Category Archives: Liberty

Obama's Belated Drug War Retreat (New at Reason)

Prior to becoming president, Barack Obama was vocally against the drug war and candid about his own youthful drug experimentation. Obama disappointed many supporters by doing very little to reform drug policy in his first term. But, Reason Senior Editor Jacob Sullum writes in the February 2017 issue, Obama deserves a modicum of credit for… Read More »

The Case Against <em>Hamilton</em>: New at Reason

The hit Broadway musical Hamilton was all that was wrong with 2016, and will likely be wrong with 2017, too. Nicholas Pell writes: We have Lin-Manuel Miranda to blame for this cultural atrocity, a scion of a psychologist and an advisor to New York mayor Ed Koch, who attended the same elementary and high school… Read More »

How Obama Helped Sell Guns: New at Reason

President Barack Obama repeatedly called for “common-sense gun control” measures throughout his two terms as president, frequently in response to a mass shooting. But throughout Obama’s presidency, background checks for gun sales continued to climb and climb and climb. In February’s issue of Reason, we say farewell to President Obama with an infographic illustrating how… Read More »

The Future of International Food Safety: New at Reason

“China’s top leadership has called for more efforts to ensure food safety,” a China-based news service reported last week, “noting there are still many problems despite an improving food safety situation.” By most accounts, it appears the problematic-but-improving characterization of China’s current food-safety situation is an accurate one. A recent report found nearly half-a-million food-safety… Read More »

Forcing Apple to Shut Down Drivers' Phones Is a Terrible Idea

Pretty soon, driverless cars will make the rather fierce debate over distracted driving a moot point. But the debate over outsourcing decision making to technology isn’t going away. Over at The New York Times website this week I make the argument that forcing Apple to disable drivers’ phones is a terrible idea: You almost certainly… Read More »

Did Chuck Schumer Dog-Whistle an Assassination?

In a recent interview with Rachel Maddow on the MSNBC network, Sen. Charles Schumer, who is the Minority Leader in the U.S. Senate, recently hinted darkly that the federal intelligence agencies could decide to harm Donald Trump. He told an approving Maddow: Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six… Read More »

Censorship: UC-Davis Student Protesters Shut Down Milo Yiannopoulos

Milo Yiannopoulos, the alt-right-friendly media figure and Breitbart tech editor who is permanently banned from Twitter, was scheduled to speak at the University of California-Davis on Friday, but student-protesters mobbed the scene, forcing event organizers to cancel his appearance. Given the unruly state of the protesters, university officials informed Yiannopoulos’s hosts, the Davis College Republicans,… Read More »