My 2003 piece: Surveillance State – from American Conservative

Here’s a 2003 piece from the American Conservative on out-of-control government surveillance. This was the first piece I wrote for them (the magazine was launched the previous Fall).  The editing process went more smoothly with subsequent pieces I wrote for them. 🙂 My original final paragraph: Three months after 9/11, Ashcroft announced: “To those who […]

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The American Spectator

My 2000 Article: The Rise of the Surveillance State

The American Spectator reposted online this morning a piece I wrote for them 13 years ago on the proliferation of government surveillance.  I included some of this in my 2000 book, Feeling Your Pain: The Explosion and Abuse of Government Power in the Clinton-Gore Years.  If memory serves, reviewers denounced my paranoia on surveillance issue […]

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Latest Wiretap Scandal Part of Long Pattern

So Verizon has been ordered to deliver to the feds the calling records of all its customers.   Appalling but not surprising. Here’s a 2006 piece I wrote on the burgeoning wiretapping scandals for American Conservative.  Here’s a few highlights: * The latest revelations are simply one in a series of revelations of the feds […]

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CEI’s Fred Smith Reviews Public Policy Hooligan

Fred Smith, the founder and chairman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, reviewed Public Policy Hooligan yesterday.  Thanks a heap, Fred! A rollicking account of a life spent humbling bureaucrats and never taking the bait By Fred L. Smith Jr This review is from: Public Policy Hooligan – Rollicking and Wrangling from Helltown to Washington (Kindle Edition) Jim’s […]

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Damndest Tweet Ever on a Government Killing

Man Killed During F.B.I. Inquiry Said to Have Been Violent nyti.ms/19rGZuV — The New York Times (@nytimes) May 31, 2013   This is the damndest Twitter headline I ever saw. “Said to have been violent” – who said it? We can’t tell you. Who killed him? It’s a secret. Why did the FBI totally change […]

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MP3 Podcast of Today’s IRS Interview with Jan Mickelson Iowa Radio

The podcast is up from this morning’s interview on the IRS’s long & sordid history with WHO’s Jan Mickelson, Iowa’s top radio host. The 12-minute interview starts with some audiotapes that Jan found that show great parallels between Nixon’s evasions during Watergate and the Obama administration’s shuffling on the IRS scandal. I pointed out that […]

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