A new episode of Five Minutes Five Issues is out. You can listen to it, and read a transcript, below. You can also find previous episodes of the show at Stitcher, iTunes, YouTube, and SoundCloud. read on...
Eleven years ago, this essay argued against hate-crime laws. One argument read “People can eventually be accused of hate crimes when they use hateful speech. Hate crimes laws are a seed that can sprout in new directions.” This has now come to pass, I am sorry to say. This week, the Congress passed S. J. Res. 49, and President Trump signed it, making it part of the U.S. legal code.
The law rejects “White nationalists, White supremacists, the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, and other hate groups…” But why? Because of their ideas? Because of their expression of these ideas? No government that stands for freedom and free speech, whose charge is to protect rights, should be singling out specific groups by name and by law declaring them as outlaws or threats because of their philosophies. If they have committed a crime, such as defamation of character or incitement to riot or riot itself, then charge them and try them. But American government has no legitimate authority to single out some of its citizens in this way. This, furthermore, is an exceedingly bad precedent. Who’s next? read on...
Last month, House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation chairman Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) met with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. This meeting led to a potential deal being brought to the White House by Rohrabacher.
Under this deal, which was reported by the Wall Street Journal, Assange would provide conclusive proof that Russia was not the source of hacked emails WikiLeaks published. In return, he would be offered a pardon, or some other assurance that he wouldn’t be prosecuted by the US for involvement in WikiLeaks. read on...
On Monday, I visited an impressive statue in a Dallas, Texas city park. The statue depicts Robert E. Lee and a fellow soldier riding their horses next to each other.
Wednesday of last week, the Dallas city council voted to remove the statue from the park, which is named after Lee and also contains a building modeled after Lee’s Virginia home. The removal process began within an hour after the vote. But, after delays due to a temporary restraining order and a vehicular crash involving the crane intended to aid in removing the statue, the statue was still present in the park on Monday. Recently erected barriers, though, blocked approaching closer to the statue than, I estimate, about seventy feet in any direction. read on...
A new episode of Five Minutes Five Issues posted on Friday. You can listen to it, and read a transcript, below. You can also find previous episodes of the show at Stitcher, iTunes, YouTube, and SoundCloud. read on...
A new episode of Five Minutes Five Issues posted on Saturday. You can listen to it, and read a transcript, below. You can also find previous episodes of the show at Stitcher, iTunes, YouTube, and SoundCloud. read on...
The end of another month in the US war against ISIS means another official accounting of civilian deaths from the Pentagon, and as usual the official figure is dramatically smaller than the figures documented by NGOs. read on...
In a new interview with host Tom Woods at the Tom Woods Show, libertarian communicator Lew Rockwell provided a fascinating critique of private technology companies such as PayPal and the Google subsidiary YouTube recently ending their provision of services to organizations they deem unworthy. Rockwell, chairman of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and publisher of the popular website lewrockwell.com, identifies the companies’ decisions as part of the shift toward fascism in America. read on...
Former US Congressman Ron Paul has joined a growing list of independent political journalists and commentators who’re being economically punished by YouTube despite producing videos that routinely receive hundreds of thousands of views. read on...
