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Border Patrol: Bean Bag “Bullets”

Did you know that Janet Napolitano, the head of the Department of Homeland Security, has issued a rule prohibiting American border patrol officers from firing the first shot at illegal immigrants? They must fire a bean bag first. It has cost one border patrol officer his life this year. Larry Pratt, the head of Gun [...]

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Sweet Revenge When State Threatens $10,000 a Day Environmental Fine

North’s first law of bureaucracy: “Some bureaucrat will eventually enforce the letter of a law to the point of utter foolishness.” Here is an example. Dear Mr. DeVries: It has come to the attention of the Department of Environmental Quality that there has been recent unauthorized activity on the above referenced parcel of property. You [...]

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No Bible Reading in a HUD-Funded Building

Some bureaucrat who polices a retirement center that was built with HUD funding is making sure there is no public Bible reading going on. She told Ruth Sweats to stop reading her Bible and discussing it with another resident. To read the Bible and then discuss it — yes, my friends, actually discuss it . [...]

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Arizona Arrests a Woman for Feeding the Poor in Her Driveway.

Free food given away in driveways is no laughing matter in Arizona, where it until this month was also illegal to give bottled water to people at a public religious festival. It took the threat of legal action, coupled with a public relations campaign by the Rutherford Institute, to persuade the Phoenix city council to [...]

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CIA Whistleblower Sentenced to Prison

If you are a CIA “asset,” and you torture a suspect, you will be officially transferred from your specialty if you get exposed. It would be bad PR to continue the policy. The person whose testimony leads to your identification will go to jail. The only question is: for how long? The whistleblower on waterboarding [...]

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The Cell Phone as a Tool of Resistance

Think of the cell phone as unleashing a million Rodney King videos. As citizens grab their cell phones to make YouTube-ready copies of bureaucrats’ unconstitutional imposition of force, the bureaucrats are going on the defensive. There is a kind of cold war going on. Every time the bureaucrats impose new restrictions on cell phones, cell [...]

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Raw Milk In Missouri: No Sales to Strangers

The Missouri Milk Board does not like unpasteurized milk. Milk boards never do. Neither do public health departments. Why not? Because pasteurization reduces the risk of milk-borne disease. Such a disease threatens the independence of the regulators. They get blamed. And, as a secondary effect, people get sick. But the key to understanding the war [...]

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Feds Spend $550,000 to Monitor Texting While Driving

The Department of Transportation, a federal agency, has just given $275,000 each to the governments of Massachusetts and Connecticut to study drivers who text while driving. Why don’t those two governments fund their own studies? Why does the federal government get involved? Because the feds plan to get all of the states involved in anti-texting [...]

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