalism from the tail ends of the administrations…