[Pictured: No surrender, no retreat: Andrei (l) and Viktor Gorodilov at the bridge.]
“What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive? Or, if during the periods of mass arrests ... people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang on the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood that they had nothi... (more)
Some pundits really don’t understand why libertarians dislike government and therefore want it to do little, if anything at all. Unable to grasp the reason, the pundits assign bad motives to those who disparage government: They don’t like poor people, or workers, or the sick, or education.
But what’s so hard to understand? Government is significantly different from anything else in society. It is the only institution that can legally threaten and initiate viol... (more)
If approved by Congress, this legislation would make the federal government the final authority on who gets hired by American businesses and in the process create a bureaucratic nightmare for already over-burdened and over-regulated small business owners. In a nutshell, H.R. 2885 requires all employers to submit potential employees' names, Social Security numbers and other data to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for authorization before the employees can start work. The data would then... (more)
Most Americans remain concerned about inflation and lack confidence in the Federal Reserve Board to keep it under control.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 83% of American Adults are at least somewhat concerned about inflation, including 52% who are Very Concerned. Just 14% are not concerned, with two percent (2%) who are Not At All Concerned. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
PRINCETON, NJ -- Thirty-four percent of Americans say gold is the best long-term investment, more than say so about four other types of investments. Real estate (19%) and stocks (17%) are distant second choices.
The Aug. 11-14 Gallup poll was conducted at the end of a tumultuous week on Wall Street that sent the price of gold soaring.
Gallup asked a similar question from 2002 to 2010, but that question did not include gold. Real estate, savings accounts, and stocks<... (more)
Somehow I missed this article, it's from August 25th, 2011. Unfortunately, they don't ask do you actually own any, I'd really love to know how many Americans actually own it, I know a lot of people who want to, but don't. - Chris
The Fed in the week ahead is widely expected to pull the trigger on a new easing program, as the European debt crisis continues to boil.
The housing market will also be a focus when new and existing home sales data is released Tuesday and Wednesday. New data this past week showed a jump in foreclosure starts, signaling that a big wave of foreclosed properties will hit the struggling housing market early next year.
The Dow and S&P 500 had their best week since July ... (more)
Kindergarten and 1st grade students are now required by law to participate in monthly terrorism drills, including active shooter, bomb threat and evacuation drills. I recently received my 1st grade students back to school paperwork. Going through the packet I found a letter serving notification that my son is now required by law to participate in monthly anti-terrorism drills.
In fact, after doing more research, I learned that all NJ schools which provide services to children from... (more)
As the Obama administration announced plans for hundreds of billions of dollars more in domestic budget cuts, it late last week solicited bids for the construction of a massive new prison in Bagram, Afghanistan. Posted on the aptly named FedBizOps.Gov website which it uses to announce new privatized spending projects, the administration unveiled plans for "... (more)
On Wednesday, George Washington Law professor and former federal prosecutor Orin Kerr authored an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, posing the question "Should faking a name on Facebook be a felony?" He was, of course, talking about the infamous Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), which Congress is preparin... (more)
I taught computer law in 1998-1999 at South Texas College of Law. How things have changed. The course would now probably be called “Internet Law” or Cyberlaw, though much of the subject matter would be similar (online contracts, spam, computer/Internet related crimes, intellectual property as applied to computer related issues, privacy and data collection, and jurisdictional issues). One thing we covered was the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or CFAA... (more)
The ongoing ticket-writing slowdown by fedup NYPD cops has become so costly to the city that a top police commander seems to have resorted to using a dreaded word in policing: quota.
Furious that so many cops are pocketing their summons books, the NYPD's chief of transportation asked a commander at a recent meeting if his cops had written 15 summonses for the month, police sources said.
Police brass deny imposing quotas on the ranks, preferring to call them "product... (more)
The NFL has announced that it will be implementing "enhanced" pat-downs at all 32 NFL stadiums. Once this is fully implemented, the 16 million fans that attend games each season will be frisked from the ankles to the knees and from the waist up. Apparently this new level of security was brought on by a recent incident where a Cowboys fan smuggled a stun gun into a game between the New York Jets and the Dallas Cowboys and started zapping other fans with it. As usual, authorities have responded... (more)
Last month, I attended the 19th annual State Policy Network conference in Seattle, Washington. Although the conference was informative and enjoyable, I took home a different lesson on free-market enterprise. This was my first trip on an airplane since President Obama upped the intensity of the screening process the Transportation Security Administration uses on passengers.
Since the new, enhanced screening procedures have been implemented, the... (more)
In a police force of less than 20 officers, it’s probably not that difficult to be named Officer of the Month.
Take Golden Beach police officer Robert Ruggiero - who was recently named Officer of the Month in this tiny town on the northeast corner of Miami-Dade – a one-mile stretch of road on the county border notorious for its speed trap... (more)
As an economist I have never had much patience with Paul Krugman’s economics, stuck as he is in 1940s-era Keynesian demand-side economics. I have sometimes concluded that Krugman had rather denounce Ronald Reagan that to acknowledge that supply-side economists have established that fiscal policy has supply-side, not just demand-side, effects.
However, Krugman does display at times a moral conscience. He did so on September 11 in his New York Times column... (more)
In his famously doleful, dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell described a world enthralled to what was functionally a "permanent war economy," an "economy existing by and for continuous warfare."
Today, on the heels of a debt ceiling increase calculated to forestall a federal-government default, we both are witnessing and are yoked to the many indispositions of what could be characterized as a permanent debt economy.
According to KCBS and Bay City News Service, two bystanders were hit by gunfire after an officer-involved shooting in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood early this morning.
According to police, at 2:06 a.m., officers located a wanted person in the 400 block of Broadway. The suspect ran away from police and produced a weapon, they said.
Officers then fired at the suspect, who was not hit. However, two bystanders w
He says he's not the father and he's got proof. A South Side man is back in court Thursday morning trying to convince the state to leave him alone. He's been in and out of courts for 21 years.
Even the mother of the child says the baby's not his. CBS2"²s Dorothy Tucker takes a look at why the state won't listen.
"This is not my kid," said Sean Harbin -- and he has the paternity tests to prove he's not the biological father.
Images from 9/11 are still chilling, even 10 years after the attacks shook the world. They triggered the so-called war on terror. But in the country that's been at the forefront of that war, it can be hard to find people who remember why foreign troops arrived in the first place. We continue our special coverage of the 9/11 anniversary, with this report from Afghanista
Here are the booking photos (click to enlarge) of the eight members of an Amish sect who were ordered jailed by a Kentucky judge after they refused to pay fines for failing to affix orange safety triangles to their horse-drawn buggies.
The men, who were booked Monday night into the Gr... (more)
San Francisco -- Some 2,000 San Francisco students who still lacked proof of a whooping cough vaccination one month into the school year were barred from class Thursday and told not to return until they got the shot.
A new state law requires all children in grades seven through 12 to have the vaccine by the first day of school this year, but districts struggling to get families to comply asked for and received a 30-day extension. [...]
Claude Guéant said that ban could later be extended to the rest of France, in particular to the Mediterranean cities of Nice and Marseilles, where "the problem persists".
He promised the new legislation would be followed to the letter as it "hurts the sensitivities of many of our fellow citizens".
"My vigilance will be unflinching for the law to be applied. Praying in the street is not dignified for religious practice and violates the principles of secularism... (more)
