Author: Eric Scheie

A piece of steel brought here from New York serves as a local reminder. Thousands of lost lives — to say nothing of lost liberties. As Ronald Bailey puts it: …the costs of 9/11 to our liberties are incalculable. Instead of calming and urging us to defend our values, our leaders opted to instill fear and…

The only thing that surprises me about this is that anyone would be surprised. The widespread abuse of the potent opioid fentanyl appears to be largely the result of illicit manufacturing of the synthetic drug as opposed to the misuse of legally prescribed versions of the painkiller, according to two US government studies released Thursday. That…

In casual conversations, I’ve raised the point that maybe they do not, which seems grounded in common sense. People always argue with me, and I’ve never considered it important enough to worry about. Now that Obamacare has put us all in the same economic pool, however, it’s worth some long, hard, number crunching. According to…

As I keep saying, we are not governed, we are ruled. Not only is privacy considered a threat to our rulers, but even curiosity about privacy is cause for being put under surveillance. The NSA surveillance program called X-Keyscore, first revealed last summer in documents leaked by Edward Snowden, has been found to contain selection…

Longtime readers may remember that I am against mandatory spay and neuter for pets. Especially male dogs. For years the politically correct people who work with animals have claimed that one of the reason male dogs should all be castrated is that unneutered male dogs are more aggressive than neutered male dogs, and hence more…

Yes, that’s the title of a monumentally stupid article (linked by hysteria-monger Drudge, natch) which blames “hipsters” for apparently helping to make yet another dangerous substance (water) readily available to mosquitoes. “Generally around construction sites, you have catchments of water in any number of things: pails, buckets, trash,” said Conlon. “Anything around a construction site that…

So said Barack Obama about Hillary Clinton on a special video shown at the DNC tonight. My dog Coco knows all about the infectious laugh. When I posted on the subject eight years ago, I opined that Coco was bored by that laugh. (And horror of horrors, I used the “b” word.) Now that I know…

The Republican Party is so screwed. The Democrats’ Hollywood-scripted convention is nothing more than a Trump bash fest. Little wonder. That is all they need to do. As I’ve said before, I think Trump is working for Hillary. FWIW, I’m glad to be a libertarian.

I’d like to see more Republicans like Ann Lee: “Bad law needs to be dealt with, we don’t need to follow it blindly,” says 86-year-old Ann Lee, the founder and executive director of Republicans Against Marijuana Prohibition (RAMP). In an interview with Reason at a Cleveland hotel near the Republican National Convention (RNC), Lee adds, “The…

Except it’s the latest shooter 3 days ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_5QHKoA3Kg I wish things weren’t so sick. Sometimes I worry that people are committing mass murder just because they want attention. AFTERTHOUGHT: Ironically, this is an age where everyone anyone can get attention, because everyone has access to the “microphone.” We all have access to the Internet, to…

Every once in a while I read something that makes me pause and reconsider what I thought were very basic political assumptions. In particular, in the past I have repeatedly attacked Newt Gingrich for his seemingly insane drug war stances. He’s one of the most prominent Americans to actually go on record advocating the death penalty for…

While I have no love for Democrats, I am not happy with Republicans. Especially Republicans who promote the war on drugs, and want to extend its reach into the lives of every American possible. In Michigan, Republican legislators have enacted a new law enabling roadside saliva testing for drugs: LANSING, MI — The Michigan State Police is…

The New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik wants to know: Last night’s tragedy was also the grotesque reductio ad absurdum of the claim that it takes a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy with a gun. There were nothing but good guys and they had nothing but guns, and five died anyway, as…

Apparently. According to HRC, there exists a “sacred duty to protect peaceful protesters”: “I mourn for the officers shot while doing their sacred duty to protect peaceful protesters, for their families [and] all who serve with them,” Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, wrote in a message on Twitter. Her likely Republican opponent, Donald J.…

While I had read about the hideous ISIS attack in Bangladesh elsewhere, not until I happened to look at a local news site did I learn that one of the victims was a Berkeley economics student. It appears that she was hacked to death. As is typical, our national leadership is describing the murders as “senseless”:…

I don’t know who is working for Trump’s campaign, but this type of image just plain sucks. (Especially by civilized American, as opposed to, say, Iranian, standards.) At the risk of sounding gullible, I seriously doubt that Trump himself would have sanctioned such an ad, but what the fuck is up with Trump’s people? You’d almost…

Earlier I had an interesting discussion of the gun issue with a friend, who asked me point blank (!) — “What do you need a weapon like that for?” Meaning, in her mind, a “weapon of war.” (She was referring to AR-15 type guns and all other similar “assault” type rifles.) Never mind how many…

America’s greatest newspaper says everything will be all right!  

And some of them claim to be Christians. Like California Pastor Roger Jimenez: One of the things that Americans tend to forget is that there is a right to hate people, and that what is called hate speech is a constitutionally protected right. Unlike some of his Islamic fellow travelers, I doubt very much that…

That’s how a drag queen characterized the mayhem in Orlando’s Pulse club. One bullet fired by a customer could have saved dozens of lives, yet despite Florida’s relatively liberal gun laws, no one in the place was armed. This would not have happened in Israel. Here in the United States (and to an even greater…