As some COVID-19 lockdowns begin to lift, life may look vastly different depending on where you live. In some states, freedom is returning. But in others, big government reigns supreme. The handling of COVID-19 in the United States has brought a renewed commitment to federalism with each governor making decisions tailored to their state. While...
Like state prisons across the country, prisons in Arkansas are too crowded to safely deal with the highly contagious COVID-19 pandemic. Already strained for capacity before the pandemic, Arkansas prisons are now facing a virus that preys on people in close quarters. This includes the Cummins Unit, which had nearly 900 infections in a facility...
More than 35 state representatives say Texas shouldn’t check whether applicants are actually unemployed before granting unemployment benefits. They have written a letter to Gov. Greg Abbott and the Texas Workforce Commission “requesting they temporarily suspend unemployment certifications in hopes of making better use of resources.” According to one of the letter’s authors, state Rep. Michelle Beckley, D-Carrollton,...
This isn’t the graduation you pictured during those long hours and months and years of study, the thousands of tests and the endless stream of homework assignments. There are no hugs from teachers, no fist-bumps with friends, and no extended family coming to town to help celebrate your achievement. Those things have been taken from you,...
As Americans engage in social distancing, we must adhere more closely than ever to our core principles of protecting individual liberty and recognizing the dignity of every person. These tenets also apply to those behind bars. With more than half of the top 50 locations with the most COVID-19 infections being jails and prisons, many...
America, and increasingly much of the rest of the world, is heading into a cold war with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Since the original Cold War ended in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union, we’ve largely lost our understanding of the nature of that kind of conflict. We are now being...
One of the reasons the coronavirus pandemic got out of hand in this country is the testing fiasco orchestrated by the Centers for Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administration. There’s a lesson here for those of us in higher education. When innovation is needed — and needed quickly — we shouldn’t put all our...
Everyday life looks different today than it did just eight weeks ago. This is especially true for Shelley Luther, owner of Salon À la Mode in Dallas, Texas. Luther was sentenced to spend seven days in jail and fined $7,000 after she refused to close her “non-essential” hair salon. After nearly a month of lockdown, and with no end in...
There appears to be no statistical connection between the economic pain of the nationwide shutdowns and the number of COVID-19 cases or fatalities. None. Let that sink in for a moment, given we were told we had to lock down America to “flatten the curve” and save lives. On the other hand, the data does...
With government asking citizens to show remarkable restraint by preventing them from earning a living and supporting their families, it is not too much to ask for the same restraint in our legal system. However, a Dallas judge took the extreme step of jailing Shelley Luther, who refused to close her hair salon, thereby exposing...
Property rights are an important part of living in the United States, especially in Texas. In these extraordinary times, they’re in danger—especially at the local level. The Framers of the Constitution thought it so imperative that they included protection of property rights in the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution—no deprivation of property without due...
Four Justices on the Texas Supreme Court just fired a shot across the bow of government officials continuing draconian COVID-19 restrictions in Texas. In a concurring opinion, Justices Blacklock, Guzman, Boyd, and Devine reminded everyone that the “Constitution is not suspended when the government declares a state of disaster.” “As more becomes known about the...