Politics & Rights

An October 6 email from the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) points out, “This week more than 1,000 privately operated parks were required to close during the government shutdown—even though they receive no federal funding.” A PERC report gives an example: [T]he U.S. Forest Service owns Crescent Moon Ranch…

It’s bad enough that thousands of Colorado families were displaced by recent flooding; now they have to fear prosecution under rights-violating gun laws, too. Thankfully, Kenneth Buck, the district attorney for Weld County (northeast of Denver), has publicly declared that he will not prosecute rights-respecting flood victims under capricious gun…

Suppose a criminal brutally raped your daughter or friend and impregnated her, she got an abortion, and then the government subjected her to first-degree murder charges (for killing the fetus) and handed her life imprisonment or the death penalty. A proposal likely to appear on the Colorado ballot in 2014…

In 2011, Dina Galassini of Fountain Hills, Arizona opposed a $44 million bond measure for roads. She emailed 23 friends and asked them to make signs and join her in a street-corner protest, as an Institute for Justice (IJ) media release relates. Under Arizona’s campaign finance laws, her actions were…

Several national organizations, including Planned Parenthood and the Center for Reproductive Rights, have joined with Texas abortion clinics to fight provisions of the outrageous anti-abortion bill signed into law in July by Texas Governor Rick Perry. Although the new Texas anti-abortion bill has received widespread attention for its ban on…

The IRS and the Department of Justice recently seized more than $35,000 from Schott's Supermarket in Michigan, which had done nothing wrong. The government took this action under the civil forfeiture laws, which permit federal and state governments to confiscate property they believe may have been used in a crime—even…

Because of political wrangling over ObamaCare, the federal government has shut down all so-called “non-essential” functions involving national parks, the National Zoo, NASA, and the like. But no politician at the national level has, to my knowledge, defined the standard by which a government function is properly deemed essential or…

Some enterprising immigrants succeed in the United States despite laws that violate their moral right to seek employment and the rights of potential employers to hire them. A recent Los Angeles Times article describes how some illegal immigrants have turned to entrepreneurship to deal with the problem: Although federal law…

“House Republicans Slash Food Stamp Funding,” screamed news headlines across the country last Friday. “What [Republicans] are saying is that in America it's OK for people to go hungry,” said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, chair of the Democratic National Committee. Harry Reid called the House bill “hateful, punitive…

The Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups for “special treatment”—this we already know. But newly discovered details about the case show that the IRS’s assault is even more shocking. USA Today reports: Newly uncovered IRS documents [from 2011] show the agency flagged political groups based on the content of their…