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One Hundred Years of IRS Political Targeting

One Hundred Years of IRS Political Targeting

by | Apr 15, 2024 | , ,

One hundred years ago, Senator James Couzens, a Michigan Republican, took to the Senate floor to denounce the Bureau of Internal Revenue for abusing its power and trampling innocent taxpayers. Couzens launched a sweeping Senate investigation of federal tax collectors. One year later, Internal Revenue Commissioner David Blair personally delivered a demand for $10 million in back taxes as Couzens stepped out of the Senate chamber. Couzens fought the case, and eventually proved that he had actually overpaid his taxes by roughly one million dollars, as David Burnham noted in his 1989 classic, A...

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‘Journalists’ and the Fight to Save Freedom of Speech

‘Journalists’ and the Fight to Save Freedom of Speech

by | Apr 8, 2024 |

“What is a journalist?” is a contemporary equivalent of the ancient question, “What is truth?” The U.S. government's prosecution of Julian Assange hinges on the assertion that he is not a journalist and should be punished like a spy for a hostile country. The controversy over Assange is part of broader clashes over the meaning of journalism and freedom of the press across the United States. I recently wrangled on this topic with former top-ranked New York City radio host Brian Wilson, with whom I do a weekly podcast. In one of his Substack essays on the topic, Brian stated that "anyone...

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The Great Escape from Government Schools?

The Great Escape from Government Schools?

by | Apr 3, 2024 |

After enduring bullshit school shutdowns during the COVID pandemic, many students concluded that school itself must be bullshit and have skipped attending classes. Government bureaucrats are panicking since subsidies are tied to the number of students’ butts in chairs each day. Duke University Professor Katie Rosanbalm lamented that, thanks to the pandemic, “Our relationship with school became optional.” School absences have “exploded” almost everywhere, according to a New York Times report last week. Chronic absenteeism has almost doubled amongst public school students, rising from 15%...

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Truth Has No Chance on Capitol Hill

Truth Has No Chance on Capitol Hill

by | Mar 25, 2024 | ,

Americans are encouraged to believe that the U.S. Congress is practically on automatic pilot to serve the public. Happily, most Americans are not so gullible and Congress receives much of the contempt it deserves in public opinion polls. But the media and the Washington establishment continue doggedly fighting against the vulgar truth of congressional depravity. Seventy years ago, comedian Milton Berle quipped, “You can send a man to Congress but you can’t make him think.” Nothing has improved on that score since the Eisenhower era. In 1999, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology...

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Will the Ghost of Duncan Lemp Haunt Gun-Grabbing Politicians?

Will the Ghost of Duncan Lemp Haunt Gun-Grabbing Politicians?

by | Mar 11, 2024 |

If you post a photo of a rifle on Instagram, tag it to your hometown, and add a caption like “green tip armor piercing gets the girls wet," Maryland police can cite that to get a no-knock search warrant and kill you in a pre-dawn assault on your bedroom. In his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell warned, “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever.” Duncan Lemp, the 21-year-old software programmer who posted the rifle photo I've just described, was shot three times without warning by a policeman standing outside a smashed-in window at 4:42 am....

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Will Any ‘Last Rights’ Epigram Go to the Moon?

Will Any ‘Last Rights’ Epigram Go to the Moon?

by | Feb 27, 2024 |

Epigrams are excellent propellants for seditious ideas. How far can one line go? Thirty years ago, I casually appended a sentence to the end of a paragraph in the final chapter of my book, Lost Rights: The Death of American Liberty. I was amazed: “Democracy must be more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner” became one of the most popular worldwide epigrams on democracy. It was translated into almost fifty languages, quoted by the Chief Justice of Hong Kong, and is serving as a rallying cry for oppressed dissidents everywhere. That epigram circulated on coffee cups,...

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Guilty But Clueless: Special Counsel Verdict On Biden

Guilty But Clueless: Special Counsel Verdict On Biden

by | Feb 12, 2024 |

Did a Special Counsel report officially launch the Biden administration Death Spiral? President Joe Biden is not guilty because he is hopelessly clueless about his own life and career. That is the tacit verdict of Special Counsel Robert Hur, who concluded that Biden “willfully retained and disclosed" classified information, which "risked serious damage to America's national security.” If anyone else did this, they would be federal crimes. But Biden cannot be convicted of a "felony that requires a mental state of willfulness,” the Special Counsel concluded – apparently because Biden’s mind is...

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Debacles at Home and Abroad Propel ‘Defend the Guard’

Debacles at Home and Abroad Propel ‘Defend the Guard’

by | Jan 30, 2024 | ,

The National Guard is back in the headlines thanks to a showdown at the Texas border and Joe Biden’s latest foreign policy debacle. The Biden administration has refused to enforce federal law to limit undocumented immigrants (many of whom “lost” their documents just before arriving at the U.S. border) from crossing from Mexico into the United States. The Transportation Security Administration permits those new arrivals to board domestic flights merely by showing their Department of Homeland Security arrest warrants as identification. (American citizens are permitted no such luxury.) Texas...

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Jim Bovard

Jim Bovard is a Senior Fellow for the Libertarian Institute and author of the newly published, Last Rights: The Death of American Liberty (2023). His other books include Public Policy Hooligan (2012), Attention Deficit Democracy (2006), Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (1994), and seven others. He is a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors and has also written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Playboy, The Washington Post, among others. His articles have been publicly denounced by the chief of the FBI, the Postmaster General, the Secretary of HUD, and the heads of the DEA, FEMA, and EEOC and numerous federal agencies.



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Israel Winner of the 2003 Iraq Oil War

Israel Winner of the 2003 Iraq Oil War

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From the Foreword by Lawrence B. Wilkerson: “[T]he debate over whether oil was a principal reason for the 2003 invasion has waxed and waned, with one camp arguing that it absolutely was, while the other argues the precise opposite.” “Mr. Vogler, himself a former...

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