“Political language,” wrote George Orwell, “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” Nowhere is this more evident today than in the phrase “liberal democratic values,” which is…
I want to like Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Online Harms Act. Children are ostensibly its biggest beneficiaries. Bill C-63 aims to shield minors from easy access to graphic pornography, online predators, and other forms of exploitation. Given that Canada…
SACRAMENTO — I still chuckle about a legislative hearing from a few years ago where state lawmakers ultimately approved new restrictions and taxes on electronic vaping devices. They were voting on complex regulations involving different types of relatively complex items…
Democrats who want to resurrect Title II (a.k.a. net neutrality) rules on internet providers continue to ignore the lessons provided by Europe, where a stronger regulatory regime harmed broadband access during the COVID-19 pandemic. Any arguments about lower broadband prices…
You are the target of an investigation. Federal agencies are stepping up their surveillance of average Americans everywhere. But it’s not just them. Americans are surveilling themselves and, by extension, letting others surveil them, too. Last week, my neighbor’s Alexa…
OXFORD, England — David Garrow, who received a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Martin Luther King Jr. and praise for his work on the Eyes on the Prize PBS documentary, receives a shunning for uncovering truths about the man…
Confession: I’m a bookaholic. And I’ve been one all my life. Once, as a toddler, I was taken to visit my parents’ friends Martha and Eugenio, and the only thing I remember is being fascinated by the huge encyclopedia that…
SACRAMENTO — Years ago, U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) warned attendees at a conference about the need to watch out whenever public officials claim to be doing something for the children. She was talking specifically about Los Angeles Unified School District’s eminent-domain…
“Manuscripts don’t burn,” or so the devil Woland tells us in Mikhail Bulgakov’s darkly comedic novel The Master and Margarita. In Bulgakov’s magical realist literary universe, the devil might very well pluck a manuscript unharmed from a blazing stove, but…
