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Relevance: 21% Posted on: October 7, 2019
“Scientist” — what an abused term! When a journalist needs an authority to write about some nutty, wildly improbable affront to common sense, a “scientist” will do. Case in point, turn to Newsweek: “Tanning salons are more likely to be located in U.S. neighborhoods with higher numbers of same-sex male…
Relevance: 21% Posted on: November 16, 2021
The brazenness of governmental assaults on freedom of speech continues apace. In addition to “aggressive IRS scrutiny” of conservative groups, using campaign finance regulations to suppress speech, and FBI raids on homes of perpetrators of journalism, we are seeing government officials openly demand that private firms suppress speech. In September,…
Relevance: 20% Posted on: November 20, 2009
Maybe it’s just me . . . and all other normal people. But I’m more worried about policemen who abuse authority than those too “culturally insensitive” in their cheerful greetings. Yes, that’s the latest crisis: Bobbies who say “Good evenin’ all” as they walk the beat. Or so says a…
Relevance: 20% Posted on: January 10, 2000
One thing you can say about the political establishment in Washington is that at least they're consistent. They consistently ignore what the American people think. Consider public funding, or matching funds, given to presidential candidates. The program just doesn't work. And the American people know it though Washington, DC isn't…
Relevance: 20% Posted on: May 28, 2010
Those who like Big Government tend to dislike Big Business. So it must be just an unintended effect that shiny, new government programs invariably harm small businesses, aiding big ones. There are many examples of this. Today’s comes from the biggest new kid on the block, the new health care…
Relevance: 20% Posted on: February 19, 2009
There’s a famous quip by one English intellectual about another. “Oh, you know what so-and-so’s idea of a tragedy is: A beautiful theory killed by an ugly fact.” Well, don’t I know it. I wrote a column, recently, for Townhall.com, entitled “The Buxom Bailout Babes of the Umpteenth Brumaire.” In…
Relevance: 20% Posted on: April 27, 2021
Not spending millions more to hire and train swarms of Internal Revenue Service agents to poke, audit, investigate and squeeze more tax dollars from wealthier Americans would be — you knew this was coming — racist. That’s the new argument for siccing the IRS on wealthier Americans; they’re more likely…
Relevance: 20% Posted on: December 1, 2003
I don't get too excited about either major political party. When the Democrats are in, I think, "Oh my goodness, the Democrats are in!" With the Republicans in, I think, "Oh my goodness, the Republicans are in!" When everything is nice and bipartisan, I think: "Oh my goodness, another pay…
Relevance: 19% Posted on: July 10, 2012
President Barack Obama is not targeting the country’s 99 percent against the wealthiest 1 percent. In a news conference, yesterday, he instead singled out the top 2 percent. Even though they account for 46 percent of all income taxes collected, Obama says members of this group don’t pay their “fair…
Relevance: 19% Posted on: April 26, 1999
On issues, politicians love to tell us how much they care, but they hate to tell us where they stand. Last year, Pat Toomey from Pennsylvania ran a different kind of campaign. No poll-driven, mushy sound bites. He didn't tell voters what they wanted to hear, but what he really…
Relevance: 19% Posted on: October 12, 2011
In one way, President Obama has had it hard: He inherited a mess. In another, he has had it easy: His predecessor blew it big time. As James Bovard put it in his 2004 book, The Bush Betrayal, “George W. Bush came to the presidency promising prosperity, peace, and humility.…
Relevance: 18% Posted on: October 10, 2013
Blasé about sweeping government surveillance? Think you have “nothing to hide”? I bet you do. Ever draw curtains? You have “something to hide.” If you balk when a con man says, “I need your birthday and Social Security Number,” you have “something to hide.” When you feel comfortable giving certain…
Relevance: 18% Posted on: April 23, 2010
