Earlier this week, I posted about the recent Court of Appeals decision finding that Obama violated the Constitution when making “recess appointments” when the Senate was not in recess. Well, over at Breitbart, there is an article on the response from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). At base, the NLRB has decided to...
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An article at Truth Out by Thom Hartmann argues that the Second Amendment was ratified to preserve slavery, particularly to empower the state militia that used arms to enforce the institution through slave patrols. I wrote to Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, an historian who has written at some length about the history of American militia...
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The Constitution allows presidents to fill certain vacancies temporarily when the Senate is out of session–a recess appointment. ”The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.” While in office, Obama has made about...
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On how to respond to mass shootings and violent crime, the public opinion trends frighten me, especially when broken down by political identification. Predictably, Democrats are in favor of gun control by wider margins than Republicans. But still, 92% of Republicans favor universal background checks, which I consider as bad a proposal as any...
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This post was prompted by all-too-common opinions expressed in Randall Holcombe’s recent “Federal Government Debt Undermines the Programs It Finances” blog. The respondents passionately insist that Social Security is a contract, whatever you do to the budget, do not touch Social Security. “I paid in and it is a contract. They owe me.” The...
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I was surprised to see James Buchanan characterized in the New York Times as “an austere man with a severe aspect that many students found intimidating.” I was never a student of his, but the James Buchanan I had the pleasure of getting to know as a guest at numerous meetings of the Mont...
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James M. Buchanan, one of the past century’s most distinguished economists and most compelling champions of free markets, died earlier today at age 93. His professional career spanned more than sixty years, during which he wrote extensively on public finance, economic philosophy, and other topics in related areas. With Gordon Tullock, he founded a...
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Today, the Supreme Court hears argument in Missouri v. McNeely. The issue presented is whether a police officer may obtain a nonconsensual and warrantless blood sample from a driver the officer believes is drunk. The petition for certiorari can be found here. Essentially, the cops stopped McNeely late at night and McNeely did poorly on...
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This year, litigation proceeds about the ObamaCare requirement dealing with health insurance and abortion drugs. The mandate requires employers to provide health insurance coverage that includes abortion-inducing drugs, contraception, and sterilization. Employers are compelled to provide these in spite of religious beliefs about abortion. Failure to comply results in fines of $100 per employee per day....
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As the U.S. government prepared for and then engaged fully in World War II, it made increasingly stringent efforts to control inflation by imposing price controls. Late in 1942, these controls were strengthened substantially, and from early 1943 through mid-1946, when the controls were allowed to lapse, the consumer price index rose very little....
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