USA TODAY, October 28, 2015 Freedom gets a foyer; Liberty gets the shaft by James Bovard The budget agreement between President Obama and leaders of the House of Representatives is sparking a conservative firestorm across the land. Newt Gingrich predicts every Republican presidential candidate in tonight’s debate will oppose the deal — which a New York […]
Archive | October, 2015
Democracy, Liberty, Leviathan Epigrams /Tweets
Whittling today on some epigrams from my books – here are some new, improved, tighter versions [earlier versions of these lines are here] ** These epigrams are works-in-progress. I welcome critical feedback – if you like or loathe any of these lines, let me know! Without a realistic concept of government, political philosophy is only […]
Washington’s Skewed Scoring for Congressional Hearings
I was chasing other rabbits today and did not closely follow Hillary Clinton’s testimony on Benghazi. I followed some of the high points on Twitter and read a few news stories on the hubbub. But I am reminded of how the Washington media 20 years ago scored the testimony of Attorney General Janet Reno before a […]
Why I Write @Twitter
This is “National Day of Writing” – sponsored by the National Writing Project, National Council of Teachers of English, the New York Times Learning Network, and the Teaching Channel. They “invite you to celebrate writing in all its forms.” I still can’t get past the fact that “National Day of Writing” sounds like a typographical error. […]
Assassin Nation Redux
Congratulations to Jeremy Scahill and The Intercept for “The Assassination Complex” – their great expose on Obama’s drone killing program. They provide smoking guns from official sources to prove that the program has been slaughtering innocents for years. I have taken a few swings at this program over the years. After I bashed drone killings in […]
FFF: The Mandatory Voting Panacea
from the July 2015 issue of The Future of Freedom The Mandatory Voting Panacea by James Bovard Barack Obama suggested on March 18, 2015, that mandatory voting could cure some of the ills of American democracy. He said that compelling everyone to vote would “encourage more participation” — perhaps the same way that the specter […]
Playboy: The Prison Industrial Complex
Vox has a great chart today on the soaring rate of prison incarceration in recent decades. This is one of the most striking renditions I have seen of this particular seachange in the relationship of government to the American people. Hillary Clinton bemoans high incarceration rates but the Clinton administration plowed almost $8 billion into […]
