From Spiegel Online, a German perspective:
The global war on drugs has cost billions and taken countless lives — but achieved little. The scant results finally have politicians and experts joining calls for legalization. Following the journey of cocaine from a farm in Colombia to a user in Berlin sheds light on why.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2013 James Ament Source: Eugene Volokh at The Volokh Conspiracy— an interesting piece which “illuminates the danger that excessive equality arguments pose to liberty.”
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2013 James Ament From The Browser—FiveBooks Interviews:
Modern society has interpreted John Stuart Mill’s concept of tolerance to mean that we should avoid giving offence. The director of the Institute of Ideas tells us about books that show how far we’ve departed from what was meant
We have way too much “freedom of speech for me, but not for thee” in our politically correct society…”intolerant tolerance.”
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012 James Ament To quote Mr. Scrooge: “It’s enough for a man to understand his own business and not to interfere with other people’s. Mine occupies me constantly.”
The quote was found in an interesting piece called, On Liberty and Abortion by another man I generally agree with: Andrew Klavan
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 James Ament Three pieces from The New York Times:
Friedrich A. Hayek, Big-Government Skeptic—May 8, 2011
Keynes vs. Hayek: A Rap Battle Renewed—April 28, 2011
Hayek: The Back Story—July 9, 2010
Then from the Encyclopedia Britannica Blog, Hayek’s Big Week, and the Hayek Century (May 9, 2011), via Frank Wilson.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 James Ament At Mullholland Books is an article titled, B. Traven: The Writer Who Wasn’t There, or A Case for His Works. For those that may not recall, B. Traven wrote The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, a good read and an excellent John Huston directed 1948 movie with Humphrey Bogart. The author of the article, Cortright McMeel, believes Traven has been neglected as one of the great adventure novelists of the 20th Century and asks, “Why?” He says,
“Perhaps because the author who wrote such adventure masterpieces as 
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Death Ship, and General from the Jungle is a mystery himself. He might have been Otto Feige, the son of a Polish potter. He also could have been the anarchist actor Ret Marut, who ended up in a London prison before traveling to Mexico. Two contradictory biographies present each case with compelling fact and argument. Whoever B. Traven was will no doubt always be shrouded in secrecy because that is the way the reclusive author wanted it.”
He then gives a pretty good case for including him with the greats (found at the above link).
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010-2011 James Ament From 3 Quarks Daily, comes an interesting post that attempts, while taking a swipe at Newt Gingrich, to answer the above question. The author, Dave Maier, doesn’t offer a full explanation of what these rights are, but we know that based on our founding documents, they have a lot to do with liberty. And to be fair, the author invokes this notion slightly with, “any right possessed by A is ipso facto a duty imposed on B not to violate that right.” For the full piece, go here. A portion follows:
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