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Since the 1800s, surly Americans have derided politicians for spending tax dollars “like drunken sailors.” Until recently, that was considered a grave character fault. But Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act shows that inebriated spending is now the path to national salvation. It was a common saying in America in the 1930s that “we cannot

After the Taliban captured Kabul far faster than anyone in Washington forecast, secretary of state Tony Blinken went on Sunday morning talk shows and announced that the US mission in Afghanistan had been “successful.” Unfortunately, there will be plenty of robotic civil servants and political appointees who recite that deranged verdict in the

Forty years ago last week, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner published my first attack on the federal drug war. The previous year, the Reagan administration had unleashed its “Just Say No” program, vilifying anyone who smoked a joint, sniffed the wrong powder, or used nonapproved hallucinogens. I was mortified to see Ronald Reagan—who was elected on

On Saturday, protests supporting Julian Assange will occur around the world. In London, Assange supporters will link arms around the parliament building. Protests will also occur outside the Justice Department headquarters in Washington (I’ll be one of the speakers), D.C., and in San Francisco, Tulsa, Denver, and Seattle, as well as in Australia.

At a White House summit tomorrow, President Joe Biden will repeat his proclamation of a goal to end hunger in America by 2030. In 1969, President Richard Nixon promised to end hunger at a similar White House summit. The vast expansion of federal food assistance after Nixon’s pledge failed to end the problem, but that won’t deter Biden from

President Biden is tub-thumping for Congress to create new federal handouts to make college free for the vast majority of students. But as Ryan McMaken and other commentators on mises.org have pointed out, college is vastly overpriced and overrated nowadays. My view on college stems from my experience as a two-time dropout. I was frightfully bored

Those who forget police debacles could be the victims of the next law enforcement fiasco. Former Montgomery County, Maryland, police chief Charles Moose passed away on Thanksgiving Day. He became famous as the most prominent law enforcement official during a three-week sniper rampage in the Washington area in 2002. The Washington Post ran a 

I have always had a bad attitude toward official secrets regardless of who is keeping them. That prejudice and John Kenneth Galbraith are to blame for an unauthorized withdrawal I made from the World Bank.  When I lived in Boston in the late 1970s, I paid $25 to attend a series of lectures by Galbraith on foreign aid and other topics. The louder

Do Americans have the right to know if the $100 billion in their tax dollars that the Biden administration is delivering to Ukraine is being wasted? No, according to the U.S. Congress - which recently voted against creating an Inspector General to investigate whether handouts to the most corrupt government in Europe were being stolen. Do Americans

Thirty years ago, FBI tanks smashed into the ramshackle home of the Branch Davidians outside Waco, Texas. After the FBI collapsed much of the building atop the residents, a fire erupted and  76 corpses were dug out of the rubble . Unfortunately, the American political system and media have never honestly portrayed the federal abuses and political