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Vin Suprynowicz's Columns Archive

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Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

Experience “should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent,” warned Justice Louis D. Brandeis, in his prescient dissent in America’s first case involving warrantless wiretapping, 1928. “Men bo

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

My recent column on the curious lack of international coverage of the death of Rod Ansell (the man who became the real-life model for the movie character “Crocodile Dundee”) in a 1999 shoot-out with Aussie police brought some “attaboys” ...

“Hell

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

In exchange for the “protection,” a bill that would designate nearly 550,000 acres of new “wilderness” in the Nevada desert -- further blocking access and most productive uses of that land -- would also open up for development 45,000 new acres in rur

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

There was no collusion -- the two staffs barely speak.

And that made the coincidence all the more notable.

The lead story on the Review-Journal’s local news section Aug. 17 -- 36 hours after the polls closed on Nevada’s Aug. 15 Nevada primary

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

Thanks to a 2004 law authored by U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., every American school and college that receives federal money must teach about the Constitution on Sept. 17 (the date the document was adopted, in 1787), or the closest school day avail

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

As has happened more than a hundred times in the past 30 years, Clark County coroner’s juries have cleared Metropolitan Police officers of wrongdoing in all 15 inquests into fatal police shootings this year -- including the May 13 shooting death of 1

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

Did history really change -- did America change -- on Sept. 11, 2001?

In terms of events that changed our history, where will the terrorist attack that brought down the World Trade Center on that dark day rank next to, say, the first voyage of Co

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

I spoke to a class of bright young college folk here in Southern Nevada recently. The most intriguing questions are the ones that catch you off guard. Asked what I thought of the United Nations, I believe I stammered out that the Founding Fathers wer

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

A few days ago, on Sept. 6, the Review-Journal -- along with a lot of other metropolitan dailies -- gave prominent coverage to the death of Steve Irwin, the popular Australian zookeeper who charmed international audiences with his enthusiastic animal

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

Decades ago, a then-young man of my acquaintance found summer employment while working his way through college, driving a taxicab in New York City.

The company was unionized.

One day, my young friend showed up for work to find all the cabs si

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

The current cattle-chute nonsense at our airports is designed to accustom us to police-state searches, body probes, and questions about why we’re carrying cash (IRS) or pharmaceuticals (DEA.)

This rigmarole costs billions in lost productivity and

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

On Aug. 23, a teen here in the Las Vegas valley received an e-mail from a Henderson 14-year-old asking “Would you be up for some Columbine-like (expletive).”

“Like what we talking?” asked his admirably articulate correspondent.

“I can’t talk

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

The federal government has spent about $1.2 billion since 1998 on scores of television, print and radio ads designed to “discourage drug use” among youth. President Bush has requested another $120 million for next year.

The words “discourage drug

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

Someday a great biography will be written about Arnold Schwarzenegger, a born-again American who proved able to remake himself in whatever ways proved necessary to succeed.

Properly explored, however, there may be pathos in Schwarzenegger’s story

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

Last week, former Clark County Commissioners Dario Herrera, 33, and Mary Kincaid-Chauncey, 68, were sentenced to 50 and 30 months in federal prison, respectively, for taking bribes from local strip club owner Michael Galardi.

Or were they?

Fe

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

Imagine for a moment the federal government owned all the supermarkets.

They wouldn’t have different names, anymore. They’d all be emblazoned with the blue-eagle logo of the NSA -- the Nutritional Security Administration.

But this would be a

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

Former Clark County Commissioners Dario Herrera, 33, and Mary Kincaid-Chauncey, 68, were sentenced to federal prison Monday for taking bribes from local strip club owner Michael Galardi in the political corruption case dubbed G-sting.

Herrera, a

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

This summer, the new governor of New Jersey, who won election by promising not to raise taxes, got darned upset when the Legislature in Trenton refused to enact his whopping new budget, just because it contained a bunch of, you know ... tax hikes. <

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

*(Apologies, this one got lost in the shuffle -- from the "better late than never" dept.)

Make no mistake, when it comes time to count the faces that delegates to our state capitals see in hearing after hearing, plain old taxpayers clinging tight

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

The Review-Journal offers no formal endorsements in Tuesday’s primary elections, and neither do I. A few observations:

First, not voting is OK. Choosing the new ruler who will decide how much of our money and property to “allow” us to keep from a

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

Flying over the desert West, looking down on an ochre or red-brown surface more than a little reminiscent of Mars, more than one traveler has remarked, “Good gracious. There sure is a whole lot of stinking desert down there. Doesn’t it ever end?”

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

Minimum wage hikes are bad, since they outlaw the jobs of those -- mostly part-time teen-agers -- currently earning $5.15 per hour.

Fans of this form of government meddling are fond of saying a minimum wage hike would “benefit more than 6 million

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

War is horrible. It kills and maims and orphans the innocent along with the combatants, who themselves are not always there willingly. It is to be avoided whenever possible.

(For instance, Lincoln had no right to invade the South, which in no way

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

Imagine finding that -- as you innocently boarded a commercial flight at McCarran Airport last year -- you’d been falsely identified by a U.S. air marshal as a potential terrorist.

Placed on a watch list without being told why, you could face int

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

In July, 2003, the Nevada Supreme Court in “Guinn v. Legislature” had the nerve to dismiss a constitutional amendment requiring a two-thirds legislative vote to raise taxes. Although that amendment had been ratified by an overwhelming majority of Ne

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

One after another, the major gubernatorial candidates of both parties who oppose state Sen. Bob Beers’ modest “Tax and Spending Control” initiative have trouped through the Review-Journal editorial offices this summer, insisting the proposed constitu

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

Melvin C. Bailey, Jr., master chief petty officer, USN retired, writes in:

“I was impressed by the comprehensive nature of the Review-Journal’s June 19 editorial, ‘Police no longer need to knock.’ Sadly, your hypothetical question about an Americ

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

Well, give them one thing: Warring candidates Brian Krolicki and Barbara Lee Woollen have managed to “push through the clutter” and elevate the visibility of a summer primary race for a do-little office that Nevadans generally ignore -- that of lieut

Article Image The Libertarian

Vin Suprynowicz

These days, states are finding an increasing share of their budgets consumed by Medicaid -- the socialized medical subsidy for the poor.

Not that Medicaid is a one-size-fits-all program. It does require that certain poor people -- such as the dis

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