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It's Time for Conservatives to Stop Defending Police
posted 07/24/2014, 7:09 AM (National Review)
[Category: Commentary]
Imagine if I were to tell you there is a large group of government employees, with generous salaries and ridiculously cushy retirement pensions covered by the taxpayer, who enjoy incredible job security and are rarely held accountable even for activities that would almost certainly earn the rest of us prison time. When there is proven misconduct, these government employees are merely reassigned and are rarely dismissed. The bill for any legal settlements concerning their errors? It, too, is cove... (more) |
High Priestess Ginsburg Rebukes the Heathen
posted 07/07/2014, 4:32 PM (William Norman Grigg)
[Category: Commentary]
 Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg professes to be offended by the idea that a commercial enterprise can claim protection under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. She is just as adamant in her insistence that an equally abstract entity called the “government” has “interests” that justify imposing on the property rights of private business owners.
“The exercise of religion is characteristic of natural persons, not artificial legal entities,” Ginsburg complaine... (more) |
Yes, Obama is a Tyrant, Just Like His Predecessor
posted 07/07/2014, 4:31 PM (William Norman Grigg)
[Category: Commentary]
In the heat of a testy exchange with a hostile journalist, the White House press spokesman insisted that “Congress ... does not have constitutional oversight responsibility over the White House.”
This patently untrue defense of unaccountable presidential power was not offered by former Obama administration spokesman Jay Carney – although it certainly could have been. It was actually made by the late Tony Snow while he was working as the press spokesman for George W. Bush in 2007.<... (more) |
Commerce is Civilization; Government is Barbarism
posted 07/07/2014, 4:31 PM (William Norman Grigg)
[Category: Commentary]
According to Barney Frank, a former Democratic Congressman from Massachusetts, “government is simply things we choose to do together.”
As it is used by the political class, the word “government” tacitly encompasses every form of human cooperation – because there is nothing they would leave outside of their sphere of control. Not only is it possible for people to cooperate without the supervision or interference of the state, such interference actually undermines peaceful and produ... (more) |
What Exactly Is 'Racism'?
posted 07/02/2014, 3:03 PM (Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.)
[Category: Commentary]
I want to look at two words that the State and its hangers-on have employed with much success on behalf of increases in government power. One is racism. The other is equality.
What exactly is "racism"? We almost never hear a definition. I doubt anyone really knows what it is. If you're inclined to dispute this, ask yourself why, if racism truly is something clear and determinate, there is such ceaseless disagreement over which thoughts and behaviors are "racist" and which are not?... (more) |
Hobby Lobby Ruling Falls Short
posted 07/02/2014, 3:03 PM (Sheldon Richman)
[Category: Commentary]
As far as it went, the Supreme Court generally got it right in the Hobby Lobby-Obamacare-contraception case. Unfortunately it didn't go nearly far enough.
The court ruled that "closely held corporations" whose owners have religious convictions against contraceptives cannot be forced to pay for employee coverage for those products.
I wish the court could have said this instead: (1) No one has a natural right to force other people to pay for her (or his) contraception... (more) |
Inside the Belly of the Beast for Sunday Service
posted 06/30/2014, 6:47 AM (Thomas DiLorenzo)
[Category: Commentary]
We went to a new church this morning at the invitation of a friend – Christ Fellowship in Boynton Beach, Florida. The first half hour was pure military worship and warmongering propaganda. There were two gigantic flags that dwarfed the rather tiny Christian cross. First came an excruciatingly long and slow rendition of the state’s war anthem (The Star Spangled Banner). Then two dudes dressed in military uniforms appeared wit... (more) |
Big Brother Wants Your Son
posted 06/27/2014, 6:37 AM (Wendy McElroy)
[Category: Commentary]
California Assembly Bill 2201 is indicative of a quiet but growing trend. The US is not only militarizing its police departments to handle a “national emergency” but it is also making certain it can conscript the civilian population at will.
