Property Owners Victorious
In late April, the Institute for Justice won a smashing judicial victory on behalf of the Community Youth Athletic Center, a boxing gym and haven for local kids, as well as for other property owners in...
View ArticleTaste Racism
Bigotry and intolerance come in many forms. And they come around again and again. A bizarre New York Times “news story” demonstrates this: Baghdad has weathered invasion, occupation, sectarian warfare...
View ArticleOysters In, Soup Out
Oysterville Sea Farms in Oysterville, Washington — a small, coastal town that some of you may know from wordplay author Willard Espy’s memoirs — is in danger. The business has long sold soup and...
View ArticleApologies to Ms. Kelo
The sad story of Kelo v. The City of New London keeps dragging on, adding coda to epilogue, epilogue to coda. Recently, Jeff Benedict, the author of Little Pink House, gave a talk attended by both...
View ArticleRenegade Regulatory Agencies
Americans often express astonishment when they learn that many of the nation’s laws — the bulk of its “regulations” — have not been written by Congress. Though the Constitution grants to Congress alone...
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Plymouth’s Great Reform
Times too tough for much thanksgiving? Some of my readers, surely, are feeling the bracing effects (to put it mildly) of a severe economic slump — a so-called “recession” that I’ve been calling, more...
View ArticleInto Each Life…
Government is the chief social institution to regularly reduce itself to absurdity. And by “reduce itself” I do not mean “diminish in size.” I mean “descend the moral ladder.” Today’s absurdity has...
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Pitchfork Rebellion
What if they threw a rebellion and everybody came? Anything you do these days can get you in trouble with regulators, from serving water without the proper liquor license to (I kid you not) throwing a...
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In the Zone
You’re a businessman. You see a need for low-cost apartments. A property owner is happy to sell you the plot on which the complex may be built. The local senior housing center has a long waiting list,...
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Banned in Miami!!…Vegetable Gardens?
Perhaps Hermine Ricketts should be glad that a SWAT team didn’t descend upon on her front-yard garden. After all, in blatant if ignorant violation of a new zoning law, the former architect had been...
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Rights Violations Close to Home
Connor Boyack, founder of Utah’s Libertas Institute, has earned a reputation combating the dangerous no-knock raids characteristic of the War on Drugs/People. The point of these raids is not to defuse...
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Naked Truth Up North
In the U.S., broadcasters and savvy consumers worry about the behavior of the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates the electromagnetic spectrum not by defending property rights, but by...
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The Tiny State of Nevada
Nevada isn’t really that big of a state. Oh, sure, it appears large on the map. But 81 percent of that land mass isn’t Nevada. It’s federal government property, run by various branches of the nation’s...
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Land Un-Grab?
When I took up the Cliven Bundy story, just before Bundy spewed his racist farragoes, I concentrated not on him, but on the broader issue: too much federal government ownership of real property in “the...
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Property as Persons
Think “corporate personhood” is bad? Well, there’s a far stranger notion in American law: civil forfeiture. That’s where corporeal property is said to have personhood, and thus can be sued — rather...
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John Oliver vs. Cops Who Rob
“Since 9/11, under just one program police have taken two-and-a-half billion dollars in the course of over 61,000 seizures of cash alone, from people who . . . were not charged with a crime. That is...
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Philadelphia Freedom?
It’s fun to watch intrusive, abusive, and exclusive government operations fail. It’s instructive to see how they react. Years ago, internationally renowned artist James Dupree purchased a large...
View ArticleWhy the Tiny Domicile
The “tiny house” movement has gained momentum. More and more people — especially young people and childless people — see the virtue of very small houses. They are cheaper, can be made energy-efficient,...
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Rare Earth Reserve
There are many places on this planet I would hardly dare visit, much less seek to live near. One of those places is remote Baotou, in Inner Mongolia, a boom region where much of our planet’s rare earth...
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Fishy Schemes Against Human Beings
Arbitrary governmental pricing of water — as opposed to free-market pricing — provides one major reason why it’s so hard for Californians and others to deal with drought. I’ve talked about it before....
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