The European Union was sold as a project of trade, cooperation, and peace. What Europe received was an unelected bureaucratic empire increasingly determined to dictate immigration policy, regulate speech, override national sovereignty, and force independent nations into one obedient political mold. Naturally, this is called “progress.” Liberty always receives a pleasant new label just before the political class confiscates it. Socialism and communism remain fashionable among European elites despite a historical record written in prisons, firing squads, secret police files, mass graves, and millions of dead citizens. Apparently, the lesson was not that centralized power produces tyranny. The lesson was that the wrong intellectuals were in charge. These systems cannot tolerate genuine liberty. Free speech exposes them. Due process restrains them. Private firearm ownership frightens them. An independent population is difficult to intimidate, manipulate, or rule by decree. Former German Ch...

It is time for court reporters to surrender to technology. The rest of civilization has discovered digital recording, searchable documents, cloud storage, and instantaneous electronic delivery. Courtrooms, meanwhile, remain fiercely committed to conducting business as though the fax machine were a dangerous new invention. Yes, replacing traditional stenographic reporting would require substantial changes to court rules across the country. That is not a reason to preserve an antiquated and unnecessarily expensive system. Rules exist to serve justice. Justice does not exist to protect a government-sponsored jobs program. Judges and court reporters have worked together for decades, and many judges understandably trust the reporters they know. But institutional friendship is not a legitimate reason to force litigants, defendants, attorneys, journalists, and members of the public to wait days or weeks and pay substantial fees for access to words spoken in a public courtroom. Modern techn...

  California is once again preparing to rock the boat, this time by imposing new training and wage requirements on the private-security industry. California overregulates nearly everything it touches, and that remains one of the defining features of the Boškovic Republic. The timing could hardly be worse.California is approaching the 2028 Olympic Games, an international event that will create security demands far beyond the ordinary needs of office buildings, stores, hotels, parking facilities, warehouses, and residential communities. Los Angeles will need thousands of additional security guards. Instead, the Legislature appears determined to make employing them substantially more expensive. Security guards have traditionally been minimally trained and minimally paid. That is not necessarily admirable, but it is reality. More important, security work is not a one-size-fits-all occupation. Every property has different risks, responsibilities, and expectations. In most cases, prop...

The political war against the Second Amendment backfired spectacularly. Whenever politicians begin demanding another gun ban, Americans respond by buying the very firearms those politicians want to outlaw. Nothing empties a gun-store shelf faster than a politician promising prohibition. The United States already had 300 million privately owned firearms when Congress enacted the federal assault-weapons ban in 1994. That legislation followed several earlier federal restrictions imposed in 1989. Fear of further prohibition helped create waves of purchasing as Americans concluded, quite reasonably, that today’s lawful firearm might become tomorrow’s forbidden weapon. The 1994 federal assault-weapons ban was not permanent. Congress included a ten-year sunset provision, and the ban expired on September 13, 2004. Despite repeated demands from gun-control advocates, Congress declined to renew it. After ten years of experience with the law, Congress allowed it to expire rather than extend a...

  By Paul Huebl In 2022, the United States Supreme Court handed down a landmark Second Amendment decision that should have ended decades of judicial gamesmanship. It did not. Instead, several Democrat-controlled states responded to the Supreme Court’s ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen , 597 U.S. 1 (2022), by searching for new ways to obstruct the very right the Court had just reaffirmed. The result has been predictable and disgraceful. Peaceful, otherwise law-abiding Americans continue to face arrest, prosecution, crushing legal expenses, and possible imprisonment for conduct that may be protected by the Constitution. This is not an academic debate. Real people are losing their freedom. What Bruen Actually Decided In Bruen , the Supreme Court held that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual’s right to carry a handgun outside the home for self-defense. More importantly, the Court rejected the interest-balancing test t...