WALTER WILLIAMS, THE free market economist and iconoclast, died in December at the age of 84. The author of 13 books, Williams was best known for 1982’s The State Against Blacks, which documented how government interference in the market has been esp

The Department of Homeland Security inspector general is investigating whether U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s purchase of cellphone location data without warrants is improper. The agency has paid nearly half a million dollars to access a databa

March 2001 “Whatever one may think of the Florida high court’s handling of the election cases, there’s no disputing that when it comes to lack of judicial restraint, it’s the U.S. Supreme Court that takes the prize.” MIKE GODWIN “Election 2000” "Adul

OPPONENTS OF MARIJUANA legalization frequently warn that it will lead to rampant cannabis consumption by teenagers. But two studies published in November found that legalization has not been associated with increases in adolescent marijuana use or ad

WHEN HISTORIANS SPEAK of “the people,” I cringe. Do they mean the industrial working classes? Do they mean historically disadvantaged groups in a broader sense? Do they mean the kind of checklist diversity one sees in contemporary advertising? Or do

THERE ARE MORE than a few antique shops in historic Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, a short walk from my suburban neighborhood. Antiquing is normally of interest only if my mother-in-law is visiting, but some years back a friend messaged me to let me

IN HIS VICTORY speech, Joe Biden promised to be “a healer, a uniter, a tested and steady hand.” If the new president wants to make good on his word, Reason staffers have some ideas for a few items to add to his policy agenda. These are suggestions th

SO LET’S SAY psilocybin mushrooms are newly decriminalized where you live, and you are now open to having your first psychedelic experience. Allow me to share some of the practical knowledge I have gleaned from talking to experts and old heads, readi

“LISTEN TO THE science” was an oft-heard riposte in political debates about how the government should respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. While Donald Trump’s administration failed on that front, it did “listen to the science” last May, when the U.S. D

THE LOS ANGELES Police Department (LAPD) banned the use of commercial facial recognition apps in November after BuzzFeed News reported that more than 25 LAPD employees had performed nearly 475 searches using controversial technology developed by the

THE SATURDAY AFTER voters in Washington, D.C., and Oregon voted to loosen legal restrictions on magic mushrooms, my girlfriend and I celebrated in the most appropriate way possible. We each ate almost 5 grams of the stuff, ground up and stuffed into

THERE’S A WELL-WORN tale about modern American conservatism: It says that the movement as we know it came into being during the mid–20th century as a “fusionist” coalition of economic libertarians and religious traditionalists. These groups, whose go

IT’S SNUGGLY TIME with your little one, who is not even in kindergarten yet. His little head rests against your shoulder as you open up a picture book. “See?” you say, pointing not to the furry bunny or diabolical cat or tree that keeps amputating he

IF HIS SELECTION of Antony Blinken as secretary of state is any indication, President Joe Biden’s promised return to normality will extend to his administration’s foreign policy. A veteran of the U.S. State Department and Democratic Party foreign pol

Do you actually own those songs and books you’ve downloaded onto your smartphone? Why is the government able to access your online data without your permission? Why is broadband internet so lackluster in parts of the country? And how exactly does tha

IN 1968, JUST 11 years after the international banker and amateur mycologist R. Gordon Wasson introduced Americans to “magic mushrooms” in a landmark Life magazine story, the federal government banned them. That was how long it took for this object o

FROM THE SPREAD of COVID-19 and the wave of state-imposed closures that followed to the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and the unrest that ensued, 2020 was a year in which American institutions flailed and failed. And few failures

It has been much remarked that Hollywood, whose denizens fall generally to the left of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, often produces movies with conservative themes. That is certainly true of Ron Howard’s adaptation of J.D. Vance’s memoir Hillbilly Eleg

NEW YORK CITY restaurants have been hit hard during the last year by COVID-19 and bad government policy. Although outdoor dining has been permitted since June, the city’s Department of Transportation (DOT) keeps changing the rules, forcing already bu

DOES THE FOURTH Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizures include the right to be free from an unreasonable attempted seizure? The late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia thought it did. “The mere grasping or application of physical for