After the media complained nonstop for months about Donald Trump offering a dark message on the presidential campaign trail, a New York Times headline bewailed his election victory on Wednesday morning: “America Hires a Strongman.” So anyone who cast a ballot became the moral equivalent of a mafia don hiring a hitman?The Times news analysis lamented, “This was a conquering of the nation not by force but with a permission slip. Now, America stands on the precipice of an authoritarian style of governance never before seen in its 248-year history.”Well, at least never-before-seen by journalists whose knowledge of history does not extend back beyond Taylor Swift’s first best-selling album. The notion that Trump was a unique threat in American history entitled the media to ignore all the civil

Facebook notified me on Sunday morning that eight years ago, I posted a link to my Washington Times article warning of Dictatorial Democracy regardless of whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump won the 2016 election. The opening sentence set the tone: “The 2016 election campaign is mortifying millions of Americans in part because the presidency has become far more dangerous in recent times.” Facebook always gives users the option to “Share a Memory” link. I tapped the button to automatically send a notice on “Dictatorial Democracy” to all my Facebook friends and followers. No such luck: Facebook notified me that they had banned sharing the piece because it violated Facebook “Community Standards.”Maybe if I had simply howled about one of the current presidential candidates being Hitler,

If Kamala Harris wins the presidential election on Tuesday, Americans will be told that the final vote count is a sacred number that was practically handed down from Mt. Sinai engraved on a stone tablet. Any American who casts doubt on Harris’s victory will be vilified like one of those January 6, 2021 protestors sent to prison for “parading without a permit” in the US Capitol. Actually, anyone who doubted the 2020 election results was being prominently denounced as “traitors” even before the Capitol Clash.But is there any reason to expect the final vote count in next week’s presidential election to be more honest than any other number that the Biden-Harris administration jiggered in the last four years?Biden, Harris, and their media allies endlessly assured Americans that the national

The official theme song of the Kamala Harris presidential campaign is “Freedom” by Beyonce. But a more accurate theme would be the Rolling Stones classic, Under my Thumb. Vice President Harris is seeking the presidency as the greatest champion of freedom in modern times. But Kamala-style freedom will only unleash the government, not private citizens.The original Bill of Rights created a row of bulwarks for citizens to prevent government oppression. In the era of the American Revolution, it was a common saying: “The Restraint of Government is the True Liberty and Freedom of the People.” But Harris and her running mate, Governor Tim Walz, are offering a “freedom,” seemingly inspired by Yugoslavian communist dictator Tito: “The more powerful the State, the more freedom.”Harris begins by

What is the Mises Institute?

The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard. Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.

For more than 70 years, America has been on the verge of honest government. In election after election, politicians have promised to finally take this nation to the moral high ground once and for all.In 1952, Dwight Eisenhower captured the presidency based in part on his promise to end “the mess in Washington”—festering corruption from 20 years of Democratic presidents. Housewives were swayed to support the Republican ticket with red, white, and blue scrub pails with the slogan, “Let’s clean up with Eisenhower and Nixon.” Those pails did not prevent waves of scandals and top Eisenhower appointees resigning in disgrace.  In 1960, Democratic candidate John F. Kennedy captured the presidency after his party’s platform promised to “clean out corruption and conflicts of interest” and “establish

Remember when government officials sanctioned orgies but insisted it was too risky to permit children to attend classes to learn how to read?During the pandemic, New York City Covid Czar Jay Varma championed endless government restrictions and lockdowns to keep people safe. But, at the same time, he attended sex parties and a dance party, indulgences that made a mockery of everything he preached to New Yorkers. His hypocrisy was exposed this week by undercover recordings made by conservative podcaster Steven Crowder. Varma declared on Thursday: “I take responsibility for not using the best judgment at the time.”That statement is a great consolation to everyone whose rights and liberties were nullified during the pandemic. In the undercover recordings, Varma bragged about brutalizing people

Remember when government officials sanctioned orgies but insisted it was too risky to permit children to attend classes to learn how to read?During the pandemic, New York City Covid Czar Jay Varma championed endless government restrictions and lockdowns to keep people safe. But, at the same time, he attended sex parties and a dance party, indulgences that made a mockery of everything he preached to New Yorkers. His hypocrisy was exposed this week by undercover recordings made by conservative podcaster Steven Crowder. Varma declared on Thursday: “I take responsibility for not using the best judgment at the time.”That statement is a great consolation to everyone whose rights and liberties were nullified during the pandemic. In the undercover recordings, Varma bragged about brutalizing people

What is the Mises Institute?

