“Supreme Court guts affirmative action in college admissions,” headlined Politico on June 29. In effect, affirmative action means racial preferences. Few, if any, reports recalled that California eliminated racial preferences 27 years ago, not by a court decision but by a vote of the people. 

Section One of the Fourteenth Amendment, in pertinent part, declares that “[n]o State . . . shall . . . deny to any person within its jurisdiction equal protection of the laws.” At its most basic level, the Equal Protection Clause requires that state and local governments treat similarly situated individuals the same. Indeed, coming out of Reconstruction, one can fairly say that the central purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to eliminate racial discrimination. Unfortunately, the early Supreme Court opinions (e.g., Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)) ignored this core purpose. They allowed states to provide separate accommodations and facilities for blacks and whites as long as they were “equal.” But when benefits and burdens are doled out based on race, such equality is impracticable, if not impossible. The Court should have followed the wisdom of Justice John Marshall Harlan, who pleaded in Plessy that “Our constitution is colorblind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. . .The arbitrary separation of citizens on the basis of race is . . . inconsistent with the civil freedom and the equality before the law established by the Constitution. It cannot be justified upon any legal grounds.” Unfortunately, the Court allowed separate but equal to reign until Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

In a controversial move aimed at curbing the escalating issue of sideshows, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors has taken a bold step by passing an ordinance that criminalizes onlookers, penalizing them with hefty fines and potential jail time. While the concern over sideshows and their undeniable negative impact on public safety is justified, the decision to target mere spectators raises serious questions about the legal validity and efficacy of such measures.

As I pointed out a few months ago, empirical studies of the minimum wage have a way of stepping into a host of price-theoretic potholes. Among these pitfalls, there’s one in particular that seems underdeveloped. It relates to the margins of adjustment.

This piece is one side of the argument in our two-post debate on Ron DeSantis’s feud with Disney. You can find the argument on the other side, written by Samuel R. Staley, here.

Like a lot of corporate giants these days, The Walt Disney Company weighed in on behalf of progressive politics and got burned.

Government has often been characterized as the institution that has a monopoly over the legitimate use of force. But effective governance requires more than this. Government must be able to display the ability to use sufficient force against those who oppose its mandates so that resistance appears futile. Most people comply with government mandates because not doing so is not a viable option. Actual use of force is reserved for those few who try to resist, to demonstrate to everyone else the negative consequences that come with non-compliance.

This piece is one side of the argument in our two-post debate on Ron DeSantis’s feud with Disney. You can find the argument on the other side, written by Graham Walker, here.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is plainly serious about the presidential race, but can he build the momentum needed to win the Republican Party nomination? A key to his campaign’s success may well be how he unwinds his political feud with the Disney Corporation. 

In 2012 Colorado and Washington became the first states to legalize marijuana for recreational use. Minnesota recently became the 23rd. Maryland, New Jersey, and Minnesota are expected to follow soon. When they do, 25 states and Washington DC will allow adults to use a Schedule 1 substance recreationally. 

I was recently told that humanity is “rapidly advancing” toward solving the socialist calculation problem. I wasn’t told why, but around the same time, economist Daron Acemoglu suggested that artificial intelligence could be the solution. To get literary, perhaps we are on the verge of creating the Machines, the artificial intelligences that plan the global economy in Isaac Asimov’s short story, “The Evitable Conflict” (which became the last chapter of his book, I, Robot.) The Machines perfectly calculate the needs of humanity and organize the economic order to best provide for them, in keeping with the first law of robotics, that “a robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm.”

The U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has ruled in favor of Maine lobstermen by ordering the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to vacate a 2021 biological opinion regarding North Atlantic right whales that cut in half the number of lobster traps that could be deployed. The appeal court ruled 3-0, and Judge Douglas Ginsberg authored the opinion.