AB 2201 is entitled “Selective Service and Drivers License for Vehicles.” Almost every male between 18 and 26 years old who applies for a driver's license or for a renewal at the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) would be autom... (more) |
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Wednesday June 18th, 2014
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The War Is On You
posted 06/18/2014, 3:02 AM (Jeffrey Tucker)
[Category: Commentary]
After 25 years of war on Iraq, the U.S. has what to show for it? A handful of dust. And at what cost in lives and property? It boggles the mind to consider the breadth and depth of the suffering.
Iraq was the great experiment following the Cold War for how the U.S. military machine could be used to make the world more free from tyranny — or so we were told.
Today, watching the crumbling of the house of cards, we see that the stated intentions of the world's largest ... (more) |
They Don't Even Pretend to Obey the Law
posted 06/18/2014, 3:02 AM (William Norman Grigg)
[Category: Commentary]
When summoned to testify before Congress regarding allegations that her agency had singled out conservative non-profits for special scrutiny, Lois Lerner – who headed the IRS's non-profit division – asserted her innocence and then invoked the Fifth Amendment.
Every citizen who files a tax return is expected to waive his protection against self-incrimination, and when the IRS accuses a taxpayer of fraud, those accusations are heard in a court the agency controls.
C... (more) |
Iraq Pays for Washington's Sins -- And We Will, Too
posted 06/18/2014, 3:00 AM (William Norman Grigg)
[Category: Commentary]
When Napoleon unwisely executed a political foe, his adviser Talleyrand said that it “worse than a crime – it was a blunder.”
The Iraq war was a world-historic crime. It was also one of the worst strategic blunders in recorded history. At least, that is the most charitable assessment that can honestly be made of the policy decisions that led to the unfolding regional catastrophe.
Prior to the US invasion in 2003, a handful of al-Qaeda cells found a haven in areas of... (more) |
"The Future is Too Good to Waste on Lies": Bowe Bergdahl's Moral Odyssey
posted 06/09/2014, 8:32 AM (William Norman Grigg)
[Category: Commentary]
 “I can’t make up my mind to put the damn thing on again. I feel so clean and free. It’s like voluntarily taking up filth and slavery again….I think I’ll just walk off naked across the fields.”
John Andrews, a U.S. soldier in World War I who went AWOL, discusses his uniform in Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos
Trying to find their footing amid a gale-force outpouring of largely manufactured outrage, officials in Hailey, Idaho canceled their long-planned ho... (more) |
Thank the Troops for Their Service?
posted 06/06/2014, 10:07 AM (Laurence M. Vance)
[Category: Commentary]
President Obama made a surprise visit over Memorial Day weekend to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. Following a performance by country music star Brad Paisley, the President addressed about 3,000 troops in a hangar on the base. Video of the event, as well as a transcript of the president's remarks, are up on the White House website.
After a few jokes, the president personally thanked the troops:
To all of you, I'm here on a single mission, and that is to than ... (more) |
Is the NDAA Notification Requirement Unconstitutional?
posted 06/05/2014, 8:06 AM (Anthony Gregory)
[Category: Commentary]
If Obama is right about the NDAA, he should start releasing far more prisoners from Guantánamo. A firestorm has erupted over the Obama administration’s release of five Guantánamo captives in exchange for the Taliban’s release of American soldier Bowe Bergdahl. Putting aside all the rest of the strategic, moral, and practical arguments, I want to focus on the legal side. Many of Obama’s critics say that his move violated the NDAA notification requirement, signed by Obama (who issued a signing sta... (more) |
Conscience and the Soldier
posted 06/05/2014, 8:06 AM (Jacob G. Hornberger)
[Category: Commentary]
Hopefully, the hoopla surrounding the negotiated release of U.S. soldier Bowe Bergdahl will serve as a reminder to young people who are contemplating joining the military: As soon as you sign the contract with the military, you will be leaving your conscience behind and you will have to follow orders to kill whomever you are ordered to kill.... (more) |
The End of Oppression - Part 1: The Problem
posted 06/04/2014, 6:11 AM (YouTube)
[Category: Commentary]
"The End of Oppression" is a six-part series of videos which show what it will take for humanity to finally outgrow and escape its long history of violence and oppression.
