BOVARD Our cluster-bomb Congress plants legislative IEDs Arcane laws lie dormant until exploding under unsuspecting Americans by James Bovard Tens of thousands of Americans have been bushwhacked by a single arcane sentence in a 673-page law Congress enacted six years ago. The Internal Revenue Service is seizing both federal and state tax refunds for individuals […]
Author Archive | Jim

20 Years Ago: The Growing IRS Dictatorship (Wall Street Journal)
The IRS did not start its mischief recently. Here’s a piece of mine published on April 14, 1994 – Wall Street Journal -The Growing IRS Dictatorship By James Bovard A Gallup Poll released last week found that two-thirds of Americans believe that the Internal Revenue Service abuses its power. Yet few people realize exactly how […]

Anti-Taxation Epigrams from Lost Rights
Income Tax Day spurred me to dip back into Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (St. Martin’s, 1994) and pluck out a few lines from the “Taxing and Tyrannizing” chapter that sought to capture the essence of the IRS and contemporary taxation: *The federal tax system turns individuals into sharecroppers of their own lives. […]
MP3 – Having Fun Trashing ObamaCare as a “Pack of Lies”
I got a phone call early this morning from Press TV seeking comments on ObamaCare. OK, some people don’t consider 8 a.m. early but my IQ is 15 points higher later in the morning – sometimes breaking into triple digits. What the heck – I enjoyed the chance to start the day by thrashing Obama’s biggest fraud […]

Aspiring Zingers from the Libertarian Hooliganism Speech
Here’s a few outtakes lines from the “Libertarian Hooliganism” speech posted online earlier today – *Federal agencies in DC think I’m a redneck, but the rednecks in the North Carolina mountains thought I was an undercover fed * As she raised the knife, I remembered the old saying – “Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself.” […]

My Libertarian Hooliganism Speech from New Hampshire Liberty Forum
I gave this spiel at the New Hampshire Liberty Forum in February – a great event put on by the fine folks at the Free State Project. It was a real treat to speak to such a fine audience. The first four minutes of the speech has too much verbal wheel spinning – but it sorta […]

Nashville Tennessean Denounces My Cynicism
An editorial headlined, “Your Time is Coming – Make it Count” in Sunday’s Nashville Tennessean denounced my bad attitude: Staunch libertarian James Bovard cynically decries efforts to promote participation in elections, saying, “Trumpeting the importance of voting deludes people into thinking that they have a leash on the government.” We could not more vehemently disagree. […]