“A few years ago, court packing was a fringe idea with no realistic prospects. President Biden’s commission on Supreme Court reform pointedly declined to endorse adding seats, and no realistic vote count could reach 51 in the Senate—not only for expansion itself, but for nuking the legislative filibuster to bring it to a vote at all. That is no longer the case.” (06/26/26)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Joshua Mawhorter
“It is not uncommon for people to conflate victory and liberty with centralization and inflation. Even in the case of the American Revolution—which was relatively decentralized—many at the time, and others since, argued that monetary inflation, standing armies and a state-centric approach to war, consolidation under a centralized national government, direct taxation, and central banking were all necessary to achieve victory and independence. The not-too-subtle implication is that liberty depends on big government.” (06/26/26)
“By statute, the approval process of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is to determine the safety and effectiveness of a new drug. If both requirements are met, the new drug is approved. The process usually takes roughly a decade. Most people would reasonably assume the lengthy approval process is due to the need to prove a new drug is safe for use by patients. But the years-long lag between a drug’s submission for approval and its arrival on the market often stems from the process of assessing its effectiveness. The easiest way to think about it is this: determining safety protects patients; determining effectiveness protects consumers.” (06/27/26)
“Leading up to our Independence Day party, my wife asked whether she should buy us T-shirts celebrating America’s 250th anniversary or stick with what we already have. We went with our existing garments. When the red, white, and blue string lights are up and the Gadsden flag is flying out front, my son will don his free speech shirt, my wife will wear one with USA printed across it, and my shirt will show an image of George Washington crossing the Delaware and text reading: ‘Americans. Willing to cross a frozen river to kill you. In your sleep. On Christmas. Not kidding, we’ve done it.’ It will be festive. But not everybody shares our enthusiasm for celebrating the nation’s birthday and the liberty at the core of its founding philosophy.” (06/26/26)
‘Most of us tend to think that the people controlling billions, or even hundreds of billions of dollars, at major corporations have a pretty good idea of what they are doing with their companies’ money. But that clearly is not always the case.” (06/26/26)
“‘I will now sketch,’ English classical liberal, ‘voluntaryist,’ Auberon Herbert wrote in ‘The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State’ (1885), ‘the practical measures by which, as it seems to me, we could give the best effect to a system of the widest possible liberty; our great object being to secure the limitation of services undertaken by the government.’ Herbert was one of the most earnest defenders of individualism in late Victorian England. He remains an inspiration today; seeing how he thought liberty should be protected ought to be instructive.” (06/26/26)
