Douglas Irwin reviews Marc-William Palen’s Pax Economica.
George Will reflects on Amy Coney Barrett’s new book. A slice:
To put the point less gently than Barrett might: Some people with mind-closing jurisprudential orthodoxies are exasperated by the tentativeness inherent in originalism and textualism. Critics misperceive this as a lack of principled rigor. In judicial reasoning, however, the importance of living with the limited utility of principles is a principle.
Barrett’s originalism is not so tightly tethered to the past that it cannot create rules implied by the Constitution’s text, history and structure.
“Tariffs are starting to crush America’s small liquor businesses.”
The annual cost to American consumers of shifting each job from service employment to manufacturing employment through high tariffs exceeds $200,000.
My intrepid Mercatus Center colleague, Veronique de Rugy, decries what she calls “the self-inflicted shutdown mess”; it’s a mess for which, in this case, she rightly pins the bulk of the blame on Democrats. Here’s her conclusion:
Yet Democrats in the Senate blocked the clean CR because leadership wants to leverage the deadline into a demand for an additional $1.5 trillion in permanent spending. They want expanded ACA subsidies and various welfare expansions. None of this has anything to do with keeping the lights on, and it only exacerbates our perilous fiscal situation.
Sen. Ted Cruz condemned the administration’s “mafioso behavior.” He warned that “going down this road, there will come a time when a Democrat wins again — wins the White House … they will silence us.” Cruz added during his Friday podcast. “They will use this power, and they will use it ruthlessly. And that is dangerous.”
Ben Shapiro, the MAGA-adjacent media mogul, concurred. While he offered little sympathy for Kimmel, he too warned against the moral hazard problem. “I do not want the FCC in the business of telling local affiliates that their licenses will be removed if they broadcast material that the FCC deems to be informationally false,” Shapiro said. “Why? Because one day the shoe will be on the other foot.”
There were others, including Sen. Rand Paul. But not many. They should be congratulated for offering any pushback against the new right’s strange mix of bullying and moral panic in the wake of the heinous murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
Indeed, it’s remarkable that the dual response to Kirk’s killing has been for his admirers to simultaneously praise Kirk’s commitment to free speech while showing very little such commitment themselves.
The cognitive dissonance has been remarkable. Kirk — rightly — ridiculed the concept of “hate speech” as a legal category. “Hate speech does not exist legally in America. There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech. There’s evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment. Keep America free,” Kirk posted last year.
Yet, in response to the at times ugly, gross and evil speech that followed Kirk’s murder, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi promised that “especially after what happened to Charlie,” Trump’s Justice Department “will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.”
