From our esteemed contributing editor, Dr. Leonard Carrier, comes this provocative post. ******************************* Free-market capitalism has come to dominate our economic thinking. It has even led to the mistaken view that there is no other variety of capitalism than the free-market kind. Capitalism is the view that a nation’s economy, for the most part, is [...]

October 12, 2008 “ The budget should be balanced, the treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.” — Cicero [...]

October 5, 2008 What would you do if you learned that President Bush was preparing – in violation of federal law – to use the U.S. military to maintain order within our borders? I hope you would at least take one minute to help raise awareness about the situation. > > For more than 200 [...]

September 8, 2008 Our regular contributing editor, Dr. Leonard Carrier, is back from an extended break and weighs in with timely and judicious thoughts. Nearly forgotten in the manufactured hoopla surrounding John McCain’s bizarre pick of Alaska’s governor to be his running mate is the following forlorn truth. The only thing worse than Sarah Palin’s [...]

May 12, 2008 What an odd juxtaposition. The latest news at Yahoo.com featured the horrendous tragedy in Myanamar with the story of Jenna Bush’s wedding. In Burma, there are nearly 2 million people struggling to survive, and more than 60,000 dead as the result of cyclone Nargis. Meanwhile, back in Texas, in the good old [...]

March 5, 2008 Contributing Editor Dr. Len Carrier hits the mark again. **************************** The New York Times seemed to do John McCain a big favor last month by titillating the electorate with a story that the Times had been sitting on for weeks. It recounted a more-than-just-friendly relationship McCain had with a lady lobbyist during [...]

February 22, 2008 The New York Times did McCain a big favor last Thursday by trying to titillate the electorate with a “nothing” story that they’d been sitting on for months. It recounted a more-than-just-friendly relationship McCain had with a lady lobbyist during his last election campaign.This effectively takes the heat off McCain for flip-flopping [...]

February 18, 2008 Forrest Gump famously said that his mama told him that life was like a box of chocolates—“you never know what you’re gonna get.” It appears that the future Republican nominee for President is like that box of candy, which is why right-wing personalities such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Ann Coulter [...]

February 7, 2008. The views of Dr. Carrier are not necessarily those of the editor. ******************************* Now that the dust of Super Tuesday has settled, the Democrats are no closer to having a nominee; but the Republican race seems to have been decided. Although there are more primaries to come, the surge for McCain will [...]

Thursday, January 24, 2008 [SG: As usual, our contributing editor, Dr. Carrier, hits the nail on the head.] Dick Cheney famously said that deficits don’t matter. On that premise our government debt ballooned from $5.3 trillion in 2000 to more than $9.1 trillion today. Where did our government incur most of that debt? At least [...]

Our man in North Carolina speaks out…again. It’s a sad fact, but members of Congress who won’t support Dennis Kucinich’s HR 333 to impeach Dick Cheney are simply playing politics. They think they won’t get re-elected unless they just stand on the sidelines and let Bush and Cheney continue their self-destructive ways. The fact that [...]

After a bit of an absence, our esteemed contribting editor weighs in again. Al Gore was right about Iraq, ditto for Climate Change Al Gore has done it. He and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have won the Nobel Peace Prize of 2007. Instead of concentrating on politics after the Supreme Court snatched the [...]

…………….Coach Sends the Wrong Message What’s wrong with this picture? A highly successful athletic team is going for the biggest win of the season. The coach yanks one of his star players for an older, more experienced one who hasn’t had a hand in the team’s winning streak. Then the team is soundly trounced, and [...]

Thursday evening, we got the President’s plan for Iraq. He announced that incremental withdrawals of our military forces would take place, but that in 2009 we would still have a significant military presence in that country. In other words, he is determined to hand the war off to our next president so that his own [...]

The word ‘democrat’ comes from the Greek ‘demos’, meaning ‘people’. So the Democratic Party should be the people’s party, as opposed to the parties that favor the elite. But how many Democrats in Congress or running for President can say that they favor the people, rather than special interests? Nancy Pelosi, through her inaction on [...]

Sheriff’s Department uses Fascist Tactics The finer points of law enforcement went unobserved in Asheville, N.C. on July 25, 2007 with the arrest of Mark and Deborah Kuhn for flying a flag in distress; namely, the reading of their rights, a warrant for their arrest, a warrant to enter their dwelling, telling them what they [...]

Welcome to The Corporate States of America. The problem of illegal immigrants has been exacerbated since President Bush took office. The chief cause is that of corporations seeking cheap labor. Most of these people came here legally under “guest worker” H-2A and H-2B programs. They not only got low wages but they also suffered other [...]

Congress is now debating the hodge-podge of an immigration bill that the George W. Bush desperately wants to sign. So far, it contains something for everyone—more miles of fence, a path to legality for the roughly twelve million illegal immigrants already here, and, dearest to Bush’s heart, a guest worker program that would allow U.S. [...]

Don Imus stepped over the line, but he was just offering a riposte to a comment one of his cohorts made about the Rutgers women’s basketball team. They thought it was funny, just like some of the other crude comments they make about celebrities every day–except these women weren’t fair game, because they were just [...]

Everything that’s going on in Iraq, and at home, makes it look like a phony war–no defined enemy and no call for personal sacrifice except on the part of the military. That makes it look more like a “war game” than a real war. The reason I wouldn’t classify it as a war game, however, [...]

Once again we feature an article by Walter Block, America’s leading Libertarian philosopher.  This time, Professor Block defends the idea that a person should be allowed to sell himself into slavery.   Remember, please, that the fundamental driving idea of Libertarianism is the Axiom of NonAggression, according to which a person may do anything he wants [...]

Recently, the State of Virginia issued a formal apology for slavery, and other states, such as Georgia, Maryland, and Missouri, are on the verge of doing so this year. It is fitting because 2007 marks the anniversary of two salient dates in history. The first is 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade [...]

In 1776, Tom Paine wrote The Crisis, whose most famous words are, “These are times that try men’s souls.” He was speaking of our bloody divorce from Great Britain, an imperious nation that taxed its American colonies without a care for their pleas to be represented before the British Parliament. It took a successful revolution [...]

………………………………..WHAT’S WRONG WITH BARACK OBAMA? Before he announced his campaign for the presidency Barack Obama’s growing popularity was already a recognizable phenomenon. His appearance had promised fresh hope to those who still clung to to the belief that this being America, someone great and noble could yet come along to save the country. Obama explains [...]