Those concerned about diminished American freedoms often focus on the overreach of the federal government and its agencies. However, the unjustified power of government can just as well be asserted by local governments. George Sheetz found that out when El Dorado County, east of Sacramento, where he owned a piece of real estate, placed a substantial barrier across his path to home ownership. [P]rivate property cannot be taken … in instances where the governmental entity which is doing the taking does not compensate the owner. In 2016, Sheetz wanted to build a modest (1,854-square-foot) man ..read more

Donald Trump’s hyperbolic threat to sic Russia on our NATO allies who fail to spend enough on defense prompted the usual screeching and rending of garments by security analysts on both sides of the Atlantic. Almost in unison they argued that the North Atlantic alliance is not a crass transactional arrangement, but one based on political solidarity derived from a collective vision, something a boorish real estate developer can’t hope to understand. But our experts then neglected to define exactly what this important collective vision at the heart of the alliance is. We shouldn’t be surprised at ..read more

The redbuds and dogwoods in our neighborhood are in full bloom, and while we’ve had something of a wet, cold spring thus far, one can see the signs all around. Before you know it, summer will be here, with picnics, baseball games, vacation trips, motorcycle rides, all the usual joys. So instead of crafting policy, we generate bumper sticker phrases and pretend we’ve solved a problem. And yet, I can’t readily recall when I’ve looked forward to the coming of summer with such a deep sense of dread. Last New Year’s Eve I invited The American Spectator readers to “Expect the Worst in 2024.” My ..read more

Have you noticed that young women all across America are demonstrating for Hamas, Iran, and Palestine? Why would such privileged and educated women, the heirs to the #MeToo movement and to Second and Third Wave Western feminisms, cheer for male rapists and male killers, arguably the most blood-thirsty and sadistic misogynists this side of Ghenghis Khan? Why side with Islamist barbarians who have jailed, tortured, and executed their own women over a slipped Islamic veil, and who would forcibly convert their Western female admirers to Islam, veil them as well, and coerce them into polygamous mar ..read more

I never thought that I would be spending Passover in Japan. The idea was always, “Next year in Jerusalem” not Tokyo, but here I am. Several currents conspired to bring me here with a few other members of my family. First of all, my older son fell in love with a marvellous Japanese girl while she was an exchange student in Toronto. After she returned to Japan to finish her degree, he began visiting her there and that promoted Japan to the top of my family’s bucket list. Then, Japan recently had a major earthquake and Air Canada announced a seat sale as a goodwill gesture. Not able to resist a b ..read more

A one-month-old baby is being evacuated from the U.K. to the Vatican’s Bambino Gesù Pediatric Hospital in Rome for treatment of a congenital heart condition. The British National Health Service (NHS) told the baby’s parents that specialized treatment for the condition was not available in the U.K. The child’s father is reportedly an Italian citizen working in the U.K. and so turned to his home country for assistance. Italian family lawyer and former senator Simone Pillon managed to secure the child’s transfer to Pope Francis’s hospital last week before the case was referred to British courts ..read more

American universities rode a tall wave of public esteem in the last few decades. In the Information Age, the value of learning naturally soars. By 2008, the chaos and violence of the Sixties and Seventies campuses was so forgotten that the revelation that Obama was sponsored by violent young radicals Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn meant nothing to the voters. America likes to forgive and forget. Americans are losing trust in the training ground of what we may gently call educated fools. But intellectuals do not like to forget, and radical intellectuals like even less to forgive. They foun ..read more

On Oct. 7 of last year, Arab terrorists committed the worst atrocities against human beings in the Western world since the end of the Holocaust. In a precisely planned attack, Hamas killed roughly 1,200 Israeli–Jewish civilians, including in an attack on an Israeli “Peace Festival” near the border with Gaza. The terrorists were especially cruel and brutal to females. They raped dozens of women and girls of all ages. They killed some of them by shoving cruel instruments into their vaginas. They killed more by applying blow torches to their genitals. It’s hard to believe it really happened, but ..read more

The most significant homeless case in decades, according to some pundits, was heard by the Supreme Court on Monday. The decision in that case, Grants Pass v. Johnson, may determine how aggressive cities can be in breaking up homeless encampments and moving homeless people out of parks and other public spaces where they set up their tents and other shelters. The city of Grants Pass, Oregon, population 38,000, encountered 600 homeless on any given day. To deal with this problem, the city passed a law in 2013 that effectively banned public camping on city property. The law prohibited sleeping in ..read more

I bought some summer clothes, you know, shorts, T-shirts, and a lilo with a beer holder for the pool. I packed everything in a suitcase along with sunscreen and set off to the beach for the weekend, taking advantage of the high temperatures my country has been enjoying the last few days. As soon as I set foot on the sand, the thermometer plummeted. The sky has also turned a donkey-belly kind of gray. And a wind that in all likelihood comes from the land of ice caps in Al Gore documentaries has started blowing. Now I’m writing behind a misted-up window, watching the rain pour down furiously out ..read more