The American Conservative posted online today my review of Jim Antle’s zippety new book, Devouring Freedom: Can Big Government Ever Be Stopped?. Antle recognizes the peril of Leviathan and is fairly optimistic on what Republicans can become and achieve. Here are a few of my lines from the review – which is posted in its […]
Author Archive | Jim

My Wall St Jrn op-ed: IRS Political Targeting Since FDR
Wall Street Journal, May 15, 2013 A Brief History of IRS Political Targeting One survey found that 75% of IRS respondents felt entitled to deceive or lie to Congress. By JAMES BOVARD Many Republicans are enraged over revelations in recent days that the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative nonprofit groups with a campaign of audits […]
Wash. Times: Will Supreme Court End USDA Dictatorship?
Washington Times, May 13, 2003 BOVARD: Dancing to the beat of the grapevine The raisin famers seek servitude liberation Does the secretary of agriculture need unlimited power over farmers to protect them against themselves? The Supreme Court might finally settle this issue in an imminent decision on one of USDA’s most bizarre regimes. When […]

Good Luck, Pakistan! Thanks for Tweets
Pakistan holds elections on Saturday. More than 70 people have been killed nationwide in pre-election violence. It is encouraging that Pakistani High Court Chief Justice Dost Muhammad Khan issued a ruling on Thursday declaring US drone strikes in tribal areas in Pakistan illegal and a war crime. I hope this election can help Pakistanis attach […]

Beer Sampling in Northern Germany 1986
To be honest, I don’t recall if this photo was taken before or after the beer that day. I do recall that I put a dent in the supplies of the Holsten brewery on the banks of the Elbe River. This is one of the dozen or so photos included in Public Policy Hooligan.

Wall Street Journal Publishes Food for Peace Retort
Responding to my piece last week – in tomorrow’s Letters to the Editor in the Wall Street Journal – Food for Peace is an international aid program that has been successful domestically and abroad since its inception in 1954 (“How ‘Food for Peace’ Hurts Foreign Farmers” by James Bovard, op-ed, April 30). It has fed the […]

Hayek Birthday and 1985 Firing Line Transcript
Friedrich Hayek was born this day in 1899. Hayek had a huge influence on the development of my political thinking. I learned about Hayek’s existence when William F. Buckley spoke at Virginia Tech and touted the Austrian economist’s opposition to the Welfare State. I zipped to the bookstore the next morning and snared Hayek’s 1944 […]