Free Republic

Criminal justice reform is a contentious political issue, but there’s one point on which pretty much everyone agrees: America’s prison population is way too high. It’s possible that a decline has already begun, with the number of state and federal inmates dropping for three years straight starting in 2010, from an all-time high of 1.62 million in 2009 to about 1.57 million in 2012. But change has been slow: Even if the downward trend continues, which is far from guaranteed, it could take almost 90 years for the country’s prison population to get down to where it was in 1980...

Ted Cruz claims to be a “constitutionalist,” but expects us to believe that the issue of gay marriage should be left to “debate…in the legislative chambers.” In response to President Barack Obama’s comments about gay marriage in the State of the union, the Texas senator said: I think the proper place to debate those issues is in the legislative chambers. I’m a constitutionalist…From the beginning of this country, marriage has been a question of the states, and we should not have the federal government, or unelected judges, setting aside the policy judgment of the elected legislatures and imposing their own...

It may take ten years or even twenty years to repair the damage done to America's security through the deliberate foreign policy initiatives followed by the three horsemen of the Apocalypse, Kerry, Clinton and Obama. That is, of course, if the damage is able to be repaired at all. Whether we can fix American security largely depends on the views of the next person we elect as president of the United States. There exists in the world today a bloody crescent stretching from Morocco through North Africa, around the Mediterranean Sea, slicing its way through Mesopotamia, Persia, near Asia and...

Politicians and lawyers pretend that they are important people doing important work. But often they're important because they are parasites. They feed off others, while creating no wealth of their own. We all complain about businesses we don't like, but because business is voluntary, every merchant must offer us something we want in order to get our money. But that's not true for politicians and their businessman cronies. They get to use government force to grab our money. Those people who take instead of producing things make up "the parasite economy," says Cato Institute Vice President David Boaz. It's my...

Interest in the bestselling novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand continues to grow, 33 years after her death and 70 years after she first hit the bestseller lists with The Fountainhead. Rand was born February 2, 1905, in St. Petersburg, Russia. In the dark year of 1943, in the depths of World War II and the Holocaust, when the United States was allied with one totalitarian power to defeat another, three remarkable women published books that could be said to have given birth to the modern libertarian movement. Rose Wilder Lane, the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, who had written Little House on...

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who's expected to run for president in 2016, says gay marriage isn't a political issue, but a biblical issue. "This is not a political issue," Huckabee said on CNN's "State of the Union." "It is a biblical issue. And as a biblical issue — unless I get a new version of the Scriptures, it's really not my place to say, OK, I'm just going to evolve. It's like asking someone who's Jewish to start serving bacon-wrapped shrimp in their deli. We don't want to do that — I mean, we're not going to do that....

Despite what some people think, hero is not a synonym for competent government-hired killer.If Clint Eastwood's record-breaking movie, American Sniper, launches a frank public conversation about war and heroism, the great director will have performed a badly needed service for the country and the world. This is neither a movie review nor a review of the late Chris Kyle's autobiographical book on which the movie is based. My interest is in the popular evaluation of Kyle, America's most prolific sniper, a title he earned through four tours in Iraq. Let's recall some facts, which perhaps Eastwood thought were too obvious...

On January 28, The Future of Freedom Foundation (FFF) vice president, Sheldon Richman, reacted to American Sniper by writing that Chris Kyle “was no hero” and that he really couldn’t see a difference between Kyle’s actions and those of Adam Lanza. Richman, who is also the editor of FFS’s monthly journal Future of Freedom, wrote, “Despite what some people think, hero is not a synonym for competent government-hired killer.”

....On Friday’s episode of his HBO series Real Time with Bill Maher, the outspoken satirist pondered whether Kyle was a “hero or not,” and revealed he’s decidedly anti-American Sniper. “Hurt Locker made $17 million because it was a little ambiguous, and thoughtful,” Maher said. “And this one was just, ‘American hero! He’s a psychopath patriot, and we love him.’”

Former Republican presidential candidate and congressman Ron Paul says bad foreign policy is to blame for the Paris terrorist attack on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo that left at least 12 dead and 11 wounded. “Well, you know, partially what the Secretary of State said is true — this is pretty obscene, when it comes to violence, and libertarians are pretty annoyed by anybody who initiates violence,” said Paul on NewsMaxTV’s Steve Malzberg Show Wednesday. “This is pretty bad.” Paul said the context for the attack, however, was France’s involvement in the Middle East. “But in the context of things,...

