A writer at The Washington Post says the answer is yes: First, it isn’t the 1950s anymore. As religion scholar Will Herberg noted in his influential 1955 essay “Protestant-Catholic-Jew,” at that time 68 percent of Americans were Protestant, 23 percent Catholic, and 4 percent Jewish. (The remaining 5 percent expressed no religious preference.) “Not to [...]

And this time, I doubt that anyone will even notice: The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials. The long-planned shift in the Defense Department’s role in [...]

One aspect common to totalitarian regimes is the forced loyalty oath. Nazi Germany, for example, forced all pastors, civil servants and soldiers to take an oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler. In the Soviet Union, in Communist China, and numerous other nations, the state demanded that people swear loyalty to the government as a condition [...]

California’s Proposition 8, the ballot measure aiming to outlaw same sex marriage, passed on a very close vote. Prop 8’s supporters* pushed a campaign of fear, misinformation, and a complete distortion of the meaning of individual liberty. This campaign commercial is typical of the intolerance and hysteria being promoted from the “yes” campaign. Argument #1: [...]

In today’s bread and circuses world, it doesn’t surprise me one bit that Americans overwhelmingly fail a quiz on civics. What is slightly surprising is that our elected officials do even worse: Are most people, including college graduates, civically illiterate? Do elected officials know even less than most citizens about civic topics such as history, [...]

The story of an eight-year old boy who police say committed a double murder is raising the eyebrows of many legal analysts: (CBS/AP) The 8-year-old boy accused of killing his father and another man in Eastern Arizona was subjected to an “absurd” police interrogation, a legal analyst told CBS’ The Early Show Thursday. “What we [...]

The City Club of Cleveland extended an invitation to the top six presidential candidates*. Of the six candidates, Libertarian Party candidate Bob Barr, Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin, and independent candidate Ralph Nader participated; Democrat Barack Obama, Republican John McCain, and Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney were no-shows. Unlike the debates we have already seen [...]

In what seems to be a follow-up to yesterday’s kerfuffle about Barack Obama’s comments about the Warren Court and redistribution of wealth, there’s now an audio clip of him from the same radio program discussing what he called a “fundamental flaw” in the Constitution: I think it’s a remarkable document… The original Constitution as well [...]

I just received my mail-in ballot a week or so ago. The ballot, with multiple choices with arrows to be filled out next to each choice, reminds me of taking standardized tests back in the day. Some tests were easier than others but I knew that if I did not study, one of two things [...]

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be on the receiving end of a personal attack ad? I have. During the 2006 campaign, I thought it would be fun to write my own personal attack ad…against myself! Like many attack ads, everything I wrote about myself was (is) technically true but lacked [...]

For those of us who value the concept of life, liberty, and property, there doesn’t seem to be much reason to be optimistic for America’s future. Last week we saw one government (taxpayer) bail out after another. The price tag seems to grow a couple of hundred billion dollars each day (depending on which figures [...]

The View seems to be an endless source of idiotic commentary, especially in the realm of politics. It appears that Whoopi picked up where Rosie left off when Sen. John McCain appeared on the show. To have “a strict constructionist” philosophy means to return to slavery and other injustices of the era of the founding [...]

Ron Paul spoke in front of a crowd of approximately 10,000 at the “Rally for the Republic” (AKA the “Ron Paul Convention”) across the river from the Republican National Convention. Below are the first 3 parts of his speech, the full text of the speech can be read here. Other speakers on the last day [...]

Sometimes, the wisdom of crowds is as bad as the insanity of a dictator: Nearly half of Americans (47%) believe the government should require all radio and television stations to offer equal amounts of conservative and liberal political commentary, but they draw the line at imposing that same requirement on the Internet. Thirty-nine percent (39%) [...]

This is an update to a post I wrote in late June. Maybe its time to propose some sort of “fully informed jury” legislation and demand a return to federalism?

This morning, I’m noting a lot of ill informed …or perhaps just informed by misunderstanding of the text… opinions and statements regarding the historic Heller ruling on the scope and applicability of the 2nd amendment. This of course is unsurprising when many people of varying levels of knowledge about law, history, and firearms have just [...]

Given that the D.C. vs. Heller ruling is a historically important ruling for the Second Amendment and given that the next president could appoint between two and three Justices to the Supreme Court over the next four years, I think the responses from Bob Barr, John McCain, and Barack Obama might give us some insight [...]

Back in November of last year, I shared the story of Paul Jacob, Susan Johnson, and Rick Carpenter. Together, they are sometimes referred to as “the Oklahoma 3.” Their crime, “conspiracy against the state” (what we know as petitioning the government for a redress of grievances) could cost them 10 years in prison and $25,000 [...]

The Hillary Clinton campaign has sent out mailers criticizing Barack Obama for trying to have it both ways on the Second Amendment. The mailer reads as follows: These are all valid criticisms of Barack Obama; I have made some of these very criticisms myself (here, and here). But the source of these criticisms (Hillary Clinton) [...]