Vox has a great chart today on the soaring rate of prison incarceration in recent decades. This is one of the most striking renditions I have seen of this particular seachange in the relationship of government to the American people. Hillary Clinton bemoans high incarceration rates but the Clinton administration plowed almost $8 billion into […]
Tag Archives | Drug War
My Playboy Greatest Hits
So Playboy is becoming proudly birthday-suit free. Lots of jokes this week about how guys will now be able to honestly say “I only read it for the articles.” From 1994 through 2002, I wrote a bunch of pieces for Playboy on No-Knock Raids, Ruby Ridge, Waco, Janet Reno, IRS, Surveillance, Pork Barrel Prisons, the […]
FFF: Cops and Donuts Don’t Mix
From the April 2015 The Future of Freedom Cops and Donuts Don’t Mix by James Bovard On a Sunday morning early last summer, I was driving south across the Potomac River to a hike in Fairfax County, Virginia. The previous night the hike leader posted online a map of the jaunt. It looked like a […]
USA Today: Govt. by Cromnibus – blind, deaf, & dumb
USA TODAY, December 12, 2014 Government by Cromnibus – blind, deaf and dumb: Column by James Bovard The Know-Nothing Party Rules Us All “You can lead a man to Congress but you can’t make him think,” quipped Milton Berle in 1950. Last night’s House of Representatives’ approval of the 1,603 page, $1 trillion Cromnibus bill […]
USA Today: Eric Holder’s Dreadful Record on Overseeing Police Shooters
USA TODAY Eric Holder’s police shooting record? Dismal: Column by James Bovard August 20, 2014 When the attorney general had the chance to be tough on police shootings, he did next to nothing. Attorney General Eric Holder arrives today in Ferguson, Missouri, in response to the unrest after a local policeman shot 18-year-old Mike Brown. […]
My 2000 Playboy Article on Militarizing SWAT Teams
The New York Times has a good story today headlined, “War Gear Flows to Police Departments.” Unfortunately, this nonsense has been going on for decades. Playboy published a piece I wrote in 2000 on the militarization of SWAT teams. The article includes a discussion of Waco and the 1999 high school shootings in Littleton, Colorado. […]
FFF: How I Learned Not to Shovel
From the February 2014 issue of FFF’s Future of Freedom – HOW I LEARNED NOT TO SHOVEL by James Bovard The Obama administration has touted government jobs and training programs as one of the solutions to America’s high unemployment rate. Such programs can teach young people invaluable lessons — especially about the unreliability of political […]