Part One ("The Problem") explains why it is not greed, hatred, or merely the nature of man which is preventing humanity from achieving peace, prosperity and freedom for all.
If you like this video, chec... (more) |
Optimism, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Freedom
posted 06/02/2014, 6:25 AM (Logan Albright)
[Category: Commentary]
In the many debates I have engaged in on the relative merits of a free society, the most common charge that is leveled against me is that my arguments are Utopian, that they assume too positive and moral a human nature ever to succeed. "People are no good," I am chastised, "and therefore they must be controlled."
To this I always respond that, on the contrary, the success of a free society requires only that people will act in their self-interest, without assuming any implicit mor... (more) |
The War on Terrorism Is One Fine Scam
posted 06/02/2014, 6:25 AM (Jacob G. Hornberger)
[Category: Commentary]
Throughout the Cold War, the proponents of the national-security state assured us that the only reason the United States needed to adopt this totalitarian-like apparatus was because of the international communist conspiracy emanating from the Soviet Union and Red China. Once the Cold War was won, the statists said, America could restore the limited-government constitutional republic that the Constitution established.
Of course, the argument was a sham. The proponents of empire, st... (more) |
American Soldiers Did Not Die Defending Our Freedom
posted 05/28/2014, 2:22 AM (Jacob G. Hornberger)
[Category: Commentary]
 I was at the Washington Nationals baseball game yesterday. Whenever I attend a Nats game, there is an air of militarism surrounding the game, but attending on Memorial Day helps to remind us what a truly militarized society America has become.
After all, what in the world does baseball, a quite peaceful and enjoyable pastime, have to do with America's countless foreign wars, which have killed, tortured, and maimed millions of people?
One of the most fascinating aspe... (more) |
Are You Talking to a Agent Provocateur?
posted 05/28/2014, 2:21 AM (LewRockwell.com)
[Category: Commentary]
The imagined look and persona of an agent provocateur in most people's minds probably couldn't be further from the truth. Most would probably picture the obscure, silent individual lurking in the back of the room while doing his best to conceal his identity and his movements. If you accept that image, you have also accepted the notion that the provocateur is really just peeking in on, documenting, and recording pre-existing criminal activities and shady plans going on around him. You haven't ... (more) |
Why Isn't Dana Rohrabacher in Prison?
posted 05/27/2014, 12:50 AM (William Norman Grigg)
[Category: Commentary]
 If the United States Government were governed by the laws it makes for the rest of us, California Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher would be in prison. More specifically, he would be in open-ended military custody without judicial remedy of any kind.
Rohrabacher was among the 230 Congressmen who recently voted to preserve a measure permitting the indefinite detention, without trial, of US citizens accused of providing “mat... (more) |
Kudos to President Correa
posted 05/22/2014, 8:00 PM (Jacob G. Hornberger)
[Category: Commentary]
Good for Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa for kicking USAID out of his country. If only every nation in the world would do that. While part of USAID’s activities ostensibly relate to helping “the poor,” that’s just a cover to disguise the real mission of the agency: to act in tandem with the CIA to engage in political activity designed to effect regime change in foreign countries.... (more) |
A Rotten Criminal-Justice System
posted 05/21/2014, 6:15 PM (Jacob G. Hornberger)
[Category: Commentary]
A good sign of a rotten criminal-justice system is the extent to which it is putting good, ordinary people into jail for inane criminal offenses while letting real criminals walk the streets free and carefree. Unfortunately, that is the type of system that now exists in the United States.
Recently, a man named Michael Steinberg was sentenced to 42 months in jail by New York City federal Judge Richard J. Sullivan. Steinberg is a former hedge fund trader on Wall Street. He and his w... (more) |
The Myth of Overpopulation
posted 05/12/2014, 2:59 PM (Logan Albright)
[Category: Commentary]
The world is overpopulated. The street are clogged, traffic is in a snarl, and people are living – both figuratively and literally – right on top of each other. There's hardly enough room to swing a cat these days, right? Wrong.
