Free Republic

Although he implemented a flat tax in Russia, I don’t think of Vladimir Putin as a supporter of free markets. Heck, he was head of the KGB during the communist era, and he presides over a country that is more known for cronyism rather than competitive markets. So if he criticizes European nations for having excessive welfare states, it’s like being called ugly by a frog. Here are some of the amusing details from Euractiv.com. He’s no Milton Friedman, but he’s right about the welfare state Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking ahead of the G8 Summit in Northern Ireland on...

I’ve repeatedly explained that Keynesian economics doesn’t work because any money the government spends must first be diverted from the productive sector of the economy, which means either higher taxes or more red ink. So unless one actually thinks that politicians spend money with high levels of effectiveness and efficiency, this certainly suggests that growth will be stronger when the burden of government spending is modest (and if spending is concentrated on “public goods,” which do have a positive “rate of return” for the economy). I’ve also complained (to the point of being a nuisance!) that there are too many...

Well apparently a president can’t just make new lows for respect of American moral authority in one single term and then let it go at that. Nope. Apparently after getting stiff-armed by our ideological enemies once in the first Obama term- turning his back on American values and getting called out on it- the administration felt the need to demonstrate crumbling American might and values by going back to that well early in the second term too. During the first term, we suffered the embarrassment of the Chinese Communist who publicly lectured Obama about straying away from capitalism and taking...

I received still more emails from French and Canadian readers on preserving culture. Since it's a slow news day, let's take a look at them. Olivier writes "Wouldn't a true conservative pay at least some respect to local cultural norms instead of trying to impose some economic diktat from on down?" Talk about getting things ass backwards. It is the social police attempting to impose cultural and economic diktats to preserve the local bookstore and the local farm to the point of absolute absurdity. Email From Canada Reader Mike from Canada writes ... Hi Mish, I totally agree with the...

Antonin Scalia may be the Supreme Court justice whom progressives most love to hate. Daily Kos blogger Sylvia Moore says he is "clearly an authoritarian." A California Lawyer reader complains online that Scalia "actively promotes an authoritarian agenda in which the rights of the individual have little meaning." Even legal writer Joan Biskupic, in her relatively respectful and sympathetic biography of Scalia, refers to his "authoritarian bent" and "authoritarian instinct." The latest refutation of this caricature is Maryland v. King, a decision issued Monday in which the Supreme Court upheld DNA testing of arrestees. Scalia's dissent illustrates how his respect...

Author's Note: check out www.letterstoayoungprogressive.com for a free chapter of my latest book. Students and their parents need to be warned about the latest serious threat to liberty on America's college campuses. They have probably already heard of campus speech codes, anti-discrimination clauses, and sexual harassment tribunals. The latest threat takes the form of "disorderly conduct" hearings. Many readers are wondering what exactly constitutes disorderly conduct. The more appropriate question might be "what does not?" Of course, it is natural for students to have conflict in college. Many are away from home for the first time and they are...

Suddenly, every cable news anchor, every pundit, every Sunday show guest, and every waiter in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia has become an expert on whether or not Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should be informed of his Miranda rights. Let's assume, for the moment, that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, has never watched a single episode of "Law & Order" in any of its manifestations and, thus, does not know he can ask for a lawyer - or refuse to answer any questions with a lawyer or without. Just so I can catch up (I know you already know this), the whole Miranda thing stems...

If abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell is found guilty of homicide, he will be unique among murderers-for-hire: He set his fees based on weight. "The bigger the baby, the more he charged," a grand jury explained. It recommended he be charged with eight counts of murder -- one patient, seven babies. Despite what amounted to a blackout at many media outlets until last week, you've probably now heard at least some of the details. According to the grand jury report, Gosnell's Philadelphia "clinic" was a filthy abattoir. It stunk of urine. Flea-ridden cats defecated freely, including in procedure rooms. Fetuses...

I thought this day would never come. The MSM can no longer pretend they didn’t “hear” about the trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell (ABC News’ Terry Moran even tweeted last night that the murderer in question “is probably the most successful serial killer in the history of the world”). But still too many networks have failed to report on the details of the case. That being said, the indispensable pro-life website Life News has compiled a list of the ten most horrific revelations to emerge from the trial -- many of which have gone unreported. Warning: The eye-witness testimony below...