GRAND RAPIDS, MI — The action taken by a New York City police officer against Eric Garner is "clear," writes U.S. Rep. Justin Amash on Wednesday. Clearly excessive force against #EricGarner. I pray that peace and justice will prevail. The incident was captured on video, showing Garner talking with police as they suspected him of selling tax-free cigarettes. The 43-year-old man then is overcome by officers who take him down to the sidewalk. Garner cried out, "I can't breathe," several times before becoming motionless.

DENVER -- Chris Easterling was sick of relying on drug dealers in Minneapolis when he needed marijuana to help ease the pain of multiple sclerosis. They were flaky, often leaving the homeless man without the drug when he needed relief the most. So he moved to Denver, where legal pot dispensaries are plentiful and accessible. Easterling is among a growing number of homeless people who have recently come to Colorado seeking its legal marijuana, and who now remain in the state and occupy beds in shelters, according to service providers. While no state agency records how many homeless people were...

Reclusive billionaire David Koch, a powerful donor in American conservative politics, says he’s a “social liberal.” “I’m basically a libertarian, and I’m a conservative on economic matters, and I’m a social liberal,” Koch told ABC News’ Barbara Walters.... Koch, who supports abortion rights and gay marriage, said he isn’t concerned with candidates he supports who don’t share some of his views. He said his primary concern when choosing a candidate to support is their fiscal policies.

Nathaniel Branden, who has died aged 84,was for many years the lover and chief disciple of the American writer and libertarian monstre sacré Ayn Rand (1905-82); the story of their relationship and its bitter ending served to illustrate some of the pitfalls of her philosophy of ethical selfishness.When they first met in 1950 Nathan Blumenthal, as he then was, was a 19-year-old Canadian psychology student at the University of California, Los Angeles. Ayn Rand, a Russian-Jewish emigrée in her late forties,was the bestselling author of The Fountainhead (1943), a torrid ideological melodrama of Nietzschean individualism, whose merciless celebration of the...

It's becoming clear to political observers that libertarians are emerging as a key swing vote, if not an official party. Republicans may have won a number of close races by appealing to these libertarians, so their views on policy cannot be ignored. Figuring out those libertarian views on immigration are therefore very important in the wake of President Barack Obama's primetime speech announcing his executive order on immigration.

The video appears on the website of Voices of Liberty, a group led by former Republican congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul. It lobbies against "unjustified wars, unconstitutional surveillance, [and] extrajudicial drone assassinations," according to its website.

PPP's final polls for Governor in Florida, Michigan, and Illinois find incredibly tight contests in all three states. Florida is the closest. Rick Scott and Charlie Crist both have 44%, with Libertarian Adrian Wyllie polling at 6%. PPP usually has a policy of not releasing poll results to the decimal, but when we find a tie on our final poll of the cycle somewhere we make an exception. Crist is at 44.0% to 43.8% for Scott- in terms of raw respondents to the poll that's 526 for Crist and 524 for Scott. Wyllie may be playing a spoiler role for...

I donÂ’t particularly care how people vote, but I do care whether they believe in freedom.ThatÂ’s why I periodically share stories that should convince everyone to believe in the libertarian philosophy of small government, individual liberty, and personal responsibility.The stories that get me most agitated are the ones that involve innocent people being robbed by bureaucrats.And when I say robbed, I use that word deliberately.Such as the case of an elderly couple who had their hotel stolen by government.Such as the case of the family grocer who had his bank account stolen by government.Such as when the government wanted to...

Reason‘s Nick Gillespie recently posted a list of the five most anti-libertarian television shows ever, and there’s a serious error. Actually, there are two serious errors. The first, larger error is that Reason put together a list of the five best libertarian TV shows, and they left off “Firefly,” which simply boggles the mind. The smaller error is that Gillespie names “Star Trek” among the anti-libertarian shows. Even worse is the reason he gives: “The Starship Enterprise’s adventures throughout the galaxy are supposedly guided by the Federation’s ‘prime directive,’ which forbids humans from intervening in the domestic affairs of the...

Former Clinton Administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich recently called on the government to force young people to spend two years either "serving" in the military or performing some other type of government-directed "community service." Neoconservative Senator John McCain has introduced legislation creating a mandatory national service program very similar to Reich's proposal. It is not surprising that both a prominent progressive and a leading neocon would support mandatory national service, as this is an issue that has long united authoritarians on the left and right. Proponents of national service claim that young people have a moral obligation to give something...