Gary's Note: What drives the innovations that improve our standard of living at such an amazing clip? It's not politics. Jeffrey Tucker explains in today's feature article. My brother is teaching a semester in London, and he casually video Skyped me last week to show me around his apartment, which is ...read more

Readers will scarcely have given any thought to the fact that they have never lived in the system of government argued for by Madison, Jay, and Hamilton in the Federalist Papers. "It may come as a shock ..." wrote John Flynn, "to be told that[you] have never experienced that kind of society ...read more

The Internet recently rallied against copyright monopolists and their paid-for lawmakers. The twin monstrosities of SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (PROTECT Intellectual Property Act) were forced back into their caves, thanks to the Internet blackout protest on Jan. 18, 2012 (Black Wednesday). But here there still be monsters. Before ...read more

Last week's violent government attack on the hugely popular site Megaupload -- the U.S. government arresting Belgian citizens in New Zealand, of all places, and stealing at gunpoint servers bank accounts and property -- has sent shock waves through the entire digital world. The first shock was the realization that the ...read more

The debate about the Fed is under way, and thank goodness. But as with many policy debates, there really shouldn't be a debate at all. That's because, if you think about it, the idea of central banking makes no sense. We don't have a government-created central repository that plans and manages ...read more

Today is the 99th anniversary of the signing of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution. It enshrined into law an idea that stands in total contradiction to the driving force behind the American Revolution and the whole idea of freedom itself. The great "old right" commentator Frank Chodorov once described the ...read more

It looks just like a reality show that's not going to be renewed for another season. President Obama's State of the Union ratings are headed in the same direction as American Idol's so far this season – down. Let me make a secret confession right here. For years, the producer of ...read more

There is a scene in the Parable of the Talents in which the returned master berates the shabbiest of his three servants. Discovering that he had buried his seed capital in the ground, the master says: "You should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when ...read more

We are getting a sense of what life is like with the new Fed policy of openness. It means that the chairman tries to beat the world record for the longest, most-boring press conference in modern history. Ben Bernanke is getting even better at that crucial skill of repeatedly saying ...read more

First, a correction. A Bar regular writes... "Joe Lieberman is not a Democrat. He is an independent, as he resigned from the Democratic Party. Don't you ever check things out before stating them as facts? "Wish you the best with your paranoia," "-- Steve K" This comes from one of our most-faithful, unswerving, persistent ...read more