This is the headline a Voice of America article gave to a story on the New York Times’ article yesterday on how the Pentagon realizes that prison abuses in Afghanistan are fueling the Taliban. Life is unfair. You beat a few innocent prisoners to death – hanging them from the ceiling by chains, etc. – […]
Archive | July, 2009
Barron’s: Obama’s Make-Work Jobs Harm Teenagers
Barron’s ran an article of mine on summer jobs boondoggles as a guest editorial in the issue hitting teh stands today. Here’s an outtake from the article (a subscription is required to see the full version on the online site). Playing At Work Isn’t Productive Barron’s July 20, 2009 by James Bovard LONG BEFORE THE […]
Torture and Political Science
Amazing how few political scientists responded to the last 5 years of revelations about torture by the U.S. government. But perhaps this merely continues that profession’s perennial habit of ignoring the dark side of Leviathan. British historian Thomas Macaulay noted in his 1837 essay on Francis Bacon that “he who first treated legislation as a […]
Will Obama’s Health Reform Lead to a Prison Building Boom?
I am starting to wonder if maybe Obama-Care will not make all Americans healthy after all. Sue Blevins of the Institute for Health Freedom sent out a shotgun email today: –According to the CBO, the largest federal expense in House health-reform bill is $773 billion federal spending (over 10 years) for federally established insurance exchange […]
Szasz, Now More Than Ever – DSM VI
Thomas Szasz has a new book coming out this Fall: ANTIPSYCHIATRY: Quackery Squared. Syracuse University Press summarizes the book: Szasz rejected, and continues to reject, psychiatry and antipsychiatry with equal vigor. Subsuming his work under the rubric of antipsychiatry betrays and negates it just as surely and effectively as subsuming it under the rubric of […]
My Vindication, Dammit
I am usually wary of the liberal bias of the New York Times but every now and then they split the bullseye. Like this article: Cursing and Pain Relief By Nicholas Bakalar If you bang your thumb with a hammer, does it really lessen the pain to let loose with a string of curse words? […]
Honest Torture Investigations?
Ice hockey in hell? And an honest investigation into all the illegal surveillance schemes uncorked since 2001? Topless female ice hockey in hell. But I would be very happy to be proven wrong on this. The Washington Post noted that the Obama administrationc could appoint a prosecutor who “may look into whether CIA interrogators operated […]
Jim Bovard
Thanks very much, Ron! Ping pong balls can provi
Ron Redrift
'[T]he American Federation of Government Empl