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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...

Martín López is an Argentine landlord, but in recent years he felt more like a nervous fugitive. Now based in Madrid, he spent much of 2022 and 2023 mired in anxiety and paperwork—not because he did anything immoral, but because Argentina's rental laws made being a landlord a liability. "Martín López" is an alias. Until late 2023, he rented out his two-bedroom apartment in Buenos Aires' upscale Belgrano neighborhood through a tangle of short-term contracts, never fully sure whether his actions were legal. Argentina's 2020 rent control law, repealed by President Javier Milei in December 2023, had loaded aboveground landlords...

Former ‘Million Dollar Listing’ star and Los Angeles real estate agent Josh Altman said Friday on Fox Business Network’s “Varney Co.” a lack of adequate home insurance was the main reason 70% of Pacific Palisades residents won’t return. Guest host David Asman said, “I heard a figure 70% of Palisades residents would not return after the fires there. What does that mean for the county?” Altman said, Yeah, David, thanks for having me again. I want to preface that statement and explain it a little bit. They’re not gonna not return because they don’t want to return. Of course, they...

00:00 Introduction 3:20 The Twitter files 7:35 Suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story 12:35 The anti-proliferation regime 16:26 Russiagate and the preemptive war against Trump 22:25 Conservatives and liberals flip stances on Russia 24:36 Leaving Rolling Stone for Substack 29:26 Matt’s Substack audience 30:40 Young liberals and progressives are turning against free speech 34:17 Breaking with identity politics 38:12 Support for prosecuting Julian Assange 41:52 The eternal villain 44:06 Similarities between RFK Jr. and Trump 46:50 Distrust in government due to COVID 51:11 Race relations and policing 54:14 Binary nature of media

Cheese and crackers, here we go AGAIN. Have we learned nothing, America? It stuns me that I even have to say this, but Democrats sandbag their political opponents with phony investigations and allegations of impropriety made by flaky women. These tactics range up to and include prosecution and even conviction by politicized juries in dark blue cities. But even when they top out at innuendo and dropped investigations, the damage has been done. The media mill has its grist, and the narrative follows the target around forever, similar to the stench that seems impossible to wash off a pet that's...

President-elect Donald Trump harked back to the assassination attempts against him this summer, contending that God spared him for a reason those fateful days. “Many people have told me that God spared my life for a reason,” Trump proclaimed during his victory speech in the wee hours of Wednesday morning. “And that reason was to save our country and to restore America to greatness, and now we are going to fulfill that mission together. We’re going to fulfill that.” “The task before us will not be easy, but I will bring every ounce of energy, spirit and fight that I...

Both Buddhism and Stoicism emphasize self-control, ethical living, and the attainment of a passionless state. However, the Indian philosophy predated Stoicism by about 500 years. Did Buddhism influence Greek Stoicism and thought, and, if so, how did it do so a continent away? Similarities between Stoicism and Buddhism: A shared path to inner peace Practitioners of Stoicism and Buddhism deeply understand life’s impermanence and the need to overcome desires. The philosophies teach mental discipline and detachment from external circumstances as paths to inner peace. In Stoicism, “apatheia” means freedom from emotional disturbance, closely mirroring Buddhism’s “nirvana,” the liberation from suffering....

Vance thinks that jobs lost because of incompetent central planning don't matter—but that jobs lost to immigrants do.In an interview published this week by The New York Times, Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Ohio) calls for a more muscular federal government to intervene even more aggressively in the economy than it already does, to create what Vance calls "incentives" for American workers. In doing so, Vance inadvertently reveals one of the major flaws in this line of analysis. Vance's opinions about these things carry significant weight, in no small part because he's on the shortlist to be Donald Trump's running mate. With...

A much more liberal left is facing off with a slightly more conservative right.For those seeking balance in this polarized moment in American politics, Gallup offers news that initially seems good. The polling firm finds Americans are becoming increasingly socially liberal while generally remaining economically conservative. Using a crude definition of libertarian and classical liberal ideas, growing social liberalism paired with economic conservatism sounds encouraging. But the ideological shift is all one-sided, with Democrats moving left much more than Republicans moved to the right—threatening not balance, but a wider partisan divide. The Rattler is a weekly newsletter from J.D. Tuccille....

America's most insane occupational licensing law is about to get a whole lot better. Louisiana is the only state in the country that requires florists to be licensed by the government. A bill that is now on the way to Gov. Jeff Landry's desk sadly won't change that fact, but it will eliminate the mandatory test that prospective florists in Louisiana must pass before being allowed to earn a living by placing different types of flowers together in an arrangement. Going forward, obtaining a florist license will require only the payment of a fee to the state. The bill cleared...