The world is not overcrowded at all. There are vast swaths of unpopulated land all over the place. Siberia, Canada, Africa, Australia, even the rural USA all contain more than enough wide open spaces. So why do people labor so resolutely under this delusio... (more) |
America's #Hashtag Foreign Policy
posted 05/12/2014, 2:56 PM (Wendy McElroy)
[Category: Commentary]
A foreign policy driven by twitter and celebrity 'selfies' holding signs is an embarrassing disaster. On April 14, 250+ Nigerian schoolgirls were kidnapped by the radical Islamic Boko Haram, which is on America's terrorist list. (Sources vary on the number of girls.) As of May 8, #BringBackOurGirls had been tweeted more than 1.6 million times and by such luminaries as Sean Penn and Angelina Jolie. Apparently that's enough for President Obama to send a team including military advisors into Nigeri... (more) |
Martial Law, Detention Camps and Kangaroo Courts: Are We Recreating the Third Reich?
posted 05/06/2014, 7:50 AM (John W. Whitehead)
[Category: Commentary]
 "First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out--Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out--Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me."--Martin Niemoller Despite what some may think, the Constitution is no magical incantation against government wrongdoing. Indeed, it's ... (more) |
No Foraging in the King's Forest Because It Hurts The Peasants
posted 05/06/2014, 7:50 AM (Activist Post)
[Category: Commentary]
Conveniently hidden in the noise of the Bundy Ranch standoff is the heart of the issue: property rights and use of government-owned land. With the federal government going on a land-grab spree of late, it's time we have a frank discussion about "public" land.
What is it? Who owns it? What's it used for? What rights do citizens have to use it?
Back in feudal times peasants weren't allowed to forage in the king's forest. Those caught poaching to feed their families w... (more) |
Deja Vu in Ukraine
posted 05/06/2014, 7:50 AM (Jacob G. Hornberger)
[Category: Commentary]
Pardon me, but I’m experiencing déjà vu with respect to Ukraine, specifically relating to the CIA.
As everyone knows, the CIA's business involves regime change, operations in which the CIA oftentimes secretly and surreptitiously ousts democratically elected regimes that are independent of or unfriendly to the U.S. government and replaces them with regimes that will do the bidding of the U.S. government.
Both during and after the CIA's regime-change operations, innoc... (more) |
How to Kill a Man
posted 05/02/2014, 4:50 AM (C4SS.org)
[Category: Commentary]
The government of Oklahoma did not botch an execution on Tuesday. When the administration of an untested combination of drugs fails, we do not describe the treatment as "botched," but simply as a failed experiment. Last night, the government of Oklahoma conducted an unsuccessful experiment on a human being without his consent.
This man, a convicted rapist and murderer, is not someone I plan to mourn. His crimes, which included the rape and murder of a teenage girl, were as heinou... (more) |
Racial Bigotry and the Free Market
posted 05/01/2014, 5:15 AM (Jacob G. Hornberger)
[Category: Commentary]
Statists have long taken libertarians to task for opposing mandatory integration laws and defending the right of bigoted owners of business establishments to discriminate against people on the basis of race. They inevitably accuse of libertarians of being racists themselves or supporting racial bigotry by virtue of libertarian opposition to mandatory integration laws.... (more) |
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Wednesday April 30th, 2014
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Raising Up Compliant Children in the American Police State
posted 04/30/2014, 2:26 AM (John W. Whitehead)
[Category: Commentary]
“[The aim of public education is not] to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. . . . Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim . . . is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States…”—Henry Mencken, American Journalist (April 1924) How do you persuade a nation of relatively freedom-l... (more) |
Some Basics of State Domination and Public Submission
posted 04/28/2014, 7:57 AM (Robert Higgs)
[Category: Commentary]
Familiarity may indeed, as the saying goes, breed contempt, but it also breeds a sort of somnolence. People who have never known anything other than a certain state of affairs—even an extraordinarily problematic state of affairs—have a tendency not to notice it at all, to relate it, so to speak, as if they were sleepwalking through it. Such is the situation of modern people in relation to the state. They have always known it, and they take it completely for granted, regarding it as one might reg... (more) |
With Government Roads, the Customer Is Always Wrong
posted 04/22/2014, 4:08 PM (Mises Institute)
[Category: Commentary]
 From the moment automobiles became commonplace in society, people have been dying in them at astonishing rates. Tragically, over the last century almost 4 million people (around 35,000 per year) lost their lives on U.S. roadways alone, with India, China, and Russia averaging almost 300,000 per year combined.