The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard. Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.

In the glorious age of the Kamala Ascendency, the TSA is no longer restraining its contempt for American travelers. After squeezing millions of butts and boobs and never catching a terrorist, TSA decided to have fun by taunting its victims. 

What is the Mises Institute?

The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard. Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.

What is the Mises Institute?

The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard. Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is not missing any chance to condemn Republicans for threatening to censor libraries and school textbooks. But she is overlooking the heavy-handed record of her chief spokesperson, Brian Fallon. Unfortunately, a recent Supreme Court decision opens the floodgates for far more federal censorship.When Fallon was press chief at the Justice Department in 2015, he was outraged at my USA Today op-eds bashing Attorney General Eric Holder, including “Eric Holder’s Lawless Legacy,” [Feb. 3, 2015] and “Eric Holder’s Police Shooting Record? Dismal,” [Aug. 20, 2014]. I thumped Holder for championing “a Nixonian-style legal philosophy that presumed that any action the president orders is legal” (the same point that President Biden is using nowadays to

In a mere 11 minutes on Wednesday night, President Biden settled any doubts about whether he was fit for another four years of the presidency. Uncle Joe wrestled with the teleprompter like a slacker high school boy blindsided by trigonometry questions on the math SAT test. By the end of the Bidens brief spiel, most judges declared that the teleprompter had won by technical knockout.A few weeks ago, Biden declared that it would take “the Lord Almighty” to get him to end his re-election campaign. Did the Lord make an unannounced visit to Biden’s Delaware vacation home?When Biden threw in the towel on Wednesday night, everything was sacred – including the Oval Office (“this sacred space”), “the sacred cause of this country,” “the “sacred task of perfecting our Union,” and the “sacred idea”

What is the Mises Institute?

The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard. Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.

Joe Biden is seeking to boost his reelection campaign by torpedoing Chinese imports. In an April 17 speech in Pittsburgh, the symbolic heart of the steel industry, Biden announced that he asked his US trade representative to triple tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum imports. The tariffs are currently roughly 7.5 percent. A White House press release proclaimed, “President Biden knows that steel is the backbone of the American economy, and a bedrock of our national security.” Biden’s edict is fresh proof that on trade policy, American politicians have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.Did Biden vow to leave no boneheaded policy behind? Remember Donald Trump’s knuckleheaded 2018 assertion that “trade wars are good, and easy to win”? When Trump imposed a 25 percent tariff on steel

Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito

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The Fifth Amendment declares, “No person shall be . . . deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”Except by dogs.The Supreme Court declared in 1967, “Wherever a man may be, he is entitled to know that he will remain free from unreasonable searches and seizures.”Except by dogs.The Fourth Amendment prohibits warrantless unreasonable searches, but canines now provide push-button vetoes for constitutional rights. Last month in my piece “Highway Robbery Continues to be the Law of the Land,” we saw how police across the nation concocted pretexts to stop and shake down drivers. But few people recognize how far police and judges have gone to exploit canines to nullify both privacy and property rights.When a pooch graduates from a drug-sniffing training program, government

Seizure fever is toxifying law enforcement across the nation. For more than thirty years, federal, state, and local government agencies have plundered citizens on practically any harebrained accusation or pretext.
You could be at risk of being pilfered by officialdom anytime you sit behind a steering wheel. Between 2001 and 2014, lawmen seized more than $2.5 billion in cash from sixty thousand travelers on the nation’s highways—with no criminal charges in most cases, according to the Washington Post. Federal, state, and local law enforcement have institutionalized shakedowns on the nation’s highways to the point that “forfeiture corridors are the new speed traps,” as Mother Jones observed.
Police can almost always find an excuse to pull someone over. Gerald Arenberg, executive director of

