SCOTUS Revives Suit From Evangelical Christian Challenging Restrictions on Demonstrations

Source: US News & World Report

“The Supreme Court on Friday revived a lawsuit from an evangelical Christian barred from demonstrating in Mississippi after authorities say he shouted insults at people over a loudspeaker. The high court unanimously ruled in the case of Gabriel Olivier, who says his religious and free speech rights were violated when he was arrested for refusing to move his preaching away from a suburban amphitheater. The city said he had shouted insults like ‘whores,’ ‘Jezebel’ and ‘nasty’ at people, sometimes holding signs showing aborted fetuses. Olivier wanted to challenge the law as an unconstitutional restriction on free speech, but lower courts stopped him from suing because he’d been convicted of breaking it. A Supreme Court case from the 1990s found people can’t use civil lawsuits to undermine criminal convictions. But the justices found that doesn’t stop Olivier from suing because he only wants to block future enforcement.” (03/20/26)

https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2026-03-20/supreme-court-revives-suit-from-evangelical-christian-challenging-restrictions-on-demonstrations

We’d Be Winning This War if It Weren’t for Your Coverage

Source: The Atlantic
by Alexandra Petri

“Dear Media: There is no other way of putting this. The Fake News’s contumacious insistence on reporting what is actually happening in Iran rather than what Donald Trump would prefer was happening is setting back the war effort. So we at the FCC would like to provide you with some suggestions for updating your coverage. This is not a threat. However, please remember that we are in the process of consolidating every media company under the control of a man with a named boat who hates all the programming and has preemptively given Donald Trump his kidney, ‘just in case it ever comes in handy.’ … Clap! Why don’t you clap?” (03/20/26)

https://archive.is/AaRQm

Bargaining with the Butcher, Baker, and Brewer: A New Look at Smith’s Most Famous Sentences

Source: EconLog
by Jacob Sider Jost

“Smith’s famous sentences about the butcher, brewer, and baker have often been taken to place interest (often silently emended to ‘self-interest’) at the root of human activity. Gregory Mankiw’s widely used introductory economics textbook glosses them in just this way: ‘Smith is saying that participants in the economy are motivated by self-interest.’ Smith could have said this. His famous sentences might have read ‘The butcher, brewer and baker provide us with dinner not out of benevolence, but out of self-interest. They act not out of humanity, but out of self-love, and seek their own advantage.’ But this is not what Smith wrote.” (03/20/26)

https://www.econlib.org/econlog/bargaining-with-the-butcher-baker-and-brewer