Free Republic

The decision revives a lawsuit against a Texas officer who shot a driver after endangering himself by jumping onto a moving car. ============================================================= During a routine traffic stop near Houston in 2016, a police officer killed Ashtian Barnes by blindly firing two shots into his car after jumping onto the doorsill as Barnes began to drive away. Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled that the shooting was justified by the threat that the officer, Harris County Constable Roberto Felix Jr., faced when he shot Barnes. Last Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rejected the...

Not since Herbert Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff has a president chosen to disregard a larger body of informed opinion than President Trump did when he instituted his protectionist trade policy. Based on a series of verifiably false grievances—wages haven’t grown in 50 years, manufacturing has been hollowed out by imports, countries with trade surpluses are “ripping us off”—Mr. Trump used constitutionally questionable powers to abrogate congressionally approved trade agreements and undermine the world’s trading system. Markets convulsed in anticipation of the massive wealth annihilation that would accompany the shredding of global supply chains and a transition to a more...

It is worrisome that “progressive” activism has managed to infiltrate so much of American higher education, but wildly politicized sociology and English departments can do us only marginal damage. Few students are interested in the ravings of those professors, and almost no one is influenced by their writings. On the other hand, the leftist capture of our law schools is a very serious matter. How we educate future lawyers and judges affects society as a whole. The corruption of our legal system is not a minor illness we can shake off; it’s a life-threatening disease. In his new book Lawless:...

Key Points Certain rules that reduce pensioners’ Social Security benefits have been in place for decades. House lawmakers voted to approve a bill that would nix those rules. Critics say more comprehensive Social Security reform should be prioritized instead. ********************************************************************* A bipartisan bill to change Social Security benefit rules for pensioners passed in the House of Representatives on Tuesday, with 327 lawmakers voting to support the measure. Now, the proposal heads to the Senate, where the chamber’s version of the bill has 62 co-sponsors, “surpassing the majority needed to pass the bill on the U.S. Senate floor and send it...

So-called “policy experts” at the libertarian Cato Institute, known for its defense of open borders, are admitting that Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) is correct when he says “immigration increases housing prices” for Americans. “We don’t want to blame immigrants for higher housing prices….

From Foreign Policy magazine comes a breathtakingly obtuse article by Jon Hoffman of the Cato Institute. The article’s title, “Israel Is a Strategic Liability for the United States,” only hints at the venom that Hoffman directs at Israel. The piece is a lengthy denunciation of the “special relationship” between the United States and Israel and of Israel’s conduct of the war against Gaza, which–astonishingly–never once mentions Hamas’s October 7 massacres, or the fact that Gaza started the war. In Hoffman’s view, it is as though Benjamin Netanyahu suddenly took it into his head to massacre Palestinians. The article is too...

Florida Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna blasted a so-called “immigration expert” testifying before a House committee in Washington on Wednesday when he began laughing at her over her accusations that the Biden administration is aiding in the trafficking of children at the southern border. David J. Bier, associate director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, was testifying before lawmakers during a House hearing on immigration when he began openly laughing at Rep. Luna when she was asking him her questions. The Cato Institute is a libertarian think tank based in Washington, D.C., that is funded by the Koch Brothers...

New York once again has the dubious distinction of being labeled “the least free state” in America, according to a report issued by libertarian-leaning think tank The Cato Institute. The Empire State ranked dead last — 50th — for policies impacting economic, social and personal freedoms in 2022, the report claims. By comparison, Florida ranked 2nd after New Hampshire as the most free state in the union. Cato said New York is a fiscal basket case. The state ranked 50th for economic freedom and scored at or near the bottom for debt and state and local taxation, government consumption, land...

Western leaders have long fostered the self-serving myth that NATO is an organization solely for the mutual defense of its members. The corollary is that other nations therefore have no legitimate reason to fear the most powerful military alliance in history. After all, it is an association of peace-loving democracies. NATO is not a purely defensive alliance, and its members are not peace-loving democracies. The operational expression of the myth is most evident regarding relations with Russia. According to the dominant narrative (that a sycophantic news media obediently circulate) is that NATO’s addition of new members in Eastern Europe during...

It’s not every day you find a government document calling for Cato Institute employees to be charged with treason, but as a new article in The Dispatch details, here we are: "In March 2020, a maritime shipping advisory panel offered a simple suggestion to the government: Charge all past and current members of two libertarian think tanks with treason. "It is certainly not the first time a bunch of libertarians angered members of a bureaucratic panel. But this backlash stemmed from criticism of the Jones Act, a century‐​old law that imposes requirements for shipping between American ports." Haley Byrd Wilt’s...

