As I mentioned recently, whether the courts protect or violate liberty in any given case is something of a coin toss. The matter could hinge on a single word. We just had a good example of that fact. On April 18 U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, a Trump...
Sheldon Richman
TGIF: What Really Protects Liberty?
by Sheldon Richman | Apr 29, 2022 | Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated, as if we needed another demonstration, that little stands between the government and our liberty. Champions of individual freedom have been properly disturbed by how much power governments at all levels have seized since the...
TGIF: NATO and Collective Insecurity
by Sheldon Richman | Apr 22, 2022 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman
Collective security, the official goal of NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, seems plausible on its face. A group of nations ostensibly concerned about a common threat agree to defend one another in the event of an attack. "All for one and one for all," as...
TGIF: Shades of Gray in the Russia-Ukraine War
by Sheldon Richman | Apr 15, 2022 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
If you're looking for morality tales — clashes between the clearly good and the clearly bad — I suggest you look elsewhere than to the geopolitical theater. There we find only conflicts between shades of darker gray. This seems to have been the case throughout...
TGIF: Joe Biden, What the Hell?
by Sheldon Richman | Apr 1, 2022 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
What's going on with Joe Biden? Is he oblivious to the fact that Russia has about as many strategic nuclear weapons as the United States has? Is he taking advice from the neocons, who apparently believe that we should not fear a nuclear holocaust because that's...
TGIF: Our Age of Character Assassination
by Sheldon Richman | Mar 25, 2022 | Featured Articles, Justice, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
I am not one for romanticizing the past because in every alleged golden age you find grumblers looking longingly to some earlier alleged golden age. Nevertheless, our own time has earned its share of criticism. For example, we live in a time when, for many, character...
TGIF: Congress Again Rewards Israel’s Misdeeds
by Sheldon Richman | Mar 18, 2022 | Economics, Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
To judge by what Congress is up to these days, one would think that it wants to reward Israel for its relentless confiscation of Palestinian land and continued ethnic cleansing. Congress -- which is not only interested in "the Benjamins," that is, Israel Lobby...
TGIF: Russia in Ukraine: Cui Bono?
by Sheldon Richman | Mar 11, 2022 | Economics, Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Justice, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
I don't know if the U.S. foreign-policy elite wanted Russia to invade Ukraine -- an argument could be made for the affirmative -- but I'd hate to think it did. Yet given its long record of global mischief (a polite word for its machinations), we certainly cannot rule...