Citing polling data with poorly (or dishonestly) worded questions, anti-Second Amendment ideologues often argue that gun control is popular. The real test, though, is what happens on election day. That’s why it was such big news when two incumbent Democrats from Colorado’s State Senate were defeated in a recall election. They both represented districts that […]

There’s an old joke that the definition of quandary is when your mother-in-law drives off a cliff in your new car. But since I’m not married, I can’t use that joke. Besides, I’m a policy wonk, so the type of quandary that catches my attention is when the Obama Administration delays big parts of Obamacare […]

Fifty years from now (assuming we haven’t suffered a Greek-style fiscal collapse), will we still enjoy our constitutional freedom of private gun ownership? Sometimes I’m pessimistic about what will happen because politically correct educators are brainwashing our kids. We’ve even gotten to the point where a deaf kid can’t use sign language if his fingers […]

Thomas Sowell, George Will, and Walter Williams have all explained that the Constitution imposes strict limits on the powers of the federal government. This means, for all intents and purposes, that it is a somewhat anti-democratic document. And by anti-democratic, I mean the Constitution puts restrictions on democracy (not restrictions on the Democratic Party, though […]

I’m not a big fan of the United Nations and I’m not a supporter of gun control, so you can imagine how agitated I get when two bad things are combined together. And that’s exactly what’s happening with a new anti-gun treaty being concocted by the United Nations. John Bolton, a former U.S. Ambassador to […]

One of my very first blog posts was about the link between big government and big corruption. For the rest of my life, I can now cite the Obamacare travesty as an example. Here’s some of what Tim Carney wrote for the Washington Examiner. Chief Justice John Roberts’ judicial sleight of hand, transforming Obamacare’s mandate […]

’m not a lawyer, or an expert on the Constitution, though I sometimes play one on TV. But I can read, and I’ll agree with my friends on the left that the federal government has a broad power to tax. I wish the 16th Amendment had never been ratified, but its language gives the federal […]

I think Obamacare is bad policy because it exacerbates the main problem with the current healthcare system, which is third-party payer. And as a public finance economist, I’m obviously not happy about the new taxes and additional spending in Obamacare. But those issues are temporarily on the back burner now that the Supreme Court is […]

The tax code is punitive and corrupt, but the economic damage caused by a bad revenue system is just part of the problem. Thanks to a punitive “worldwide” approach to taxation, we have needless conflicts with other nations, leading the United States to side with high-tax governments and persecute low-tax nations. But the impact on […]

As a grumpy libertarian, I routinely get agitated about taxes, spending, and regulation. As far as I’m concerned, much of government is a racket that uses coercion to reward interest groups with unearned wealth. But there are degrees of evil. So if you asked me to pick the most reprehensible thing that government does,  “asset […]