June 2, 2023 10:50 am

Constitutional Rights at Stake: Assessing California’s Gun Legislation AB-28 and SB-2

The California Assembly recently passed Assembly Bill 28, the “Gun Violence Prevention, Healing, and Recovery Act,” authored by Assemblyman Jesse Gabriel, Woodland Hills Democrat. Under this measure, commencing on July 1, 2024, the state will “impose an excise tax in the amount of 11 percent of the gross receipts from the retail sale in this…
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May 31, 2023 2:36 pm

Misinformation Is a Word We Use to Shut You Up

Writing at Discourse, published by the Mercatus Center, Martin Gurri describes “disinformation” as follows: The word means, ‘Shut up, peasant.’ It’s a bullet aimed at killing the conversation. It’s loaded with hostility to reason, evidence, debate and all the stuff that makes our democracy great. (Gurri 2023) That is from Gurri’s excellent piece, “Disinformation…
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May 30, 2023 10:50 am

The Debt Ceiling Deal

In January 2023, President Biden pledged he would not negotiate with the incoming Republican-controlled House of Representatives over the U.S. government’s statutory debt ceiling. In May 2023, President Biden caved. Over the last few weeks, the outline of a two-year debt ceiling deal took shape. That deal has now been finalized. USA Today outlines…
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May 30, 2023 10:39 am

The Supreme Court’s Watershed 9-0 Ruling

In a 9-0 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the property of Chantell and Mike Sackett is not the waterways of the United States containing wetlands protected by the Clean Water Act of 1972. The Idaho couple’s property, where they prepared to build a home, was near a ditch that fed into Priest Lake….
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May 25, 2023 3:59 pm

A Rent Control Renaissance Is Underway in the US—and It’s Sure to Make the Housing Shortage Worse

If one needed any more proof that rent control laws suppress investment in new housing, then it is not necessary to look any further than this recent survey from the National Apartment Association. They found that “Over 70% of housing providers say rent control impacts their investment and development plans; actions include reducing investments, shifting…
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May 24, 2023 3:42 pm

Eliminating the Debt Ceiling: Is There Anything the 14th Amendment Can’t Do?

The Biden administration threatens to invoke Section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment to sidestep the longstanding federal debt ceiling in a way that would increase the power of the executive branch. Although largely responsible for the modern debt ceiling, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) would be proud. A US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) case decided in…
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May 23, 2023 12:08 pm

Who Owns Your DNA?

How secure is your DNA? Even if you have never purchased an ancestry kit, your identity can easily be traced through the DNA samples of your relatives. Law enforcement use of genetic genealogy searches to identify criminal suspects is evidence of this fact. The most recent example comes from Idaho, where Bryan Kohberger was arrested for…
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May 18, 2023 11:45 am

No Taxes Before 30

“More Americans benefit from public expenditures than pay income taxes,” contends Adam Mill at American Greatness, a trend accelerated by the response to COVID-19. The real national emergency is a system that “encourages people to underachieve and indulge indolence,” Mill advances a solution: you pay no taxes until you turn 30.  “This simple plan would…
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May 17, 2023 11:13 am

Central Banks—What Lebanon Teaches Us

A raging debate is taking place in many countries about central banks, perceived by many as responsible for inflation and other monetary dislocations that are hurting ordinary folks. The United States is one of them, but there are many more. In Argentina, one of the countries with the highest price inflation, an outsider has…
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May 15, 2023 12:04 pm

The Growing Burden of Old National Debt

Although the debt ceiling debates, like the one currently taking place in Washington D.C., are nothing new, there is something unique about this one that makes it more of a cause for concern than the ones that came before. That something is the escalating cost of financing the U.S. government’s outstanding debt. Economist Gerald P….
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May 11, 2023 2:59 pm

Fed Expands its Span of Control over U.S. Banks

“First Republic Seized, Sold to JPMorgan,” reads the headline on page A1 of May 2’s Wall Street Journal. First Republic’s collapse—the second largest bank failure in U.S. history, according to the story’s authors, Rachel Louise Ensign and Ben Eisen—quickly lost half of its deposits ($100 billion) in the wake of the unraveling of Silicon…
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