Author: Norman Leahy

I’ve written about government surveillance many times in this space, providing links to important research work that groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) do to help hold the state accountable for its snooping. A new EFF resource details the vast and highly sophisticated array of tools, devices and technology government agencies use to police the U.S.-Mexico border. As the EFF rightly notes, the political focus is always on “border security.” But the security measures taken often include round-the-clock surveillance of U.S. residents of border areas – raising serious and undiscussed – questions of civil rights and privacy violations: While…

There is one constant in official Washington that transcends political parties and ideologies: incumbents can’t stop messing with the tax code. All that fiddling has made the code far too complex for the average taxpayer to comprehend. But for politicians, the code itself isn’t the problem, but an opportunity – to hand out favors to this, that and the other interest groups. Even when those favors make absolutely no sense. Consider an example former Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., who wrote in The Wall Street Journal: U.S. taxpayers have been subsidizing the production of cherry vodka and orange maple whiskey for…

To look at the stock market is to get the general impression that inflation is less of a threat than it was a couple of months ago, fears of a deep, hash recession are receding and the good times might soon return. Maybe they are. After all, markets are about future earnings and conditions (and yes, fear and greed, too). But before everyone starts thinking it’s safe to go back in the water, we need to take a closer look at Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s remarks on the Fed’s interest rate path. Rates are going to go up –…

Congress has a longstanding, bipartisan addiction to spending. The federal debt and annual deficits are prime examples of how deep the problem is. But another, more insidious version that Republicans, at least, had sworn off was earmarks, those gateway drugs tucked inside spending bills that helped a favored few at the expense of everyone else. At its recent meeting to set policies and rules for their new House majority, Republicans overwhelmingly voted to embrace earmarks. As The Wall Street Journal’s Kim Strassel writes, it was yet more proof that Republicans are no more serious about spending control than Democrats. But…

Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 movie “RoboCop” was set in a futuristic, violence-torn Detroit. Little did we know at the time it wasn’t just a sci-fi hit Verhoeven was filming, but a “how-to” documentary for politicians in present-day San Francisco. City leaders approved a measure allowing the SFPD to use remote-controlled robots in dangerous situations. Situations in which the robots would be armed and deadly: The San Francisco police department said that it had owned and used robots for tasks such as serving warrants for 11 years and that the department did not have pre-armed robots and had no plans to arm…

There’s been a lot of talk about what Republicans can or should do to increase their odds of success at the ballot box in 2024 and beyond. Some of that talk has been about tactics – as is happening over early voting. Early voting is just what it sounds like: people casting ballots before Election Day, often with no excuse required. While no-excuse early and absentee voting has cut down on the number of little white lies people have told registrars for decades in order to cast an early ballot, Republicans tend to be against early voting entirely. The reasons…

Pundits and pols have spilled oceans of pixels on what to make of the GOP’s underwhelming show in the November elections. That’s normal for either major party following an election in which it failed to meet even the worst-case expectations. But out of all of this chatter has come one interesting, and useful, critique from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who says the GOP “must learn to quit underestimating President Joe Biden.” Do tell, Mr. Gingrich: …conservatives’ hostility to the Biden administration on our terms tends to blind us to just how effective Biden has been on his terms. He…

Tax season is right around the corner and with all the headaches and heartaches it can bring, let’s add to the pile of misery concerns about privacy. According to reporting in The Markup, some popular tax filing services have been sharing user data with Facebook. Even if clients didn’t have FB accounts: Major tax filing services such as H&R Block, TaxAct, and TaxSlayer have been quietly transmitting sensitive financial information to Facebook when Americans file their taxes online, The Markup has learned. The data, sent through widely used code called the Meta Pixel, includes not only information like names and…

It’s no secret that government debt is a problem, and servicing that debt in a rising interest rate environment will force politicians to make the sort of hard choices they usually avoid. But what about debt on the grand scale – globally, and including not just government IOUs but private debt as well? Turns out that mountain of red ink is gigantic and getting more expensive to service than ever: The total owed by households, businesses and governments stands at $290 trillion, up by more than one-third from a decade ago, according to research by the Institute of International Finance.…

Doomsayers and apocalyptic thinkers have always been with us. But extinctionists – those who want to see the human race end in order to save the planet? That is a new one for me. But such people do exist. And they even manage to get ink in The New York Times: [Les] Knight, 75, is the founder of the Voluntary Human Extinction movement, which is less a movement than a loose consortium of people who believe that the best thing humans can do to help the Earth is to stop having children. Mr. Knight added the word “voluntary” decades ago…