California's Version of Pot Protectionism
Proposition 19, the California marijuana legalization initiative that lost by seven points in 2010, was about 3,000 words long. The Adult Use of Marijuana Act (AUMA), the legalization initiative that...
View ArticlePaperwork Can't Stop Criminals From Getting Guns
A lack of background checks for gun buyers plainly had nothing to do with the mass shootings that have grabbed headlines in the last few years. The weapons used in those crimes were purchased legally...
View ArticleNosy Neighbors Tell Colorado to Stop Regulating Pot
On January 6, two days before Mexican authorities recaptured Joaquín Guzmán Loera, a.k.a. El Chapo, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt pointed to another drug lord, this one hiding in plain sight:...
View ArticleTrump Is Right About Cruz's Presidential Eligibility
During last week's Republican presidential debate, Ted Cruz said it's "really quite clear" he is eligible to run for president even though he was born in Canada, because his mother was a U.S. citizen....
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Americans Love Pot Taxes
Next fall California voters can expect to see at least one ballot initiative aimed at legalizing marijuana. At press time, the leading contender is called the Control, Regulate, and Tax Cannabis Act....
View ArticleThe General and the Drug Lord
Marine Corps Gen. John F. Kelly, who plans to retire next month after more than four decades in the military, recently stepped down as head of the Miami-based U.S. Southern Command, a post he held for...
View ArticleCorny Crony Capitalism in Iowa
The "report card" from America's Renewable Future (ARF), a biofuel industry group, is not complicated. If you are a presidential candidate participating in Monday's Iowa caucuses and you support "the...
View ArticleHow Ted Cruz Turned His Back on Drug War Prisoners
A year ago, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley condemned a sentencing reform bill backed by Ted Cruz as "lenient" and "dangerous." Eight months later, it was Cruz's turn. Explaining...
View ArticleCamera-Shy Cops Can Relax
FBI Director James Comey says cops are reluctant to do their jobs because they worry that their actions will be captured on camera. Judging from the official response to the shooting of Zachary...
View ArticleWeed Studies Needed
In a new Brookings Institution report, John Hudak and Grace Wallack describe in detail the bureaucratic barriers to medical marijuana research. These roadblocks, they write, are "inexcusabl[e]" in...
View ArticleThe GOP's Suicidal Immigration Stance
Ted Cruz, who won the Republican caucus in Iowa on Monday, says he has always opposed legalizing the 11 million people who live in the U.S. without the government’s permission. Donald Trump, who...
View ArticleWhich Presidential Candidates Would Tolerate Legal Pot?
With Rand Paul ending his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, the GOP race has lost its strongest supporter of drug policy reform. But the remaining Republican candidates are for the...
View ArticleWhat Rand Paul Brought to the Presidential Race
During the last Republican presidential debate in which he participated, Rand Paul condemned the National Security Agency's mass collection of Americans' telephone records, cautioned against reckless...
View ArticleSelf-Help for Soft Targets
There is not much the government can do about the sort of terrorist threat that President Barack Obama described in his speech following the massacre in San Bernardino. It will always be difficult to...
View ArticleDon't Punish All Drug Offenders for the Crimes of One
Last month Wendell Callahan was charged with using a knife to murder his ex-girlfriend and her two young daughters at their apartment in Columbus, Ohio. Opponents of sentencing reform have latched...
View ArticleThe Second Amendment Without Scalia
This week Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz warned that Antonin Scalia's death leaves us "one justice away from the Second Amendment being written out of the Constitution altogether."...
View ArticleScalia on Drugs
In 1989 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld urine testing of applicants for Customs Service jobs that involved carrying a gun, handling classified material, or participating in drug interdiction. Justice...
View ArticleClinton vs. Trump
The first time I looked at the website for Either, "the world's largest game of would you rather questions," this was the dilemma at the top of the page: "Would you rather be stabbed in the stomach 10...
View ArticleConnecticut's State-Backed Liquor Price Fixing Scheme
Last summer, when Pennsylvania's governor vetoed a bill that would have privatized liquor and wine sales in that state, he argued that inviting private businesses to compete for drinkers' dollars...
View ArticleWhen Conservatives Love Overregulation
Conservatives usually are not fans of arbitrary, heavy-handed, anti-competitive, counterproductive regulations. But as a case the Supreme Court will hear today shows, they make an exception for...
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