A US News and World Reports article documents there are now nine confirmed cases of monkeypox in the US across seven states as of May 27th, 2022. Globally, the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota estimates 225 monkeypox infections across 21 countries. Suspected global infections (testing for monkeypox is tedious) are higher.
When I get to criminal law at the end of the semester, I ask my law & economics students, “why do mass shootings seem to be on the rise?” The recent horrific events in Buffalo, NY, and Uvalde, TX, raise that question again. The headlines were followed by the usual demands to “do something,” meaning enact more stringent gun control laws, which, of course, criminals will not obey.
On May 27, 2022, the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) announced it was responsible for starting two fires in New Mexico that grew and combined to become the state’s largest-ever wildfire.
U.S. politicians, regardless of party, share one common trait. When it comes to dealing with the national debt growing too large, they do whatever they can to put off dealing with it.
The U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) has released its Annual Statistical Transparency Report disclosing the use of national security surveillance laws for the year 2021—and to no one’s surprise it documents the wide-ranging overreach of intelligence agencies and the continued misuse of surveillance authorities to spy on millions of Americans. Specifically, the report chronicles how Section 702, an amendment to the Foriegn Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), that authorizes the U.S. government to engage in mass surveillance of foreign targets’ communications, is still being abused by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to spy on Americans without a warrant.
Liberalization is taking a back seat. Almost everywhere you look in Latin America, the left is running the show—or on the verge of doing so if Gustavo Petro wins the soon-to-be presidential elections in Colombia and Lula da Silva (yes, the corrupt former president who presided over a vast empire of graft and spent time in jail) is elected again in October in Brazil.
Despite much hand-wringing by California politicians and bills in the state legislature with lofty goals and rhetoric, home prices in California continue to set new records. Apartment rental prices also continue to soar in Southern California, the Central Valley, and Northern California.
As expected, on May 12, the California Coastal Commission voted unanimously to reject the Poseidon Water desalination plant in Orange County. As the California Globe noted, the plant was “decades in the works during a time when California needs more freshwater to combat a drought in the state.”
The ontology of the human being is elusive. But let’s say: You are a soul and you own your person.
Increasingly, it seems, people are quick to escalate what might be viewed as differences into animosities. This has manifested itself in a number of different ways in recent years.
