This post by Alex Tabarrok reminded me, oddly enough, of a little prose poem I wrote as a teenager—just over a decade ago, if the date on it is to be trusted. So, against my better judgment, one from the vaults, just for the hell of it: I drive a medium-sized black 1987 Audi 5000. […]

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My interest was piqued by the first line of this Slate review of the new film Shooter, which describes it as a “libertarian action thriller.” Then I realized that by “libertarian” they mean “about a survivalist crackpot who blows up lots of government stuff.”

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It should have come as no surprise that National Security Letters, which bypass the judicial oversight that would normally be required for a search warrant, have been subject to widespread abuse. But an anonymous Washington Post contributor reminds us of an additional factor: NSLs typically come coupled with gag orders, preventing those who’ve been served […]

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A new Lancet study finds—contrary to conventional wisdom, but confirming what anyone familiar with actual users of these various drugs could already have told you—that E and LSD are less harmful than alcohol and tobacco. In one sense, this ought to be beside the point: Adults should be allowed to do things that are harmful […]

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I don’t know whether we should be celebrating that a flagrantly unconstitutional law has been struck down or just dismayed that anyone had thought it might pass muster in the first place, but the Child Online Protection Act is, happily, no more. (As Kerry Howley predicted.)

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If jailed Egyptian blogger Abdul Kareem Nabil Soliman (better known as Kareem Amer) is ultimately freed, I think it’s safe to say it’ll be in large part due to the tireless efforts of my friend Constantino Diaz-Duran, who is one of the major reasons any of us have even heard of the case. He’s got […]

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Via A&L Daily, an article in the Times Literary Supplement digs into the scholarship behind Foucault’s breakthrough work Madness and Civilization. It’s not a pretty sight.

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Also via Cato-at-Liberty comes a link to this Washington Post op-ed in defense of the D.C. gun ban: In other words, even if the D.C. Circuit is right in holding that the Second Amendment creates individual rights, that does not answer the question as to the level of scrutiny to be used in evaluating gun […]

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Lest my decoder ring be revoked for the previous post, let me reply to my friend Micah’s post, which trots out what I’d called a “paint-by-numbers” argument I expect my fellow travelers are as bored of hearing as I am: That a defense of (relatively unregulated) markets in this or that case is (profound sigh) […]

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Cato’s executive VP has a post up noting the frustrating frequency with which one encounters the view that markets and free trade are good and desirable except for this or that special case—often some pet project or regulation that benefits the person making the exception—and defends holding fast to “dogmatic” principle, lest all these exceptions […]

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