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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
Agri-Pulse : How one state’s poultry lawsuit became a warrant-free search of another state’s farms
What is a state to do when it cannot regulate farmers outside its borders? The answer, apparently, is to sue someone else for 20 years, then force an unconstitutional settlement that binds farmers unrelated to the lawsuit. In 2005, Oklahoma did exactly that. It sued six large poultry companies for alleged pollution in the Illinois River Watershe ...
Washington Examiner : Stealing land in data center fight—What happened to property rights?
Last month, Nashville's mayor filed legislation to condemn a piece of private property. Often, condemnations are used to allow governments to acquire land to build roads or schools. But in this case, the condemnation was intended to stop a data center. A company had a lawful contract to buy the land, the zoning fight wasn't going the mayor's way, a ...
A can of spray paint is not an argument
Someone in upstate New York took an electric saw to them. In California, they've been knocked down and vandalized. In Idaho, a man rammed a truck into two of them. This summer, a 19-year-old worked his way down Florida's First Coast with cans of silver and gold spray paint, hitting cameras along the way; he told police he doesn't trust license-plat ...
Americans still believe in property rights. ‘Squatters’ proves it.
A new A&E series, Squatters, is bringing a frustrating reality into living rooms across America: homeowners who find themselves locked out of their own property while managing a confusing and often slow legal process to regain possession from trespassers. The show's popularity says something interesting about our culture. Americans don't spe ...
New York Post : Congress’ housing bill isn’t enough to fix California’s problems
This weekend, the most substantive housing bill in decades took effect without President Donald Trump's signature. The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act has been described as the most ambitious federal housing legislation in a generation. Everyone understands that housing is too expensive in many places today because we don't build enough of it. ...