Last Monday, a bipartisan group of Senators and a coalition including libertarian and progressive activists thwarted a scheme to ram through the Senate legislation renewing three provisions of the USA FREEDOM Act (previously known as the USA PATRIOT Act). The bill had already been rushed through the House of Representatives, and most expected it to sail through the Senate. But, instead, Senate leadership had to settle for a 77-day extension. Senate leadership was also forced to allow consideration of several amendments at a later date. Included is Sen. Rand Paul’s amendment that would...
limited government
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: Which Hamilton Are You Talking About?
We often hear people referred to as “Hamiltonians.” But that term always makes me wonder, which Hamilton do you mean? I recently had the opportunity to speak to a class at the West Virginia University School of Law. The subject was the constitutionality of federal marijuana prohibition. As I told the class, this is an open and shut case. It’s clearly unconstitutional. If you doubt me, ask yourself why alcohol prohibition required a constitutional amendment. The simple fact is there is no delegated power for the feds to regulate marijuana within the borders of a state. But over the years,...
Two Sets of 100 yr Periods in American History — Each Guided by Completely Opposite Ideas
The great Austrian economist Ludwig Von Mises wrote: "History is a struggle between two principles, the peaceful principle, which advances the development of trade, and the militarist-imperialist principle, which interprets human society not as a friendly division of labour but as the forcible repression of some of its members by others." America was founded on the peaceful principle. The country's first President, George Washington, said in his farewell address: "It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world". This policy, which can be...
War Powers Resolutions Don’t Matter
Marbury v. Madison took the written U.S. Constitution and superseded it with a British style system of an unwritten constitutionality. This was judicial review and it lasted until the New Deal when the jurisprudence of limited government figured out that the Executive Branch was just as able to modify the unwritten rules as was the Judicial. Oops. Do you really think the states and the people respectively would have allowed this Empire to come about? So, yeah, war powers under the "written part" of the Constitution matter. That doesn't mean there aren't exceptions to be found under...
Why America’s Founders Didn’t Want a Democracy
In his book "Liberty in Peril," Randall Holcombe challenges the presumption that liberty and democracy are complementary. When I took history and government in school, many critical issues were misrepresented, given short shrift, or even ignored entirely. And those lacunae undermined my ability to adequately understand many things. Randall Holcombe’s new book, Liberty in Peril: Democracy and Power in American History, fills in some very substantial gaps, particularly with regard to American constitutionalism and how it has morphed from protecting liberty to advancing democracy at the...
Is The ‘Mother of all Bubbles’ About to Pop?
When the New York Federal Reserve began pumping billions of dollars a day into the repurchasing (repo) markets (the market banks use to make short-term loans to each other) in September, they said this would only be necessary for a few weeks. Yet, last Wednesday, almost two months after the Fed’s initial intervention, the New York Federal Reserve pumped 62.5 billion dollars into the repo market. The New York Fed continues these emergency interventions to ensure “cash shortages” among banks don’t ever again cause interest rates for overnight loans to rise to over 10 percent, well above the...
War Is Not a Conservative Thing
Perpetual war and aggressive interventionism have become the hallmark of Republican foreign policy. But war is not a conservative thing. Last month, I saw somebody assert unironically and in complete seriousness that Californians need to reelect Rep. Maxine Waters (D) “if we want to preserve the Constitution!” This further proves what I said in my most recent Thoughts from Maharrey Head podcast — the Constitution has become nothing but a prop in America’s political theater. People drag the Constitution out during campaign speeches and political rallies, and then ignore it when it actually...
Forget the Russians: It’s the Federal Reserve Seeking to Meddle in Our Elections
The US Constitution never granted the federal government authority to create a central bank. The Founders, having lived through hyperinflation themselves, understood that government should never have a printing press at its disposal. But from the very beginning of America’s founding, the desire for a crony central bank was strong. In fact, two attempts were made at creating a permanent central bank in America prior to the creation of the Fed. Fortunately, the charter for The First Bank was allowed to expire in 1811, and President Andrew Jackson closed down the Second Bank in 1833....
If Deficits Are This Huge Now, What Happens When the Recession Hits?
The Treasury Department released new budget deficit numbers this week, and with two months still to go in the fiscal year, 2019's budget deficit is the highest its been since the US was still being flooded with fiscal stimulus dollars back in 2012. As of July 2019, the year-to-date budget deficit was 866 billion dollars. The last time it was this high was the 2012 fiscal year when the deficit reached nearly 1.1 trillion dollars. At the height of the recession-stimulus-panic, the deficit had reached 1.4 trillion in 2009. (The 2019 deficit is year-to-date): What is especially notable about...
The Failure of Liberal Democracy in Europe
The New York Times podcast took a tour of Europe as only this show can do, with astonishing production values and depth of insight. It provided a fresh look at a creeping but dramatic shift in the shape of European politics. In Italy, Hungary, France, Germany, and Poland, the reporters were able to discern the move away from the early ideals of the European Union and toward a new assertion of national identity as a political culture force. Their treatment could easily have caricatured the movement as entirely one-sided and dangerous, away from democracy and toward authoritarianism. There...