John McCain must hate little girls. It is one of many inescapable conclusions that arise from reading his National Security position paper, which promises all things to everyone - well almost everyone. His foreign policy plans promise more submarines, more ships, more aircraft, more divisions, more security, more military assistance for allies, more [...]

Over in the Science Based Medicine blog, Wallace Sampson is expresses outrage that the National Institutes of Health has announced an initiative to fund “research” into Traditional Chinese Medicine …

While insightful, Dr Sampson fails to dig down to the real sources of the problem:

If the NIH wastes money on quackery, its officers do not suffer a loss. They don’t have to justify their spending to donors or shareholders. The money extracted at gunpoint from the citizenry will continue to flow in regardless of the junk science the NIH produces.

Senator Warner has a brilliant idea how to reduce gas prices; force Americans to consume less at gun point:
Sen. John Warner, R-Va., asked Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman to look into what speed limit would provide optimum gasoline efficiency given current technology. He said he wants to know if the administration might support efforts in Congress [...]

The left hand says
Existing Legal Drugs Provide Superior Treatment for Serious Medical Conditions
The FDA has approved safe and effective medication for the treatment of glaucoma, nausea, wasting syndrome, cancer, and multiple sclerosis.
Marinol, the synthetic form of THC (the psychoactive ingredient contained in marijuana), is already legally available for prescription by physicians whose patients suffer from [...]

The always thought provoking J.D. Tucille of ‘The Disloyal Opposition’ answers this question with an emphatic , No!
Both major presidential candidates have made it quite clear that — policy differences aside — they’re running to be national leader and they want to be assessed on their readiness to take the nation’s helm.
That’s a shame, because [...]

Seymour Hersh writes in the New Yorker:
Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential [...]

In barbaric cultures, when people find themselves facing unpleasant changes, like the failure of crops or natural disasters, they look for scapegoats to blame. In the Europe and early colonial America, all to often the quest for a scapegoat took the form of a persecuting old women, who were charged with having used magic to [...]

In a thread at Reason’s hit and Run, during a discussion where Enron was cited as an example of what happens when governments fail to regulate private behavior, frequent commenter fluffy wrote an insightful comment which is well worth reading in full. The second half of her comment read:
It is customary in the US [...]

If you are a serial killer who is looking for human prey, you can find some very nice hunting grounds Yapavai County in Arizona. At night, you will be able to force any car you want to stop in a deserted spot at your whim - all you have to do is put some [...]

Last week some ex LAPD officers were convicted in Federal Court.  These thugs had been convicted of conducting numerous home invasions, violently battering the people they found there and tossing the homes for illegal drugs which they then fenced.
The FBI, understandably proud of its role in apprehending these criminals, has issued the following press release:
Evidence [...]

A great deal of attention is focused on the recent raids on the FLDS compound in Texas. The behavior of the state has rightly been condemned, most effectively by Les Jones who wrote:
Imagine that some parents in a school district were accused of child abuse. Now imagine that the authorities took every [...]

In an earlier post, I discussed the economic damage that “energy independence” would cause to U.S. consumers. In a recent conversation in meatspace, I ran into someone who acknowledged this problem, but argued that the price is “worth it” because when we trade with people who make oil, those people use the wealth to [...]

Very quietly, a bill has been working its way through Congress that bans Genetic Discrimination. The bill, the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, has been passed by the House of Representatives with overwhelming support and will probably pass the Senate in the next few weeks.
While this bill has some powerful arguments behind it, it is [...]

This week Boston’s Mayor Menino testified before the Congressional Task Force on Illegal Guns. He had this to say:
We share a common disdain for what we have seen happen in our cities, to our residents and to our police officers as a result of illegal guns. So, we signed a statement of principles [...]

In the field of professional executioners, the Saudi executioner has one of the more brutal reputations since he uses a sword to cut off people’s heads. This is not the clean antiseptic push-button executions of the U.S. but one where the executioner has to physically exert himself, gore splatters and the smell of blood [...]

One of the hot topics in this campaign is a call for “energy independence”. All the candidates for president, with the exception of Ron Paul are for it. The vast majority of the candidates for Congress are for it too.
Essentially, the proponents are arguing that if people living in the U.S. bought less [...]

Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.
Ovid

One interesting question within political theory is the question of when armed rebellion against a government is justified. Most people that tackle this subject try to find some set of moral lines that a government must cross before [...]

Internet Broadcasting Systems has a new breathless article warning of the latest danger to government space travelers making the rounds of the internet:
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station apparently have access to a gun.
Oh the horror! Then comes the letdown:
Russian Cosmonauts carry a gun on their Soyuz space capsule, which is attached to [...]

Mitt Romney, seeing the writing on the wall, has suspended his campaign according to CNN.
This essentially kills any chance of a brokered convention; John McCain, once written off as lacking the money needed to make it to Super Tuesday, will be the Republican nominee come the convention.
This is, of course, a disaster for the Ron [...]

On the eve of the New Hampshire primary a staffer made allegations accusing Ron Paul of consorting and collaborating with racists. The first hint came with this interview on the Tucker Carlson show:

This was followed by an article published today:
Angry White Man: The bigoted past of Ron Paul. by James Kirchick
The thesis of the [...]