A leaked Supreme Court draft opinion denying the constitutional legitimacy of the Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade opinion has piqued interest concerning “unalienable” individual rights: (i) whether such rights logically exist; (ii) if so, then how are they to be reified; and (iii) which branch and level of government is constitutionally authorized and best equipped to defend them.
After his first year in office, President Biden doesn’t have much to brag about. That’s especially true when it comes to the economy. So much so that he’s reached into his bag of political tricks and pulled out an old one. He’s trying to make himself look better by fudging facts.
On May 11, acting National Institutes of Health (NIH) director Lawrence Tabak conceded that $350 million in undisclosed royalty payments to Dr. Anthony Fauci, his deputy Clifford Lane, former NIH director Francis Collins, and hundreds of NIH employees presented “an appearance of a conflict of interest.” Tabak, deputy ethics counselor of NIH since 2010 and in 2009 acting principal deputy director, seemed unaware of developments at his own agency.
I was deeply saddened to hear that David Theroux recently passed away. Being a huge fan of the Independent Institute since college and someone who benefited from David’s encouragement and support for years, the loss is especially difficult.
Over the last few weeks, rumors have been circulating that the Kansas City Chiefs are considering moving from Kansas City, Missouri to Kansas City, Kansas.
The Rev. Martin Luther King had a dream that in my youth I came to share wholeheartedly, “[T]hat my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” To my disappointment, my university now has a counter-dream of elevating race-consciousness on campus through a “Take the Pledge” campaign, which challenges long-espoused cherished values of all universities.
Last week, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen became the first member of President Biden’s administration to acknowledge its spending policies are feeding inflation in the U.S. economy.
That admission came during an interview with the Wall Street Journal‘s editor in chief Matt Murray. The video clip below is cued to start with the question he asked that led to her admission. The relevant portion of the exchange starts at the 7:30 mark and takes place in less than a minute.
“Sacramento police want your guns in exchange for gas money,” says a May 6 Sacramento Bee headline. The department asks residents to give away their firearms, which the Second Amendment authorizes them to keep and bear, for a $50 gas gift card that would not even provide a fill-up for many vehicles.
The well-publicized leaked draft of the Supreme Court’s majority opinion on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, if it represents the Court’s final decision, would allow the State of Mississippi to retain the prohibition on abortion beyond 15 weeks into a pregnancy that was passed by the Mississippi legislature. That much is clear. But there is some ambiguity on the degree to which abortion would be permitted, more generally.
At the beginning of the Covid pandemic, schools confronted new difficulties when they were tossed into remote learning due to prolonged lockdowns. Resorting to online classes, schools relied on obtrusive software to proctor online tests. State Senator Dr. Richard Pan is recently advancing with a proposed revision to California’s Business and Professions Code relating to student privacy. The California Student Test Taker Privacy Protection Act aims to curb the invasive surveillance of remote students by their schools.