President Obama is blasting what he calls “the furious efforts of industry lobbyists” to fend off tighter regulation of the financial industry. Pretending that Fed credit expansion and governmental incentives to take on temporarily cheap mortgages had no part in the current crisis, officials carefully direct our attention elsewhere. Widespread…
Relevance: 18% Posted on: July 22, 2010
Do not look at the liability behind that curtain! Or: Do not mention that we don’t know what the liabilities are. Some things are too painful to report. Apparently. The folks who audit the Social Security Administration are late on a set of reports. The reports in question account for…
Relevance: 18% Posted on: February 24, 2010
Spending sprees are fun. The responsible cut-backs after such sprees? Not so much fun. Seems the recent gubernatorial election made a difference in New Jersey. There’s change there. Also hope. Last November, running on a platform of fiscal sanity, Republican challenger Chris Christie defeated the Democratic Governor Jon Corzine. And…
Relevance: 17% Posted on: March 10, 2015
Government is out of control. This statement sadly seems to require no additional explanation or defense. Whether one is conservative or liberal, progressive or libertarian, Americans increasingly regard this proclamation as a self-evident truth. But perhaps some Rip Van, catatonic through previous decades, just now awakening, might seek further details…
Relevance: 17% Posted on: August 18, 2014
The important group Democrats Against Democratic Obstruction of Justice (DADOOJ) has yet to be formed to denounce ongoing cover-ups by the Obama administration. If a DADOOJ did exist, though, its two or three members would surely cite a recent Hill column by Rick Manning, “More lost emails—When will Democrats have…
Relevance: 17% Posted on: February 9, 2012
Ronald Bailey, online at Reason.com, quotes a press release from a group of renewable energy outfits whining and moaning to keep their huge tax breaks. It’s all for the good of the country, they say. But Bailey notes that when such tax credits go to businesses not favored by environmental…
Relevance: 17% Posted on: September 20, 2011
Retail sales taxation became vogue among the states of the union during the Great Depression. When other revenue sources dried up, many states decided to nab potential taxpayers at each transaction. We’re in a depression again, and numerous legislatures are looking to expand their retail sales tax base by targeting…
Relevance: 17% Posted on: May 18, 2011
When President Obama granted to himself the power to execute American citizens without due process, it wasn’t just Judge Napolitano who became alarmed. Now, citizen activists are honestly nervous, some now thinking that the government is targeting them with assassination. Sounds paranoid. But, as is often said, just because you’re…
Relevance: 16% Posted on: January 13, 2020
Should Lincoln Chafee invert a boot and place it on his head? It might help him compete. The famous Republican turned Democratic politician from Rhode Island — former U.S. Senator and Governor, both, and sometime presidential hopeful — has filed to run for the presidency. But as a Libertarian. The…
Relevance: 16% Posted on: May 9, 2015
U. S. Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont “independent” who caucuses with the Democrats and calls himself a “democratic socialist,” announced this week that he is seeking the Democratic Socialist Party’s nomination — er, I mean the Democratic Party’s nomination for president. One of the Vermonter’s most visceral claims to left-wing…
Relevance: 16% Posted on: February 19, 2017
As conflict grows week by week, month by month — left vs. right, black vs. white, insider vs. outsider — and as good will is quickly being abandoned for fear, hatred, and loathing, one American organization is dedicated solely to tracking “hate groups.” Or is it? Click on over to…
Relevance: 16% Posted on: September 12, 2012
“Ideas are forces: the existence of one determines our reception of others.” This is more than just a statement of associationist psychology. Take the politics of “welfare.” The modern project has placed government at the heart of society, construing its basic mission as that of “rescuing” people who make mistakes…
Relevance: 15% Posted on: April 8, 2015
