“A person under surveillance is no longer free; a society under surveillance is no longer a democracy.”—Writers Against Mass Surveillance THE GOOD NEWS: Americans have a right to freely express themselves on the Internet, including making threatening—even violent—statements on Facebook, provided that they don’t intend to actually inflict harm. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Elonis v. United States threw out the conviction of a Pennsylvania man who was charged with making unlawful threats (it...

There seems to be great Republican resistance to the idea that their interventions in Iraq and the Muslim world are the main cause of both the mess in Iraq and the growing and increasingly powerful worldwide Islamist movement. To the extent that Hillary Clinton and other Democratic senators and congressmen joined the Republicans in illegally delegating the war-declaring power to George W. Bush there is a point to the Republicans’ resistance. The correct formulation of the statement is that...

When last we checked in on the situation in Syria, ISIS (who a secret Pentagon document recently revealed was, and probably still is, considered a US “strategic asset”) was supposedly on the move, emboldened by recent successes in the ancient city of Palmyra and the conquest of Ramadi in Iraq, where, you’re reminded, Iraqi forces showed “no will” to fight according the Pentagon. Recent reports also indicated that the militants may have commandeered 2,300 humvees worth more than $1 billion when...

Is there hope for Iraq? It depends on what you are hoping for. It is becoming clearer that there is little hope of destroying Islamic State in Iraq. Islamic State has no shortage of new recruits. Its fighters capture heavy weapons with such ease that the United States is forced to direct air strikes against equipment abandoned by the Iraqis — even as it ships in more. Islamic State holds territory that will allow it to trade land for time, morph into an insurgency and preserve its forces by...

This month Congress will consider whether to renew the charter of the Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im Bank). Ex-Im Bank is a New Deal-era federal program that uses taxpayer funds to subsidize the exports of American businesses. Foreign businesses, including state-owned corporations, also benefit from Ex-Im Bank. One country that has benefited from $1.5 billion of Ex-Im Bank loans is Russia. Venezuela, Pakistan, and China have also benefited from Ex-Im Bank loans. With Ex-Im Bank’s track record of...

“Hey, guys, we’ll be here long after you are gone,” gloated a high-ranking CIA official during a hearing of the US Senate’s “Church Committee” investigation of illegal domestic intelligence operations forty years ago. What this meant, according to Peter Fenn, Senator Church’s Chief of Staff, “was, `we’ll wait you out.'” Church, an Idaho Democrat who briefly ran for his party’s presidential nomination in 1976, had served in Army Intelligence during World War II and had supported the disastrous...

It’s been a bad time for foes of ISIS. Islamic State (IS) scored a neat hat-trick by invading strategic Ramadi in Iraq’s mainly Sunni Anbar province, occupying Syria’s historic gem Palmyra, and taking over Al-Tanf, the last remaining border crossing with Iraq. The multinational, American-led "Coalition" launched last August to thwart Islamic State’s (IS, formerly ISIS) march across Syria and Iraq…did nothing. And so Baghdad and Washington are pointing fingers, each accusing the other of being...

“The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control.”—William Binney, NSA whistleblower We now have a fourth branch of government. As I document in my new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, this fourth branch came into being without any electoral mandate or constitutional referendum, and yet it possesses superpowers, above and beyond those of any other government agency save the military. It is all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful. It operates beyond the reach...

During the Cold War Washington was concerned about communists fomenting street protests that they could turn into revolutions, with groomed politicians waiting in the wings to take over the new government, thus expanding the Soviet empire. Today this is precisely what Washington does. We recently witnessed this operation in Ukraine and now it seems to be underway in Macedonia. The National Endowment for Democracy was established in 1983. The official purpose is to promote democracy abroad. The...

Iraq? On another Memorial Day, we’re still talking about Iraq? Remembering I attended the 2015 commencement ceremonies at Fordham University in New York. The otherwise typical ritual (future, global, passion, do what you love, you’ll never forget this place) began oddly, with an admonition to pause for a moment in honor of our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a special congratulations to veterans among the graduating class. No other group was so singled out. At William and Mary, a...

This week I found myself in rare agreement with Janet Yellen when she admitted that her economic predictions are likely to be wrong. Sadly, Yellen did not follow up her admission by handing in her resignation and joining efforts to end the Fed. An honest examination of the Federal Reserve’s record over the past seven years clearly shows that the American people would be better off without it. Following the bursting of the Federal Reserve-created housing bubble, the Fed embarked on an...