Radley Balko

The great journalist H.L. Mencken was a fierce critic of alcohol prohibition. He wrote in 1925: "Five years of Prohibition have had, at least, this one benign effect: they have completely disposed of all the favorite arguments of the Prohibitionists. None of the great...

Dan Peruchi, father of four, enjoyed fixing up old cars and reselling them. Because the dealers he worked with dealt mainly in cash, he usually had lots on hand. Peruchi was driving home to Ft. Worth, Texas when he noticed the flashing lights of a police car behind...

One of the most powerful museums in Washington, D.C., is the Holocaust Memorial Museum. It's the one site I always recommend to people visiting the city, even though it takes a couple of days to shake off the malaise that settles in after you've seen it. It's a...

"Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse or omission." -- Isabel Paterson, "The God of the Machine" Now that we're in the thick of the holiday season, we're again being warned to be wary of the commercialization, corporatism...

The fat cops are on the prowl again. Not content with the current spate of obesity-inspired lawsuits, "nutrition" interests have taken to the state legislatures, looking to pass "menu labeling" laws that will pave the way for, yes, even more lawsuits. The state of...

Two reporters relay this anecdote from Thailand: One of the half-dozen men and women sitting on a bench eating was a sinewy, bare-chested laborer in his late 30's named Mongkol Latlakorn. It was a hot, lazy day, and so we started chatting idly about the food and,...

"Big business never pays a nickel in taxes, according to Ralph Nader, who represents a big consumer organization that never pays a nickel in taxes." -- Dave Barry Crystal Lewis hadn't the slightest idea what "MOPIRG" was. Each semester, she says, the mysterious phrase...

A reader of this column e-mailed an interesting question a few months ago: "We hear all about Richard Mellon Scaife," he wrote, "but we never hear about who funds the left. Who's bankrolling the vast left-wing conspiracy?" It's an interesting question, and you'll...

Editor's note: This is a parody, similar in style to the Onion.Rep. Charlie Rangel (D- NY) took his "fairness in the military" proposal a step further this month. The congressman is now calling for what he calls "affirmative casualties" in war, a move he says will...

"We want to produce the soundtrack to the ongoing war against capitalism." That's the creed of Sweden's new garage band The (International) Noise Conspiracy. They're avowed socialists, to the point of caricature. A comically self-indulgent manifesto posted on the...

This month, American voters will head to the polls for midterm elections. Though the names on the ballots have changed since the last election, proponents of limited, accountable government will again be forced to choose between the same contenders: Candidate No Way...

At about the same time a hodgepodge of protesters descended on Washington, D.C. last month to protest capitalism, globalization and free trade, the United Nations and the Institute for International Studies released a triad of studies declaring that humanity is, for...

This time, it's a traveling museum exhibit entitled "Target America: Traffickers, Terrorists and You." The exhibit harmonizes chunks of World Trade Center rubble and pictures of the scarred Pentagon with paraphernalia seized in international drug busts, and offers a...

Several decades ago, mathematician Edward Kasner conceived a number so large, it would exceed the total number of elementary particles in the known universe, with room to spare. He asked his nine-year-old nephew to name this new number, a one followed by one hundred...

I'd planned on writing a snarky, mocking narrative of my day at last weekend's IMF/World Bank protests. A friend and I had set our sights on infiltrating the great unwashed activists, blending in, then collecting great stories to tell about the twisted logic,...

President Bush last week showed Clintonesque skill in the art of political triangulation. An alleged champion of free markets and free trade, the Bush White House last week announced plans to impose tariffs as high as 30% on steel imports to the U.S. next year. The...