Jim Caton lives in Southeast Michigan where he teaches English and works as a freelance writer. A graduate of Wayne Law School, he writes on matters of constitutional law, public policy and international affairs. He is currently at work on a book of economic and social criticism entitled Ass Backward.


The Road So Far: Permanent War Part 1

Getting old is no good. The world gets blurry. Hair grows in your ears. People stop falling in love with you. And that ain’t the half of it. Lately, I’ve been getting older. The skin on my neck is coming loose, and my face is getting lumpy making it hard to shave without cutting myself.


Banning Huck: Respectable Robbers and Comfortable Education

  Once again Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been banned by a school. This time it is the Friends’ Central School in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania where students had complained that the book made them uncomfortable. You can’t blame folks for wanting to be comfortable. When he’s living with the Widow Douglas, wearing starchy


Le Pen Loses, Fascism Wins in France

French neo-fascist Marine Le Pen’s National Front party emerged from France’s second round of regional elections without a single regional majority. Newspapers and television networks that had been presenting the elections with a lurid focus on Le Pen and her xenophobic, nationalist politics were quick to gloat over her defeat as a rejection of xenophobia


Trans-Pacific Partnership: Twilight of the Nation-State

Trans-Pacific Partnership: Twilight of the Nation-State Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Thursday 12/10 declared that President Obama should not act to pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership before his lame-duck session following the 2016 election. Given the massive trade deal’s dependence on Republican support, it seems McConnell will get his way. Opponents of the treaty,


The Importance of Hedges v. Obama

by Jim Caton The most important federal case of our lifetimes had its beginning four years ago this month. It was a case that was never heard by the Supreme Court, a case almost wholly ignored by the media, a case you have probably never heard of. In December of 2011, President Obama signed the


John Brennan, Our Grand Inquisitor

by Jim Caton Predictably, the U.S. security state has begun to exploit the recent terrorist attacks in Paris in order to tighten its grip on the public. Using the Sunday talk shows, the New York Times and other social media accounts, government officials and mouthpiece pundits have fired their first salvo of cynical alarm over


Shooting the Fourth Amendment on Cemetery Road

On Monday, November 9th, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling that in the words of one of the justices herself “renders the protections of the Fourth Amendment hollow.” The case in question, Mullenix v. Luna, involves the 2010 killing of Israel Leija, Jr., by Texas Department of Public Safety officer Chadrin Mullenix. Fleeing officers


The Future of Our Private Prisons

The Future of Our Private Prisons by Jim Caton http://photos.gograph.com/thumbs/CSP/CSP992/k12902504.jpg Hillary Clinton’s recent vow to end privatized prisons and immigrant detention centers and her renunciation of contributions from firms such as GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America amount to yet another insult added to the fatal injuries long since sustained by American liberalism. The