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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 […]

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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.

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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 […]

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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 […]

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J.D. Tuccille’s Zesty Subversive Romp – High Desert Barbecue

J.D. Tuccille‘s High Desert Barbecue is a zesty subversive romp through the woods and deserts of northern Arizona. How could anyone not like a feral mountain man in a running battle with the Forest Service? After inept Forest Service rangers ignite a huge fire when burning down the mountain man’s squatter shack, the feds demonize […]

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More Madness from Psychiatrists

The director of the National Institute of Mental Health, Dr. Thomas R. Insel, tells the New York Times that the new Diagnostic Statistical Manual – the psychiatrists’ bible – is a crock. But we will still be endlessly taxed to pay for treatments that shrinks gin up as a result of the profusion of new […]

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America Needs Fewer Laws, Not More Prisons -Lost Rights

Congress is finally paying attention to the choking profusion of federal criminal laws.  The House Committee on the Judiciary Over-Criminalization Task Force of 2013 will be launched this week, seeking to pare  back the federal criminal code.  The Wall Street Journal, which has had an excellent series of reports on this problem in recent years, notes, […]

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