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In response to the unexpectedly skeptical Supreme Court hearings on ObamaCare, an insolent President Obama declared that “overturning the law would amount to an ‘unprecedented, extraordinary step’ of judicial activism,” reports David Nakamura. Obama questioned the authority of the nine-member panel of unelected justices to reverse legislation that was approved…

“America was not founded on God and religion. America was founded on reason,” said Michael Shermer, editor of Skeptic magazine, at the 2012 Reason Rally in Washington, DC. He added: The Age of Reason . . . was the age when humanity was born again, not from original sin, but…

Turning out the lights for “Earth Hour” is the perfect symbol of the ultimate goal of the environmentalist movement, which is to erase industry—and thus human life—from the face of the Earth. To genuine environmentalists (as against people who call themselves environmentalists but don’t understand what the movement is really…

Apparently Justice Elena Kagan is oblivious to the obvious fact that taxes are coercive, in that they forcibly take wealth away from the owners of that wealth and give it to others. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court considered oral arguments regarding the Medicaid mandate that ObamaCare would impose on states.…

 Commenting on the Supreme Court session regarding Obamacare, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, Jr. wrote: And in arguing for restraint, Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked what was wrong with leaving as much discretion as possible “in the hands of the people who should be fixing this, not us.” It was nice…

I am nearly at a loss for words: “The New York City Department of Education is waging a war on words of sorts, and is seeking to have words they deem upsetting removed from standardized tests,” reports CBS New York. The offending words include “dinosaur” because the term suggests “evolution…

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday pertaining to the ObamaCare insurance mandate. At issue is whether the federal government may force people to purchase health insurance. The arguments demonstrate that the mandate is a response to the problems created by other government controls of health care and insurance. Consider…

Ann McElhinney is a journalist and documentary film director and producer. Her films include Mine Your Own Business (2006), which takes on the environmentalist opposition to mining. This film incurred the wrath of 80 NGOs, including Greenpeace, which tried to stop its screening in the National Geographic auditorium in Washington…

At the behest of “fathers’ rights advocates,” New Jersey Assemblyman Gilbert Wilson (D) has “proposed a measure . . . that would require all newborns—and their parents—to undergo genetic testing to create a record should questions arise about whom the father or mother is.” A justifiably angry NJ Star-Ledger columnist,…

[caption id="attachment_3328" align="alignright" width="199"] Image: SpaceX[/caption] A question has been bothering me since a Colorado high school student asked me last year: Why don’t the news media report more good news? Part of the answer lies in the nature of the business: “If it bleeds, it leads,” goes the rationale.…

T-Mobile, other companies, and so-called “public-interest” groups, are calling for the government to block Verizon’s purchase of “spectrum from cable companies,” the Washington Times reports. The “justifications” for this call for government force are that (1) if Verizon were to make such a purchase, that would create “‘excessive concentration’ of…

In The Hunger Games, tyrannical rulers of a future dystopia force children to fight to the death in an annual tournament as a means to suppress and control the population. Given the story’s gruesome subject matter, what explains the popularity of Suzanne Collins’s book and the new film based on…

This letter and reply are from the Spring 2012 issue of TOS. To the Editor: I must take issue with part of Craig Biddle’s article “Ayn Rand’s Theory of Rights” [TOS, Fall 2011]. Mr. Biddle is right to distinguish Rand’s view of rights from both the religious notion that we…

An almost-unbelievable story in The Sun claims that teachers at some UK schools have banned “best friends.” Harry Hawkins writes for that paper: Teachers are banning schoolkids from having best pals—so they don’t get upset by fall-outs. Instead, the primary pupils are being encouraged to play in large groups. Educational…

Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke is “one of the most powerful men in Washington,” notes the New York Times. Of course he is: He holds near-dictatorial powers over the nation’s money supply. In a recent talk at George Washington University, Bernanke condemned the gold standard for hampering the government’s ability…