Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute

Celebrate Fourth of July by Cussing Politicians

by Jim Bovard | Jul 3, 2023 | Featured Articles, Politics

America was founded by rowdy folks who enjoyed nothing better than applying tar and feathers to British tax collectors. For a couple centuries, Independence Day was an occasion for raising a ruckus with firecrackers and plenty of other friendly detonations. But in recent times, the Fourth of July has been downgraded to simply another opportunity for citizens to express gratitude to their political masters. We are still permitted to celebrate, but unfortunately, federal, state, and local governments routinely trample the rights that the Founding Fathers sought to make sacrosanct. The Fourth...

My 40 Year War on Reefer Madness

by Jim Bovard | Jun 26, 2023 | Featured Articles

Forty years ago this week, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner published my first attack on the federal drug war. The previous year, the Reagan administration unleashed its "Just Say No" program, vilifying anyone who smoked a joint, sniffed the wrong powder, or used non-approved hallucinogens. I was mortified to see Ronald Reagan—who was elected on a promise to get “government off your backs”—double-cross his supporters with what morphed into the most intrusive scheme in American history. Like kids everywhere in the 1970s, I laughed at the 1936 “Reefer Madness” movie in my high school health...

Daniel Ellsberg’s Courageous Work Remains Unfinished

by Jim Bovard | Jun 19, 2023 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

What if truth doesn’t win out until a million corpses too late? Daniel Ellsberg, one of the most heroic truth-tellers of our era, passed away on Friday at the age of 92. He risked life in prison to leak the Pentagon Papers during the Nixon administration. Ellsberg sought to shatter the enchantment that official lies held for so many Americans. That noble cause remains a work in progress. Here is a two minute video of Ellsberg telling the story of his epic battle against the Nixon administration and warmongering government officials. Ellsberg was an antiwar icon for more than 50 years after...

Biden Demagogues Florida Massacre to Demonize Gun Owners

by Jim Bovard | Jun 13, 2023 | Criminal Justice, Featured Articles

President Joe Biden tweeted yesterday on what he called “Pulse Remembrance Day": Seven years ago today, our nation suffered what was then the deadliest mass shooting in American history. Forty-nine people, predominantly Latino LGBTQI+ people, lost their lives in a senseless act of gun violence. On June 12, 2016, Omar Mateen killed 49 people and wounded 53 people at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando while police loitered for hours outside. Politicians have been exploiting the killings ever since. And no amount of hard facts or a damning jury verdict have been able to curb political demagoguery....

EXPOSED: Biggest FBI Spy Scandal of the Year

by Jim Bovard | May 25, 2023 | Featured Articles

A Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinion released last week revealed that the FBI violated the constitutional rights of 278,000 Americans in 2020 and 2021 with warrantless searches of their email and other electronic data. For each American that the FISA court permitted the FBI to target, the FBI illicitly surveiled almost a thousand additional Americans. This is only the latest federal surveillance scandal stretching back to the years after 9/11. The FISA law was enacted in 1978 to curb the rampant illegal political spying exposed during the Richard Nixon administration. After the...

The FBI Vetoed the 2016 Presidential Election

by Jim Bovard | May 17, 2023 | Criminal Justice, Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Politics

On Monday, Special Counsel John Durham released his final report on the FBI and Justice Department's abuse of power during the 2016 presidential election. His 316-page report proves that federal law enforcement was weaponized to rig American politics by shielding Hillary Clinton's campaign and persecuting Donald Trump's campaign. Durham’s report is only the latest in a long pattern of abuses by the FBI. In 1945, President Harry Truman noted in his diary, “We want no Gestapo or Secret Police. FBI is tending in that direction.” In the 1948 presidential campaign, Hoover brazenly championed...

The Biden Crime Family and Our Corrupt Foreign Aid

by Jim Bovard | May 15, 2023 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

I know Romanian corruption. When I was exiting the country after investigating its collapsing economy in 1987, I made sure to bribe every guard who searched my luggage at the Bucharest airport with a pack of Kent cigarettes. But I neglected to give a pack to the soldier on the tarmac as I walked to my Lufthansa flight. He was soon screaming and waving his submachine gun in my direction. Whoops. After the fall of communism, the U.S. State Department launched a program to help Romania and other East European governments curtail corruption. Vice President Joe Biden masterminded that effort from...

Scott Horton’s Greatest Waco Hits

by Jim Bovard | Apr 19, 2023 | Featured Articles

Thirty years ago, Waco radicalized a teenage grocery clerk in Austin, Texas. Scott Horton was horrified both by the televised carnage of the FBI assault and by the mindless support for the feds he heard voiced by suburban housewives. Unlike the national media, Scott understood what it meant when the feds used toxic gas on American citizens and sent in tanks to collapse their home on top of them. After the fiery conflagration, Scott was vaccinated for life from being a starry-eyed idealist. Since 1999, Scott has done superb interviews with the top experts on Waco, keeping a story alive that...