"Not only are cops protected from most charges of wrongdoing—whether it’s shooting unarmed citizens (including children and old people), raping and abusing young women, falsifying police reports, trafficking drugs, or soliciting sex with minors—but even on the rare occasions when they are fired for misconduct, it’s only a matter of time before they get re-hired again." Continue reading →
"If one repeatedly learns that feeding a beast can briefly appease it, but predictably makes it more enormous, savage, and unstable, it is best to remember the lesson. Instead, central bankers have doomed the world to learn that lesson again." Continue reading →
"Lola’s travel papers had expired in 1969, five years after we arrived in the U.S. She’d come on a special passport linked to my father’s job. After a series of fallings-out with his superiors, Dad quit the consulate and declared his intent to stay in the United States. He arranged for permanent-resident status for his family, but Lola wasn’t eligible. He was supposed to send her back. Lola’s legal status became what Filipinos call tago nang tago, or TNT—'on the run.' She stayed TNT for almost 20 years." Continue reading →
"We devote impressive money and manpower to the fight against illegal immigration, but meanwhile, in Big Bend, one can find a modest example of free enterprise defying borders." Continue reading →
"We’re not dealing with a government that exists to serve its people, protect their liberties and ensure their happiness. Rather, these are the diabolical machinations of a make-works program carried out on an epic scale whose only purpose is to keep the powers-that-be permanently (and profitably) employed." Continue reading →
"The worst part of Venezuela’s tragedy is that it was so obviously predictable. Economists familiar with the work of Ludwig von Mises understood the necessary results of socialist policies. A sound money and freely floating prices provide a society with functioning markets that deliver the goods to the people. The market economy is true populism." Continue reading →
"Here’s a short story about how I became a real American: Someone whose debt is gonna take a few years to pay off. 28 months by current count." Continue reading →
"You can imagine my surprise when I found out that SWIFT runs on Windows Vista - an obsolete operating system that Microsoft no longer supports. When my bank received its SWIFT code, we were told that we had to have a computer running Vista in the office in order to connect to SWIFT. It was such an absurd exercise to find an obsolete computer running an obsolete operating system to connect to the supposedly most advanced and important international payment network in the world. Unsurprisingly, SWIFT has been hacked numerous times, both by the NSA as well as private hackers who have stolen a great deal of money from their victims." Continue reading →
"In the wake of the terror attacks in England, France, Germany and elsewhere, can we finally admit that the war on terror is an utter and complete failure? So if the war on terror has failed, what should we do to stop terrorists?" Continue reading →
"In an era in which federal officials are now requiring Americans who are returning from foreign travel to turn over their cell phones for searches and forcing them to disclose their passwords, it’s time for Americans to start asking some fundamental questions regarding the nature of liberty, the purpose of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and the proper role of government in a free society and to abandon the passivity, submissiveness, and deference to authority that have come to characterize their lives." Continue reading →