Standing with Rand, as Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) announced yesterday his candidacy for the U.S. Presidency? A banner: “Defeat the Washington Machine — Unleash the American Dream.” I know and like Rand, both personally and politically. I love that message. Yet, today, I come not to praise Dr. Paul but…
Relevance: 15% Posted on: December 5, 2013
Getting rid of Obamacare has proved not so easy. The GOP House majority, won in late 2010, voted dozens of times to get rid of the program, but without Senate support to pile on (much less override a presidential veto), they could vote to repeal every day of the year…
Relevance: 15% Posted on: August 25, 2014
Russian politics — does it consist in anything but the progressive unraveling of what modest liberalization of civic life the Russians benefited after the crackup of the Soviet Union? The latest assault on liberty? The government targeting of Russian bloggers. The most popular ones — those with 3,000 or more…
Relevance: 15% Posted on: June 6, 2013
Seeing how the IRS flagrantly violates the civil rights of Americans, do we really need more government agents, more bureaucracies to ride herd over our political endeavors? Arkansas’s Senate Bill 821, an unconstitutional slap at citizens who dare propose ballot measures, was passed despite my many, many, many complaints, and…
Relevance: 15% Posted on: September 19, 2022
All we have is the word of Department of Justice whistleblowers. They told the New York Post that over the last 19 months, Facebook has been cooperating with the FBI to spy on “private” messages of users “outside the legal process and without probable cause.” The targets were gun enthusiasts…
Relevance: 15% Posted on: August 29, 2018
While statistics are generally unreliable, data about gun crimes often qualify as “anti-data.” “This spring the U.S. Education Department reported that in the 2015-2016 school year, ‘nearly 240 schools . . . reported at least 1 incident involving a school-related shooting,’” National Public Radio told us yesterday. Like previous stats…
Relevance: 15% Posted on: August 16, 2016
When Donald Trump called our country’s electoral process a “rigged system,” he was not wrong. The system is a legally secured duopoly. I’ve discussed a number of the elements of this system previously. But one I may not have explored enough is the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD). The League…
Relevance: 15% Posted on: January 18, 2023
Is the republican form of government unnatural? People in government tend to balk at republican imperatives, anyway. You know, like transparency. Citizen control sure seems unnatural to politicians. Case in point: Detroit. “The Rochester Community School district is determined to keep the sun from shining on its operations,” writes Kaitlyn…
Relevance: 14% Posted on: April 10, 2023
Suppose suggested legislation outlaws both murder and walking. How could you oppose it? Are you, a dedicated perambulator-peripatetic, also a murder-supporter? Obviously, this would be an attempt to foist a package deal consisting of unrelated or mutually contradictory elements. Consider a more true-to-life example. In the Wall Street Journal, Philip…
Relevance: 14% Posted on: February 20, 2023
After Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton legally challenged how several states conducted the 2020 election, dozens of lawyers submitted complaints. To the state bar. Their idea: disbar the Republican officeholder for daring to oppose the current Democratic narrative about “election denialism.” The Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel dismissed those initial…
Relevance: 14% Posted on: March 30, 2016
Being a clever person is hard work. Many of the truly clever things about everyday life have already been said. New and innovative cleverness? A rare thing indeed. But if you are in the business of being clever, that puts you in a pickle, if “being relevant” and “worth our…
Relevance: 14% Posted on: July 6, 2021
Is Google working for the Chinese government? The group Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights believes that pro-Chinazi partisans have been targeting its YouTube videos, triggering sanctions against Atajurt’s channel. Many of its thousands of videos provide testimony about how family members have been hauled off to internment camps in China’s Xinjiang…
Relevance: 14% Posted on: April 19, 2024
Paul Jacob on ideological suppression in Europe.
