Opponents of marijuana legalization have never been shy about predicting consequences of biblical proportions should the drug become legal: pot will lead to rape; a scourge of crime will sweep the land; cartels will rise like Cthulhu and enslave us all; brains will be baked in America’s laboratories of democracy. After 7 months of totally legal pot … Continued
“It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished. But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, “whether I do good or … Continued
I stopped watching movies for a couple years after seeing Outbreak (1995) in the theatres. What did it was a scene of a character infected with an airborne Ebola-like disease coughing away in a movie theatre – the filmmakers zooming in on the germs as they spread among the audience. Even though Ebola is not … Continued
By Marc Scribner Libertarians, we may have an Uber problem. Don’t get me wrong, friends of freedom. I love Uber. I use Uber at least once a week. I sympathize with the company being forced to take on entrenched, decades-old taxicab cartels and their captured regulators in order to offer an innovative new service to … Continued
For years, famed writer and thinker Deepak Chopra has peddled his own unique brand of nonsensical pulp profundity to anyone willing to listen–and pay. While his preachings have made him a global celebrity with a net worth of $80 million, he has been widely criticized for thoroughly misunderstanding science and for making absolutely no fucking … Continued
Charles and David Koch are prolific philanthropists, patronizing art, science, medicine, education, and public policy. Sounds wonderful, right? Wrong. Unfortunately, their libertarian philosophy isn’t an approved variation of self-hatred and hypocritical cant required by the progressive left, so their money can do no good to anyone. In fact, their charitable gifts are even more suspect than simply hoarding their money … Continued
I chatted with Kyle Platt of Liberty.me about the consequences of superstition and pseudoscience that I outlined in my article “What’s the Harm?”. We talked liberal science denial, bad bureaucracy, and the dreaminess of Matthew McConaughey. Video and brief excerpts below. KP: You say the cost of [scientific] misinformation is too large to ignore, and that it’s “a … Continued
Over at the Washington Blade blog, Mark Lee raises an important question about the recent Brendan Eich/Mozilla debacle: are we more interested in punishing our enemies than we are about changing the social and political landscape? He argues, “It is astonishing that in the midst of winning hearts and minds on the most essential elements … Continued
