Source: Quillette
by Jeffrey S Flier

“In the US, free speech is protected by the First Amendment, which restricts the ability of government to limit citizens’ speech, with exceptions for speech that incites violence, represents a true threat to safety by narrowly defined criteria, or constitutes fraud or defamation. Hate speech, even if vile, is protected under the First Amendment. First Amendment protections don’t apply to private institutions, like many universities, though most universities voluntarily establish free speech rights for their communities. Academic freedom is a more limited concept, protecting scholars, researchers, and educators from censorship, discipline, or retaliation by their institutions. Academic freedom is essential to the pursuit and transmission of knowledge and to critical thinking.” (04/25/24)

https://quillette.com/2024/04/25/academic-freedom-in-higher-education-and-medicine/

Source: Hoover Institution

“One of the ideas that economists are most sure of is that when the price of something rises, other than due to something that shifts the whole demand curve, the quantity demanded falls. Conversely, when the price of something falls, the quantity demanded increases. This is not controversial in economics. Moreover, it’s so clear that it is part of our mutual understanding, even for non-economists. … The law of demand applies to virtually everything: the demand for steaks, the demand for cars, the demand for houses, and, yes, the demand for labor. That means that when governments raise the price of relatively unskilled labor by substantially raising the minimum wage, the number of unskilled workers employed will fall.” (04/25/24)

https://www.hoover.org/research/high-minimum-wage-laws-hurt-many-workers

Source: The American Prospect
by David Dayen

“Every news outlet has a busy period. For Variety, it’s the time when Hollywood gives out awards; for The Wall Street Journal or Bloomberg, it’s quarterly earnings season; and for the Prospect, it’s the narrow period when executive branch agencies issue final rules in the last year of a presidential term, before the window opens whereby these regulations could be overturned the following year by a new president, under the Congressional Review Act. … In just the past few days, the executive branch has banned all employee noncompete agreements, enacted a minimum staffing ratio for nursing homes, initiated the American Climate Corps, opened up overtime benefits to more employees, updated the definitions that require investment advisers to operate in the best interest of retirement savers, enhanced privacy protections for medical records for out-of-state abortions, and prevented illegal fees in mortgage servicing.” (04/25/24)

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-04-25-transportation-departments-new-path/

Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob

“This April, a Nashville homeowner shot an intruder intent on burglary. Also this month, a St. Louis apartment dweller shot an intruder who threatened to kill his family. A Newport Beach homeowner recently shot an intruder as well. Aside from the obvious, what do such incidents, often in newspapers, have in common? The government is hiding research about them. In December 2022, Fox News reported that to appease gun control activists, the Centers for Disease Control had deleted reference to a study on how often guns are used in self-defense from its published research.” (04/25/24)

https://thisiscommonsense.org/2024/04/25/cdc-on-self-defense/