Think twice before you call the cops to carry out a welfare check on a loved one. Especially if you value that person’s life. Particularly if that person is disabled, mentally ill, elderly, autistic, hearing impaired, suffering from dementia, or might have a condition that hinders their ability to understand, communicate or immediately comply with an order. According to an investigation by The Washington Post, cops sent out on welfare checks ended up shooting or killing the very people they...

The world’s richest man, Space X’s Elon Musk, has a problem. Musk’s Starlink, a low-orbit satellite internet connectivity system, is used free of charge by the Zelenskyy regime in Ukraine. The system is used to target and kill Russians, so naturally, Zelenskyy and his neo-Nazi proteges consider it essential. Elon Musk is a lot like Donald Trump when it comes to geopolitics. He does not understand the complexities of the war and, like far too many westerners, especially Americans, apparently...

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is a 2022 recipient of the Nobel Prize in economics for his writings on how government should respond to bank failures. Honoring Bernanke for his advice on what government should do when banks fail is like giving a fire safety award to an arsonist.Bernanke was Fed chairman when the housing bubble, created by his predecessor Alan Greenspan in the wake of the bursting of Greenspan’s tech bubble and the 9-11 attacks, exploded. When the housing market...

As the Ukraine conflict continues, a basic question with ethical dimensions has risen and will need to be answered soon by European politicians: how moral it is to support Ukraine “as long as it takes” against the necessity of protecting your own citizens’ welfare and the constitutional duty to follow your people’s mandate which is the basic rule of democracy? European unclenched and blind support for US policies in the Ukraine conflict, and the dire economic and political consequences it has...

A recent study done by the Heart Rhythm Society published this week makes the claim that video games are a cause of cardiac arrest in children.  The Sun: “Video games could trigger heart attacks in children with undiagnosed heart issues, new research has revealed. Some kids are born with irregular heart rhythm, otherwise known as an arrhythmia, and don't even find out unless they get tested… Australian experts have said the adrenaline surge from the excitement of playing a game can prove...

In the latest demonstration of the absurdity of defamation laws, radio show host Alex Jones has been ordered to pay $965 million to people whose didn't like things Jones said about the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre in Newtown, Connecticut.  In the years following the massacre, Jones repeatedly stated that he thinks the shootings were staged and that the purported parents were so-called "crisis actors." (He has since said he thinks the shootings were real.) Some of Jones's listeners chose to agree...

Below is my column in USA Today on the panic among political and media figures at the prospect that Elon Musk might return free speech protections to Twitter. I have long advocated what I call the “First Amendment model” for social media to replicate the standards applied to the government. While I am often called a “free speech absolutist,” I recognize that a social media company (like the government) has some ability to curtail speech containing elements like threats. The question is the...

The Biden Administration released its first National Security Strategy (NSS) document Wednesday, and it is exponentially more unhinged than any of its predecessors. The NSS was once understood as a serious document compiling a list of *actual* threats to the nation. It now resembles a hyper-political Blue Anon fundraising mailer. Most of the items discussed in the supposed threat assessment have nothing to do with national security at all. And the things that are related to national security...

On 7 October 2022, late in the evening, at around 11.30 pm, I was detained at Gatwick Airport in London by anti-terrorism police. I was not released until shortly before 1 am and my computer was taken from me. It has not yet been returned. My passport and all my personal belongings - my wallet, my phone, my keys, everything - were removed. I was taken to a room where I was questioned for an hour by two anti-terrorism police officers, acting under powers given to the police (as I learned for...

[The following is excerpted from remarks made at the Arizona Biltmore hotel this past weekend during the 2022 Mises Institute Supporters Summit] The architect Frank Lloyd Wright played an important role in the design of this beautiful desert resort. I’m sure I’m not the only person here tonight who was introduced to his work through reading Ayn Rand. His touches are plainly visible in the stonework, wooden touches, and organic approach to melding the buildings with the landscape. His style...

The old adage is that a good foreign policy is the reflection of the national policy. A perfect storm is brewing on the foreign policy front in America triggered by the OPEC decision on Thursday to cut oil production by 2 million barrels a day, which will on the one hand drive up the gas price for the domestic consumer and on the other hand expose the Biden Administration’s lop-sided foreign policy priorities.  At its most obvious level, the OPEC decision confirms the belief that Washington...

John Bolton is calling for the quick and opportunistic assassination of Vlad Putin, and as many of his friends as possible. Too bad we can’t just give John a rifle and send him to the Ukrainian front. He’s certainly itching to kill, much as he itched for similar murders of Saddam, Iran’s President, Syria’s Assad, Libya’s Gadaffi, or Venezuela’s Maduro, and non-state “enemies” like Julian Assange,and Ed Snowden Back when he was younger, Bolton was asked by Jon Stewart if there was anyone he...

Last week the New York Times ran a shocking article claiming that the US intelligence community believes the Ukrainian government to be responsible for the August attack that killed Darya Dugina, the daughter of a prominent Russian philosopher.Surely the established narrative that Ukraine is a model western democracy standing strong for our shared values against an aggressive Russian invader is damaged with reporting that Kiev conducted an al-Qaeda style attack on an innocent civilian inside...

Below is my column in the Hill on the noticeably narrow scope of charges referenced in the recent FBI leak from the Delaware investigation. The leak raises a number of intriguing questions in its wake. Here is the column: President Biden’s hot mic moment during a visit to hurricane-stricken Florida — in which he muttered that “No one f–ks with a Biden” — left many people confused. His Sopranos-like warning might not deter developing hurricanes but it has succeeded for years in Washington as a...

A continually unhinged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has spent the past year trying to draw NATO powers into direct conflict with Russia, and he has yet to achieve success, despite many attempts to do so. While the rhetoric between D.C., Brussels, and Moscow has certainly become more fiery, the kinetic pieces on the geopolitical chessboard have remained steadily in place, because the major parties to the conflict do not want to witness World War III breaking out.On Thursday, Zelensky...

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.Four years ago, I wrote a USA Today column calling for Assange to receive a Presidential Medal of Freedom. My piece failed to sway the Trump White...