The @HLMenckenbot had a great Mencken quote on Twitter this morning: “The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.” It never occurred me that laughing in court could be a crime punishable by jail time. But maybe […]
Tag Archives | Freedom
Will Congressional Republicans Ever Be Worth A Damn For Freedom?
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 […]
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 Franklin […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
Italian Freedom Champion Bruno Leoni’s Centenary
This month is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Bruno Leoni, one of the most penetrating political thinkers of the post-World War Two era. His 1961 book, Freedom and the Law, helped me get a handle on the perils of majority rule. (E-text versions of that book are available free from the Liberty Fund […]