Arcane tax rules based on carbonation levels are flattening the growth of America's craft cider industry. America's tax code is notoriously convoluted, but the complexity really sparkles when it comes to the federal government's approach to alcohol taxation. Wine, beer, and liquor are all subject to varying tax rates based on intricate calculations, but the so-called "bubble tax" for hard cider is the star of this regulatory circus. Unbeknownst to most Americans, the tax rate for alcoholic cider is based on, among other things, the amount of carbonation the drink contains. Yes, America technically already has a carbon tax and...

U.S. District Judge Diane Humetewa acquitted three former Backpage executives of myriad counts against them last week—more evidence of how empty so much of the federal case against them is. Humetewa ruled that there was insufficient evidence to uphold 50 of the counts* against journalist and Backpage co-founder Michael Lacey, 10 of the counts against former Executive Vice President Scott Spear, and 18 of the counts against former Chief Financial Officer Jed Brunst. From the beginning, this prosecution has been premised on a bogus rationale (authorities yammer on about sex trafficking though none of the defendants are charged with sex...

A Florida man accused of facilitating an illegal health care scheme has been spared additional prison time, ending the Justice Department's attempt to reprosecute him after his sentence was commuted by former President Donald Trump. Philip Esformes on Thursday pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and was sentenced to time served, with prosecutors agreeing to dismiss the remaining five counts. It's a quiet conclusion to a controversial prosecution that saw the federal government resuscitate the criminal case against him not long after he'd spent four and a half years behind bars and was released...

While federal authorities did not bring legal charges against the black press for the balance of the war, that doesn't mean they shifted to a hands-off approach. Instead, they ratcheted up both intense monitoring and informal pressure. In the first half of 1942, FBI agents visited leading black newspapers that had carried critical stories about the federal government. Moreover, postal inspectors admonished two leading papers that the "benefits of citizenship" carried an obligation not to "'play up' isolated and rare instances in such a fashion as to obstruct recruiting and in other ways hamper the war effort."

It may not seem unusual that a corporate CEO would want to focus on increasing shareholder value, but in October this was treated as big news. A Financial Times headline announced that "Unilever's new chief says corporate purpose can be 'unwelcome distraction.'" That new CEO, Hein Schumacher, went on to explain that he rejected the idea that "every brand should have a social or environmental purpose." He intended, he said, to build a "performance culture" instead. Why would it be newsworthy for a CEO to be focused on corporate performance? Not long ago, that was simply assumed. What changed? The...

I am talking about normal Christians who do have a working mind. It is a sin for them not to use it. Sure, some folks might be smarter or brighter than others – maybe even have higher IQs and the like. But that is still no excuse. Some Christians will just have to work harder at this and put more effort into it. This is true of all areas of life. In Christ we are to grow and mature in all spheres.The English humourist P. G. Wodehouse once said: “Some minds are like soup in a poor restaurant—better left unstirred.”...

We talk frequently – those of us who are paying attention – about the various policy proposals of the opposite sides in American politics. It goes back centuries; it predates our founding era, even. One side has one solution and the other side proposes an alternative; both sides debate, and eventually one option or the other is tried. Sometimes – and this is one of the goals of the idea of states’ rights – some states try one method and other states try the other. The “laboratories of democracy” concept is given its opportunity, and we can see which methods...

<p>Nothing focuses the mind quite so intently on the sheer stupidity of government as doing your taxes. What is taken from us is excessive, the intrusiveness is maddening, and the rules are byzantine, which is the distilled essence of most of our interactions with the state. So, it was with a certain degree of anticipation that I told my son that, after working hard at the supermarket in addition to his homeschooling and martial arts, he would have to file his first tax return. Much fun ensued.</p>

The Global Disinformation Index (GDI) is a British organization that evaluates news outlets' susceptibility to disinformation. The ultimate aim is to persuade online advertisers to blacklist dangerous publications and websites. One such publication, according to GDI's extremely dubious criteria, is Reason. GDI's recent report on disinformation notes that the organization exists to help "advertisers and the ad tech industry in assessing the reputational and brand risk when advertising with online media outlets and to help them avoid financially supporting disinformation online." The U.S. government evidently values this work; in fact, the State Department subsidizes it. The National Endowment for Democracy—a...

The FBI paid Twitter millions of dollars to cover the costs of processing the agency's requests. "I am happy to report we have collected $3,415,323 since October 2019!" wrote someone with Twitter's Safety, Content, & Law Enforcement (SCALE) team in a February 2021 email, according to internal messages reported by journalist Michael Shellenberger today.