5-term US Congressman Tom Campbell has founded a party for the rest of us — Our country has been governed since its founding by a two-party system. The Constitution did not establish political parties, which the founders feared. History proves their concerns were prescient, not paranoid. James Madison hoped opposing factions would counterbalance each other’s power, through “ambition offset[ting] ambition.” Unfortunately, it did not work…

Ted Galen Carpenter thinks we’re repeating the same mistakes in Ukraine, yet journalists have learned nothing from Iraq. — Today’s guest, Ted Galen Carpenter, is a senior fellow for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. He has written 13 books and over 1,100 articles on international affairs. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the editorial board of the Journal…

A concise summary of Philip Howard’s new book. — “Elected leaders come and go, but public unions just say no.” Hiding in plain sight is a fatal defect of modern democracy. Public employee unions have a death grip on the operating machinery of government. …

Philip K. Howard on the Unaccountability & Unconstitutionality of Public Sector Unions — Philip K. Howard is the founder of Common Good, a nonpartisan organization devoted to streamlining laws so that Americans can use sound judgment in their everyday decisions. Philip is the author of Not Accountable, which persuasively contends that public employee unions weaken our democracy and should be (and I will…

Most fears of foreigners are calmed by the facts and historical context. — A semester of immigration policy crammed into an hour, with the Cato Institute’s Alex Nowrasteh. Follow my on-going series, “ Make Immigration Legal Again, “ debunking populist misconceptions about immigration. Listen or read the interview summary below: Links The Legalism Fallacy, Alex Nowrasteh’s Substack Immigrant and Native Consumption of Means-Tested Welfare and Entitlement Benefits in 2020 |…

Christian Britschgi on the Solution to California’s Housing Crisis — It’s accepted as gospel by economists, politicians on all ends of the political spectrum, and by everyday people who want nothing more than to stay warm and dry, that California is the poster child for the breakdown in housing policy. …

The Twitter Files confirm everything in Will Duffield’s Cato report on “Jawboning against free speech” — Although the Bill of Rights technically contains the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, they can be rightly considered part of the original document. …

The FBI tried to use Civil Asset Forfeiture against hundreds of innocent citizens. Then the IJ stepped in. — First, just a reminder that the archives of the Bob Zadek Show podcast hold 15 years of discussion of major issues, including today’s topic of Civil Asset Forfeiture, which I first covered 10 years ago with Sarah Stillman ( The Rise of Civil Forfeiture | The New Yorker), who had…

A concise summary of Michael Munger’s new book. — About the Author Michael Munger is a Professor of Political Science, Economics, and Public Policy at Duke University and Senior Fellow of the American Institute for Economic Research. His research interests include regulation, political institutions, and political economy. Much of his recent work has been in philosophy, examining the concept…