Politics, Moderate
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Chip Mellor's Legacy Promotes a Broader Concept of Civil Liberties: For More Than Three Decades, the Institute for Justice Has Shown That Economic Freedom and Private Property Are Essential Safeguards for Ordinary Americans
The recent death of Chip Mellor, former president of the Institute for Justice, made me think about caskets, but not for the reason you might expect. Mellor, who cofounded that public interest law firm with Clint Bolick in 1991, was instrumental in successfully challenging Tennessee's blatantly protectionist restrictions on sales of "funeral ...Read more
Neither Harris Nor Trump Is a Friend of Free Speech: Both Presidential Candidates (and Their Running Mates) Seem Confused About the First Amendment
During last week's vice presidential debate, the Democratic candidate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, asked his Republican opponent, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), whether then-President Donald Trump lost his 2020 bid for reelection. Because Vance did not want to choose between contradicting reality and contradicting his running mate, he dodged that ...Read more
A Houston Drug Cop's Murder Conviction Highlights the Potentially Deadly Consequences of 'Testilying': Similar Scandals Across the Country Suggest the Problem Is Widespread
Nearly six years ago, Houston drug cops killed a middle-aged couple, Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas, after breaking into their home to serve a search warrant. Last week, a jury convicted Gerald Goines, the former narcotics officer who obtained that no-knock warrant by reporting a heroin purchase that never happened, of felony murder.
...Read more
Recent Overdose Trends Underline the Folly of the War on Drugs: Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris Support Supply-Side Tactics That Are Worse Than Ineffective
The annual U.S. death toll from illegal drugs, which has risen nearly every year since the turn of the century, is expected to fall substantially this year. The timing of that turnaround poses a problem for politicians who aim to prevent substance abuse by disrupting the drug supply.
Those politicians include Republican presidential nominee ...Read more
A Movie Mirrors the Stranger-Than-Fiction Reality of Civil Asset Forfeiture: The Outrageous Seizure at the Center of 'Rebel Ridge' Resembles Real-Life Cash Grabs
"I need to report a crime," Terry Richmond, the protagonist of the currently popular Netflix movie "Rebel Ridge," tells Jessica Sims, a police officer in a small Louisiana town. That crime was highway robbery: the theft of $36,000 in cash. But the perpetrators were two of Sims' own colleagues, and the cash grab was perfectly legal.
While the ...Read more
Bowing to Public Opinion, Trump and Harris Agree That Marijuana Should Be Legal: It Remains Unclear Whether Either Would Do Anything About That as President
After former President Donald Trump endorsed a Florida ballot initiative that would legalize recreational marijuana in that state, Vice President Kamala Harris accused her Republican opponent of flip-flopping on the issue. Yet Harris herself did not publicly support marijuana legalization until 2018, when two-thirds of Americans already ...Read more
A Federal Judge Highlights the Hazards of Reckless Drug War Tactics: The Ruling Notes That Breonna Taylor's Death Resulted From the 'Late-Night, Surprise Manner of Entry'
A judge recently dismissed a couple of the federal charges against two former Louisville, Kentucky, police officers who instigated the 2020 drug raid that killed Breonna Taylor. The ruling was by no means a vindication of the defendants, who still face several misdemeanor and felony charges, and it was an implicit indictment of the reckless ...Read more
Kamala Harris' 'Price Gouging' Ban Is a New Idea That Has Failed for Thousands of Years: The Vice President Is Counting on Voters Who Like What She Says but Do Not Consider the Predictable Consequences
In her first economic policy speech as the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris rightly criticized former President Donald Trump for favoring steep tariffs, saying her Republican opponent "wants to impose what is, in effect, a national sales tax on everyday products and basic necessities that we import from other ...Read more
Two Contradictory Decisions on AR-15 Bans Reflect Clashing Views of Supreme Court Precedents: Does the Second Amendment Allow the Government to Ban Guns in Common Use for Lawful Purposes?
Last month, a federal judge ruled that New Jersey's ban on AR-15 rifles is unconstitutional. A week later, a federal appeals court deemed a similar ban in Maryland perfectly consistent with the Second Amendment.
These dueling decisions reflect a basic disagreement about whether the Second Amendment allows the government to ban guns that are ...Read more
'Too Much Law' Gives Prosecutors Enormous Power to Ruin People's Lives: In a New Book, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch Details the 'Human Toll' of Proliferating Criminal Penalties
"Criminal laws have grown so exuberantly and come to cover so much previously innocent conduct that almost anyone can be arrested for something," Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch observed in 2019. Gorsuch elaborates on that theme in a new book, showing how the proliferation of criminal penalties has given prosecutors enormous power to ruin ...Read more
Trump Values Judicial Independence Only When It Benefits Him: His Criticism of President Joe Biden's Proposed Supreme Court Reform Is Hard to Take Seriously
Two weeks before President Joe Biden officially proposed terms limits for Supreme Court justices, Donald Trump preemptively condemned the idea. "The Radical Left Democrats are desperately trying to 'Play the Ref' by calling for an illegal and unConstitutional attack on our SACRED United States Supreme Court," the former president wrote on ...Read more
Promising to Restore 'Law and Order,' Trump Falsely Claims Crime Is Rising: The Most Notable Recent Increase Happened on His Watch, When Homicides Spiked
"Our crime rate is going up," former President Donald Trump claimed during the Republican National Convention last week, when he vowed to "Make America Safe Once Again." Yet the most notable recent increase in the homicide rate happened on Trump's watch, and violent crime has been falling since then.
That gap between Republican rhetoric and ...Read more
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