The war on drugs and the war on terrorism, I noted in a recent Beacon post, have fostered a crisis mentality that has eroded traditional constraints on domestic law enforcement. The new zeitgeist has resulted in police departments increasingly using “no knock” raids and other military-type tactics formerly considered off-limits to them. But other...
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From the early days of the United States to the post-Reconstruction era and beyond, Americans viewed the separation of the military from law enforcement as essential for the health of the republic. In recent years, however, the line between the police and the military has become increasingly blurred, with police departments across the United...
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The Spring 2013 issue of The Independent Review—the Independent Institute’s flagship scholarly journal, edited by Robert Higgs—is hot off the press. Below you’ll find links to articles and book reviews that address a host of intriguing questions: Why have domestic police agencies across the United States resorted increasingly to “no-knock” raids and other military-type...
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Senator Rand Paul’s thirteen-hour filibuster of Obama’s appointee for CIA chief, John Brennan, was the ninth longest filibuster in U.S. history, and unlike most such spectacles in U.S. history, it concerned fundamental, core issues of American liberty. It will go down in the history books as one of the very few great moments in...
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On February 28, 1993, the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Bureau raided the home of the Branch Davidians, a religious sect just outside Waco, Texas. The agency, which has suffered bad press due to sexual harassment and racial discrimination scandals, made sure reporters were there to witness its planned heroics and dubbed the raid “Operation...
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The front page of Tuesday’s “Bay Area” section of the San Francisco Chronicle features a story on the latest Field Poll results: “Support Grows for Gun Control,” reporting that a majority of California voters now “view stricter gun control laws as more important than protecting the constitutional right to own a firearm.” Four pages...
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Presidents’ Day should itself remind us that the executive branch has expanded its power way beyond what the nation’s founders had intended at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. We don’t have a “Congress or Judiciary Day.” The day celebrates powerful executives as caricatured celebrities. The founders had envisioned Congress, as the dominant branch of...
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Jonathan Turley, a professor of law at George Washington University, wrote recently: An authoritarian nation is defined not just by the use of authoritarian powers, but by the ability to use them. If a president can take away your freedom or your life on his own authority, all rights become little more than a...
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On how to respond to mass shootings and violent crime, the public opinion trends frighten me, especially when broken down by political identification. Predictably, Democrats are in favor of gun control by wider margins than Republicans. But still, 92% of Republicans favor universal background checks, which I consider as bad a proposal as any...
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In the 1990s, I read an interview with a rock star optimistic about the country’s direction. He thought President Clinton’s admission to having tried marijuana was a good sign. America was becoming more socially liberal. The new generation was in charge. And as one consequence, maybe the disastrous war on drugs would end. Not...
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