Seizure fever is toxifying law enforcement across the nation. For more than thirty years, federal, state, and local government agencies have plundered citizens on practically any harebrained accusation or pretext.
You could be at risk of being pilfered by officialdom anytime you sit behind a steering wheel. Between 2001 and 2014, lawmen seized more than $2.5 billion in cash from sixty thousand travelers on the nation’s highways—with no criminal charges in most cases, according to the Washington Post. Federal, state, and local law enforcement have institutionalized shakedowns on the nation’s highways to the point that “forfeiture corridors are the new speed traps,” as Mother Jones observed.
Police can almost always find an excuse to pull someone over. Gerald Arenberg, executive director of

Under Obama and Biden, the banking sector has been weaponized against industries American leftists don’t like.  The Obama administration acted as if its regulatory targets did not deserve due process, and the program ravaged far and wide.
Original Article: Biden and Forgotten Federal Financial Tyranny

Americans were jolted last week to learn that the Joe Biden administration viewed purchasing a Bible as a potential terrorist warning sign. Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, revealed that the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network stretched its “suspicious behavior” definition to include purchasing a Bass Pro Shop hat, as well as items sold by Cabella’s and Dick’s Sporting Goods. If you’ve bought a gun or ammo since 2021, Team Biden bureaucrats may have automatically classified you as a “potential active shooter.” Or maybe your plane ticket purchases triggered the latest “lone actor/homegrown violent extremism” indicators.
Unfortunately, there are plenty of Washington precedents for this type of idiocy. The vast array of

It seems U.S. government officials are entitled to blindfold and deceive the American people to avoid “intruding” on foreign leaders planning a military attack? This theory of democracy gets curiouser and curiouser.
Original Article: Truth Is the Biggest Threat to Democracy in DC

Early this year, Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guard member, was arrested and charged with transmission of national defense information and other charges. Teixeira allegedly leaked classified documents on the Ukraine war and other foreign policy issues to a Discord gaming group. The document propagated from there and appeared in many news articles in the following months.
The Post article sympathetically portrays the struggles of U.S. government officials fighting to suppress the unapproved eruption of hard facts. In a passage sue to boost sales of Kleenex inside the Beltway, the Post quotes a U.S. government official who was permitted to remain anonymous: “We were blindsided and furious,” 
 The Post, which partnered with PBS for a television program on the

In the past two decades, the TSA has proven it is ineffective in providing real security for airline passengers. However, its growing incompetence is matched only by its increasing intrusion into travelers’ lives.
Original Article: The TSA Is Still Crazy after All These Years

The TSA has been promising to end its boneheaded ways for more than 20 years. Flying out of Dallas International Airport last week, I ruefully recognized that all TSA reform promises are malarkey.
As I neared the end of a TSA checkpoint line, I saw two women loitering behind a roped off section for CLEAR, a new biometric surveillance program that works with 35 airports and coordinates with TSA. CLEAR involves travelers standing in photo kiosks that compare their faces with a federal database of photos from passport applications, driver’s licenses, and other sources. The Washington Post warned that airport facial recognition systems are “America’s biggest step yet to normalize treating our faces as data that can be stored, tracked and, inevitably, stolen.”
Though the CLEAR program is

Forty years ago last week, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner published my first attack on the federal drug war. The previous year, the Reagan administration had unleashed its “Just Say No” program, vilifying anyone who smoked a joint, sniffed the wrong powder, or used nonapproved hallucinogens. I was mortified to see Ronald Reagan—who was elected on a promise to get “government off your backs”—double-cross his supporters with what morphed into the most intrusive scheme in American history.
Like kids everywhere in the 1970s, I laughed at the 1936 movie Reefer Madness in my high school health class. I’d occasionally smoked marijuana but hadn’t felt compelled to burn down any orphanages afterward. When Reagan went on the antidrug warpath, I was “laying for him,” as Mark Twain would say.
The

Official Washington and its Court Media are up in arms that someone has told the truth via leaking government documents. They won’t rest until he is punished severely.

