The Swiss Minaret Ban: Some Things Never Change

In the Letter Concerning Toleration, John Locke wrote,
Nobody… neither single persons, nor Churches, nay, nor even commonwealths, have any just title to invade the civil rights and worldly goods of each other, upon pretence of religion. Those that are of another opinion would do well to consider with themselves how pernicious a seed of […]

Is Cato ‘Liberal’ on Criminal Law Issues?

Kent Scheidegger, who blogs over at Crime and Consequences, takes issue with the recent New York Times article that said liberal and conservative groups are finding common ground on criminal justice issues.  He makes some fair observations but then he had this to say about Cato:
The picture is somewhat complicated by the existence of libertarian […]

Lula’s Diplomatic Embarrassment in Honduras

One of the big losers from yesterday’s successful election in Honduras has been Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who demonstrated that under his presidency, Brazil is not ready to play a positive leadership role in the hemisphere.
Not only did Lula seem to be complicit in smuggling deposed Honduran president Manuel Zelaya into the […]

A Few Foreign Policy Items

1) Commandant of the Marine Corps announces part of justification for sending more troops to Afghanistan: “where we have gone, goodness follows.”  Pat Lang is displeased.
2) Glenn Greenwald observes that in Foreign Policy magazine’s survey of leading public intellectuals who write about foreign policy, the United States is tied with Somalia and Iran for second […]

Remembering the Reporter Who Sued the Fed

With the Washington Post and other mainstream media outlets publishing endless defenses of “Federal Reserve independence” and proclaiming the Fed as savior of our financial system, it is all to easy to dismiss much of the media as simply defenders of the status quo.  There were many, however, willing to challenge this orthodoxy.  Standing out […]

Monday Links

Nancy Pelosi: “The power of Congress to regulate health care is essentially unlimited.”

Since August 2008 the monetary base (bills in circulation plus bank credits at Federal Reserve banks) has increased by 137%. If not defused, this bomb will eventually explode into inflation.

Federal spending  just pushed the government’s debt over $12 trillion. Spending has soared so […]