Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute

The Mirage of Washington Intelligence

by Jim Bovard | Oct 24, 2022 | Featured Articles, Politics

“You can send a man to Congress but you can’t make him think,” quipped comedian Milton Berle in the 1950s. To update Berle for our times: You can spend $60 billion a year on intelligence agencies but you can’t make politicians read their reports. Instead, most politicians remain incorrigibly ignorant and hopelessly craven when presidents drag America into new foreign fiascos. Congressional docility has been paving the way to war since at least the Vietnam era. In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson invoked an alleged North Vietnamese attack on a U.S. destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin to ram a...

Joe Biden’s COVID Dictatorship Will Never End

by Jim Bovard | Oct 18, 2022 | Featured Articles

The Biden administration formally decreed last week that America’s COVID “emergency” continues. That proclamation was tricky to reconcile with President Biden’s announcement last month on 60 Minutes: “The pandemic is over.” Apparently, that was malarkey—perhaps part of the Democratic messaging for the midterm congressional elections. Americans have officially been living under a state of COVID emergency since President Trump issued the first declaration in early 2020. The latest extension of came via a bureaucratic form letter posted online: “As a result of the continued consequences of the...

On the Ground at DC’s Pro-Assange Protest

by Jim Bovard | Oct 10, 2022 | Criminal Justice, Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

On Saturday, protests supporting freedom for Julian Assange erupted around the world. In London, 7,000 protestors linked hands to surround the Parliament building, demanding that the United Kingdom not extradite Assange to the United States for a show trial. Protests also occurred in several American cities, including Denver, Colorado, where Kyle Anzalone, the Libertarian Institute’s news editor, spoke. A protest also occurred on a corner of the block housing Justice Department headquarters in downtown Washington DC. The event commenced with attendees carrying a long yellow “Free Assange”...

Don’t Let Biden’s Attempted Vaccine Mandate Fall Down the Memory Hole

by Jim Bovard | Oct 5, 2022 | Featured Articles

If you pick up a COVID infection during your next visit to a hospital or medical office, maybe send a thank-you card to President Biden. His COVID vaccine mandate was one of the most perverse public-health edicts in modern times. Vaccination status went from being a proxy for health to being a substitute for sane healthcare policy. Last September, Biden announced that he was mandating COVID vaccines for all 10 million healthcare workers in America—as well as for any American working for a company employing more than a hundred people. In a televised evening speech, he announced, “My job as...

Stop Trying to Rebrand Slavery

by Jim Bovard | Sep 27, 2022 | Featured Articles

When did slavery become so chic? From The New York Times to the Aspen Institute to a bevy of failed generals and weaselly ex-diplomats, the caterwauling for mandatory national service is rising. After decades in which political betrayals and federal failures destroyed almost all public trust in the government, our ruling class believes that compelling all young people to sacrifice a year or two of their lives will restore faith in the system. I have been whacking proposals for mandatory service for 25 years. In 1997, President Bill Clinton announced at a so-called “Volunteerism Summit” that...

Joe Biden is Manipulating Hate

by Jim Bovard | Sep 15, 2022 | Featured Articles, Politics

Fresh from denouncing Republicans as “semi-fascists” and “violent extremists,” President Joe Biden will host a White House “United We Stand” summit Thursday: Our president will assure Americans (or at least the media) that he is totally opposed to hate notwithstanding any sentences that recently scrolled across his teleprompter. Hatred is simply another issue conscripted for a desperate Democratic “Get out the vote” drive. For Team Biden, “hate” is a flag of political convenience. In announcing the summit, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stretched back a decade to list a...

Biden’s New War on Extremism (and Liberty)

by Jim Bovard | Sep 7, 2022 | Featured Articles, Politics

President Joe Biden believes that hysterical denunciations of extremism will save the Democratic Party in the upcoming congressional midterms. Despite media portrayals of Biden as a good-natured moderate, the president has relied on sweeping castigations of opposition throughout his political career. Worse, Biden’s rhetoric on extremism could signal an attack on any limits on presidential power. Last Thursday in Philadelphia, Joe Biden overheated in a primetime speech with a backdrop seemingly inspired by a mix of the movie “V for Vendetta” and Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. The harsh red...

Presidential Record Racketeering

by Jim Bovard | Aug 30, 2022 | Featured Articles

Former President Donald Trump is supposedly one of the biggest scoundrels in American history for allegedly retaining documents from his presidency at his Mar-a-Lago home. Trump denies wrongdoing but the Justice Department is targeting him for violating the Espionage Act and other laws. DOJ is refusing to reveal the affidavit and the specific charges that the feds claimed justified a massive, heavily-armed raid on Trump’s Florida base. Much of the media commentary on the raid castigates Trump for conspiring to block Americans’ access to official records. But the federal government has done...