Natural Rights, the Declaration, and the Constitution, Part 2 by Jacob G. Hornberger November 1, 2010 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Throughout most of history, it was a given that government had the legitimate authority to wield omnipotent power over its citizenry. If the king wanted a person’s land, he took it. If he wanted a share of its produce, he confiscated it. If he wanted to punish people for worshiping ...
Nullifying Tyranny by George Leef November 1, 2010 Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century by Thomas E. Woods Jr. (Regnery, 2010); 309 pages. One of the big mistakes made by the drafters of the Constitution was their omission of any provision that says what is to be done if the Congress or president acts unconstitutionally. Although the Constitution places limits on their authority, nowhere does ...
First Guantánamo Habeas Appeal to U.S. Supreme Court by Andy Worthington October 4, 2010 Last week, two years and three months after the U.S. Supreme Court in Boumediene v. Bush recognized constitutionally guaranteed habeas corpus rights for the prisoners held at Guantánamo, Fawzi al-Odah, a Kuwaiti prisoner held for nearly nine years, became the first prisoner to appeal to the Supreme Court “to protest federal court interpretations of detainees' right to ...
Natural Rights, the Declaration, and the Constitution, Part 1 by Jacob G. Hornberger October 1, 2010 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 We live in a country whose economic system is a welfare state and a government-managed economy and whose foreign policy is now based on an extensive overseas military empire and perpetual war, along with ever-increasing infringements on the civil liberties of the people. The economic consequences of the welfare-warfare state have ...
The Incessant Growth of Government Bureaucracy, Part 2 by Gregory Bresiger October 1, 2010 Part 1 | Part 2 A government bureaucracy may be difficult to establish, as supporters of expanded Obama health-care socialism discovered. But the friends of collectivism should take heart. No matter how many times people reject their calls to venture farther down the “road to serfdom,” no matter how many times American outrage is expressed at town halls across ...
Leading Humanity Out of the Darkness, Part 4 by Jacob G. Hornberger September 21, 2010 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 During the entire 11 years of the sanctions on Iraq, the anger in the Middle East was simmering, not only among Iraqi parents but also among Muslims throughout the Middle East, who could only sit idly by and watch the deaths occur year after year. There ...
Two Freed Prisoners in Germany by Andy Worthington September 20, 2010 On Thursday, two Guantánamo prisoners were released, to start new lives in Germany, bringing the prison’s population to 174. Announcing their arrival, Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière stated that, by taking them in, Germany had “made its humanitarian contribution to closing the detention center.” He also noted that the two men had asked for their identities to be withheld ...
Obama’s Hollow Guantánamo Apology by Andy Worthington September 13, 2010 On Friday, in his first press conference since May, President Obama was concerned primarily with the economy, but also found time to answer a couple of questions about Guantánamo that were put to him by Ann Compton of ABC News Radio. For the most part, the media overlooked this section of the press conference, focusing only on ...
Restricting Presidential Wartime Powers by Andy Worthington September 7, 2010 Under President George W. Bush, a small group of advisors tied closely to Vice President Dick Cheney argued that neither Congress nor the judiciary should attempt to prevent the president from doing whatever he felt was appropriate as the commander-in-chief of a “war on terror” that was declared after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. As Sidney Blumenthal ...
The Moral Case for Drug Freedom, Part 2 by Laurence M. Vance September 1, 2010 Part 1 | Part 2 Believers in a free society should challenge all laws on drug trafficking, drug manufacturing, drug sales, and drug use. They should object to the 750,000 arrests of Americans every year for marijuana possession. They should protest the incarceration of tens of thousands of Americans for drug-related offenses. They should contest the Harrison Narcotics Tax ...
The Incessant Growth of Government Bureaucracy, Part 1 by Gregory Bresiger September 1, 2010 Part 1 | Part 2 The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, & government to gain ground. — Thomas Jefferson “It is far easier to introduce a government program than to get rid of it.” Those were the words of a former federal bureaucrat who had worked in World War II in the Office of Price Administration (OPA). ...
No Surprise at Obama’s Guantánamo Trial Chaos by Andy Worthington August 31, 2010 Surprise is the last thing that anyone ought to feel on hearing the news that the Obama administration “has shelved the planned prosecution,” in a trial by military commission, “of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged coordinator of the October 2000 suicide attack on the USS Cole in Yemen,” as the Washington Post reported on Thursday, ...