An email came across the other day from the libertarian think tank, the Cato Institute, inviting me to compete in an essay contest with some fairly significant financial prizes.

Vision for Liberty Award

Dear Mr. Greenfield,

The Cato Institute is launching the Vision for Liberty Award, which will pay $50,000, $25,000, and $12,500 to the three best written cases for individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace. Total winnings sum to $87,500. Submissions open March 1, 2027, which means you have months, starting now, to think, research, and write your best work before the contest window even opens.

Here’s the prompt: Continue reading →

She had no qualifications to be an ambassador, which hardly makes her an unusual choice for a prominent position in the Trump administration. Despite Trump’s routine Manafort-style denial that he barely knew who she was,* her appointment came days after Junior was photographed holding hands with his then-new squeeze, later his wife, Bettina Anderson, complete with party paid by Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev. In Trump world, getting Kimberly Guilfoyle out of the country and away from Junior is as good a reason to shuffle her off to Greece as any other.

And now she’s out. Not quite fired, even though Trump told her to resign so resign she did, she’s lost the gig after she committed two of the most egregious offenses possible in Trump world. First, she embarrassed him by her attempt to sell her purported access for a mere $100 grand. Second, she failed to offer Trump his piece of the grift. The boss always gets his piece, even if she sold cheap. Continue reading →

DC District Court Judge Ana Reyes should have known better. After what happened with Chief Judge James Boasberg, it was clear that the Trump administration was unconcerned about ignoring the orders of the court. More importantly for a judge, it was clear that the AUSAs coming before the court could not be trusted, either to tell the truth or to abide by the judge’s directions. Sure, this never rarely happened before, but it was most assuredly happening now.

And yet, Judge Reyes wanted to believe that the government wouldn’t burn her. And then the government burned her.

A federal judge on Monday excoriated the Trump administration for ripping up hundreds of mature trees at a Washington golf course over the holiday weekend, even though she had directed officials to disclose any major changes before work was started. Continue reading →

Morality is a personal matter. Priests (and priestesses) have their beliefs about it, and others turn to them for guidance. That’s the nature of religion, whether organized or informal. Sure, some moral lines are so clear and universally accepted that we can all agree, or at least we used to all be able to agree, that they cannot be crossed. Others are squishy, and people can fairly disagree about where the line should be drawn.

David French, as a conservative Christian, makes no bones about where he would draw lines. I don’t begrudge him doing so, as he’s never denied the role religion plays in his life and thinking, but I also don’t really care about where his lines are drawn. He’s not my priest and I don’t look to him for guidance on morality. But when he conflates his version of morality with the law, even if he denies that’s what he’s doing, it’s a problem. And that’s what he’s done in castigating the morality of manhood when he lays blame on the young men of the Chi Phi fraternity for failing to put a stop to the “sexual depravity.” Continue reading →

Of all the people who should be executed, few would defend Nidal Malik Hasan. But regardless of your views on capital punishment, which seemed on the verge of being mercifully ended a decade ago, turning his execution into a public spectacle as one would find in Iran, North Korea or Afghanistan, presents a turning point in the nature of the American psyche.

There is an argument that executions should be public so that those people who still feel the lust for violence and death can see the horrors of the act. If the government is going to kill people in our name, we should be able to see just how horrible it is to watch someone being executed. There is some merit to this argument, but only if the execution is seen and understood to be horrific. The problem, as is becoming pathetically clear, is that there is a cohort in America that not only won’t find executions horrible, but will also delight in them, cheer for the death of a human being, no matter how evil his act. Continue reading →

“Son of a bitch,” muttered Sheriff Roy Templeton.

Two days prior, he’d gotten a text from Nana Wentzel—who’d stopped by the Sheriff’s residence to clean as part of a new business she’d started—mentioning something about a possible leaky toilet in Sheriff Roy’s master bathroom.

Mud Lick’s top cop was in the middle of an important investigation at the time and promptly forgot about it. He would get a vague reminder from his wife Arlene when she noticed puddles around the base of the toilet the next day. Because the investigation involved a robbery and potential kidnapping, Sheriff Roy forgot Arlene said anything about said potential toilet leak. Continue reading →

Three days before New York Attorney General Tish James was appointed by Governor Kathy Hochul to supersede Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten in the investigation and potential prosecution of former Cornell Chi Phi students, she took to the twitters to make her position clear.

What this young woman has been forced to endure is horrific and unacceptable. I’m holding her in my heart and in my prayers. To her, and to all survivors: you’re not alone. We stand with you.

Nonetheless, Hochul decided that leaving Van Houten, the elected district attorney, to do his job would undermine public faith in the process and that appointing James in his place, after she made it absolutely clear where she stood on a matter about which she had conducted no investigation, would be a more publicly preferable choice. The reason seems quite obvious: James would make sure these young men were prosecuted, which was the outcome Hochul desired to satisfy the lust for punishment. Continue reading →

Alabama did what Congress did not. It passed a law, HB2, requiring all state and local entities, and their employees, to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.

(1) Refer to the body of water that borders the coast of Alabama as the “Gulf of America.”

(2) Reflect the “Gulf of America” terminology in all newly created maps, documents, educational materials, websites, official communications, and other resources.

(3) a. Make reasonable efforts to update all pre-existing resources owned by state and local entities, including, but not limited to, official state maps, documents, educational materials, websites, and communications under their jurisdiction to reflect the name change, where practicable.

b. The requirements of paragraph a. shall not apply if compliance would impose an operational or financial burden on the state or local entity and their employees.

Nothing in this section shall prohibit a public K-12 school or public institution of higher education from using the term “Gulf of Mexico” within a larger course of academic instruction when reasonable for historical purposes.

Continue reading →

Among the various shenanigans employed by the Trump administration to circumvent the law is the firing of United States Attorneys appointed by the judges of a district after the 120-day period of an interim appointee lapsed without Senate confirmation of the interim appointee or anyone else to the position. When that happens, 28 U.S.C. § 546(d) kicks in, authorizing the judges to appoint the United States Attorney.

Trump hasn’t taken the law well.

What is happening is that Trump names someone to the position, the clock runs out, the judges replace the prosecutor with their own selection, and within minutes to hours, Trump fires the court-appointed prosecutor. Continue reading →

One of the hardest things to swallow for people who are friendly toward Free Speech is that the people you dislike are entitled to it as much as you are. Sure, they may be wrong, even lie, whereas of course you would never do such a thing, and yet, within the normal legal parameters, they still get to speak without suffering any governmental penalty for it. That’s the position taken by three prawfs, Eugene Volokh, Rebecca Roiphe and Nadine Strossen, in an amicus brief in support of John Eastman in support of cert before the Supreme Court.

The last ten years have seen many attempts to punish or compel professionals’ speech in the service of broader ideological goals. This Court rejected two such attempts, in NIFLA v. Becerra, 585 U.S. 755 (2018), and in Chiles v. Salazar, 607 U.S. 627 (2026). It should likewise consider the constitutionality of the punishment in this case—a punishment that, if left unreviewed, portends still more such attempts. Continue reading →