Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute

World War II, the ‘No Good’ War

by Jim Bovard | Sep 1, 2026 | Featured Articles, History

September 1 is the anniversary of the start of World War II in Europe. On that date in 1939, Nazi Germany launched an invasion of Poland from the west and a few weeks later, the Soviet Union invaded from the east. Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin signed a non-aggression pact shortly before they carved up Poland but that ceasefire didn’t last beyond June 1941. World War II has been heralded for more than fifty years as the “Good War"—in contrast to subsequent U.S. military debacles in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran. But World War II cannot be glorified without hiding a heap of lies...

Presidential Entitlement and the 1998 Bombing of Sudan

by Jim Bovard | Aug 24, 2026 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Last week was the 28th anniversary of the U.S. government's bombing of a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan. Scott Horton, director of the Libertarian Institute, observed last week that that wanton assault by the Clinton administration “helped make a folk hero out of bin Laden, drove up recruitment for Al Qaeda and made it more difficult for the Taliban to give him up.” Operation Infinite Reach was a farce of the first order—and may have helped pave the way to the September 11 attacks. That carnage resulted in a federal court ruling that practically gave presidents a license to kill any time...

From Biden’s Potemkin Presidency to Trump’s Potemkin War

by Jim Bovard | Jul 28, 2026 | Featured Articles

In this age of social media and A.I. illusions, an old Russian scam provides the best lens to understand America’s two most recent presidents. In eighteenth-century czarist Russia, a fake village was built by a Russian governor named Grigory Aleksandrovich Potemkin to deceive Catherine the Great about the condition of the peasants she ruled. “Potemkin Village,” according to Time magazine, “signifies any deceptive or false construct, conjured often by cruel regimes, to deceive both those within the land and those peering in from outside.” In Washington a few years ago, the media partnered...

RIP Tom Blanton, Antiwar Artist

by Jim Bovard | Jul 8, 2026 | Featured Articles

One of America’s most talented antiwar artists and political satirists passed away last week. Tom Blanton did one of the best daily roundups of government oppression and outrages stories on the Internet. His Project for a New American Revolution was an inspiration for me and thousands of other folks over the years. Tom was also one of the best and funniest headline writers I knew. He was principled, courageous, and talented as the day is long.He was 68 years old and a lifetime resident of Richmond, Virginia. His Flickr page showcases his political art and other smackdowns of contemporary...

How I Busted the Ruby Ridge Coverup

by Jim Bovard | Jun 30, 2026 | Criminal Justice, Featured Articles

On this day in 1995, I helped shatter the coverup of federal killings at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. For millions of Americans, those brazen killings epitomized how the U.S. government had become a deadly peril to their rights and liberties. In 1991, an ATF informant entrapped Randy Weaver into selling him two sawed-off shotguns. After ATF officials lied to a federal prosecutor, Weaver was indicted and sent the wrong court date. On August 21, 1992, after numerous illegal incursions onto Weaver's Ruby Ridge mountaintop property near the Canadian border, three U.S. marshals dressed in Ninja outfits and...

The Demented Origin of the War on Drugs and War on Terrorism Nexus

by Jim Bovard | Jun 22, 2026 | Featured Articles

President Trump effectively claims that he is entitled to preemptively kill suspected drug traffickers anywhere on earth, or at least in the Western Hemisphere. The U.S. military has killed hundreds of people in its attacks on suspected smugglers’ boats off the coast of South America. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth proclaimed that illicit drugs are “tantamount to chemical weapons” and the dead suspects “are the al-Qaeda of our hemisphere, and we are hunting them with the sophistication and precision that we hunted al-Qaeda.” Anyone whom the U.S. military killed is automatically posthumously...

Supreme Court Ends Federal War on Gun-Owning Potheads

by Jim Bovard | Jun 19, 2026 | Criminal Justice, Featured Articles

Yesterday, the Supreme Court unanimously struck down a pretext that the feds have used to nullify the constitutional rights of more than fifty million Americans. The Gun Control Act of 1968 prohibited gun ownership by anyone who is "an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance." That law was a Damocles Sword that created a pretext for the feds to forcibly disarm and imprison up to 10% of the American public. The court’s landmark decision overturned a conviction by Ali Hemani, a Texan whose home was searched in 2022 by the FBI “after his family had come under suspicion because...

We Must End the TSA ‘License to Loot’

by Jim Bovard | May 29, 2026 | Criminal Justice, Featured Articles

For more than a decade, Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents have plundered passengers at airport security checkpoints on the flimsiest or most shameless pretexts. If you get stopped at an airport security checkpoint with $100 or more in cash, TSA agents can fleece you. More than 10,000 travelers have been stripped of their money by TSA agents since 2014. But the feds almost never bother filing criminal charges against the victims of asset forfeiture. TSA considers itself generous when it “permits the passenger to continue on to their destination”—after taking away their...