(Shutterstock) 1989—In solo dissent in Hamblen v. Dugger, Florida justice Rosemary Barkett opines that a capital defendant is not permitted to waive his right to present evidence of mitigating circumstances. Such waiver, she contends, somehow makes it impossible for the sentencing court to carry out its statutory role of weighing aggravating and mitigating circumstances when

Introduction In April 2016, the Democrats and Hillary were the natural preference for Putin. Remember the trampoline joke by Dmitry Rogozin? Hillary Clinton delivered on her promise “to help strengthen Russia”, including the act of making the United States entirely dependent on Russia for human space flight. The list of her feats is long and

Much of the debate about campus culture would have you believe that the average college student is hellbent on tearing down the patriarchy. One wakes up in the morning, wallows in grievance, and proceeds to spend the day railing against the evils of privilege. I attend Harvard University, one of the places … Read More

If I were to buy a Tesla, because I thought it was the best car in the world, but had trouble making the payments for it and for my mortgage, and in the end lose my car and my house, who is responsible: the Tesla advertisers, the banks that extend credit, my boss who does

Joe Biden joins Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti on a campaign stop in Los Angeles, Calif., May 8, 2019. (Kyle Grillot/Reuters) Of the four top candidates for the Democratic nomination — Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren — Biden is the only one who has not come out for outlawing most private

To hear most of our higher-education leaders talk, you’d gather that their sole concerns are helping students and improving society. But in their recent book Cracks in the Ivory Tower, two scholars (Jason Brennan and Phil Magness) do a “public choice” analysis of our higher-ed system and show that it’s full of self-interested actions that waste resources

A woman smokes a Juul e-cigarette. (Ronen Zvulun/Reuters) Virtue-signaling can have real-world consequences. San Francisco, not known as a city particularly interested in fighting the drug war, has just passed legislation banning the sale of e-cigarettes to consumers of any age — while leaving real cigarettes alone. The city’s board of supervisors passed the bill

The National Park Service has a useful list of the ways Presidents have celebrated the Fourth of July in the past. Some interesting ones (their editing is terrible, but this is copy&paste. Just assume a [sic] throughout): 1798 – President Adams is in Philadelphia where he reviews military parade with a reception later in the

Campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. (Brian Snyder/Reuters) A message from a young person who’s on your side Much of the debate about campus culture would have you believe that the average college student is hellbent on tearing down the patriarchy. One wakes up in the morning, wallows in grievance, and proceeds to spend

“We hold these truths to be self-evident….” We sometimes forget that Jefferson, even at 33, was a massively educated man. Almost everyone forgets that at the time, a proper education included a kind of formal training in mathematics and logic that hardly anyone receives today — the geometry of Euclid and the logic and rhetoric

(Pixabay) 1776—The Declaration of Independence is a stirring statement of America’s creed, but is it also a sexist and xenophobic document? Defending the Supreme Court’s increasing use of foreign law in support of its rulings on the meaning of the Constitution, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg titles a 2005 speech “‘A decent Respect to the Opinions

This summer we reached a milestone in the American energy industry. The United States now produces 12 million barrels of crude oil per day. This shatters the record set a year ago, which in turn shatters the U.S. production record set way back in 1970. The United States is now the world’s top energy producer.

Activists with Planned Parenthood and the Center for American Progress protest in Washington, D.C., June 28, 2017. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters) Writing for Mother Jones, Kevin Drum takes issue with my Corner post from earlier this week on the recent Gallup survey showing a short-term increase in Americans who describe themselves as “pro-life.” Drum notes that Gallup’s

Did the Russians pay the 2020 Democratic candidates to throw the 2020 election to President Donald Trump? Watching all four hours of the first Democratic debates, it became increasingly difficult to reach any other conclusion. The candidates unanimously agreed on “Medicare for All” and that it should cover illegal aliens — or as the moderator

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks during a press conference before a town-hall meeting in Queens, New York, April 27, 2019. (Jeenah Moon/Reuters) Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Wednesday released a plan to address the increasing numbers of migrants crossing the southern border, calling among other things for decriminalizing illegal border crossings. In her four-point plan, the New

Long before Donald Trump became President of the United States, the Opinion section of The New York Times was already a hotbed of America-loathing (if not outright hating) leftist ideology. They just used to try and hide it a little back then. One of Trump’s greatest achievements as president thus far has been to unmask the