But early figures indicate that 2013 saw the lowest number of traffic fatalitie... (more) |
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Thursday April 17th, 2014
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Ranchers vs. Regulators: The Clark County Range War
posted 04/17/2014, 10:09 AM (William Norman Grigg)
[Category: Commentary]
 Truth, Justus, and the American Way: Cliven Bundy invites a five-year-old to try on a cowboy hat.
War came to the Western Range that April, a conflict pitting the forces of order and respectability against a restive band of extremists accused of cheating the government of what it was due. The prohibitively stronger side consisted of regulatory agencies allied with powerful non-governmental organizations determined to control the land and expel small private interests... (more) |
Bundy, the Senecas and Fighting for Sovereignty
posted 04/17/2014, 10:09 AM (Ryan Calhoun)
[Category: Commentary]
In 1997, New York state declared war on the Seneca Nation reservations located upstate near Tonawanda. The war was over a declared power of the state to impose taxes on goods sold on native reservations. As enforcement, New York saw fit to shut down native businesses, cutting off petroleum and cigarette supplies to the Senecas.
In response to this declaration of war, natives and their supporters blocked traffic onto their land from state troopers and mounted a blockade on Intersta... (more) |
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Wednesday April 16th, 2014
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Does Intellectual Property Defy Human Nature?
posted 04/16/2014, 10:27 AM (Joseph S. Diedrich)
[Category: Commentary]
A music-composition professor of mine once lamented that without copyright protection, Western civilization would cease to exist. Most of us take intellectual property (IP) for granted, assuming it is ethically and economically necessary. We’ve become so blasé about IP that heavy-handed FBI warnings and billion-dollar lawsuits don’t faze us in the slightest. Yet despite the unquestioned consensus, intellectual property actually defies basic tenets of human nature.... (more) |
Tax Day: What Kind of "Civilization" Are We Paying For?
posted 04/14/2014, 7:34 AM (Kevin Carson)
[Category: Commentary]
April 15 seems to be a holiday of sorts for progressives, who inevitably trot out Oliver Wendell Holmes’s quote about taxes being “the price we pay for civilization,” and reminding us of all the great stuff — roads, schools, etc. — that they pay for. But on closer examination, tax day really isn’t a very good choice for progressive holiday.
Let’s start with the idea of progressive taxation as a remedy for economic inequality and unjust distribution of wealth, taking Bill Gates a... (more) |
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Thursday April 10th, 2014
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I am a North Korean defector
posted 04/10/2014, 8:17 AM (DailyLife.com.au)
[Category: Commentary]
I lived in North Korea for the first 15 years of my life, believing Kim Jong-il was a god. I never doubted it because I didn't know anything else. I could not even imagine life outside of the regime.
It was like living in hell. There were constant power outages, so everything was dark. There was no transportation – everyone had to walk everywhere. It was very dirty and no one could eat anything.
It was not the right conditions for human life, but you couldn't think ... (more) |
Justice Should be Blind, Not Crazy
posted 04/08/2014, 1:34 AM (Will Grigg)
[Category: Commentary]
 Two years ago, Chicago-area voters reelected a criminal court judge named Cynthia Brim despite the fact that she was declared legally insane. Her state-certified mental illness was the only thing that kept Brim from being sent to jail for assaulting a sheriff’s deputy.
Judge Brim, who shoved the deputy during what was described as a manic episode, was found not guilty of battery by reason of insa... (more) |
The Big Lie of a "Rape Culture"
posted 04/08/2014, 1:32 AM (Wendy McElroy)
[Category: Commentary]
April is Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month, and it will be used to promote a big lie -- namely, that we live in a "rape culture."
