SHARE        Thursday, October 22, 2015
Spoiled Rotten: Who Owns Your Vote? There's a word that sets my teeth on edge, bubbling up among the commentariat every other year as election campaigns heat up. In this cycle I'm starting to hear it earlier than usual, mainly because prominent candidates -- first Donald Trump, now Jim Webb -- are rumored to be considering independent bids for the presidency.

(24 comments) SHARE        Tuesday, October 20, 2015
The Death of an American Political Prisoner Irwin Schiff spent much of his later life in prison. He died in prison on October 16, blind and suffering from lung cancer, having been denied "compassionate release" to die at home with his family. So, who was this Schiff fellow? A mass murderer? Perhaps a serial rapist? Well, no. Irwin Schiff's "crime" was saying and writing things the federal government didn't want you to hear.

(7 comments) SHARE        Monday, October 12, 2015
Five Years is Five Years Too Long: Free Julian Assange! Julian Assange has already spent the last three years and four months under de facto house arrest, trapped in the embassy and prevented from traveling to Ecuador proper, where he's been granted political asylum. And let's make no bones about this: Assange is a political prisoner.

(46 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, October 7, 2015
War Party's New Line: Vladimir Putin is Why We Can't Have Nice Things Remember the good old days? The US and the Soviet Union constantly staring each other down? Mutual Assured Destruction? Perpetual brushfire and proxy wars punctuated by deadly and disastrous conflicts like Korea and Vietnam? They're baaaaaaack "

SHARE        Thursday, October 1, 2015
Private Prisons: Bernie Sanders is Right As a libertarian, I'm all for "privatization." I'd love to see as many services as possible taken out of government's hands and left to the private sector. But "private prisons" aren't "private" in any meaningful sense of the word.

(1 comments) SHARE        Thursday, September 24, 2015
Pwned Again: Don't Trust These Jokers With Your Information There's a word for people who trust their data security to screwups like president Barack Obama, would-be presidents Hillary Clinton and Chris Christie, FBI Director James Comey, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and other politicians and bureaucrats. That word is "naive."

(1 comments) SHARE        Monday, September 21, 2015
Religion and Politics and Presidential Qualifications Most Americans adhere to some system of religious belief. I'm one of those Americans. I don't consider that a disqualifier for public office. What I do expect from candidates vis a vis their religious beliefs are two things ...

(1 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, September 2, 2015
Religious Liberty: Some Unsolicited Career Advice for Kim Davis One of the jobs of the County Clerk in Rowan County, Kentucky is to issue marriage licenses to couples who meet the legal standards for such licenses. Recently, those standards changed, and now same-sex couples can license their marriages. That new standard conflicts with Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis's religious belief that marriage is only valid between one man and one woman. No problem.

(1 comments) SHARE        Tuesday, August 25, 2015
Unacceptable Speech at Old Dominion With the fall semester beginning at colleges and universities around the US, it's time for a new round of controversy over student speech. Right out of the gate, Virginia's Old Dominion University takes an early lead: WTKR News Channel 3 reports that ODU "officials took time from their weekend to respond to some banners hung up at an off-campus home that are upsetting many."

SHARE        Thursday, August 13, 2015
It's Classified: A Tale of Two Scofflaws I find it painful to compare Chelsea Manning to Hillary Clinton. Chelsea Manning is an American heroine who knowingly exposed classified information for the purpose of revealing war crimes in Iraq and other government lawlessness ... Hillary Clinton is a power-monger who carelessly exposed classified information because she believes she's above the law.

(25 comments) SHARE        Tuesday, August 4, 2015
August 1945: Let's Talk About Terrorism Terrorism, per WordNet, is "the calculated use of violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature." The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings meet that definition in spades.

SHARE        Wednesday, July 29, 2015
Celebs vs. Amnesty: Do The Entertainment Elite Hate Women? There's no sex work without sex workers. Pimps can't broker transactions in, nor can "Johns" purchase, something that isn't for sale. And as the public-facing part of the business, the workers are the easy ones to detect and to persecute. Where prostitution remains illegal, it is they who suffer.

(28 comments) SHARE        Saturday, July 25, 2015
Police Violence: An Anti-Obscenity Proposal I have to credit [NYPD police union president Ed] Mullins with inspiring my proposal for consideration by his association, by New York City, and by police unions and city governments everywhere: Insurance. Yes, insurance. Cities should require every police officer in their employ to carry a $10 million liability policy for torts inflicted while on duty.

(2 comments) SHARE        Monday, July 20, 2015
Election 2016: Scott Walker vs. "Government Dependence" Google returns more than 5,000 results on [Scott] Walker's name and the phrase "government dependence." He seems to have focused on it for many years. And on a quick read of his biography, I doff my cap to his stature as world-class expert on the topic.

(11 comments) SHARE        Friday, July 17, 2015
The Iran Deal: What You Need to Know Supporters of the nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 nations have a better case than anti-Iran hawks.