The massive farm bill being considered by the House of Representatives — the Federal Agriculture Reform and Risk Management Act (H.R. 1947) — exemplifies the regulatory excess that characterizes the federal government today and which dominates our agricultural policy. Much of this government control began implementation in the 1930s, led by advisors and aides to the…

Editor's note: This commentary was coauthored by John Fund. From Florida to Maryland to New York City, there has been quite a bit of election news recently involving fraud and the potential for fraud that shows the continuing vulnerabilities in our election process and illustrates the fact that there are those who are willing to take advantage of those weaknesses. In…

Karl Rove's recollection of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act ("Immigration Reform and the Hispanic Vote," op-ed, June 6) is, shall we say, highly selective. That law, he writes, "essentially told those here illegally that if they had arrived in the U.S. prior to 1982 and wanted to become citizens, simply raise your right hand." He asserts that the Gang of Eight…

The immigration bill now being considered on the floor of the U.S. Senate does a lot of things — many of them bad. One thing it does not do, however, is fix our broken immigration courts.   When the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) detains illegal immigrants and initiates deportation proceedings against them, those cases go to immigration courts in the Justice…

Ondray Harris, the African-American executive director of the Public Employee Relations Board of the District of Columbia, stepped down last week. His resignation letter provides a disturbing look at alleged discriminatory and partisan conduct by the members of the board tasked with overseeing labor issues and the D.C. government's relations with public…

The revelation that the National Security Agency (NSA) has secured a court order directing Verizon to provide it with call data has sparked controversy. And, rightly so. If the order is genuine (and nobody has denied that it is), it reflects a significant expansion of America’s surveillance apparatus – one that should at a minimum be closely examined. First, some…

It is not clear that Lois Lerner, the embattled head of the IRS's tax-exempt organizations office, waived her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, as has been suggested by commentators ... when she briefly appeared before the House Oversight Committee investigating the targeting of conservative organizations. Lerner proclaimed her innocence before asserting…