The term "rape culture" was coined by politically correct (PC) feminists in the 1970s. It refers to attitudes, beliefs, and values that allegedly normalize sexual violence against women and encourage the act of rape by men. America is called a "rape culture" because sexu... (more) |
The Disturbing Truth Behind Your Next Income Tax Return
posted 04/07/2014, 7:40 AM (Jeffrey Tucker)
[Category: Commentary]
The least of the problems with income tax is that it takes your money. The really big problem is that the income tax takes your life. It gives the government direct access to the things you own and sets up the political-bureaucratic sector to be the final arbiter of what you can and cannot consider to be yours.
Illustrating this point is the bitter news that the IRS has considered it completely legal to demand access to your email archive whenever it wants. This news came about be... (more) |
Gun-Control Madness
posted 04/01/2014, 11:05 PM (Jacob G. Hornberger)
[Category: Commentary]
British commentator Piers Morgan took a parting shot in favor of gun control during his final appearance on his CNN news show last Friday. Morgan exclaimed, "It's your country; these are your gun laws. And the senseless slaughter will only end when enough Americans stand together and cry: Enough!"
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times is exclaiming against th... (more) |
America's Liar in Chief
posted 04/01/2014, 1:30 AM (Jacob G. Hornberger)
[Category: Commentary]
 Everyone is familiar with where America's Cold War national-security state apparatus has led our nation: down the dark road of assassinations, torture, indefinite detention, coups, surveillance, regime-change operations, secrecy, tribunals, and other dark-side practices that are inherent to communist and other totalitarian regimes.
But how many Americans ever give thought to the fact that the national-security state apparatus has also converted the duly elected president of the Un... (more) |
Pardon Martha Stewart and Joseph Nacchio
posted 03/31/2014, 12:15 AM (Jacob G. Hornberger)
[Category: Commentary]
The Get Out of Jail Free card that the Justice Department has given to national-security state official James R. Clapper can't help to bring to mind what the feds did to Martha Stewart.
Clapper commits perjury before Congress and nothing happens to him.
Stewart lies to some federal agent when she's not even under oath and she's indicted, prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced to five months in prison and fined.
How can anyone claim that that type of jus... (more) |
Obama's Iraqi Fairy Tale
posted 03/31/2014, 12:15 AM ( Sheldon Richman)
[Category: Commentary]
I promised myself that I would no longer comment on what Barack Obama has to say, because it's just not worth the time and effort. Obama's public remarks are comprehensible only if you keep one thing in mind: he, like other politicians, thinks most people are morons.
I am so appalled by what Obama said in Europe the other day, however, that I must break my promise. In his s... (more) |
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The Century of the Self: The Untold History of Controlling the Masses Through the Manipulation of Unconscious Desires
Operation Gladio: The Hidden History of U.S. Sponsored False Flag Terrorism in Europe
The New American Century: The Untold History of The Project for the New American Century
Nearly a century ago, the immortal Albert Jay Nock decanted 
Michelle Obama spared a moment between lavish tax-victim-funded vacations and celebrity outings to join this year’s version of the 
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Rialto, CA Police Made to Wear Cameras, Use of Force Drops by Over Two-Thirds
Cop Who Karate Chopped NY Judge In Throat Gets Off Scot-Free
Florida Cop Smashes Compliant Woman's Face Into Car -- "Maybe Now You Can Understand Simple Instructions"
VIDEO: Lapel Cam Reveals A Day In The Life Of A U.S. Police Officer (Tasing, Beating, Breaking & Entering, Stomping On Heads... and Laughing About It)
Caught On Tape: Officer Sucker Punches Inmate In Face, Files Report Claiming 'Self Defense'
Insult Person On Twitter, Go To Jail
SWAT Team Brings TV Crew To Film Raid Against Threatening Internet Critic -- Raids Innocent Grandma Instead
Cop Karate Chops NY Judge In The Throat
When the Right to Resist Becomes the "Duty to Submit"
The Missing Lesson From Norway: Never Trust a Man in Uniform