Maybe securing the border isn’t the fix. A reporter tried to set Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene straight by telling her that most fentanyl coming across the border from Mexico is carried by U.S. citizens, not immigrants. When challenged, the reporter said his source was the Cato Institute. Fentanyl, the synthetic opioid responsible for 88 percent of opioid overdose deaths in the United States, is showing up in campaign ads across the country. The message is simple: Fentanyl would disappear if illegal immigration disappeared. This is wrong. If anything, border crackdowns have exacerbated the crisis. Much of this narrative places blame...

Last week, a shocking moment of truth broke through the huge effort elites normally put into hiding their disdain for the rest of us. At an event sponsored by the libertarian Cato Institute, President of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Adam Posen—a man who appears to be paid $450,000 a year—made clear his absolute contempt for the working class.

New York Times “The Morning” newsletter writer David Leonhardt claimed President Joe Biden’s massive tax hike proposal was not “radical.” One economist was having none of it. Leonhardt panned outcries from detractors against Biden’s tax increases like the Tax Foundation as allegedly obscuring “a basic fact about Biden’s tax plan: It would not actually raise tax rates on the rich to high levels, historically speaking.” He pivoted off of an opaque analysis on historical tax rates by University of California Berkeley associate professor of economics Gabriel Zucman to claim Biden’s plan was “not radical. For that reason, it is highly...

President Trump suffered no grand repudiation across the country but was dealt a blow in the popular vote by voters dominating the coastal regions.One of my new neighbors in Denver ended our friendship a few days ago over what I do for a living and my vote for President Donald Trump. A sign for your front yard. pic.twitter.com/YWBcKsYL7h — Christina Sommers (@CHSommers) November 17, 2020In Denver, however, 71,000 people still voted for the president, a few of whom are probably on my street. They just choose to hide it. Trump reaped a record-breaking 73 million votes this election, totaling more...

Joe Biden was hardly the darling of the youth vote during the Democratic primaries. From the Iowa caucuses through the March 17 primaries, he won just 22 percent of the votes among those younger than 45 years old and far less among those aged 18-24. But despite his low levels of initial support and ongoing reports of a lack of enthusiasm for his candidacy, polls now show the former vice president boasting a 20+ point lead over Pres. Donald Trump among young voters. It’s little wonder why. Millennials (born 1981 to 1996) and Generation Z (born after 1996) identify or...

Chaos, disorganization and cluelessness describe the current state of COVID-19 testing in the United States. Doctors, hospitals and state labs give patients needing tests the runaround, each pointing to the other as the place to get tested. Some people self-quarantine for days awaiting their results, only to be told the lab misplaced or bungled the test. As of March 11, the U.S. trailed most of the developed world in tests administered, with per capita numbers virtually the same as Vietnam's. A rigid federal regulatory regime that fails to make use of the innovation, flexibility and speed of the private sector...

In tapping Judy Shelton to become one of two Federal Reserve Board governors, President Donald Trump selected one of the minority of mainstream economists supportive of a return to the gold standard and critical of central bank activity. Shelton, who serves as the U.S. executive director at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, wrote as recently as last year in support of pegging the dollar to gold prices. Trump announced his intention to nominate both Shelton and St. Louis Fed economist Christopher Waller via tweet on Tuesday. Shelton’s unorthodox monetary beliefs will likely draw questions from Senate lawmakers, who...

(Via CNN) No person accepted to the United States as a refugee, Syrian or otherwise, has been implicated in a major fatal terrorist attack since the Refugee Act of 1980 set up systematic procedures for accepting refugees into the United States, according to an analysis of terrorism immigration risks by the Cato Institute. Oh Really? No Refugees implicated in terrorism? Read on…

This afternoon, Donald Trump made an announcement regarding the future of the Iran nuclear deal. Ahead of a self-imposed May 12th deadline, the President announced that he will not be waiving the sanctions. This decision places the United States in violation of the deal. But while it may not kill the JCPOA completely – European states and Iran could decide whether to keep some version of the deal going without the United States – it will start a period of profound uncertainty about the future of U.S-Iranian relations. In some ways, this uncertainty is the most concerning thing about the...

I think I must have been ill that day. At some point, no one can say precisely when, libertarians apparently swore a feudal oath of fealty to the Republican Party. In response to an American Prospect article on libertarian disenchantment with the Bush administration, Reason's own former editor in chief Virginia Postrel explained that "real Dean voters don't like Jeff Flake. (I do.)" On the Crossfire view of politics, this makes sense: You pick your team and root for it, come hell or high water. The Platonic Real Dean Voter can't possibly hold any affection for a member of the...