New victim of cancel culture: science

October 14, 2021

Cancel culture has reared its ugly head once again, and this time in a new and unprecedented way. A lecture by a physicist was canceled at one of America’s premier institutions of science, MIT, for reasons having nothing to do with the subject of the lecture. The lecture was canceled not because of its scientific content but because of the politically incorrect views on diversity of the scientist scheduled to give the lecture. Dorian Abbot is a professor in the department of the geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago. He has an undergraduate degree in physics from ...

Let’s get it together on pot laws

October 13, 2021

Quick. Do you know whether marijuana is legal in your state? Is it approved for medical or even recreational use? If you don’t know, that is completely understandable. We are a collection of 50 different states with a wide-ranging patchwork of laws regulating cannabis, nearly all of which are in direct opposition to federal law. It’s difficult to generalize on the state-by-state tally because the laws are so different. One state’s medical marijuana law may be limited to products containing cannabidiol, abbreviated to CBD, a chemical extracted from cannabis and sold in oils, ...

Are China’s threats to Taiwan a bluff?

October 12, 2021

Monday, four dozen Chinese military aircraft flew into Taiwan’s air defense zone, climaxing a weekend of provocations that saw nearly 150 sorties of China-based fighters and bombers. The U.S. State Department countered by issuing a stern statement warning Beijing about the adverse effect on regional “stability” of such “provocative military activity.” Yet even as the waves of Chinese military aircraft entered Taiwan’s air defense zone, President Joe Biden was reassuring Japan’s new Prime Minister Fumio Kishida that the U.S. would defend the Senkakus from any Chinese ...

The dirt on Dems’ reconciliation bill

October 9, 2021

Democrats are quarreling over the price tag of their Build Back Better bill, but the real problem is what’s in it. The bill coerces workers to join unions, imposes racial preferences on every facet of life and redistributes money from workers to takers. Fortunately, this bill is in limbo. Moderate Democrats such as Sen. Joe Manchin insist the bill has to be pared down to less than half its current price tag. The far left is screaming in outrage. But the bill can’t pass without every Senate Democrat supporting it. Not passing it would be the best outcome. This bill is as ...

A brief history of the law of both personal privacy and bodily integrity

October 8, 2021

As more governors issue so-called mandates requiring municipal and state employers, as well as private employers and public accommodations, to require their employees and patrons to be vaccinated against COVID-19, they are being challenged by arguments based on personal privacy and bodily integrity. The former argues that personal medical decisions are protected by the right to privacy, which is a natural right that supersedes governmental needs. The latter argues that since we each own our bodies, we can decide what goes into them. Both the personal privacy and the bodily integrity ...

2022 looking good for GOP

October 7, 2021

Going back to the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, the party of first-term presidents gained seats in House midterm congressional elections only twice. Karl Rove reminded readers a few months ago in his Wall Street Journal column that, since World War II, the average loss of House seats of the party of each first-term president in congressional midterms is 28. The largest loss was 63 in the first midterm elections in Barack Obama’s first term. This was after Democrats rammed through the Affordable Care Act without a single Republican vote. Given that ...