Think Freely Media presents Common Sense with Paul Jacob
Seventy-seven million. That is the dollar amount of “financial errors” that North Dakota State Auditor Joshua Gallion discovered in the last year, after launching performance audits at twice the rate of his predecessor.* So, uncork the champagne! Huzzahs all around! Back slaps. But the back-slappers in the state legislature took
“It’s overkill of epic proportions,” John Kass writes in the Chicago Tribune, “like using a sledgehammer to kill a gnat, or firing off a nuclear weapon to kill a sparrow.” In three columns, Kass tells the story of David Krupa, a 19-year-old DePaul University student, who gathered over 1,700 voter
The old keywords were “Constitution,” “Patriot” and “Tea Party.” The new ones? “Marijuana,” “oxycodone,” and “legalization.” Paul Caron, the TaxProf blogger, calls attention to another IRS scandal — again about denying tax-exempt status to organizations because of their political views. He had barely finished blogging about the scandal that came
Sometimes lying just isn’t enough. But dishonest politicians have additional weapons at their disposal. There’s cheating. And stealing, too. Meet the Memphis City Council. Apparently fearful that their official fibbery through deceptive ballot wording on three council-referred measures won’t be enough to successfully hoodwink a majority of voters, the council
Former Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson is running for governor. Again. You may recall, as I certainly do, that Mr. Edmondson prosecuted — more like persecuted — me and two others involved in a 2005 petition drive. He charged us with “conspiracy to defraud the state,” a felony carrying a
On Friday, the Arkansas Supreme Court struck Issue 3, a citizen-initiated measure to restore legislative term limits, from Arkansas’ November ballot. The Court declared, 4-3, that there weren’t enough “valid” signatures. This, despite opponents never disputing that more than enough Arkansas voters had signed the petition. In recent years, legislators
“The mainstream media screams about Russia stealing elections,” says U.S. senatorial candidate Dale Kerns, “but behind the scenes they pull the strings to keep the duopoly in control.” Mr. Kerns, who is running in Pennsylvania as a Libertarian in a four-candidate race, has had the rug pulled out from under
Once upon a time, people who worried about communists infiltrating the government were often dismissed as paranoid. “Sure, commies under every bed! Right!” Communists in the State Department or wherever generally weren’t caught on tape boasting that they were Soviet agents and part of the Resist Truman or Resist Eisenhower
The cost of the War on Drugs is not to be reckoned just in dollars. Or in that more serious accounting index: lost lives. The hit to our civil liberties has been enormous, too, and instrumental in setting up the modern Surveillance State. But beyond these, there is a stranger
One of my more persistent critics on this site asked, last week, why I might believe anything the current president says — considering all the lies. For reasons of decorum I won’t repeat his exact wording. The odd thing about the comment was not the vulgarity, though (unfortunately). It was
The Arkansas Chamber of Commerce’s CEO and chief lobbyist, Randy Zook and Kenneth Wall, have formed Arkansans for Common-Sense Term Limits. The Chamber has a burning hatred for term limits — Common-Sense or otherwise — just like every other lobbyist and special interest. But Zook and Hall are fibbing in
“Term limits,” said Daniel McCarthy, editor of The Modern Age, in a recent podcast conversation with historian Tom Woods, “was one of the dorkiest ideas of the 1994 so-called Newt Gingrich revolution.” He characterized it as not having really gone anywhere. Huh? Granted, Congress is still not term-limited. But Americans