Relevance: 14% Posted on: February 14, 2024
Can crime be defined out of existence? “Attorney Ben Crump proposed a solution to the issue of high crime that is plaguing the black community,” YouTube commentator Anthony Brian Logan reports on a story that an aging white fellow like myself was not apt to spot. “He said it is…
Relevance: 14% Posted on: January 22, 2018
Rotterdam police are gearing up for a new crime reduction scheme. “They’ll soon begin a pilot program targeting young men in designer clothes that the police believe they couldn’t afford legally,” reports Quartz. “If it’s not clear how the person paid for the clothing, the police may confiscate it.” A…
Relevance: 14% Posted on: November 2, 2015
Sen. Marco Rubio’s charge in last week’s presidential debate, that the mainstream media functions as a SuperPAC for Democrats, was not only accurate, I wrote at Townhall, it has deeper implications. Consider the relentless media drumbeat for restrictive campaign finance regulations. If the Federal Elections Commission mutes, at Congress’s instruction,…
Relevance: 14% Posted on: May 18, 2017
Last night, House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) appeared on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight, where Chaffetz was asked how he would know if the Justice Department fully complied with subpoenas issued by his committee for documents. “Look, we have a storied and horrific background on this,” explained the…
Relevance: 14% Posted on: July 15, 2016
Yesterday, we discovered that modern America asks police to do “too much.” Which prompts the next question: What should police stop doing? Here are two immediate reforms where police can do less, while protecting the public more: (1) End the War on Drugs. Preventing violence and fraud is…
Relevance: 14% Posted on: August 30, 2021
“It’s one thing to let people post UFO content about crop circles in Arkansas,” Ciaran O’Connor was quoted in a recent Washington Post article, talking about YouTube competitor Rumble. “It’s another to allow your platform to be used by someone claiming vaccines are actively harmful and that people should not…
Relevance: 14% Posted on: March 29, 2021
“Oakland to give low-income residents $500 a month,” reads the headline, “no strings attached.” Well, actually there may be just a little itty bitty filament attached to what CBS News calls “the latest experiment with a ‘guaranteed income,’ the idea that giving low-income individuals a regular, monthly stipend helps ease…
Relevance: 14% Posted on: June 10, 2012
The enemies of freedom usually pretend to be engaging in their outrageous and over-bearing coercion "for the people's sake." Don't believe them. See Sunday's column at Townhall — and then come back here for links and hints on further reading. The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair — free from Project Gutenberg Dracula, by…
Relevance: 13% Posted on: September 7, 2023
How specific do requests for records of unconstitutional activity have to be? In February, the Federal Bureau of Investigation pretended an inability to fulfill America First Legal Foundation’s freedom-of-information request for documents about the FBI’s pre-election efforts to censor Twitter users. The agency declared the request to be “overly broad.”…
Relevance: 13% Posted on: November 7, 2017
Roger Stone is suing Twitter for kicking him out. Without saying exactly why they booted him, Twitter implies that the reason is abusive language. For his part, Stone accuses the social media giant of targeting right-wing tweeters while letting left-wing tweeters off the hook for the same or worse alleged…
Relevance: 13% Posted on: November 9, 2022
The GOP has just issued a 1,000-page report about corruption in the Department of Justice and its Federal Bureau of Investigation. Based largely on the disclosures of 14 whistleblowers, plus what’s in plain sight — what we’ve all been able to see for ourselves over the last several years —…
Relevance: 13% Posted on: September 8, 2020
A recent email from Amy White of MoveOn.org — an activist outfit that got its start defending Bill Clinton’s sexual indiscretions — theorized that, this election, “the GOP strategy to win is to use their billionaire donors to flood battleground states with fearmongering, racist ads. . . .” The snuck-in assumption that Democrats…
Relevance: 13% Posted on: March 1, 2021
Occasionally, an outlier appears in politics, someone who follows through on campaign promises. Many people say that Donald Trump was one of those outliers, being someone who actually delivered to his voters the most conservative administration of our lifetimes. I have heard precisely the opposite, too. But that is not…