Original Article: "Endangering Washington’s Divine Right to Deceive"
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.

Donald Trump legally pays hush money and prosecutors try to fashion a crime from it. However, if a president lies and thousands of people die, it is called foreign policy.

Original Article: "Presidents Are Legally Immune for Their Most Dangerous Crimes"
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.

Thirty years ago, FBI tanks smashed into the ramshackle home of the Branch Davidians outside Waco, Texas. After the FBI collapsed much of the building atop the residents, a fire erupted and 76 corpses were dug out of the rubble. Unfortunately, the American political system and media have never honestly portrayed the federal abuses and political deceit that led to that carnage.
What lessons can today’s Americans draw from the FBI showdown on the Texas plains 30 years ago?
Purported Good Intentions Absolve Real Deadly Force
Janet Reno, the nation’s first female attorney general, approved the FBI’s assault on the Davidians. Previously, she had zealously prosecuted child abuse cases in Dade County, Florida, though many of her high-profile convictions were later overturned because of gross

Do Americans have the right to know if the $100 billion in their tax dollars that the Biden administration is delivering to Ukraine is being wasted? No, according to the U.S. Congress – which recently voted against creating an Inspector General to investigate whether handouts to the most corrupt government in Europe were being stolen.
Do Americans have the right to know if their own government blew up the Nord Stream pipeline, the biggest act of environmental terrorism in history? The Washington Post reported that the message from the U.S. and western European governments is “Don’t talk about Nord Stream.” So almost all reporters were “good boys” and moved along.
Do Americans have the right to know if Biden administration officials have perennially made false statements about the prowess

Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg has charged former president Donald Trump with thirty-four felonies tied to his payments to two women prior to the 2016 election. Some pundits are outraged that a former president is facing charges, and others are jubilant that Trump now has a mug shot. But this case will do nothing to curtail the most dangerous immunities that presidents possess.
Neither presidents nor any federal officials were entitled to break the law when this nation was founded. John Taylor, a US senator, wrote in 1820 that the Constitution “wisely rejected this indefinite word [sovereignty] as a traitor of civil rights, and endeavored to kill it dead.” But the following year, Chief Justice John Marshall concocted the doctrine of sovereign immunity out of whole cloth: “The

The president’s SOTU speech has become an annual presentation of a new set of White House lies. But official Washington believes it is worse to publicly boo false statements than to make them.

Original Article: "Decorum Propels DC Deceit"
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.

I have always had a bad attitude toward official secrets regardless of who is keeping them. That prejudice and John Kenneth Galbraith are to blame for an unauthorized withdrawal I made from the World Bank. When I lived in Boston in the late 1970s, I paid $25 to attend a series of lectures by Galbraith on foreign aid and other topics.

Life in American changed twenty years ago after the 9/11 attacks. Many Americans became enraged at anyone who did not swear allegiance to President George W. Bush’s antiterrorism crusade. Anyone who denied “they hate us for our freedoms” automatically became an enemy of freedom.

Since the 1800s, surly Americans have derided politicians for spending tax dollars “like drunken sailors.” Until recently, that was considered a grave character fault. But Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act shows that inebriated spending is now the path to national salvation.

FBI agents across the nation are tracking down and arresting Trump supporters who walked into the US Capitol during the January 6 protest that turned into a brawl. Scores of protestors have already been charged with unlawful entry—“knowingly entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds without lawful authority.”

Politicians have destroyed more than 13 million jobs this year in a deluge of edicts aimed to fight the covid-19 pandemic. More than two hundred thousand Americans still died from the coronavirus, but the anticovid government crackdowns probably did far more damage than the virus. The covid crisis has also shown how easy it is for politicians to fan fears to seize nearly absolute power.

Former president George W. Bush has returned to the spotlight to give moral guidance to America in these troubled times. In a statement released on Tuesday, Bush announced that he was “anguished” by the “brutal suffocation” of George Floyd and declared that “lasting peace in our communities requires truly equal justice. The rule of law ultimately depends on the fairness and legitimacy of the legal system. And achieving justice for all is the duty of all.”