Free Republic

The Global Disinformation Index (GDI) is a British organization that evaluates news outlets' susceptibility to disinformation. The ultimate aim is to persuade online advertisers to blacklist dangerous publications and websites. One such publication, according to GDI's extremely dubious criteria, is Reason. GDI's recent report on disinformation notes that the organization exists to help "advertisers and the ad tech industry in assessing the reputational and brand risk when advertising with online media outlets and to help them avoid financially supporting disinformation online." The U.S. government evidently values this work; in fact, the State Department subsidizes it. The National Endowment for Democracy—a...

The question of how to counteract cancel culture goes far deeper than the question of legal or illegal speech.While some Republicans build their campaigns around cancel culture in the form of a broad bumper sticker slogan or rebuke the party for seeking leaders dissimilar to neoconservatives like Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the issue of standards—and what those standards ought to be—should be at the heart of the cancel culture discussion on the right. It’s time for conservatives to make morals a focal point and not overgeneralize by invoking free speech as an end-all, be-all. Cancel culture, which Federalist writer Tristan...

Ross Ulbricht was jailed for life after he was accused of being Dread Pirate Roberts who ran online black market site But his horrified mother Lyn claims there has been a miscarriage of justice and is fighting for his freedom In a revealing interview she described her 'gentle' son as an idylistic graduate with little money But she says he was branded as a cyber-criminals by a legal system that rode roughshod over natural justice

In recent years, the Big Apple's fast food industry has trailblazed for employee protections and higher wages, particularly as the driving force behind the "Fight for 15." It's a battle they won with the passage of New York's $15 minimum wage law. Now they're setting their sights on eliminating unfair firings. "Workers have told me they've been fired for no reason at all," Democratic City Councilman Brad Lander, who introduced a bill to ban the practice in the fast food industry, told The Guardian. "Should employers have the right to fire people for any reason, including the most trivial reasons?...

The editor of a journal that fell for a hoax defends his field.

It’s unquestionable that the United States prides itself on the freedoms which establish its foundations, but it is also undeniable that our very own judicial system is just as guilty of violating these freedoms. reason magazine On June 2nd, Reason magazine was issued a subpoena by a U.S. district court, demanding “any and all information” on six of the magazines’ readers. When the organization didn’t comply, the government authorized a gag order, prohibiting Reason from discussing or acknowledging the order and the subpoena. “Given the seriousness of the potential legal sanctions, I was exceedingly anxious that a Reason staff member...

The Libertarians are up in arms this week after the Justice Department served subpoenas to Nick Gillespie’s Reason Magazine over comments left on their web site by anonymous readers. The commentariat buzz in question erupted over an article dealing with the life sentence imposed on Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht. This has prompted some outraged cries from observers such as Bloomberg contributor (and former Reason editor) Virginia Postrel, who described the move as stomping on free speech. Powerline’s Steven Hayward (coincidentally also a former contributor to Reason) wonders aloud whether the Justice Department attorneys are just stupid or possibly...

For a magazine that styles itself Reason, it’s surprisingly unreasonable. Nick Gillespie of Reason attacks Truth Revolt’s Ben Shapiro for writing that “Philip Seymour Hoffman['s] self-inflicted death is yet another hallmark of the broken leftist culture that dominates Hollywood, enabling rather than preventing the loss of some of its greatest talents. Libertarianism becomes libertinism without a cultural force pushing back against the penchant for sin; Hollywood has no such cultural force.”It’s a point that’s rather hard to argue with. Freedom opens up the arena for individual character to define how people will use it. Freedom alone is a blank slate...

The original Monster Mash appeared in 1962. Fifty one years later a classical song is used to describe a classic governmental assault and screw up.

Three things people don't know about the Trayvon Martin case (but think they do)

Mainstream America is finally getting to know the billionaire brothers backing the libertarian movement, thanks to a pair of dueling profiles in New York and The New Yorker. Now that we've heard about their charitable giving, David's 240-foot mega-yacht and role as patrons of the Tea Party movement, it's time to ask a more serious question: How libertarian are they? The short answer...not very.Charles and David Koch, the secretive billionaire brothers who own Koch Industries, the largest private oil company in America, have spent millions bankrolling free-market think tanks and pro-business politicians in order, as David Koch has put it,...

Sarah Palin's announcement of her resignation as governor of Alaska may be the end of her political career or, as some speculate, the real beginning. What seems clear is that Palin is not conservatism's new hope but its dead end. In recent days, this has been amply confirmed by the arguments of Palin defenders, focused less on her presumed merits than on her presumed injuries at her enemies' hands.Thus, Ross Douthat, the new conservative voice at the New York Times, hails Palin as Everywoman—living proof you can aspire to the White House without an Ivy League degree—and deplores her abuse...

Matt Welch of Reason notices a strange phenomenon in primary voting this year, one that seems highly counterintuitive. I had noticed this in New Hampshire as well, and the trend has continued. John McCain, despite his championing of the Iraq war, continues to draw pluralities in self-professed anti-war voters: It's no mystery why independents gravitate toward McCain. He's a country-first, party-second kind of guy who speaks bluntly and delights in poking fellow Republicans in the eye on issues such as campaign finance reform and global warming. But there's a bizarre disconnect in the warm embrace between McCain and the electorate's...

Reason: George Bush, not the most conciliatory person in the world, has said on plenty of occasions that we are not at war with Islam. Hirsi Ali: If the most powerful man in the West talks like that, then, without intending to, he’s making radical Muslims think they’ve already won. There is no moderate Islam. There are Muslims who are passive, who don’t all follow the rules of Islam, but there’s really only one Islam, defined as submission to the will of God. There’s nothing moderate about it. Reason: So when even a hard-line critic of Islam such as Daniel...

AMONG THE MANY measures and half-measures that are being proposed to solve the crisis of illegal immigration, there have been some real doozies: a 700-mile wall to keep people out (or in?); a temporary guest-worker program that may end up harming both American and Mexican employees; even a scheme for the largest mass deportation in U.S. history. But here's one good idea you won't hear about. Let's allow the North American Free Trade Agreement to live up to its promise and permit citizens of Canada, the United States and Mexico to move and work freely among the three countries. ...There...

`Tis the season for Christmas trees and immigration reform, two issues that are rarely considered in the same thought. But they are intricately interconnected in important ways: As with most agricultural products, growers rely heavily on immigrant labor to bring the trees to market... ...While politicians put presents under their trees they should think about workers such as Buca, a 35-year-old Mexican immigrant who works in North Carolina, where one out of every five Christmas trees sold in the United States is grown. It is grueling, backbreaking work, the sort that most of us born in the United States would...