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Wash. Times: AmeriCorps’ National Service Charade

Washington Times, July 18, 2013 BOVARD: AmeriCorps’ national service charade Paying youths to push big government makes a mockery of volunteerism by James Bovard At a White House ceremony Monday, President Obama announced a Task Force on Expanding National Service. He is jumping onto a popular bandwagon: Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson recently promised that […]

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no-privacy

Obama’s Vacuum Cleaner for Your Health Data

Here’s a piece I wrote in 2009 on one of Obama’s first assaults on privacy. A few of the piece’s punchier lines: *Privacy is very lucrative for the Beltway boys: they reap millions when they betray it. *We now know that psychologists were brought to the prison at Guantánamo to exploit detainees’ weaknesses for interrogation […]

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N.Y. Times Snares Secret FISA Court Decrees – Fresh Hell for NSA and Obama

The New York Times published a long article today on secret rulings by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The article describes the FISA court as “almost a parallel Supreme Court” which has cast aside traditional understandings of privacy and the Fourth Amendment. Reading between the lines, it is clear that NYT has the actual decisions…. […]

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Bovard photo from 2013 anti-NSA rally in DC

Photos from DC Anti-NSA July 4th Rally

Thomas Drake after his speech The Restore the Fourth organization had a rally at McPherson Square in downtown DC on this July 4th afternoon.   They had several excellent speakers – including the Libertarian Party’s Carla Howell, CEI’s Ryan Radia, Cato’s Julian Sanchez, and Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin.  (Other rallies are occurring across the nation.) […]

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Gettysburg Lesson: The Illusion of Invincibility

I was a big Civil War enthusiast as a boy.  My sixth grade teacher wrote on my permanent record that I was “overly interested in war.”  In this photo (probably snapped at Gettysburg), I’m sitting astride a cannon wearing a pair of flip-flops that definitely would have been out of place a century earlier.   […]

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