In August 26, 2020, Kevin Phomma was arrested in Portland for assaulting several police officers with bear spray during that city’s nonstop siege by Antifa and Black Lives Matters protesters. Phomma and others surrounded the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, blocked traffic, and fought with law enforcement. In a press release announcing his arrest, the Justice Department said, “Phomma doused several officers with pepper spray while they attempted to arrest him. Once in...

President Joe Biden has ordered the Financial Stability Oversight Council to prepare a report on how the financial system can mitigate the risks related to climate change. The Financial Stability Oversight Council was created through the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reform act and is supposed to identify and monitor excessive risk to the financial system. The council is composed of the heads of the major federal financial regulatory agencies, including the Federal Reserve.Federal Reserve...

Reporters joke the easiest job in Washington is CIA spokesman. You need only listen carefully to questions and say “No comment’ before heading to Happy Hour. The joke, however, is on us. The reporters pretend to see only one side of the CIA, the passive hiding of information about itself. They meanwhile choose to profit from the other side of the equation, active information operations designed to influence events in America. It is 2021 and the CIA is running an op against the American people....

It seems like whenever Hunter Biden is in the news, the Biden staff screams, the media screams, “we all scream for ice cream.” On October 19, 2020, the Biden campaign and its protective cocoon of media faced the discovery of Hunter’s presumed laptop with details of his (and his uncle’s) influence peddling while Joe Biden was Vice President. The solution? Joe Biden went for ice cream and the media peppered him with questions about his confectionary choice (Spoiler: he ordered a two-scoop...

While state and local governments, schools, businesses, and various venues have lately been removing mask and social distancing requirements for adults and children, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) this week laid out its recommendation that all children and adolescents, ages two and older, who have not been “fully vaccinated” for coronavirus wear masks and “socially distance” in a wide variety of circumstances when they are outside their homes. The AAP’s mask wearing recommendation...

“It’s like we created another industry in our state. The amount of money is staggering,” Andrew Schaufele, director of Maryland’s Bureau of Revenue Estimates, happily declared last week. The Biden stimulus plan is deluging governments across America with hundreds of billions of dollars of extra revenue that will allow politicians to stretch their power in ways that vex citizens long after the pandemic is over. One year ago writing for AIER, I asked, “Will the Political Class Be Held Liable For...

It is with great personal sadness and a profound realization of the intellectual loss to the cause of liberty that I announce the death of our dear friend Robert Wenzel, publisher of the Economic Policy Journal and Target Liberty. Robert Wenzel's two outlets, for the many in the know, were among the first websites to visit each and every morning. His Target Liberty was as eclectic and iconoclastic (when it comes to the statist status quo) as it was didactic and, yes, even entertaining. Every...

On April 1, 1933, shortly after Hitler was appointed chancellor, the Nazis staged a boycott of Jewish businesses in Germany. Members of the Storm Troopers (“die Sturmabteilung,” or the “Storm Department,” as I like to think of them) stood around outside of Jewish-owned stores with Gothic-lettered placards reading “Germans! Defend yourselves! Do not buy from Jews!” The boycott itself was a total disaster — most Germans ignored it and just went on with their lives — but it was the beginning of...

“Truth will out” is the most popular fairy tale in Washington. Members of Congress are clashing over whether politicians will appoint an “independent” commission to reveal the facts behind the January 6 Capitol ruckus. Proponents are portraying the issue as a simple choice between “truth or Trump.” Recent history provides no reason to expect a politically controlled process to expose facts that undermine powerful politicians. Congress has long been worse than useless as a fact-finding agency....

Journalist Abby MartinWe have been discussing the state laws requiring contractors and employees to swear that they do not support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (“BDS”) movement against Israel. I have long maintained that the law is unconstitutional as a limitation of free speech and associational rights. This week, a court in Georgia became the latest to declare such laws unconstitutional. The case was brought by journalist Abby Martin who was denied a contract as a keynote speaker at...

In the post-vaccination era, why don’t people remove their masks? Learned helplessness, employed as a control tool. Learned helplessness is well-documented. It takes place when an individual believes he continuously faces a negative, uncontrollable situation and stops trying to improve his circumstances, even when he has the ability to do so. Discovering the loss of control elicits a passive reaction to a harmful situation. Psychologists call this a maladaptive response, characterized by...

In March, Governor Greg Abbott announced that Texas would open for business 100 percent without a statewide mask mandate. The pro-lockdown “experts” were shocked. If a state as big as Texas joined Florida and succeeded in thumbing its nose at “the science” – which told us that for the first time in history healthy people should be forced to stay in their houses and wear oxygen-restricting face masks – then the lockdown narrative would begin falling apart.President Biden famously attacked the...

We have all been born and raised under a government that wields the power of assassination. State-sponsored assassinations at the hands of the US government — and specifically the Pentagon and the CIA — have become a rather ho-hum affair. They have become fully accepted as part and parcel of American life. Yet, when we stop to reflect on this phenomenon, we can’t help but come to the realization that this is truly an extraordinary power. It is an omnipotent power that enables the federal...