“Whatever the shortcomings in Kristen Welker’s ‘Meet the Press’ interview, it did provide Trump with the opportunity to disarm one of his defenses to the indictments regarding Jan. 6, 2021. Welker asked, ‘The most senior lawyers in your own administration and in your campaign told you that after you lost more than 60 legal challenges that it was over. Why did you ignore them and decide to listen to a new outside group of attorneys?’ He responded that he didn’t ‘respect them.’ He explained, ‘You know who I listen to? Myself.’ … Just to make sure everyone understood he wasn’t blaming the lawyers, he reiterated, ‘It was my decision. I listened to some people.’ His attorneys might now be barred from even raising the defense.” (09/21/23)
“Government-funded research should be treated as ‘work for hire,’ and its results should always, in every case, go instantly into the public domain. The idea isn’t far-out or fringe. It’s how government-employee-generated writing and text are already handled where copyright is concerned. … It’s time to get past the idea that monopolies and government research winner-picking are the wellsprings of innovation. They aren’t and never have been.” (09/21/23)
“As the Nobel Laureate on the subject points out, Bill Nordhaus, we shouldn’t have an emissions target. Because that’s the wrong way to incentivise the innovation necessary to gain less climate change. We need to use prices and the market, not bureaucratic dictat. But OK, everyone’s decided, wrongly, to use a target instead. As we’ve pointed out before, they’re still getting it wrong even if we allow them that pass. For the economics here is terribly simple. There are costs of allowing climate change to happen. There are costs of stopping climate change happening. The costs we don’t have to carry by not stopping it are therefore benefits of allowing climate change to happen. Equally, a benefit of stopping climate change is not having to bear the costs of climate change happening.” (09/21/23)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“People are upset over the homelessness problem in American cities. Unfortunately, however, all too many of them are not interested in adopting the solution to the problem, which is twofold: (1) repeal zoning laws and (2) repeal minimum-wage laws. … Today, much of the anger that arises from the homelessness problem is directed toward the homeless. But what are they supposed to do — commit suicide? They can’t afford to rent a place in which to live because zoning laws have knocked out low-priced housing within the city. Moreover, minimum-wage laws prevent them from getting a job at a wage that is lower than the government-mandated minimum.” (09/21/23)
“What’s the alternative to tautological trickery? One approach is the study of history. Unfortunately, history reveals no strong examples of either minarchy or anarcho-capitalism. The United States wasn’t exactly minarchy even in 1880, and Iceland wasn’t exactly anarcho-capitalism even in the year 1000. Still, these are probably history’s closest approximations to minarchy and anarcho-capitalism, and we can learn a lot by studying them. Long story short: Both worked well for their era, but Iceland decayed into statism more slowly. … Furthermore, history teaches us a great deal about how markets and governments work. One big lesson is that private property, free competition, and reputation normally deliver much better performance than public property, coercive monopoly, and faith in authority. Another big lesson is that despite textbook naysaying, markets have provided virtually every good you can imagine — including police, courts, and law.” (09/21/23)
Source: The Spectator
by Jay Bhattacharya & Martin Kulldorff
“On July 4, our Independence Day, Judge Terry Doughty issued a preliminary injunction ordering the federal government to immediately cease contact with social media companies, which it had been urging to censor protected free speech. Evidence unearthed in the Missouri v. Biden case, in which we are co-plaintiffs, has revealed a vast federal enterprise dictating to social media companies who and what to censor. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Surgeon General’s office, the National Institutes of Health, the FBI, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the White House itself were all closely involved. You can get a good sense of what ideas the government finds threatening from its priority list of what it does not want Americans to talk about freely: the pandemic, vaccines, wars, concerns about election fraud and Hunter Biden’s laptop.” (09/21/23)
“This summer, Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Jerry Moran (R-KS) introduced the bipartisan Visa Processing Improvement Act. The bill aims to create long-lasting solutions to the egregious wait times that visitors and immigrants to the United States often face at American consulates abroad. The bill includes provisions to increase consular capacity by expanding the availability and use of English-language interviews and recruiting new consular fellows from foreign service applicant pools. It will also establish wait time standards and accountability metrics, extend interview waiver eligibility, create a new expedited processing option, and direct the Department of State to revalidate B-1 and B-2 visas domestically for eligible applicants.” (09/21/23)
Source: Orange County Register
by Andrew P Napolitano
“On ‘Meet the Press’ last week, former President Donald Trump made a compelling case highlighting the differences between his years in office and President Joe Biden’s. He also substantially and irretrievably undercut his principal defense in the four criminal cases in which he is a defendant. … Trump revealed that his legal team in the White House told him that he lost the election and there was insufficient evidence to challenge or overturn it. Then he said that he opted to ignore their advice ‘because I didn’t respect them.’ ‘It was my decision,’ to do what I did, not theirs. Ouch. If he was not taking the advice of his lawyers, then he cannot invoke the advice of counsel defense. Either he relied on the advice of his legal team or he didn’t.” (09/21/23)
“Earlier this year, Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra and the Commerce Department made an announcement that should have sent shock waves through Boston’s university community. The federal government announced the formation of a working group to ‘develop a framework for the implementation of the march-in provision of the Bayh-Dole Act.’ This doesn’t sound too threatening, but ‘implementation of the march-in provision’ would have serious adverse consequences for university research. … the Biden administration’s working group is considering utilizing the march-in provision to force lower drug prices on any product developed with federal funds. For example, a Cambridge biotech company that licensed a patent on a molecule from an NIH-funded Harvard lab could be stripped of its patent if the government did not like their drug price. In all likelihood, the government would then allow a generic company to manufacture the product and sell it more cheaply.” (09/21/23)
“Veterans have and continue to play, an important role in instigating social and political change in this country. One such group of veterans is the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, or VVAW: a movement of military veteran activist who, while struggling to heal from the psychological, emotional, and moral injuries of war, demanded through protests and demonstrations that our leaders fulfill their obligation to help veterans address their physical and mental health challenges, find alternative resolutions to conflict, and to bring an immediate end to the war in Southeast Asia. Soldiers coming home from war joined VVAW members in speaking out through their poetry, short stories, novels, memoirs, and testimony to Congress and the American people about their experiences in war and afterward.” (09/21/23)
