Kevin Drum observes the lobbying fight between merchants and credit card companies. Card companies charge fees to merchants for the ability to accept cards, but if competition makes them unable to fully pass those fees along, they end up eating out of profit margins. So merchants want to get Congress to slap restrictions an the [...]

While July 20, 2009 marks the 40th anniversary of arguably man’s greatest achievement (landing on the moon), this day also marks yet another important day in history: the 65th anniversary of the nearly successful attempted assassination of Adolf Hitler and overthrow of the Third Reich (a.k.a Operation Valkyrie) from individuals within the German Government. An [...]

The hosting company had an upgrade/migration issue with one of their services today, and we had about 30-40 minutes of downtime. Our apologies.

As reported (circumspect) by QandO: One of the district attorneys that participated in the operation that took place this Friday showed reporters an official voting result from the Technical Institute Luis Bogran, of Tegucigalpa, in which the specific number of people that participated in table 345, where there were 550 ballots, 450 of which were [...]

THIS BOOK IS BASED on a single idea: You should be allowed to do whatever you want with your own person and property, as long as you don’t physically harm the person or property of a nonconsenting other. Thus begins a book that everyone interested in politics should read; Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do: The [...]

One of the most pernicious beliefs held by Americans is the conflation of the state with society. This belief is causing them acquiesce to government actions that threaten the destruction of American civilization if not stopped. The word society comes to us from the Latin societas, which meant a group of people bound by friendship [...]

Kevin Drum sees this and weeps. My god! The rich aren’t paying any taxes any more! Look at how steep those lines are! Those greedy rich bastards are getting off easy! Or, maybe if you rescale the image, you make a different point (my apologies for an inability to make a chart, this in Excel [...]

Ezra Klein says there’s we shouldn’t act as if defense spending (considered discretionary in the budget) in unable to be cut: My friend Chris Hayes likes to say that “non-defense discretionary spending” is the most pernicious phrase in Washington. It means, essentially, that there’s spending, which we can cut, and then there’s defense spending, which [...]

It wasn’t all that long ago that Karl Rove was using an example of Republican socialized medicine to illustrate why Democratic socialized medicine is bad.  Now here’s Nebraska Republican Jeff Fortenberry calling for an increase in government health care spending: In addition, we could expand subsidies for high risk pools for those with chronic illnesses [...]

CNS News provides the following quote (emphasis added) from Vice President Joe Biden: “And folks look, AARP knows and the people with me here today know, the president knows, and I know, that the status quo is simply not acceptable,” Biden said at the event on Thursday in Alexandria, Va. “It’s totally unacceptable. And it’s completely unsustainable. [...]

I’m at a loss. I don’t know what world can justify this, and can only hope that my readers will be just as appalled as I am, because I have nothing to add. WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson testified on Thursday that he pressured Bank of America Corp. last year to go [...]

Hidden within the language of the House Democrats’ Health Care Bill is a provision that would effectively destroy the market for private health insurance: It didn’t take long to run into an “uh-oh” moment when reading the House’s “health care for all Americans” bill. Right there on Page 16 is a provision making individual private [...]

During the course of her confirmation hearing today, Sonia Sotomayor had a very interesting exchange with Senator Tom Coburn over the right to keep and bear arms: In a prickly exchange over gun control, Sen. Tom Coburn tried hard to get Sonia Sotomayor to explain what she actually thinks about the right to bear arms. [...]

The July/August 2009 issue of the Left-leaning Mother Jones dedicates several articles to the asinine War on (some) Drugs. The title of the magazine’s cover story states it best – “Totally Wasted: We’ve blown $300 billion. Death squads roam Mexico. Cartels operate in 259 cities. This is your War on Drugs. Any Questions?” Reason’s Nick [...]

The purpose of society is to help people satisfy their needs. A major means used to satisfy needs are economic activities such as production, trade, and the performance of services. In a complex economy, it is easy to lose sight of this, and people begin to believe the fallacy that the purpose of an economy [...]

Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. George Washington So what is the difference between the USA and China? Our government is still a “dangerous servant”. China’s is a “fearful master”. But that line is blurring every day. Hat Tip: [...]

I wanted to give a shout out to co-blogger Jason Pye, who is currently editor of UnitedLiberty.org, a [fairly] new libertarian group blog. United Liberty is, much like The Liberty Papers, a “big-tent” libertarian site. They’ll run the gamut from anarcho-capitalists to Ron Paul Republibertarians. They include portions of their site for “headlines” and other [...]

Kevin Drum, on time filling out forms: So once you do your taxes you only have about two additional hours of government form filling out to do each year. To be honest, that’s less than I would have guessed — but that’s probably because I’ve been fooled by the fantastic increase in private sector forms [...]

Radley Balko made the following observation at his blog: “Illinois has sentenced 224 people to death since reinstating capital punishment in 1977. Since then, 20 have been exonerated. I’m not sure what an acceptable rate of error in death penalty cases would be, but nine percent seems awfully high, doesn’t it?” One wrongfully killed person [...]

Well, when I was awoken by my toddler at 4 AM, and kept up by him all morning, I knew I was in for trouble. 40 oz of coffee later, I’m marginally ready to think. In the thought that some readers might be as zombie-like as I am, I give you exploding watermelons: This comes [...]