It was a wild ride last week in the world of the Deep Web, that section of the Internet that requires special tools to access. The feds took down the site called Silk Road and claim to have arrested its founder and administrator. The news streams were filled with lurid tales of derring-do in this …

“Dad, I’ve got to do something,” begins a panicky letter from one of the children. “When I changed my job status, I lost my health insurance. The best policy I can find is $550 a month. What should I do?” “Don’t buy the insurance,” we suggested. “It’s a waste of money.” “Just don’t get sick,” …

Want to know just how invasive the state is going to get in the United States? Well, take a look across the pond. In terms of the large, invasive state, we English are way ahead of you guys. We’re a good 50 or more years further down the road to serfdom. Nineteenth-century Britain was about …

For the life of me, I just don’t get conservatives. They profess to love free enterprise and free markets and they say they hate socialism. Okay, then why do they never call for the repeal of Medicare and Medicaid? After all, it’s not surprising that progressives (or liberals) favor Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare. They don’t …

“This only works if young people show up,” said Bill Clinton the other day. He was explaining Obamacare. On the surface, that’s an odd thing to say. Medicare seems to work just fine without a lot of young people. It needs taxes from young people, of course. But nobody has ever said young people need …

A tense drama unfolded this week with the virtual shutdown of vital government agencies: the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the National Labor Relations Board, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, as well as many other such federal agencies. Without them, the Founding Fathers could not have imagined the republic. Even if …

Three months after Edward Snowden’s leaks began to reveal the extent of the U.S.’ mass surveillance program, “serious people” are beginning to make the case that it’s time for the outrage and indignation to subside and give way to a “national conversation” about the future of surveillance. So has the moment come for us to …

The other night, I tuned into The Flaw, a 2011 documentary about the 2008 financial crash. While telling the crash story, the movie flashes in and out of a street tour offered by an ex-mortgage bond trader. The young man has the required effervescence to keep a dozen tourists entertained while they look at nothing …

My community in the Deep South prides itself on friendship, community feeling, and an overall happy spirit. So it was a bit strange for all of this to be utterly smashed and obliterated in the course of a few calamitous weeks in which friend turned against friend, colleagues became antagonists and enemies, and families were …

In all likelihood, Republican efforts to defund Obamacare are toast — and sooner rather than later. It appears to be a fantasy that a bill to defund would even make it to president Obama’s desk. This straightforward reality has prompted many reasonable observers to ask why frustrated conservatives would bother risking a government shutdown over …

Stocks settled down recently. The Dow dropped 40 points. Either the market had already priced in “QE forever”… or investors are starting to wonder. Maybe an economy with falling household incomes is not a good place to own stocks. Maybe an economy that is barely growing doesn’t justify the highest stock prices of all time. …

A sixth-grader has been suspended for drawing an inappropriate picture. The drawing did not include any gun, but showed a checkpoint backed up by a SWAT team carrying flower pots while an unarmed drone hovered above. The suspended girl, whose name is kept secret at the request of her family, said she “just wanted to …

As much as I love technology, part of me hates being so dependent on a live wall plug wherever I go. You find yourself trapped in some setting without accessible wall plugs and your phone is dying. You charge from you laptop, but that is dying too. You take recourse to your tablet, but that …

Every year, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) adds to its short-term budget forecasts (10 years and 25 years) a long-term (75-year) outlook.The 2013 Long-term Budget Outlook was published earlier this week. The CBO, of course, admits that “the uncertainty of budget projections increases the farther the projections extend into the future.” Some would argue that …

It has now been nearly two centuries since French political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville visited America and compared American democracy to the French variety. The Martian asked his Earth correspondent to redo the comparison. The typical Frenchman thinks that Paris is the center of the universe, life without a baguette is not worth living, France …

Mobsters shake down, say, a restaurant owner. They drink all the booze and eat all they want and pay nothing. They rob the cash register. They even go out and borrow money against the place and spend it. When they’ve finally bled the thing dry and the business is about to collapse, they burn the …

A new assessment of state pension obligations suggests the problem is even worse than it already appears. How much worse? EMPTY COOKIE JAR: Pension liabilities are worse than many states’ official figures indicate. Using a more conservative method of accounting for financial gains in the marketplace, there is a $4.1 trillion gap between assets and …

I was at the Canadian border, headed toward the freedom that exists a few feet beyond the last security check. I was gently waved down a side corridor. Ninety minutes later, I was let go, but not before something truly alarming happened. I’m pretty sure that the Canadian government captured a mirrored version of my …

I have come to the point that I cannot believe a thing President Obama says. That’s not quite the same as saying I don’t believe anything he says. When he speaks he may be telling the truth, he may not be, or he may be parsing his words to mislead. But it’s impossible to know …

Our “Crash Alert” flag warns of a crash in U.S. stocks. Readers are advised to proceed with caution. But since the start of September, the news for stocks has not been bad. If you want to buy stocks, the financial press and Wall Street can give you plenty of reasons to do so. There is …

Fort Meade, MD – The United States, the least unfree country on Earth, is fighting a major invasion of the Blueshirts. The most visible Blueshirts constitute a 50,000-plus army that occupies all the airports in America. Recognizable by their blue shirts and their inquisitive eyes and hands, they search and humiliate all Americans trying to …

Sometimes, the news of the day causes me to say, “Huh?” The New York Times revelations last month about NSA programs and activities to enhance the agency’s ability to spy on ordinary citizens prompts today’s “Huh?” Who knew that our every phone call, Internet post and tweet is being recorded by the government? I have …

Apparently, global markets rallied overnight on hopes that a conflict may be avoided if Syria gives up its chemical weapons. If that’s the case, it’s a rally that will fade later in the week. That’s because the ongoing Syrian conflict has nothing to do with chemical weapons. It’s all about regime change, which is all …

I dreamed I saw Bernard von NotHaus, alive as you or me. Said I, “But Bernard, you’ve been jailed two years.” “I never was,” said he. Bernard has been the called the Rosa Parks of the alternative money movement. More than 10 years ago, he had this idea that he would make his own money …