by jpitney | Apr 3, 2025 | Congress, Debate, Debt, Deliberation
Mike Johnson (the former Michel guy, not the current speaker): The framers of the Constitution were in good measure geniuses who had a vision for the future and took lessons from the accomplishments and failures of the budding European democracies. That genius is not...
by jpitney | Apr 2, 2025 | California Politics, Health
Kristen Hwang at CalMatters: California voters told lawmakers last fall that they wanted doctors to get paid more to see low-income patients. But officials for the Newsom administration blew past a federal deadline to make that happen through Medi-Cal Monday,...
by jpitney | Apr 1, 2025 | Foreign Policy, Journalism, Journalists, Voice of America
With the Voice of America falling silent, Rep. Young Kim said she worries the U.S. is ceding the airwaves to foreign dictators. “And we’re not there to counter that disinformation,” she said.https://t.co/FfUHguDH0n — Kris Cheng (@krislc) March 31,...
by jpitney | Mar 31, 2025 | Free Speech, Higher Education
Assumption University President Greg Weiner at NYT: Colleges and universities are right to invoke academic freedom as an essential bulwark against government interference. But it is difficult not to greet this opportunistic defense of academic freedom cynically...
by jpitney | Mar 30, 2025 | California Politics, Crime
Summer Lin at LAT: The family of a a woman who was strangled to death last year during a conjugal visit with her husband at a Northern California prison has called for reforms after a second woman was killed in a similar manner. Tania Thomas, 47, was killed in July...
by jpitney | Mar 29, 2025 | intelligence, Reagan
Remarks at Groundbreaking Ceremonies for an Addition to the Central Intelligence Agency Headquarters Complex, May 24, 1984: An intelligence agency cannot operate effectively unless its necessary secrets are maintained even in this, the most open and free country on...
by jpitney | Mar 28, 2025 | California Politics, Homelessness, Housing, Regulation
LINDSEY HOLDEN and DUSTIN GARDINER at POLITICO: California Democrats are feeling the weight of the state’s crushing housing crisis in a particularly acute way. Oakland Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, San Francisco state Sen. Scott Wiener and other Democratic lawmakers...
by jpitney | Mar 27, 2025 | Trade
New tariffs will increase the price of US-made cars because their parts come from other countries. It’s not a new phenomenon, as Milton Friedman once explained with a pencil.
by jpitney | Mar 25, 2025 | Economic Policy, Trade
Jason Douglas and Tom Fairless at WSJ: Barriers to open trade are rising across the world at a pace unseen in decades, a cascade of protectionism that harks back to the isolationist fervor that swept the globe in the 1930s and worsened the Great Depression. It isn’t...
by jpitney | Mar 24, 2025 | Foreign Policy, Reagan
President Reagan, Remarks at the Welcoming Ceremony for Prime Minister Poul Schluter of Denmark, September 10, 1985 Denmark is an old friend and an ally in NATO and an active trading partner; ties between our two countries run long and deep. Denmark recognized the...