Relevance: 13% Posted on: January 25, 2018
Is Twitter cooperating with Germany’s new crackdown on social-media speech because otherwise it risks steep penalties? Or is Twitter just doing what it would do anyway? When Germany’s new law against unwelcome speech went into effect this year, many Germans protested. “Please spare us the thought police!” was the headline…
Relevance: 13% Posted on: March 6, 2017
What is the percentage of tenured faculty on American campuses who are still unambiguously on the side of free intellectual exchange? What is the percentage of them who are willing to express that position openly? Sociologist Charles Murray asked those questions near the end of his reflections on Thursday’s Middlebury…
Relevance: 13% Posted on: April 18, 2016
Campaign finance reform is surely dead . . . if Hillary Clinton is elected president. Which would be good. Not Clinton being elected, mind you. What would be good is the death of so-called campaign finance reform — the kind supported by Democrats, including Sen. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton.…
Relevance: 12% Posted on: April 21, 2021
Are cigarettes containing menthol-flavored tobacco racist? Follow the science! It is an absolute fact that those menthol smokes “disproportionately addict — and kill — Black Americans.” The reason? “Only 29 percent of White smokers choose menthol, as opposed to 85 percent of African American smokers, according to a National Survey on…
Relevance: 12% Posted on: March 9, 2018
After the recent school shooting in Parkland, Florida, followed by pressure from gun control advocates, Delta Airlines announced it would end its corporate relationship with the National Rifle Association, whereby NRA members were given discounts on travel.* Meanwhile, Georgia legislators were in the process of passing legislation to give Delta…
Relevance: 12% Posted on: January 31, 2023
“[China’s] portion of the global economy and their portion of the global population match exactly,” Bill Gates informed his audience at Australia’s Lowy Institute. “Countries like Australia, U.S., we have per capita GDPs five times what the Chinese have, so we have a disproportionate share of the world's economy.” Funny…
Relevance: 11% Posted on: February 21, 2019
It can happen here. Congress could simply identify a group of citizens and pass a law forcing them into servitude. At least, Congress thinks it has this incredibly abusive power . . . even though the 13th Amendment specifically prohibits it.* In fact, the idea of conscription — not merely…
Relevance: 11% Posted on: November 1, 2019
Is there an easy way to avoid the insanity of what author and decorated Marine vet Elliot Ackerman calls America’s “two-decade military quagmire”? Yesterday, I took issue with Ackerman’s idea of a “reverse-engineered draft,” whereby each year about 65,000 young men and women — but only those with parents in…
Relevance: 11% Posted on: February 12, 2020
“WOW, BLOOMBERG IS A TOTAL RACIST!” tweeted President Donald J. Trump. He was reacting to a recording, recently unearthed, of Democratic presidential aspirant Michael Bloomberg speaking to the Aspen Institute in 2015 about his controversial “stop-and-frisk” police policy while mayor of New York City. “Ninety-five percent of your murders, murderers…
Relevance: 11% Posted on: January 4, 2014
On Townhall.com, in the year 2014 A.D., columns by Paul Jacob: January 5: A Movable Voter Fraud Feast? — Boy, have Colorado's insider Democrats whipped up something for (that is, against) the voters this time! January 12: Embracing Economic Justice — Want social justice? Want peace? Give liberty a chance.…
Relevance: 10% Posted on: August 7, 2018
Paul Jacob How far are we away from a completely vindictive, murderous madness like The Terror of revolutionary France? I know, no one is talking of guillotines. Well, almost no one. I’ve seen a certain cartoon poster from Seattle that features a guillotine and the severed head of Jeff Bezos,…
Relevance: 10% Posted on: April 11, 2018
Once upon a time, President Donald Trump was against attacking Syria merely on grounds that its dictator is a murderously bad guy — despite numerous chemical attacks on civilians in opposition-occupied and -contested areas that had been blamed on Syrian dictator Bashar Hafez al-Assad. Almost exactly a year ago, a…
Relevance: 9% Posted on: July 2, 2014
The First Amendment, I think I’ll keep it. Not so for 44 sitting U.S. Senators — all Democrats. They’re proposing Senate Joint Resolution 19, which would amend the U.S. Constitution by scratching out a sorta important part of the Bill of Rights. Senate Joint Resolution 19 would repeal the First…
