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 ...
Austin American-Statesman : Yes to women in sports. No to rigid quotas in Title IX enforcement
A recent piece in the Austin American-Statesman asked: "Who decided girls don't really want to compete?" But no serious commentator disputes that plenty of women enjoy competing, even at the highest levels of sport. The real policy question is: Who should decide how athletic opportunities are allocated? Should federal bureaucrats impose a stifli ...
Wall Street Journal : Don’t Write Plymouth’s History by Ancestry
Millions visit Plymouth, Mass., to see the birthplace of American self-government. Yet today the town decides who participates in that government based on their ancestry. Plymouth occupies a singular place in the American story, with a rich history of the Pilgrims, the Wampanoag people and their complicated relationship. The town has chosen to p ...
Reason : SCOTUS Said You Can’t Lose Gun Rights for Smoking Pot. But You Could Still Lose a Government License To Work.
In June, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Hemani that the government can't strip your right to possess a firearm just because you smoke marijuana. Yet an old drug conviction could still stop you from waxing eyebrows, cutting hair, or giving massages. Hemani highlights a double standard in constitutional law: Courts roll out th ...
CON Quarterly : New research, a state legislative round-up, and CON news coverage
Welcome back to your quarterly dose of Certificate of Need news— As a reminder, in markets where the government requires a certificate of need or CON, those who wish to offer a new service or expand an existing service must first prove to a regulator that the service is needed. As the name suggests, the regulator's primary task is to determine i ...
National Review : A Colorblind Constitution Is Not Just a Partisan Pet Project
"Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens," Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan famously wrote in his dissent in the 1896 case Plessy v. Ferguson. It would take decades to dismantle the Jim Crow system of racial segregation challenged in that case. Through those years, Harlan's vision of colorbl ...
Surf instructor wins fight to teach in Newport Beach
After a long legal battle, Pacific Legal Foundation client and surf instructor Jason Murchison just won the right to teach surfing lessons on city beaches. The California native has been surfing since he was in kindergarten. Always pulled toward the ocean, Jason chose to attend college at the University of Hawaii and later spent time as a diver ...
New York Post : New Jersey’s outrageous union giveaways are paving a road to ruin
New Jersey is slamming taxpayers with a one-two punch: forcing them to pay more for their roads — and trampling on the Constitution to do it. When Evesham Township in southern New Jersey needed some roads repaved in 2025, it put the job out for bid. Of the eight responding contractors, Earle Asphalt Co.'s bid came in lowest, at $1,463,513. ...
The Hill : New York’s no-bid contracting scandal — A quarter-billion dollars, awarded by race
Mayor Zohran Mamdani's Racial Equity Plan, released on April 6, commits New York City government to using racial classifications to guide more than two hundred goals across nearly every agency. Among other things, the plan commits specific percentages of city contracts to be doled out on the basis of race, a continuation of the city's longstanding ...