The Washington Post : ‘Black boxes’ on lobster boats set a dangerous precedent for America
Eating enough lobster could kill me; eating even a little could ruin my day. Nevertheless, I took two flights and drove 85 miles up the rainy Maine coast to get from Sacramento to the Maine Lobster Festival. My work usually takes me to public policy conferences. This time, I found myself sitting in a sprawling market, surrounded by vendors selli ...
Justice Gorsuch charts the path to “return, all the way, to the Constitution”
Last term, the Supreme Court took a major step toward restoring the separation of powers. In Trump v. Slaughter, the Court ruled that congressional limitations on the president's authority to remove commissioners of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are unconstitutional. As Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, "Subordinates who exercise the Presid ...
National Review : It’s Not Just the Economics, Stupid
In her new book, Fusionism: Liberty, Virtue, and the Future of the American Right, Stephanie Slade sets out to describe and recover a political philosophy that faded in the years after it succeeded. Fusionism helped shape the movement that Ronald Reagan led. But what it fused — liberty and virtue — came apart over the four decades since he left ...
Court finds constitutional violation in fishery council, lets rule stand anyway
A federal appeals court just handed the government a win in its fight to control how much fish American fishermen can catch—even after ruling that the officials who wrote the regulation were never lawfully appointed. On September 3, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit agreed that members of the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management ...
The Hill : More discrimination among expectant moms is a bad prescription
Weeks before her due date, first-time mother Erica Jimenez sought help with her pregnancy. Yet Jimenez was excluded from California's Black Infant Health Program because she was not the right race. When Jimenez attempted to access the program, a representative told her that the program was not for her and offered to show her other resources. Exc ...
In Divided Maine, Privacy from the Government Transcends Party Lines
This year's Maine Lobster Festival hosted a motley political crew. Ardent Trump supporters, bleeding-heart liberals, and everyone in between gathered to eat their favorite crustacean. One political issue cut through the food-centric affair. And attendees overwhelmingly agreed. The government should not be tracking lobstermen. Beyond the mass ...
A guide to your rights and searches of personal property when traveling
Americans do not surrender their constitutional rights when they travel. Yet, currently, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) policy hands U.S. border officials broad authority to conduct warrantless searches and seizures of electronic devices at ports of entry and of vehicles at checkpoints within 100 miles of the border. That policy is doing ...
I supported PLF for years. Then I experienced injustice firsthand.
I'm a farmer in California. As you may have read on PLF's blog, I recently fought an overzealous state agency and won after it tried to invoke California's anti-SLAPP statute. The victory was a win for the First Amendment and all future plaintiffs who might have lawsuits against the government. I wanted to write to you from a different perspecti ...
The making of John Locke—and the ideas that made America
America's 250th birthday has provided plenty of reasons to revisit the men and ideas behind the country's Founding. But another birthday passed at the end of August with considerably less fanfare, despite belonging to a man without whom the American experiment might have looked very different. On August 29, 1632, English philosopher John Locke w ...