Let’s say you want to reverse the American industrial revolution, restoring America’s technology and economy to something much closer to the way they functioned before the Civil War. In fact, let’s say you’re such a radical Luddite that you oppose even the “green” technologies of wind turbines and solar energy farms, since they have to […]
It was on their fourth album, “I Think We’re Also Bozos on This Bus,” that the Firesign Theatre formulated Fudd’s First Law of Opposition: “If you push something hard enough, it will fall over.” (Trivia fans will also recall Testicle’s Deviant to Fudd’s First Law: “What goes in, must come out.”)
Proponents were full of assurances as they took their dog-and-wheelchair show around the country back in the late 1980s: The proposed Americans with Disabilities Act wouldn’t impose undue costs or hardships on businesses. It would simply require a few “reasonable accommodations.” Widen a doorway here, provide a wheelchair ramp there — there weren’t even likely […]
Considering the performance of the two elected obstetricians most recently in the national eye, it’s intriguing to speculate how much better off the country might be if we could send the 533 big spenders currently holding down seats in Congress on an extended world cruise, replacing them for a term or two with randomly selected […]
If we had no armed central state to seize money from people against their will and fund the government schools, we’d have no tax-funded government schools. The best teachers could still find work in places where parents pay tuitions voluntarily. Given free competition, the best of them would probably make more than they make now […]
Overturning two earlier rulings, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said last week an Arizona middle school assistant principal violated the constitutional rights of a 13-year-old inmate of his government youth propaganda camp (“public school”) by ordering her to be strip searched to determine whether she had in her possession a […]
“A man wearing a T-shirt depicting a cartoon character holding a gun was stopped from boarding a flight by the security at Heathrow’s Terminal 5,” The BBC reported on June 1. Brad Jayakody, from Bayswater, central London, said he was “stumped” at the objection to his Transformers T-shirt.
Though some will always seek to make the Silver State more like oppressive and actuarially bankrupt California or New Jersey, Nevada is still blessed with a part-time Legislature, limited to working its mischief a mere 120 days in odd-numbered years. As each of those biennial sessions draws to a close, a predictable scramble to pass […]
Those who want government to run our lives are endlessly frustrated with such “outmoded” ideas as state sovereignty and the Electoral College. The initial ideas were simple enough: While the federal government would guarantee the residents of each state a republican form of government and refrain from infringing the citizen’s basic rights — the right […]
Image by mandj98 via FlickrPrairie dogs are considered pests not just by farmers and ranchers — their burrowing can render vast acreages unsuitable for cattle grazing — but by golf course operators and even agencies of the federal government. (Threatened with fines of a $100,000 a day from the Federal Aviation Administration, the City of […]