Here is some reading to celebrate Martin Luther King Day: Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. I confess up front I have not read the book. I’ve just read some things about it. Here is a short write-up from the author’s interview on NPR. The book...
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Siobhan Reynolds was killed on Saturday, December 24, in a plane crash. Not many people knew her, I’m sure, yet she was a true heroine. She had, however, nothing whatever in common with those who are commonly regarded as heroes, especially the soldiers who slaughter, maim, and bring grief to unoffending people all over the world at...
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In the aftermath of the Solyndra cronyism debacle, the Los Angeles Times now reports that a no-bid contract was awarded last May to a firm controlled by a billionaire Obama supporter for the highly unlikely national security threat of a small pox attack: Over the last year, the Obama administration has aggressively pushed a...
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The Fall 2011 issue of The Independent Review is hot off the press! We have posted selected articles and all book reviews online, as indicated below. This issue addresses a host of fascinating questions on topics as diverse as intellectual history, economic development, political theory, and government policy: Why do progressives and social democrats...
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Here’s a story about TSA agents accepting bribes to allow passengers to carry large quantities of the prescription narcotic oxycodone onto airline flights. I have two comments. First, people are allowed to carry prescription drugs on airline flights. These drugs were pills, and there is no security threat to carrying them, nor are there...
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  I inadvertently badly scared my stepson when, as a little boy, he asked me if I had ever broken the law and I responded that there are so many laws that I was sure I broke one every day. Since 9/11, of course, this “overcriminalization of American life” has only exploded, and I...
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Tobacco companies are suing the U.S. government over a policy forcing them to put ghastly images on their product to dissuade consumers from smoking. Along with warning labels, which have long been mandated, would come graphics depicting diseased lungs, corpses, rotting teeth, even tracheotomy holes. The businesses claim this is an example of “forced...
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An eighteen-year-old Floridian is pulled over for riding a bike without a night light. A small amount of marijuana is found on him. He is thus in violation of probation for a crime he committed years before as a juvenile. He is arrested and tossed in a jail cell. He suffers a medical emergency...
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Interventionists insist that “free market absolutism” is naive, runs counter to reality, puts ideology above empirical facts. Yet I am amazed by how often government policies with a clear historical record of failure are enacted and defended. This is the most baffling and frustrating as it concerns policies that the most elementary of economic...
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Federal officials are pointing fingers at one another over a ludicrous plan to infiltrate Mexican drug smuggling groups that went totally awry. Under Operation Fast and Furious, the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Bureau allowed top Mexican drug dealers to purchase weapons, hoping to trace them back to kingpins. They lost track of these weapons,...
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