Career influence peddler and political mercenary Terry McAuliffe is at it again; and this time he’s pushed the bare-knuckled, gutter politics he’s known for to a new low. Last month saw the 4th Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals overturn an anti-sodomy statute in Virginia law that can be used to prosecute sexual predators who prey on our children, with a ruling handed down by a three-judge panel as opposed to the full bench. Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli subsequently appealed the decision, sparking a headwind of media chatter, driven by far-left websites like Mother Jones. Mr. McAuliffe, who is...

I would like to think that Supreme Court justices are smarter than I am. At one level, they surely are. Their years of devotion to the practice and analysis of law involves countless pages of book-learning I will never undertake. Their brains must fairly bulge with minutiae I cannot grasp. But there is a difference between intelligence and wisdom. There are high school dropouts who have deep wells of astuteness about how to think, act and live in an enlightened way. And there are Ph.D.’s I would not let into my house. In one stunning moment Tuesday from the Supreme...

The feminists have ratcheted up the laws against men to such an outrageous level that paternity fraud is not just ignored, but routinely rubber stamped by the courts. Whether one agrees with the concept of child support or not, virtually everyone can agree that jailing men for child support over children who are not theirs is morally wrong. Men are routinely sent to jail for falling behind on paying child support, even though debtors' prisons in the U.S. were mostly eliminated in the mid-nineteenth century. The family courts and laws are set up in such a way that makes it...

Over the course of the last twenty years, I have taught hundreds of cases highlighting constitutional violations in criminal investigations and adjudications. Some of the cases are so outrageous that it is hard to believe they actually happened in America. Until recently, I considered the 1964 juvenile adjudication of Gerald Gault to be unparalleled as a mockery of due process. Gault was accused by a neighbor, Ora Cook, of making a lewd phone call that would have been punishable by a maximum of two months in jail and a fifty dollar fine had Gault been an adult. But he was...

In 1919, back when the United States was a constitutional republic, Congress passed a child labor law imposing a 10 percent excise tax on companies that violated it. A North Carolina furniture maker challenged the law and won. In 1922, the Supreme Court ruled in Bailey v. Drexel Furniture that although child labor laws have a noble purpose, the means – Congress using taxing power as a penalty – was unconstitutional. This was before Franklin Roosevelt’s court-packing threat in1937 ended the Supreme Court’s resistance to grandiose expansions of federal power. The child labor issue, by the way, was resolved when...

Totalitarianism is brewing in the heartland. An Indiana inmate is now serving two years for voicing his online opinions against a judge who took away his child-custody rights during a divorce case. I know the custody case pretty well having written about it in 2009. But I'm convinced that the free speech case that is brewing in its aftermath heaps an even greater injustice upon an existing one. And I'm convinced it is showing the darker side of a dangerous man who needs to be stopped. Dan Brewington is justifiably angry because James Humphrey took his kids away from...

NOTE: This is the sixth and final column in a series of columns related to National Marriage Week, Feb. 7-14, 2013. The fifth column is available here. Much of the debate surrounding same-sex marriage asks about societal harms. Many advocates of the change quickly dismiss the question and insist that a redefinition of marriage won’t hurt anyone. But that conclusion proceeds from a misperception about what marriage is—a failure to grasp marriage’s role as a public institution that shapes our thoughts and actions. Marriage is not merely a legal arrangement that bestows various benefits and obligations on its participants....

Lawyers representing three of the men charged in the New Delhi gang rape case said last week that they would enter pleas of not guilty on their clients' behalf. In most criminal prosecutions, that would be unremarkable. But the lawyers who stepped forward to represent the suspects in this case did so in the face of emotional protests by fellow attorneys, many of whom insisted that no one should defend those accused of such a terrible crime. "There was a good response from the members, and they will not represent," the president of the local bar association had warned....

The accelerated transformation of the American economy and polity into a mandatory racially-based spoils system was a defining trait of President Barack Obama’s first term in office. Though perhaps understated, it is set to become an even more defining trait of his second. Obama, by various accounts, wants to be more aggressive about suing banks, employers, schools and other institutions whose practices, however unintentionally, adversely affect “disadvantaged” (read: nonwhite) populations. This is the doctrine of “disparate impact.” Attorney General Eric Holder already has used it to extract hundreds of millions of dollars in coerced settlements from Wells Fargo and other...

