America is one of many countries that forbid openly gay people to serve in the military. Others are: Cuba, China, Egypt, Greece, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Turkey and Venezuela. See a pattern? With a few exceptions, those are not countries where free ... More of this article

Many of the wonderful-sounding ideas that have been tried as government policies have failed disastrously. Because so few people bother to study history, often the same ideas and policies have been tried again, either in another country or in the same country at a later time-- and with the same disa... More of this article

Can anyone tell me why suddenly race is the hot topic of national discourse? According to Gallup polling of last week, the issues most on the minds of Americans are the economy and jobs followed by dissatisfaction with all aspects of government.  I didn’t notice racism on the list anywh... More of this article

I'm confused about immigration. We libertarians believe in free trade. That includes trade in labor, too. New people bring us not just labor, but also good new ideas. Open immigration during America's first hundred years helped make America rich. Open immigration is dangerous today, however, becau... More of this article

Credit card fraud is a serious problem. But race card fraud is an even bigger problem. Playing the race card takes many forms. Judge Charles Pickering, a federal judge in Mississippi who defended the civil rights of blacks for years and defied the Ku Klux Klan back when that was dangerous, was depi... More of this article

For years, domestic sugar producers have profited from quotas limiting sugar imports, boosting prices to American users.  While such protectionism indefensibly takes from American consumers for politically powerful sugar producers, it usually hides under the public radar.  But the dif... More of this article

Suppose you had a choice to invest in one of two competing business plans. Behind one plan are billionaires Jeff Bezos and Michael Dell, who are investing their own money in it.  Bezos and Dell are two of the country’s most successful entrepreneurs.  Both got rich founding and build... More of this article

Something's happened to America, and it isn't good. It's become easier to get into trouble. We've become a nation of a million rules. Not the kind of bottom-up rules that people generate through voluntary associations. Those are fine. I mean imposed, top-down rules formed in the brains of meddling b... More of this article

If you could spend vast amounts of other people's money just by saying a few magic words, wouldn't you be tempted to do it? Barack Obama has spent hundreds of billions of dollars of the taxpayers' money just by using the magic words "stimulus" and "jobs." It doesn't matter politically that the stim... More of this article

In August of 2005, Houston investment banker Matt Simmons predicted in a New York Times feature article that the price of oil, then $65/barrel, would soar.  Simmons, who had written a book arguing that the world is running out of oil, was predicting oil prices “in the high triple digits.... More of this article