Free Republic

Yes, the Ohio Court of Appeals held Thursday.? "Fighting words"—face-to-face personal insults that are likely to start a fight—are generally constitutionally unprotected, and can be criminally punished (usually under disorderly conduct statutes). But in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul (1992), the Supreme Court struck down a statute that imposed heightened punishment on those "fighting words" that "arouse[] anger, alarm or resentment in others on the basis of race": Even when some speech (e.g., fighting words, libel, obscenity, etc.) is constitutionally unprotected, the law can't selectively impose extra punishment on unprotected speech that, say, expresses racist views. Yet in Wisconsin...

Former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell yesterday responded to the $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit that Dominion Voting Systems filed after she repeatedly accused the company of participating in an elaborate international conspiracy to deny Donald Trump his rightful victory in last year's presidential election. Her defense, more or less, is that she did not really mean what she said. True, Powell claimed over and over again that Dominion rigged voting machines to manufacture "millions" of votes for Joe Biden. She fingered a specific Dominion executive as largely responsible for the scheme, claimed the plot had its roots in fraud-facilitating software...

A pack of Democratic lawmakers in California are proposing a wealth tax for the state's richest citizens, forcing them to pay more essentially just for owning a lot of stuff. They also, amazingly, want the tax to follow Californians who flee the state in response, attempting to make them continue paying taxes on wealth that's not even in the state. Assemblymember Rob Bonta (D–Oakland) is blunt about his reasons for introducing the California Wealth Tax (A.B. 2088). Rich people have money. He wants more of it to pay for and expand state services. And that's it. "The California Wealth Tax...

JAG 5000 Writes: Man's Free Will is responsible for all the evil in the would. God created a perfect world. God created perfect human beings. God gave human beings a Free Will. Human beings used their Free Will to choose to do evil. Human beings choosing to do evil is the reason we have natural disasters and evil in the world-- and the reason we have The Curse upon the Earth. Many atheists blame the God of the Bible for all the natural disasters and all the evil in the world. You may ask, "How can atheists blame the God...

Matt Ridley is one of the best-selling—and best-regarded—science writers on the planet. He wrote recently that in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, "We are about to find out how robust civilisation is" and "the hardships ahead will be like nothing we have ever known." Given that Ridley's best-known book is called The Rational Optimist, this is bracing stuff. Ridley's next book, How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom, will be published in May. Nick Gillespie spoke with him from his home in northern England. They discussed why the coronavirus caught him by surprise, when he thinks the...

When it came to the fate of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, a credible sexual assault allegation alone, even absent any evidence or corroboration, was enough for most Democrats to cry “believe women” and demand the Senate reject Kavanaugh’s nomination. Now that it’s Joe Biden who faces a similar sexual assault allegation, Democrats must hold their party's presumptive nominee to the same standard — or reveal themselves as cynical hypocrites once and for all. A former Biden staffer who worked in his Senate offices in the early 1990s, Tara Reade, has come forward to accuse him of sexually assaulting her...

The goal behind long-term shutdowns and quarantines is to preserve health and ultimately to save lives, but how extensive will the cost be to the economy? Will that effect itself cost lives, as well as foster permanent loss of personal freedom? Months from now how do you think all the actions o Covid-19 be judged? What will or should we learn from this? How will this change society? Will this be an annual recourse to the next incarnation of a highly communicable infection? Being part of crowded gatherings puts people involved in danger when a highly communicable disease is a...

Ross Ulbricht was jailed for life after he was accused of being Dread Pirate Roberts who ran online black market site But his horrified mother Lyn claims there has been a miscarriage of justice and is fighting for his freedom In a revealing interview she described her 'gentle' son as an idylistic graduate with little money But she says he was branded as a cyber-criminals by a legal system that rode roughshod over natural justice

For the past two weeks, Reason, a magazine dedicated to "Free Minds and Free Markets," has been barred by an order from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York from speaking publicly about a grand jury subpoena that court sent to Reason.com. The subpoena demanded the records of six people who left hyperbolic comments at the website about the federal judge who oversaw the controversial conviction of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht. Shortly after the subpoena was issued, the government issued a gag order prohibiting Reason not only from discussing the matter but even acknowledging the...

The decade that just ended saw a period of uninterrupted economic growth. In the decade to come, we'll pay for squandering it. Since the so-called Great Recession officially ended in the third quarter of 2009, the United States has enjoyed 42 consecutive quarters of solid if unspectacular economic growth. That's the longest run of uninterrupted growth since government economists began tracking the business cycle in the 1850s, far outpacing the average economic expansion of 18 months. Employment has increased by 12 percent, the jobless rate reached record lows, and America's gross domestic product (GDP) has increased by more than 25...

