Author: Norman Leahy

The Transportation Security Administration was created in 9/11’s wake to prevent a repeat of boxcutter-wielding terrorists from taking over airplanes and turning those planes into weapons of mass destruction. Since its creation, the TSA has been a demonstrable failure at keeping weapons off planes but has been an expert at harassing and humiliating passengers, even as it wastes billions of taxpayer dollars a year on needless security theater. Oh…and about those boxcutters it’s supposed to stop from getting through security. Turns out, it’s rotten at detecting those, too: A Frontier Airlines flight bound for Tampa changed course Friday night after…

Watching the stunning collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX over the last few days has been a powerful reminder of one of the oldest pieces of financial advice around:  Buyer beware. That’s especially true for crypto, which has the potential to become a useful financial tool…but not yet. And maybe not for a very long time. Part of it is because of the people involved in running the exchanges. FTX’s ex-CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was widely hailed as a stable, reliable actor in the space who could bring it both legitimacy and security. That didn’t happen. Not even close. And as…

The inevitable has happened: Former President Donald Trump has declared his candidacy for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. The serial wailing and gnashing of teeth from assorted Republican corners preceded, accompanied and followed the announcement. How all that plays out inside the GOP – which has been an idea-free shadow of its former self for more than a decade – is an open question. And it’s also one that, for all the drama that will happen along the way, won’t produce substantive, effective, humane, liberty-friendly policies and ideas. Which is a great loss to the nation, which needs at least…

It’s long been clear that mainland China is not a friendly nation to the West or to bedrock liberal values. There are still strong pockets of denial about this – primarily among corporations, which have lashed their (and their shareholders’) financial futures to China’s mast. But as former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd writes, the most recent communist party congress should remove every doubt that Chinese leader Xi Jinping is restoring the country – its people, politics and massive economy – to old-school Marxism. In the party congress report, we learn: …that party members are now required to “grasp both…

As always happens following a big national election, the major political party that loses — or is perceived to have underperformed so badly they look like losers — goes through a bout of recrimination and infighting. That’s where Republicans are right now, having spectacularly underperformed in the Nov. 8 elections and, in the process, making Joe Biden look stronger and more confident than he has a right to be. The infighting has centered on whether the GOP has a Donald Trump problem. There are plenty of signs it does. Whether that means the election results see the credible and lasting rise…

Ask someone what the greatest threat facing the country is, and you’ll get a host of answers generally aimed at making your hair stand on end. But what if someone said the greatest threat facing the U.S., and capitalism as a whole, is a lack of accountants? That might seem like a non-starter. No accountants? So what? I do my own taxes, anyway. But there’s a real, growing and potentially enormous problem building right now in the market economy because there just aren’t enough accountants to go around. Writing in Bloomberg, Adrian Woolridge says accountants are essential for a smooth-running…

Inside the batteries that go into our electronic toys, computer workstations, cars and so much more are raw materials that come from mines and manufacturers in some fairly dodgy and dangerous places. And it’s those dodgy, dangerous places that are emerging as choke points – or if you prefer, weak links – in the clean energy supply chain. Bloomberg has a long-form story on the rare earth metals mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia and elsewhere in Central and Southern Africa. Getting the ore out of the mines is bad enough. Transporting it to market? That’s where…

How, and how much, the U.S. should support Ukraine’s fight back against the Russian invasion has been a matter of some debate on the campaign trail and most certainly will be once the new Congress gets to work. Some on the left and right say the U.S. should do much less, or even nothing at all, to stop Putin’s aggression. Setting aside that bipartisan strain of appeasement for a moment…just what is happening with the man who started the war? According to the Carnegie Endowment for Peace’s Andrei Kolesnikov, Putin is entering the “Stalin phase” of his dictatorship. What does…

Midterm elections have a way of bringing out the worst in politicians. It’s not just the flubs, gaffes and stumbles they make as the campaigns rush toward the finish. It’s the things they say which really tell us who they are. Consider President Joe Biden’s remarks about oil and gas companies. Thanks to high energy prices and long-standing decisions to curtail investment in new energy production, those companies have made historically high profits. And it’s those high profits that brought out the real Joe Biden: Biden accused oil and gas companies of profiting off “a windfall of war” in Ukraine,…

The Buffalo Bills are riding high – deservedly so – and the rest of the NFL is taking note. But behind Josh Allen’s MVP-like season, there’s old-fashioned corporate welfare afoot. The culprits: the team’s owners, in line with state and local politicians, who are prepared to fleece fans and taxpayers to finance a new stadium. It’s an old story – politicians using tax dollars to fund the sports palaces of billionaire team owners. But in Buffalo’s case, the usual suspects are thinking bigger than any corporate welfare combo has before: Funding for the [proposed $1.4 billion] stadium includes a record…