Politics & Rights

Last week at the annual conference of the Association of Private Enterprise Education, I had the opportunity to interview Warren Orbaugh, director of the Henry Hazlitt Center at the Francisco Marroquín University. Orbaugh discussed the work of Manuel “Muso” Ayau, who founded the university to support the ideas of free…

Last week, at the annual conference of the Association of Private Enterprise Education, I interviewed Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, about the development of the Tea Party. Kibbe said, among other things, that the Tea Party is becoming more directly political, focusing on get-out-the-vote efforts and the like, and, more…

In a distressing sign of the times, the New Jersey government has turned to outright theft of people’s gift cards in the Garden State. As the Christian Science Monitor summarizes: Pursuant to a law passed two years ago, the New Jersey Department of the Treasury will soon compel sellers to…

In a speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors this past Tuesday, Barack Obama condemned the Republican budget proposal as “thinly veiled social Darwinism.” Why? Because Republicans would spend slightly less money on welfare and other programs than Obama proposes, and increase government spending at a slightly slower rate…

The New York Times is calling for the government to “step up” its support for AmeriCorps, while reprimanding Republicans who want to reduce or eliminate funding for it, castigating them for forgetting “the value of community service.” AmeriCorps’ activities, which consist primarily in working with other non-profit organizations to “build…

No, Colorado cannot unilaterally impose tax obligations on out-of-state businesses, U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn ruled recently. Blackburn threw out Colorado’s 2010 “Amazon Tax” that sought to force out-of-state sellers to assist the state in collecting sales taxes from residents. The judge ruled that the controls “impose an undue burden…

The Justice Department continues its assault on the property and contract rights of Apple and various book publishers. Bloomberg reports that the DOJ “is close to a settlement with three of the world’s biggest publishers on e-book price contracts with Apple Inc.” According to the antitrust laws under which the…

Richard Salsman in a new piece in Forbes.com makes an illuminating point about the efforts to defend ObamaCare: Defenders of ObamaCare before the Supreme Court last week argued from precedent, reminding the justices that there were already scores of mandates embedded throughout America’s semi-socialized health care system – including the…

Fox News reports that Khulood Badawi, an officer in the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), “used Twitter to send a picture of a bloodied child in her father’s arms with a caption: ‘Palestine is bleeding. Another child killed by Israel. Another father carrying a child into a…

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…