From the News
330 – Maine’s Tuition Assistance
When parents saw what their children were being taught during the COVID-19 school shutdowns, school choice has been a topic of interest lately. If government schools were going to substitute political theory for reading, writing, and arithmetic, parents wanted another choice. Most people cannot afford private schools, and others cannot dedicate the time to home schooling. Since the people pay for these government schools through their taxes, shouldn’t they be able to use that money for better options?
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329 – Limits on Freedom of Speech
Most of us have heard of the case where the Supreme Court placed limits of freedom of speech. However most people don’t know the name of the case and frequently misquote it. A recent case out of Kansas once again brings into question the government’s ability to criminalize certain types of speech. From the Schneck case in 1919 to the Hernandez-Calvillo case in 2022, when the government tries to make speech it doesn’t like criminal, We the People must stand up to the tyranny.
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328 – Turning a Lemon into Lemonade
A high-school coach was denied his freedom of religion and speech based on a more than 50 year old lemon of a court opinion. In the case Lemon v. Kurtzman, the Supreme Court claimed that your right to freely speak and exercise your religion must yield to the government’s “interest” in avoiding violating the establishment clause. But the “Lemon Test” puts the government’s interest above your rights protected by the Constitution. In this years case Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the court took this Lemon and turned it into lemonade.
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327 – Showdown at the EPA Corral
Did you ever imagine that a question about air pollution could end up changing the way governments work? That may be exactly what happened with the Supreme Court’s opinion in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency. What started as a question of whether or not the EPA’s plan to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions from the electric grid was constitutional turned into a statement about the limits of discretion granted to executive agencies.
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326 – NYSRPA v. Bruen
Can a state arbitrarily decide whether or not you get to exercise a right protected by the Constitution of the United States? That is the question in the case New York State Rifle and Pistol Association (NYSRPA) v. Bruen, Superintendent of the New York State Police. New York State is a “may issue” state, meaning that you did not get your carry license even if you met all of the legal requirements, you had to show you had a “good cause” to carry a firearm in public. But self-defense was not considered “good cause” by the New York courts. You had to show you had a special need for self-defense, greater than the general public. Does that sound like infringement on your right to keep and bear arms to you?
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325 – Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health
After almost 50 years, a landmark decision of the Supreme Court has been overturned. Will it be remembered with other decisions like Dred Scott or Plessy v. Ferguson? Only time will tell. After all of the furor when a draft of the opinion was leaked, we finally get a chance to review that actual opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health in its final form.
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A Quick Look at the Overturning of Roe v. Wade
A lot has been said about the anticipated release of the Supreme Court’s opinion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health case. The leak of a draft of the opinion set off a firestorm, both figuratively and literally, around the nation. With the release of the final opinion, we see a tectonic move in American…
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322 – Money, Speech, and Federal Overreach
Have you ever considered how money relates to speech? The federal government has. One of the issues with federal election law is the limitation on the use of money for a candidate to get their message out. What does the case FEC v Cruz have to do with free speech? More important, what does it show about the state of elections in America?
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