Relevance: 9% Posted on: May 8, 2023
“Prosecutors are nearing a decision on whether to charge President Biden’s son Hunter with tax- and gun-related violations,” The Washington Post reports. Last October, the paper disclosed that, after a four-year investigation, federal agents had “gathered what they believe is sufficient evidence to charge him.” Hunter Biden’s failure to honestly…
Relevance: 9% Posted on: February 24, 2015
The past offers us many lessons. And cause for alarm. And inspiration, too. Seventy-two years ago today, three young Germans — 21-year-old Sophie Scholl, her older brother by three years, Hans, and their friend 24-year-old Christoph Probst — were put to death by the Nazis. They were decapitated — guillotined —…
Relevance: 9% Posted on: July 11, 2013
“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.” Or so goes the old saying, its wisdom completely unappreciated by the folks producing MSNBC’s “Lean Forward” spots, featuring various network stars spouting lame political talking points into the camera. Go figure — in…
Relevance: 9% Posted on: February 4, 2012
“Life,” my parents often told me, “isn’t fair.” But President Barack Obama isn't so negative: yes it can be fair. “We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by,” our president informed the nation…
Relevance: 8% Posted on: June 20, 2013
James “Whitey” Bulger adamantly denies two of the 19 murders he’s accused of committing and for which he’s now on trial in a Boston federal court, along with facing a dozen lesser charges. Decades ago, the 83-year old reputed mobster allegedly ran much of the city’s organized crime. Whitey may…
Relevance: 8% Posted on: November 17, 2015
“I want to go home,” Arkansas State Senator Jon Woods whimpered last weekend. The poor, pitiful politician — announcing he would not seek election to another legislative term — cried that he had not “been fishing with [his] brother in a year.” “I have friends in my district who I…
Relevance: 8% Posted on: March 18, 2014
How do you turn a fine, upstanding, conscientious and goal-driven young man into a terrorist? By fiat. That is, by treating him like a terrorist. That is, treating him very badly. Drop the whole weight of the law on him . . . for holding the wrong opinions. What opinions?…
Relevance: 8% Posted on: November 24, 2015
Government is supposed to defend our rights, including rights to property. When it doesn’t — or when in the course of its job it takes our stuff without due process — it ceases to justify its own existence, appearing to all intents and purposes like just another criminal…
Relevance: 8% Posted on: July 21, 2015
Sometimes the good guys win . . . but only when they stand up to the bad guys. Nowhere is this more true than in politics, especially with the increasingly vicious partisan attempts to criminalize opposition. On a fall day back in 2012, before dawn, SWAT-styled police with battering rams raided the private…
Relevance: 7% Posted on: July 18, 2013
Growing from a single Arkansas discount store in 1962 to the world’s biggest retailer and largest private employer, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., today provides jobs for two million people. In our modern world, that’s enough to make the Bentonville, Arkansas, company big labor’s “Public Enemy Number One,” with union-backed politicians (read:…
Relevance: 6% Posted on: April 25, 2015
Grover Norquist makes a good case: http://youtu.be/r3tFqzeXI0g
Relevance: 6% Posted on: October 1, 2014
I’m a republican. You’re a republican. It used to be that most Democrats were also republicans. Today, I’m not even sure that most Republicans are republicans. But I’m hoping you are, whether you vote R or D or something else. Or don’t vote at all. This is not an essay…
Relevance: 6% Posted on: July 4, 2016
In Common Sense, his incredible hit pamphlet of 1776, Tom Paine appealed to “the inhabitants of America”: O ye that love mankind! . . . Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia, and Africa, have long expelled her. Europe…
Relevance: 5% Posted on: May 25, 2012
When times get tough, the tough . . . switch currencies. A fascinating report by Eric Garland in The Atlantic tells of the upswing in “local currencies.” In the United Kingdom, the Brixton Pound is being floated, engraved on its paper notes the likes of “David Bowie in his Ziggy…
Relevance: 3% Posted on: March 16, 2023
. . . recently published on this site. . . . Date (links to PDFs) — Title (links to articles) — Topic: May 15 — Library Against Liberty — Paul Jacob on censorship, local-government-style. May 14 — A Done Decision — Paul Jacob hazards a guess about a court’s conclusion.…