The nation of Sri Lanka was many things. A beautiful country, international tourism was a major industry. A fertile land, it grew enough rice to feed all its people. Prosperous, it earned its place as an upper-middle income nation. Then it all went to hell.
In District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. 570 (2008) and its progeny, the Supreme Court established the Second Amendment embodies an individual right–not tied with military service. Law-abiding citizens may possess handguns for the defense of their homes. What about the ability to carry guns outside the home for self-defense? In New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, decided this week, the Court recognized an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home.
At least since Thomas Carlyle’s infamous put-down of economics as the “dismal science” (for economists having the temerity to oppose slavery), it has been popular to disparage economics as a discipline that fosters depression on the one hand and narrow self-interest on the other. Perhaps the two are linked, says the critic.
The first chapter of Francis Fukuyama’s new book, Liberalism and its Discontents, is titled, “What is Classical Liberalism?” While he never explicitly answers the question, he does list some liberal principles: respect for the individual and individual autonomy, protection of property rights and of the right to transact with others, and inclusion of individuals in the political process via the right to vote.
As summer approaches and midterm elections loom, it’s hard to imagine a worse climate for President Joe Biden.
The average price of gasoline is creeping toward $5 a gallon, inflation is at 40-year highs, and stocks are red, with the Dow, S&P, and Nasdaq down 9.8 percent, 14 percent, and 23 percent year-to-date, respectively.
A moment existed in the Jurassic World franchise when businessmen were human, like the rest of us. That moment has passed.
Unlike the 2018 movie Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (see my Independent Institute review here), and even the first movie in the trilogy, Jurassic World: Dominion‘s filmmakers threw away any pretense of nuance or layering. Instead, they crafted a heavy-handed, apocalyptic tale of man-made environmental disaster, all in the pursuit of profit and world domination.
While President Biden’s fiscal policies get much of the credit for contributing to today’s high inflation, there’s more to the story. The Biden-Harris administration’s regulatory agenda adds to the costs of that inflation.
If Jeanine Añez, the former president of Bolivia, were a woman of the left, she would be a “cause célèbre” by now. Because she is a Christian and a conservative (with some of whose ideas, I hasten to add, I do not agree), her recent ten-year prison sentence at the hands of an increasingly dictatorial government led by Luis Arce—a stooge of former president Evo Morales, a close ally of Cuba and Nicaragua—has given rise to less international furor than it should. She is a political prisoner and the case against her (she is accused of having grabbed power illegally in 2019) is grotesque by any standards.
“Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, and Chief Medical Advisor to President Biden, tested positive for COVID-19 on a rapid antigen test,” the National Institutes of Health announced Wednesday. Embattled Americans have reason to be puzzled.
United States v. Microsoft Corp., 253 F.3d 34 (D.C. Cir. 2001) was the first major antitrust case of the digital age. At its conclusion, Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson declared that Microsoft had violated the Sherman Act by monopolizing the U.S. market for “Intel-compatible” computer operating systems (see, e.g., here).
