Daily Articles

War with Iran Would Be Madness

by Sheldon Richman November 23, 2011

President Obama's refusal to rule out military action against Iran and GOP contender Mitt Romney's recent threat of war against Iran should appall anyone who believes, with the free-market liberal Ludwig von Mises, that not war, but peace, is the father of all things. If the U.S. government or its client state Israel were to attack Iran, all hell ...

Drug-Sentencing Disparities

by Laurence M. Vance November 22, 2011

As many as 12,000 inmates in federal prison could soon be released early including 1,800 who are eligible for immediate release thanks to the U.S. Sentencing Commissions vote earlier this year to provide retroactive application of the Fair Sentencing Act that was passed by Congress last year. The new policy took effect on November1. Does that mean that murderers and ...

GOP Debate Reveals Depraved and Deluded Political Class

by Tim Kelly November 21, 2011

The most recent GOP foreign policy debate revealed the depraved and deluded state of Americas political class. There was a time when U.S. presidents sought plausible deniability for things like torture and assassination; now such sordid practices are openly supported by candidates seeking the country's highest elected office. Several candidates were asked their opinion regarding waterboarding. Herman Cain said that ...

The EEOC’s Forgotten Racial Racketeering

by James Bovard November 21, 2011

Few federal agencies have a more brazen history of trampling due process and basic fairness than the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. From the time the EEOC was created in 1965, it has continually stretched its power and sought to win by legal intimidation. Its latest shenanigans need to be judged in light of its early bureaucratic racketeering. The 1964 Civil ...

It Costs $72 Million a Year to Hold Cleared Prisoners at Guantánamo

by Andy Worthington November 18, 2011

Last week, the exorbitant expense of maintaining the Bush administrations war on terror prison at Guantánamo was revealed in the Miami Herald, where Carol Rosenberg explained that Congress provided $139million to operate the prison last year. With 171 prisoners still held, that works out to $812,865 per prisoner nearly 30times as much as it costs to keep a ...

Industrializing Human Suffering

by Wendy McElroy November 16, 2011

Is Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain guilty of sexually harassing women? Only the people directly involved know for sure. But so many high-profile cases of alleged sexual abuse have crumbled under scrutiny for example, Dominique Strauss-Kahn's alleged rape of a New York City maid that some skepticism is called for. Indeed, the presumption of innocence offered to ...

Thank You for Your Service

by Rich Schwartzman November 16, 2011

It was another Veterans Day without me wearing the display cap with my old chevrons and campaign ribbons. I put that cap together in the mid-1980s to help me deal with survivors guilt. I had spent 16 months in Southeast Asia, but I was at U-Tapao in Thailand, not a base in Vietnam. U-Tapao was a major B-52 base where ...

Nanny State Disapproval: Manipulating Your Diet through Taxation

by Fergus Hodgson November 15, 2011

Twenty-six states intrude on our nutritional decisions by taxing soda at a higher rate than other groceries, and seventeen states do the same for candy. As if that were not bad enough in the land of the free, legislators continue to push for new and heftier taxes in this realm, with new soda taxes pending in fourteen states. A new ...

Drug Testing for Welfare Benefits

by Laurence M. Vance November 15, 2011

Lawmakers in dozens of states are considering proposals to require drug testing of welfare recipients. In these days of budget tightening, states are looking for ways to balance their budgets without raising taxes. The drug-testing requirements are supposed to save the states money, since they will cause some families to be prohibited from receiving welfare benefits. The proposed measures seem ...

The Road to the Permanent Warfare State, Part 7

by Gregory Bresiger November 15, 2011

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 |Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 |Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 |Part 12 |Part 13 In later years, NSC-68 would be held up by revisionist historians as the inevitable ...

Veterans Day: Thanks but No Thanks

by Tim Kelly November 11, 2011

Veterans Day honors those citizens who fought in the U.S. governments wars wars supposedly waged to preserve Americans liberty. Most Americans uncritically accept this last part, and believe they owe the U.S. military a debt of gratitude for their freedom and independence. This belief is so widely held that it has become a tenet of the country's civic faith. However, ...

Trial at Guantánamo: What Shall We Do With the Torture Victim?

by Andy Worthington November 11, 2011

At Guantánamo this past Wednesday, one of the most notorious torture victims of the Bush administration Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri was arraigned for his trial by military commission. He was charged with masterminding the attack on the USS Cole in 2000 off the coast of Yemen, which killed 17 U.S. sailors and wounded 39 others. Al-Nashiri is also one of three ...