William Ruger and Jason Sorens are the authors of the “ Freedom in the 50 States” report, a Cato Institute project which gives an annual assessment of which states are increasing and decreasing in the rankings of a broad index of liberties. …

Beyond affirmative action, special privileges based on group identity are wrong — Whenever it comes to a vote, Americans reject the idea of racial classifications as a violation of our core founding principles. The founders railed against the old peerage system, where people were given special privileges based on the mere accident of their birth. …

Steven E. Rhoads and I attempt to distill an entire semester’s worth of economic thinking into a full hour. — Joe Biden’s gaffes are usually unplanned slips of the tongue — not pre-meditated social media posts that presumably received approval from staffers prior to publication. However, his recent Tweet demanding that gas stations lower their prices to alleviate the “pain at the pump” is far more embarrassing than his accidental…

Is Divorce on the Horizon for the Orlando-Based Powerhouse Couple? — “The bonds will be paid by Disney. They will be paying taxes, probably more taxes. They will follow the laws that every other person has to do, and they will no longer have the ability to run their own government.” …

Civil Asset Forfeiture is just the beginning of Policing for Profit — Remember the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the civil unrest that followed? It seemed like a powder keg had gone off. …

Revisiting Baylen Linnekin’s *Biting the Hand that Feeds Us* — To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, there are few things more terrifying than a government bureaucrat who is trying to help us. In California, we are confronted with the stuff of nightmares on an almost daily basis. …

How a radical rewrite of history undermines the American founding ideals — Back in February, frustrated San Francisco parents voted to recall three school board members for spending more time renaming schools than planning their post-pandemic re-opening. Among the school names being “canceled” were Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, John Muir, and even Dianne Feinstein — found guilty of exploitation and oppression. …

Guy Bentley on the latest front in the racist War on Drugs — The sun has set on the Golden Era of Tobacco, much like the bygone Golden Era of Hollywood. Perhaps once movie stars stopped smoking cigarettes on the Silver Screen, audiences found the activity less glamorous. …

A Q&A with Scott Lincicome on the Problem with Picking Winners & Losers — We’ve been hearing about the end of globalization for the better part of the last decade, and yet rumors of its demise appear to have been greatly exaggerated. The latest calls for American energy independence and re-shoring manufacturing are part of this broader trend, which seeks to insulate the domestic…