Separate Banking and the State by Jacob G. Hornberger May 14, 2012 Have you noticed that whenever something goes wrong in life, statists call for more government regulations? How come they never seem to notice that their beloved regulated economy failed to prevent the thing that went wrong? No matter how highly regulated the activity, in the mind of the statist the fact that something went wrong doesn’t connote the failure ...
Jim Crow’s Drug War by Jacob G. Hornberger May 11, 2012 After the Civil War, Washington, D.C., became a model Jim Crow city for the United States. Having supposedly waged the war for the purpose of ending slavery, U.S. officials proceeded to keep the nation’s capital city segregated all the way through the 1950s. U.S. officials like to point to the 1964 Civil Rights Act as evidence of how enlightened they ...
Put the Postal Service Out of Its Misery by Jacob G. Hornberger May 10, 2012 In perpetual financial agony, the Postal Service has announced that it no longer intends to close thousands of rural post offices, notwithstanding the fact that, according to the New York Times, such offices earn an average of $15,000 while costing $114,000 to operate. Apparently constituent political pressures in those rural areas have caused the Postal Service to ...
Hitler’s Tribunals by Jacob G. Hornberger May 9, 2012 After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. government came up with the idea of instituting military tribunals for trying suspected terrorists as a possible alternative to prosecuting them under the U.S. Code in regular federal courts. Since then, some terrorist suspects have been accorded the federal court route, others have been accorded the tribunal route, and at least one ...
Totalitarian Show Trials by Jacob G. Hornberger May 8, 2012 If there is anything good about the military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay, it is that the American people will get to see how trials are conducted in totalitarian countries. One thing is for sure: The procedural protections found in the Bill of Rights that are employed in our federal court system here at home are nowhere to be found ...
It’s Again Time to Dismantle the Cold War Military Machine by Jacob G. Hornberger May 7, 2012 In 1989, when the Soviet Union dismantled, the American people had a grand opportunity, one in which they could have dismantled the massive national-security state apparatus that had come into existence at the end of World War II for the purpose of confronting America’s wartime ally and partner, the Soviet Union. Instead, the U.S. national-security state sought out ways ...
Resembling the Pinochet Regime by Jacob G. Hornberger May 4, 2012 Let’s assume that an American critic of U.S. foreign policy goes abroad and travels around the Middle East delivering a series of lectures, speeches, and articles attacking the U.S. invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. He refuses to support the troops, saying that when people are engaged in wrongdoing, regardless of their particular occupation, they should not be ...
The Military’s Exalted Position in American Life by Jacob G. Hornberger May 3, 2012 The Ninth Circuit’s decision holding John Yoo immune from liability in Jose Padilla’s lawsuit against him pretty much confirms what I recently wrote about the exalted position that the U.S. military and the CIA hold in American society. See here and here. The Court confirmed that when the cops are dealing with a criminal defendant, they are prohibited ...
Conservatives Are Socialists Too by Jacob G. Hornberger May 2, 2012 Conservatives are having a heyday calling President Obama a socialist. What they block out of their minds is that by their own measure, they are socialists too. In its purest sense, socialism refers to a situation in which the state owns all the means of production. Obviously, Obama doesn’t favor doing that. Thus, when conservatives call him a socialist, they ...
Obama Is Right — It’s Time for Reflection by Jacob G. Hornberger May 1, 2012 President Obama says that the one-year anniversary of the U.S. military’s killing of Osama bin Laden should be a time of reflection rather than a time of celebration. Indeed. Let’s do some reflecting. Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, U.S. officials claimed that the attackers had been motivated by hatred for America’s “freedom and values.” That was a crock, as I pointed ...
Joy Gordon’s Lecture at George Washington University by Jacob G. Hornberger April 30, 2012 Last Thursday I attended a great lecture by Joy Gordon, professor of philosophy at Fairfield University in Connecticut. The talk was based on her book Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions. It was sponsored by The Institute for Middle East Studies at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Gordon described the horrifying sanctions ...
The Military Exception to the Bill of Rights by Jacob G. Hornberger April 26, 2012 Consider the following hypothetical. DEA agents in Columbus, Georgia, suspect that Joe Blow is selling cocaine and heroin to city youths. They’re sure he’s guilty but have been unable to come up with any evidence of his guilt. Under a formal policy established by the DEA, they take Joe into custody without a warrant, take him to a secret ...