AOL News is reporting an AP story with the telling opening sentence, “Thirty years after it began as just another quirky movement in Berkeley, Calif., the push to ban smoking in restaurants, bars and other public places has reached a national milestone.” Think about all the other quirky ideas being kicked around, ideas that seem innocuous now yet
Representative democracy in actio n in RobespiBlaire’s Gulag UK. The Government is to press ahead with preparations for nationwide congestion charging despite the millionth signature on a petition opposing the idea. An experiment in internet democracy, in which people were invited to place petitions on the No 10 website and vote for them by
Josh Wolf was a young video blogger who covered an anarchist protest in San Francisco. (On NPR I heard some of the footage--kids chanting “Smash the state! Smash the state!”) Apparently a police officer was injured and a cruiser burned. Since the cruiser was purchased with government money, the gov’t claimed it was a federal crime, and thus Wolf
I’ve noted before, in Objectivism and Federalism and other entries linked there, “how many libertarians and Objectivists simply seem unable to appreciate the virtues of our federalist system; and that this is rejected implicitly when libertarians use ‘the government’ to refer to both state and federal government”. We see this yet again in Clint
I’ve noted before how many libertarians and Objectivists simply seem unable to appreciate the virtues of our federalist system; and that this is rejected implicitly when libertarians use “the government” to refer to both state and federal government (see Libertarian Centralists ; The problem with “government”: The rejection of federalism by
As reported and summarized here , a divided three-judge panel for the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit has ruled “that the District of Columbia’s gun control laws violate individuals’ Second Amendment rights”. “According to the majority opinion, “[T]he phrase ‘the right of the people,’ when read intratextually and in light of
A couple arrested at a rally after refusing to cover T-shirts that bore anti-President Bush slogans settled their lawsuit against the federal government for $80,000 , the American Civil Liberties Union announced Thursday. Nicole and Jeffery Rank of Corpus Christi, Texas, were handcuffed and removed from the July 4, 2004, rally at the state Capitol
Gambling Dispute With a Tiny Country Puts U.S. in a Bind tells the fascinating David-and-Goliath story of the WTO battle between Antigua and Barbuda, on the one hand, and the US, on the other. Mendel has threatened US online gambling legislation, intellectual property law, and the WTO’s fragile existence, all in one fell swoop. Amazing! (Thanks to
A trucker has sued the Drug Enforcement Administration, seeking to get back nearly $24,000 seized by DEA agents earlier this month at a weigh station on U.S. 54 in New Mexico north of El Paso, Texas. Anastasio Prieto of El Paso gave a state police officer at the weigh station permission to search the truck to see if it contained “needles or cash
Lew Rockwell on unions . One of my favorite lines from people is the one that goes, “Well, nowadays unions are awful, but the early intentions were good.” The early intentions of unions were the same as the modern goals: to be a social-democratic ideological and political force by aligning class interests with the political elites who hold the
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.