statism

White House Makes It Official: It Wants to Keep Snooping on Americans

"President Donald Trump and allies may complain on Twitter and out loud how the Deep State illegally snooped on him under his predecessor, Barack Obama, but that doesn't mean the White House wants less surveillance authority. The White House and several GOP senators have made it official: They want to make some significant surveillance authorities permanent under law without addressing concerns by civil liberties and privacy advocates that these authorities are being used to collect Americans' data without the use of warrants." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingWhite House Makes It Official: It Wants to Keep Snooping on Americans

Congress Passes Bill To Imprison Sexting Teens, And Their Parents, For 15 Years

"The United States House of Representatives has passed a bill to criminalize 'sexting' among teenagers. But that’s not all. This ominous bill also punishes their parents by making them face a 15-year mandatory, minimum sentence." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingCongress Passes Bill To Imprison Sexting Teens, And Their Parents, For 15 Years

The Little Known Law That Lets Hospitals Shut Down Competition

"Iowa makes it a crime for doctors to open up a new location and offer services without obtaining special permission known as a 'certificate of need.' Permission is not easy to come by: Dr. Birchansky must persuade state officials that his outpatient surgery center is 'needed' in the proposed location through a cumbersome process that resembles full-blown litigation and that allows existing businesses (his competitors) to oppose his application. This process amounts to nothing more than certificates of monopoly." Continue reading →

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Desperate Police Departments Ditch Hiring Standards

"Police could stop arresting people for drug crimes, and focus on violent and property crimes if they wanted to get by with less personnel. They could even pull some officers off speed-trap duty and actually respond to desperate calls for help. But no, the solution is to simply hire heroin addicts and crack heads. That will surely improve the tensions between the public and police. How could this go wrong, hiring even lower quality officers than before?" Continue reading →

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US to criminalize undeclared cash, bitcoin, gift cards, prepaid phones

"Have too much cash? You’d better tell the government. If not, they’re authorizing themselves in this bill to seize not just the money you didn’t report, but ALL of your assets and bank accounts. They even go so far as to specifically name 'safety deposit boxes' among the various assets that they can seize if you don’t fill out the form." Continue reading →

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The DEA’s $4 Billion Warrantless Cash Grab

"Federal law enforcement officers are raking in hundreds of millions of dollars a year with little oversight or constitutional protections for property owners. Most of these types of seizures are never challenged. The I.G. found petitions were filed in only 20 percent of the DEA cash seizures it reviewed. Of those that were challenged, though, 40 percent saw money fully or partially returned to the owner, indicating that there may be a significant number of unfounded seizures going unchallenged." Continue reading →

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State-Run Single-Payer Health Care: Prohibitively Expensive—and Illegal?

"State lawmakers in California and New York voted this year to pass state-run single payer health care plans, despite the fact that both states would need to double their existing tax revenue to pay for the new entitlement. But even if those political hurdles are overcome, and even if the two states figure out how they are going to come up with the necessary tax revenue—about $400 billion in California's case, and somewhere between $91 billion and $225 billion in New York's—to make those systems functional, both may run into another problem: The whole thing could be against the law." Continue reading →

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Silk Road Creator Ross Ulbricht Loses His Life Sentence Appeal

"As Judge Katherine Forrest explained at the time, Ulbricht's life sentence was intended also to send a message to other would-be dark web drug kingpins. Her strategy appears to have backfired, at least in the short term: Sales on Silk Road successor sites doubled in the immediate wake of Ulbricht's sentence, as news of the trial's outcome raised awareness of the dark web drug market." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingSilk Road Creator Ross Ulbricht Loses His Life Sentence Appeal