Articles

In the Southern Texas county of La Salle in 2008, explorers at Petrohawk Energy Corporation took the first steps of what would become an oil producing revolution in the region. The company focused on developing the Eagle Ford Shale, a formation of siliciclastic carbonates and shale less than 300 feet…

When I was a kid I loved watching The Six Million Dollar Man, the television show starring Lee Majors about the bionic man. Of course that was just make-believe. But today scientists are making bionic components a reality. Time reports that Second Sight Medical Products produced (and the FDA approved)…

Rand Paul’s proposed immigration reforms are marginally better than what Republicans usually offer, but they fall far short of a policy based on the principle of individual rights. Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference on March 14, Paul outlined his favored immigration reforms, which involve: Increasing legal immigration. Using…

Easter properly is a celebration of life. The holiday takes place in Spring, the season of budding leaves and flowers, of hatching eggs, and of newborn deer and other animals. Some think “Easter” derives from the name of a Germanic fertility goddess. But some Christians celebrate death instead. In the…

[caption id="attachment_6408" align="alignright" width="300"] Image: Gage Skidmore[/caption] This week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two key cases regarding same-sex marriage: challenges to California’s Proposition 8 and to the federal Defense of Marriage Act. Republicans and conservatives have long expressed concern that legalizing same sex marriage will threaten their…

When a professor at Florida Atlantic University asked students to stomp on the name of “Jesus” written on a piece of paper, a Mormon student objected. Although the university first threatened to sanction the student, in the face of widespread criticism the university relented and apologized for the exercise. (For…

I am devastated to report that Joshua Lipana’s lymphoma has returned. (If you’re new to Joshua’s situation, see my earlier posts here, here, here, here, and here.) Although just two months ago CT scans showed remarkable improvements and indicated that Joshua’s cancer was in remission, a recent bone marrow biopsy…

Lately, many Republicans have become sympathetic to the idea of giving legal status to illegal immigrants. But not Ann Coulter. She labels all such plans “amnesty” and harangues Republicans who support it. Amnesty, in this context, means relieving current undocumented aliens of the legal penalties associated with breaking immigration laws,…

Writing for National Review Online, the Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner argues that “much of the debate over future policy boils down to a question of the size of government.” However, as Eric Daniels points out in his most recent TOS article “Why ‘Big Government’ is Not the Problem,” size is…

Verlin Stoll operates a no-frills funeral parlor in St. Paul, Minnesota. As the Miami Herald’s Glenn Garvin notes, Stoll’s fees start at “just $250, about one-tenth the city’s going rate. No hearse, no chapel, just simple service for working-class folks who can’t afford to spend a lot of money to…

Since the 2008 financial crisis, U.S. petroleum consumption and imports have declined. Simultaneously, domestic oil production has increased. On Wednesday March 20, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) ran the headline “U.S. crude oil production on track to surpass imports for first time since 1995.” The expectation is that imports will…

Yes, the national debt is a huge problem. But the proper way to address it is to cut federal spending, not increase taxes. As CBS reports, the senate instead passed a budget plan asking for $975 billion in net tax increases over the coming decade. The plan also includes more…

Which party will gain ground next year? Robert Borosage argues for Reuters, “The 2014 midterm election is more likely to be a debacle for Democrats than Republicans. It will take a true political miracle for Democrats to take back the House.” But Rand Paul and his congressional allies are giving…

Why were central banks established? As Richard Salsman summarizes in his latest TOS article, “The End of Central Banking, Part I”: As government grows and spends more, politicians seek to avoid the electoral consequences of raising taxes and try to rely more on borrowing and printing money, policies that central…

Just days ago the eurozone and the International Monetary Fund pressured the government of Cyprus to blatantly steal up to ten percent of the savings accounts of everyone with money in the country. Reuters reports the results: “People rushed to banks and queued at cash machines that refused to release…