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Don’t Give Missouri License to Beat a Dead Horse

My father loves to tell jokes. Most of them are horrendously stupid and not funny. To make matters worse, he loves to repeat them, much to my chagrin. Because of this, I became fond of the phrase, “don’t beat a dead horse”, to rebut any attempt he would make to retell these terrible jokes. This…

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Creating a Fairness Doctrine for the Internet Is a Really Bad Idea

Critics of America’s online discourse have heightened their objections to what they see as viewpoint bias, hate-mongering, what Bill Clinton once called “the politics of personal destruction,” and questionable content curation by social media companies. Should Social Media Be Regulated? Now some are making calls to impose government regulations to “solve” the problems they see….

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Bernie Sanders’ ‘Most Socialist Idea Yet’

By William J. Luther Sen. Bernie Sanders recently announced that “his campaign is working on a plan to require large businesses to regularly contribute a portion of their stocks to a fund controlled by employees, which would pay out a regular dividend to the workers.” Such a plan would go further than the bills he introduced on May 28…

The 7 Worst Ideas for Regulation This Century
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The 7 Worst Ideas for Regulation This Century

Many good things have happened both in the United States and worldwide this century. In the U.S., we have the lowest unemployment rate in half a century. Worldwide prosperity is growing so fast that the rate of extreme poverty fell by half between 1990 and 2015, five years ahead of the World Bank’s optimistic goal….

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Why a Free Society Cannot Transform Wishes into Rights

Any careful observer of American politics must be struck by the ever-expanding roster of things people have asserted rights to. But when such arguments are seriously considered, there is little to them beyond shared desires or wishes for certain things, which supposedly implies that there ought to be rights to them. From there, it is…

Sen. Hawley’s Moral Panic Over Social Media
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Sen. Hawley’s Moral Panic Over Social Media

In a hotly-worded USA Today op-ed last week, Senator Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) railed against social media sites Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. He argued that, “social media wastes our time and resources,” and is “a field of little productive value” that have only “given us an addiction economy.” Sen. Hawley refers to these sites as “parasites” and blames…

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This Memorial Day, Lawmakers Seek to Protect Americans from Beach Umbrellas

By Ross Marchand As it happens on most every Memorial Day, the beaches are sure to soon be filled with families covered in sunscreen and lying under umbrellas—that is, unless federal regulators have their way. Senators Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and Mark Warner (D-VA) are calling on the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to recall umbrellas…