Alliance Defending Freedom recently settled a lawsuit brought on behalf of Julea Ward, a former graduate student at Eastern Michigan University who was expelled from her counseling program after refusing to violate her religious beliefs. Media reports have unfortunately suggested that Julea’s lawsuit involved her refusal to counsel a client because he identified as gay: this is untrue. Instead, her case involved her religious objection to being forced to provide counseling about sexual relationships outside of marriage, an objection which applies equally to homosexual and heterosexual clients. Her objection is to providing counseling on certain topics, not to counseling any...

Most of us would be honored to have our name become a verb. Especially those of us in public life. But that is not how Judge Robert H. Bork got into the dictionary. He was "borked" when President Reagan nominated him to the U.S. Supreme Court. No sooner had the announcement been made by the White House on July 1, 1987, than Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) raced to the Senate floor to denounce the distinguished judge and former Yale Law Professor. In Robert Bork's America, Kennedy roared, blacks would once again sit in the back of the bus, rogue...

Neither Congress nor the White House has proved itself capable of reaching a decision on how to begin trimming the $16.5 trillion national debt with which these two institutions have saddled the American taxpayers. They even have been unable to come up with a reasonable measure to avoid the so-called “fiscal cliff” they themselves constructed months ago. Yet, when it comes to expanding the power of the government to spy on American citizens without warrants, both the House and the Senate last week fairly tripped over themselves in a rush to pass legislation doing just that; with President Obama...

The last time I saw Bob Bork was the Sunday before Election Day. His familiar baritone was faint. You had to sit close to hear him, and he seemed to have a little difficulty following the conversation. At one point, his son Bob directed his attention to an Obama ad that was running on the Internet. It warned darkly that if Romney was elected, he would nominate Robert Bork for the Supreme Court! Bob, who has inherited his father's wry sense of humor (as well as his intellect), played the ad on an iPad. Bob Sr. didn't react at first,...

In the weeks before Christmas, many Christians read about John the Baptist in the Gospel of Luke. They see that ordinary people came asking John if it was possible for them, too, to prepare the way for the Lord. Tax collectors also came to be baptized and said to him, “Teacher, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Collect no more than you are authorized to do.” Soldiers came as well, asking, “And we, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation, and be...

If you thought President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder had given up on closing Guantanamo Bay and bringing jihadists to American soil, think again. Two troubling developments on the Gitmo front should have every American on edge. The first White House maneuver took place in October, while much of the public and the media were preoccupied with election news. On Oct. 2, Obama's cash-strapped Illinois pals announced that the federal government bought out the Thomson Correctional Center in western Illinois for $165 million. According to Watchdog.org, a recent appraisal put the value of the facility at $220 million. Democratic...

Of all the sloppy and confused decisions rendered by the Supreme Court in recent years, few compare with CLS v. Martinez (2010). The decision was more than just poorly reasoned. It was also based upon willful blindness toward factual misrepresentations by the defendants in the case. Justice Ginsburg authored an opinion she knew she could arrive at only by pretending to believe facts she knew were not true. Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE, offers a good critique of the decision in his new book, Unlearning Liberty. I write about it today because...

President Bill Clinton used his presidential pardon power in July 2000 to commute the sentence of Serena Nunn, who was sentenced to 15 years for a first-time nonviolent drug offense when she was 19. The pardon shaved three years off Nunn's sentence. Nunn told me over the phone, "I thought then that it was a great thing that a president used his power to help an average person." Nunn later graduated from college and then the University of Michigan Law School. Last month, having passed a character fitness test, Nunn passed the Georgia bar. On Monday, she will be sworn...

What if the government never took the Constitution seriously? What if the same generation -- in some cases the same human beings -- that wrote in the First Amendment, "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech," also enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts, which made it a crime to criticize the government? What if the feds don't regard the Constitution as the Supreme Law of the Land? What if the government regards the Constitution as merely a guideline to be referred to from time to time, or a myth to be foisted upon the voters,...

Much like one of his predecessors, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Barack Obama has all but declared war on the United States Supreme Court. It will be remembered that in 1937 FDR was angry over the high court's refusal to put a stamp of approval on much of his New Deal agenda, and sought to bend the court to his will by adding new members to the existing court membership. Contemptuously calling the court's members a collection of "nine old men," FDR sought to "pack" the high court with up to six additional members more likely to do his bidding. The proposal...