On Feb. 7 the United States will once again reach its statutory debt limit, meaning it cannot legally borrow any more money. Since the obvious option of cutting spending to match the amount of revenue that the government collects is off the table for some inexplicable reason, Congress will have to pass a new, higher …
For critics of the surveillance state, it is tempting to see President Obama’s speech a few weeks ago as a partial victory: Prompted by Edward Snowden’s leaks and the public pressure for National Security Agency reforms, he announced significant changes to the program that collects and stores information about all telephone calls. And he promised …
We’ve pointed out in the past that President Obama’s views on the surveillance state shifted completely from when he was Senator to when he was President. As Senator, he supported a bunch of reforms that are very much like the ones his panel have suggested — and which he’s about to ignore. The NY Times …
Continuing revelations of the extensive scope of the U.S. government’s mass spying program, piled on top of decades of foreign intervention and liberty suppression at home, can lead Americans to question if they should give up their work for peace and liberty. Nevertheless, there is reason for hope that pursuing this work will yield success. …
The power to tax has long conferred the power to destroy one’s political opponents. When the latest IRS politicization scandal erupted in May, many commentators talked as if the abuses were a novelty in American history. But, as David Burnham noted in his masterful 1990 book, A Law Unto Itself: The IRS and the Abuse …
Professor John H. Cochrane of the University of Chicago had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Dec. 25, in which he gave a brief description of (among other things) a market in which individuals buy our own health insurance — and not from an Obamacare exchange. According to Professor Cochrane: “…we should transition …
You’ve probably heard that President Obama signed up for Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. ObamaCare) health care. Well, sort of. He won’t actually be using it because he already receives dandy federal government coverage, as well he should. And as would be expected, he didn’t actually sign up himself because some staff did that for him, …
“Nowadays to be intelligible is to be found out.” — Oscar Wilde In the wacky world of American politics, if you as an employer have a religious objection to paying for your employees’ contraceptives, it is you who is contemptuous of religious freedom. As the New York Times editorial board lectured a judge who thinks …
Back in 2009, to accuse President Barack Obama of lying about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was to crawl onto a pretty lonely branch. In December of that year, when I leveled the charge in response to the president’s knowing mischaracterization of the Congressional Budget Office’s scoring of his signature piece of legislation, …
Last spring, Barack Obama told the graduating class of Ohio State University: “Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems… They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. …