Air travelers, mark your calendar. An activist opposed to the new invasive body scanners in use at airports around the country just designated Wednesday, Nov. 24 as a National Opt-Out Day. He’s encouraging airline passengers to decline the TSA’s technological strip searches en masse on that day as a protest against the scanners, and the…
Liberty
Liberty
Reason.tv: Are We Really Less Free Today? Sheldon Richman on the State of Liberty
by JOHN ADAMS •
Here’s the description accompanying the video: Reason.tv sat down with Richman during the recent Libertopia festival in Hollywood, California to discuss the mixed bag that is the state of liberty today. The nanny state and regulatory state may be growing, but Richman points out that many people, from blacks to women, are freer than they…
Laws/Regulations, Libertarians, Liberty, Press Release
Libertarians Oppose Abusive TSA Strip-Search Machines
by JOHN ADAMS •
The Libertarian Party of America issued the following press release about the Transportation Security Administration’s excessive security policies — WASHINGTON – Libertarian Party Chair Mark Hinkle commented today on the Transportation Security Administration’s use of strip-search machines at airports. Hinkle said, “The TSA should end the strip-search machine program immediately. “We’ve reached a point where…
Free Markets, Government Spending, Liberty, Planning
Sumner, Roosevelt, and the Forgotten Man
by JOHN ADAMS •
Liberty, Politics
Jeremy Lott on William F. Buckley Jr.’s Faith and Politics
by JOHN ADAMS •
I have never been a great fan of National Review, but over the years I have come to admire its founder’s principled, diligent, often iconoclastic, and (over time) increasingly libertarian political views. He made mistakes, surely, but he acknowledged them. Buckley was an honest, serious, and courageous man. Here’s a description that accompanies Reason’s interview…
Liberty
Institute for Justice Takes Arizona School Choice Fight to U.S. Supreme Court
by JOHN ADAMS •
Sometimes a commitment to liberty, one that would offer low and middle-income students a better life, requires a strenuous defense. That’s the task facing the Institute for Justice in a school choice dispute. The IJ is taking its case for Arizona school choice to the United States Supreme Court. Here’s a video that describes what’s…
Free Markets, Liberty, Tyranny
Preparing Cuba for the free market from the US | PRI.ORG
by JOHN ADAMS •
Easier said than done, though certainly worth doing: Cuba is flirting with free-market reforms, while Cuban Americans try to help prepare the country for life under a version of capitalism. (This story’s from the left-of-center Public Radio International — and that provenance offers another of many signs of the inevitable return to free markets in…
Liberty
Charles Haynes: Why religious literacy matters — GazetteXtra
by JOHN ADAMS •
….But how much do inhabitants of our faith-saturated land actually know about religion? Not very much, according to a new survey released by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life on Sept. 28…. While most people (89 percent) correctly understand that Supreme Court decisions bar public school teachers from leading their classes in prayer,…
Laws/Regulations, Liberty
Lou Dobbs, American Hypocrite | The Nation
by JOHN ADAMS •
The Nation has a fine story exposing the hypocrisy of Lou Dobbs, an immigrant-bashing television commentator and former CNN anchor: In Lou Dobbs’s heyday at CNN, when he commanded more than 800,000 viewers and a reported $6 million a year for “his fearless reporting and commentary” in the words of former CNN president Jonathan Klein,…
Freedom of Speech, Laws/Regulations, Liberty, Politics
Camp Politics: Training the Next Generation of Censors Since 1974!
by JOHN ADAMS •
Freedom of Speech, Law, Laws/Regulations, Liberty
From the Institute for Justice: Defending the Right to Ordinary Speech
by JOHN ADAMS •
Is it possible, in America, that government will not allow citizens to make a living describing national landmarks without holding a license from the state? A license, literally, to speak about our democratic heritage. Not a business license — no, a second license from government — by which government claims to permit a person to…
Law, Liberty
Im Not Going to Be Interrogated As a Pre-Condition of Re-Entering My Own Country – Hit & Run : Reason Magazine
by JOHN ADAMS •
There’s justifiable pride in being an American citizen: America is an extraordinary place, a free, beautiful republic. There are countless reasons to be proud of being a citizen, so many reasons to love the American way of life. Unfortunately, the encroachment of government regulations is so considerable that federal officials often assert authority that they…
Free Markets, Liberty
Arthur Brooks and Paul Ryan: The Size of Government and the Choice This Fall – WSJ.com
by JOHN ADAMS •
Well said: As we move into this election season, Americans are being asked to choose between candidates and political parties. But the true decision we will be making—now and in the years to come—is this: Do we still want our traditional American free enterprise system, or do we prefer a European-style social democracy? This is…
Law, Libertarians, Liberty
Reason.tv: Anyone Care About Economic Liberty Anymore? George Thomas on the 14th Amendment
by JOHN ADAMS •
George Thomas of Claremont McKenna College discusses economic liberties. Reason.tv’s interview is a solid contribution to the topic. I have embedded the video, and a description of it, below. (By the way, if you’re looking for those who take economic liberties seriously, there’s no better place to start than the “merry band of litigators” at…