"Most of the states with dropping populations are high tax states. California, Rhode Island, and New York are all expected to lose Congressional seats. Illinois is hit especially hard with a fleeing populace, so much so that it may lose two seats."
"Occupational licensing is corrupt and idiotic. It’s idiotic because no one needs a license to braid hair, arrange flowers, or do interior decorating, or 300 hours of training to shampoo hair, all real examples of occupations subject to licensure. And it’s corrupt because although it’s couched in language about protecting the consumer, it’s actually about fleecing consumers and protecting existing players from competition via government power."
"Many of the heavily-armed activists who flocked to the scene feared that the FBI snipers had a license to kill the Bundys. Their reaction cannot be understood without considering a landmark 1990s case that continues to shape millions of Americans’ attitude towards Washington: the federal killings and coverups at Ruby Ridge."
"The South Carolina Department of Revenue said Alhanik filed $971,935 in sales tax returns in the period between 2013 and 2016, but after an investigation the agency found the store’s sales was $2.6 million, according to a press release. Alhanik dodged paying more than $136,000 in sales taxes during that four-year period, the department said."
"'Outrageous and tone deaf.' 'Madness.' 'Completely counterproductive and wrong-headed.' And that's just within the first few of more than 400 pages of comments submitted by residents of Washington, D.C., a city where child care costs are already some of the highest in the country, in response to an onerous new licensing requirement for daycare workers. The Office of the State Superintendent for Education (OSSE), which regulates daycares and early childhood education programs in the nation's capital, last year passed a rule requiring all daycare workers to have a college degree by 2020."
"Although the U.S. has been illegally deporting citizens for over a century, the number started soaring when Congress eliminated the right to judicial review for criminal aliens in the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. The idea was to remove the barriers to ejecting immigrants who posed a danger to Americans. But the result was a general weakening of legal protections and the rise of an unaccountable immigration bureaucracy that itself has become a danger to Americans."
"A federal judge ruled Monday that the federal government may not retry Cliven Bundy and his sons after rebuking prosecutors for withholding evidence during their felony trial stemming from an armed standoff four years ago. She said the attorneys were in violation of the Brady rule, which requires prosecutors to disclose evidence that could be favorable to a defendant, and told them it wasn’t possible to proceed with the case. On Monday, she dismissed the case 'with prejudice,' meaning the government cannot retry the defendants."
"Over 30,000 people had their electronic devices searched without probable cause or a warrant by Customs and Border Protection in 2017. This is a 50% increase from 2016. Most of the searches took place at airports when travelers were leaving the country. Imagine the helplessness of having your phone taken by an Agent, and searched without your consent. No suspicion of any crime. No probable cause. Just some thug using brute force to violate your privacy. In these settings, travelers are powerless. You just want to get home or continue to your destination, but the American police state shakes you down. Hundreds of traveler complaints about such oppression have now surfaced thanks to a Freedom of Information Request."
"Judge Navarro slammed the FBI for withholding key evidence. Unfortunately, this seems to be standard procedure for the FBI — including in their investigations of both the Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton presidential campaigns as well as the Las Vegas shooter who slaughtered concert goers last October. FBI officials have also been caught routinely twisting the truth to burnish prosecutions. False FBI trial testimony may have helped sentence 32 innocent people to death, as the Washington Post reported in 2015. How many other innocent people have been put behind bars because of federal misconduct?"
"The government has blocked popular messaging services like Telegram and Signal, in addition to several internet networks. Yet despite censorship and civil unrest, the Iranian bitcoin community is growing rapidly. Iranian customers protested outside local branches in 2017, demanding deposits because they worry some of the country’s largest credit institutions are on the verge of collapse. Meanwhile, Iranians remain politically ostracized from most international businesses and financial institutions. Part of the inspiration behind the Iranian revolution in 1979 was a belief that the Shah’s regime perpetuated economic inequality."