Why Trump won and why he will win again from Shark Tanks Kevin O'Leary | YouTube | paint the trail | Published on October 16, 2019

Establishment media outlets like The Washington Post hyped a now-disputed study that linked President Donald Trump’s campaign rallies to a spike in hate crimes, but they’ve yet to cover a second study that debunked the first one. The first study, which three Texas university professors conducted, said counties that hosted Trump rallies in 2016 saw a 226% spike in hate crimes compared to places that didn’t host Trump rallies. Harvard University researchers found the political scientists had gotten it wrong when they tried to replicate the study. “The study is wrong, and yet journalists ran with it anyway,” Harvard researchers Matthew Lilley...

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D–Hawaii) took a cue from conservative conspiracists Thursday, when the congresswoman and Democratic presidential hopeful sued Google for $50 million and accused the company of violating her right to free speech. The suit, filed in a federal court in Los Angeles, argues that Google infringed on the First Amendment when it suspended her campaign advertising site for six hours, briefly impeding her ability to raise money right after a well-received debate performance. Many people on the right have recently made social media companies Public Enemy No. 1, claiming that they discriminate against conservative points of view. Ironically,...

President Donald Trump likes to keep score. Well, here's a score for him: America, zero; while the rest of the world keeps tallying up free trade points. That's right; while American consumers have been waiting for well over a year to see some resolution to the various trade disputes started by Trump, other countries have agreed to lower their tariffs against each other and signed free trade agreements with one another. Meanwhile, American consumers and exporters are drowning in a sea of high tariffs. Some of Trump's supporters have argued that the president is actually a free trader who wants...

The Second Amendment covers magazines holding more than 10 rounds, U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez says, because they are commonly used for lawful purposes. On Friday evening, a federal judge in San Diego blocked enforcement of California's ban on magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, deeming it inconsistent with the Second Amendment right to keep arms for self-defense. U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez concluded that "California's law prohibiting acquisition and possession of magazines able to hold any more than 10 rounds places a severe restriction on the core right of self-defense of the home such that it amounts to...

In Washington, D.C., he's been labeled "loser," accused of being a secret Democrat, and ostracized from the legislative caucus he co-founded, but on Monday night Rep. Justin Amash (R–Mich.) found himself in friendlier territory—and embraced the opportunity. At a town hall in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Amash's constituents gave him applause and praise—but also fired pointed questions from left, right, and center political perspectives—during a nearly two-hour meeting marking the congressman's first public appearance since tweeting that he believed President Donald Trump had engaged in "impeachable conduct." It was the sort of spectacle that's all too rare in politics today; a...

It's way too early to be thinking this, much less saying it, but what the hell: If Donald Trump is able to deliver the sort of performance he gave today at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the annual meeting of right-wingers held near Washington, D.C., his reelection is a foregone conclusion. There is simply no potential candidate in the Democratic Party who wouldn't be absolutely blown off the stage by him. I say this as someone who is neither a Trump fanboy nor a Never Trumper. But he was not simply good, he was Prince-at-the-Super-Bowl great, deftly flinging juvenile...

There are at least three areas of inquiry traditionally in the purview of philosophy that now are often claimed to be best — or only — studied scientifically: metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. Let us discuss each in turn. Physicists Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow open their 2010 book The Grand Design by asking: What is the nature of reality? Where did all this come from? Did the universe need a creator? ... Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics. Scientists have become the bearers of...

Last month, The Conversation published biologist Jerry Coyne’s article, lovingly served up for audiences at Christmastime, “Yes, There is a War Between Science and Religion.” Coyne fancies himself a participant in a perceived war between faith and reason, science and religion. His mission: To show people they can’t believe the account of Christ’s birth—as depicted, for example, in the Book of Luke, Chapter 2—while simultaneously believing there’s crackers in the pantry. You use your eyeballs for the latter, but not the former, and it’s simply irrational to go through life with a bifurcated mind!It is of course odd to enlist...

Thirty-eight years ago, Reason contributor Thomas Hazlett and Senior Editor Manny Klausner sat down with University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) economist and social scientist Thomas Sowell for a sprawling interview about race, gender, poverty, economics, and what he viewed as the government's many failed and misguided attempts to lift up poor minorities. Sowell talked about his history as a Marxist, his frustrations with working in government, and why he rejects the label "libertarian," preferring instead to describe himself as "a person who dissents from the current liberal orthodoxy." That interview occurred not long after the publication of one of...