On Sunday, Kamala Harris expressed support for new, federally mandated busing policies. “I support busing. Listen, the schools of America are as segregated, if not more segregated, today than when I was in elementary school,” Harris said. “Where states fail to do their duty to ensure equality of all … Read More

Coal camp company houses sit below the Lone Mountain Processing coal mine in St. Charles, Va., May 18, 2018. (Brian Snyder/Reuters) Two major U.S. coal companies have declared bankruptcy in the last two weeks, in a dramatic demonstration of the industry’s recent decline. Revelation Energy LLC. and its affiliate Blackjewel LLC. filed for Chapter 11

Happy Fourth of July! We have reason to celebrate. The Fourth honors the founding of America. It’s the anniversary of the day in 1776 that the Declaration of Independence was approved. The Declaration was important. It didn’t say that America would be the best country because it would have the biggest military, toughest leaders, most

Naturalization ceremony in Los Angeles, Calif., in 2013. (Mario Anzuoni/Reuters) Two-thirds of voters support allowing the U.S. census to include a question about an individual’s citizenship status, disagreeing with the Supreme Court’s decision to block the question. In a Harvard CAPS/Harris poll released Tuesday, 67 percent of respondents said the question, “Is this person a

Special Counsel Robert Mueller departs after delivering a statement on his investigation at the Justice Department in Washington, D.C., May 29, 2019. (Jim Bourg/Reuters) Making the click-through worthwhile: House Democrats genuinely believe that Robert Mueller’s testimony will be a game-changer in their effort to impeach the president, some ominous news for John Hickenlooper’s presidential campaign,

WASHINGTON — It is often said our nation’s capital is filled with wealthy college-educated elites operating in a company town where everything is transactional. They are a clubby set of folks who can “fail up” in their profession and rarely interact meaningfully with anyone who isn’t part of their peerage. They have lost touch with

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in Washington, D.C., June 1, 2017 (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters) Today is the anniversary of perhaps the most consequential decision made by President George H.W. Bush. On July 1, 1991, he nominated Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court. Thomas was nominated to replace Justice Thurgood Marshall, whom Professor Stephen Carter called

If you watched either or both of the two Democratic Party presidential candidate debates, and if you are a liberal, a conservative or a centrist, you had to have been depressed. The intellectual shallowness, the demagoguery and the alienation from reality were probably unprecedented in American political history. Only a leftist, a socialist or a

Sen. Todd Young (R., Ind.) speaks at a news conference in Washington, D.C., May 8, 2019. (Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters) Both the White House and congressional Republicans are taking a hard look at restrictive zoning laws. YIMBYism is the ideology of “Yes in My Backyard.” Its advocates support urban development to bring down rents, among other

Robert Bork at his Senate confirmation hearings in 1987. (CNP/Getty) 1987—Upon President Reagan’s announcement of his decision to nominate D.C. Circuit judge Robert H. Bork to the Supreme Court, Senator Edward Kennedy races to the Senate floor to launch a viciously false attack on Bork: Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would

Supreme Court justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh at the Capitol in Washington, D.C. February 5, 2019. (Doug Mills/Pool via Reuters) The end of Justice Kavanaugh’s first term on the Supreme Court is a fitting time to make some observations. This has not been a year marked by many ideologically divisive landmark decisions, but the

Nike shoes at a sporting-goods store in New York City. (Mike Segar/Reuters) Nike, the athletic shoe giant, has pulled a product off the shelves in response to a storm of social-media protest. Nike, the athletic shoe giant, has pulled a product off the shelves in response to a storm of social-media protest. The product was

(Pixabay) 1993—In furtherance of his 1985 desegregation plan for the Kansas City, Missouri, School District—a plan that will become (according to the description embraced by Chief Justice Rehnquist) the “most ambitious and expensive remedial program in the history of school desegregation”—federal district judge Russell G. Clark orders the state of Missouri to fund salary increases

During Thursday night’s Democratic debate, California Senator Kamala Harris blasted former Vice President Joe Biden for not supporting school busing when he was a member of the Senate. In the ensuing days, several Democratic presidential hopefuls have come out in support of resurrecting a failed policy that Americans have opposed for decades — that is,