Dispensaries providing marijuana to doctor-approved patients operate in a number of states, but they are under assault by the federal government. SWAT-style raids by the DEA and finger-wagging press conferences by grim-faced federal prosecutors may garner greater attention, but the assault on medical marijuana providers extends to other branches of the government as well, and moves by the Internal Revenue S ...

Hidden amongst the reams of reports about the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) scandal is one little gem: the outgoing IRS Commissioner Steve Miller said that America’s tax system is “voluntary” in his testimony. Now, whatever you do, don’t take that to mean that it is actually voluntary in the way that the word voluntary is normally used. While you might think that voluntary means something which is “done wi ...

The journalism world has been rightly outraged by the Justice Department dragging the Associated Press (and now a Fox News reporter) into one of its sprawling leak investigations. As we wrote last week, by obtaining the call records of twenty AP phone lines, “the Justice Department has struck a terrible blow against the freedom of the press and the ability of reporters to investigate and report the news." B ...

All 50 states have adopted a legal limit of 0.08 percent. In a move opponents believe will have no measurable effect on public safety, the National Transportation Safety Board is urging state governments to lower the allowable limits for drivers from 0.08 percent to 0.05 percent, a move it says will reduce fatalities caused by drunk drivers. Even MADD, the most vocal anti-drunk driving group in the world, w ...

May 19, 2013 - The FBI is pushing for expanded power to eavesdrop on private Internet communications. The law enforcement agency wants to force online service providers to build wiretapping capabilities into their products. But a group of prominent computer security experts argues that mandating “back doors” in online communications products is likely to compromise the security of Americans’ computers and c ...

Since news broke that the IRS targeted conservative organizations due to their political views, some on the left have celebrated the actions. The latest to do so is Bette Midler, who took to Twitter Thursday to thank the IRS for going after the small government movement, Twitchy reported. "The IRS overtaxing The Tea Party? I never thought I'd say this to the IRS - THANK YOU! THANK YOU FOR DENYING 501C-4 to ...

Is the tea party getting its groove back? Shouts of vindication from around the country suggest the movement's leaders certainly think so.   They say the IRS acknowledgement that it had targeted their groups for extra scrutiny — a claim that tea party activists had made for years — is helping pump new energy into the coalition. And they are trying to use that development, along with the ongoing controv ...

Obama aide Dan Pfeiffer made the talk show rounds today saying that the “law is irrelevant” when discussing the IRS scandal and that Obama’s location in the wake of the Benghazi attack is an “irrelevant fact.” While some of Pfeiffer’s statements were downright absurd, one must commend him for making an effort in such a scandal-filled week. “I can’t speak to the law here. The law is irrelevant,” Pfeiffer sai ...

In a controversial move that some believe will essentially lead to a de facto ban on semi-automatic handguns, Attorney General Kamala Harris announced that, effective immediately, all new semi-automatic firearms sold in the State of California will require a unique microstamp on every shell ejected when a gun is fired. Microstamping, or ballistic imprinting, is a technology patented in the 1990′s by enginee ...

The Organization of American States on Friday released a report laying out a future in which more countries in the Western Hemisphere legalize marijuana. Although marijuana decriminalization and legalization was only one "scenario" outlined in the report, drug policy reform advocates praised it as a sign of an increasingly open conversation about alternatives to the war on drugs. The OAS delivered the repor ...