Publication
Review: A Novel Capturing the Cruelty of Mass Incarceration
Suzanna's fictional mother in The Hill-much like author Harriet Clark's real-life mother-is imprisoned for a botched leftist bank robbery. Suzanna's childhood is a dreamy Groundhog Day loop of visits, guards, waiting rooms, fluorescent lights, and...
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Brickbat: Fake Stop
Baltimore police officer Dequwan Houchins has been indicted on charges of misconduct and making false entries in public records for allegedly filing fake reports about traffic stops he didn't actually make. During an undercover investigation,...
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Brickbat: Texas Two-Step
Social media messaging app Discord has agreed to a Texas court order requiring it to introduce the same age-verification it already uses in the United Kingdom. Within 90 days, Texas users will not be able to access certain content unless they are...
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Brickbat: The Big Easy
New Orleans police officer Brandon Coleman faces 350 criminal charges for allegedly claiming more than $111,000 in overtime pay that he did not actually earn. Investigators say Coleman repeatedly reported working long shifts, while surveillance footage...
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Euclidean Zoning: How Our 'Arbitrary and Oppressive' City Planning Scheme Got Its Name
The practice of separating homes, businesses, and factories into their own dedicated districts is called "Euclidean zoning." Given that Euclidean zoning involves the slicing and dicing of city maps into color-coded districts, you might assume it is...
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New Jersey Revives the Fight To Reclassify Gig Workers as Employees
For close to a decade, the political left has sought to reclassify independent contractors and gig workers as full-scale employees. Most notably, there was the notorious showdown over the issue in California, after which the push generally seemed to...
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Colombia's New President Wants More U.S. Military Help Fighting Cartels
The Trump administration is expanding the footprint of its war on drugs in Latin America. On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that Colombia would join the "Shield of the Americas" initiative. When the multinational security coalition...
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Review: Is Exit 8 an Anti-Screens Metaphor or Something Deeper?
Based on an atmospheric video game about a man stuck in a subway station who must notice "anomalies," Exit 8 is a tightly wound horror thriller that neatly transforms a simple puzzle game into an elaborate metaphor about taking responsibility and...
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Brickbat: Banned in Moscow
A court in Moscow has taken away 123 properties from the Jehovah's Witnesses and given them to the Russian government. The properties include 63 homes and business buildings totaling more than 11,000 square meters (118,000 square feet) plus 60 pieces...
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Brickbat: Anyone for Tennis?
In San Francisco, Sam Dogen took his 6-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son to play tennis at Golden Gate Heights Park on an empty public court so they could spend time together. After about 20 minutes, two park rangers approached him wearing vests and...
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Brickbat: Stop Asking Questions
In England, London's Metropolitan Police investigated reporter Jack Grove after he and others raised questions about possible plagiarism and résumé embellishment by Jason Arday, a professor at the University of Cambridge. Arday, who has since resigned,...
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Brickbat: Traffic Toll
Former Ruleville, Mississippi, police officer Antonio Wade was sentenced to seven years in federal prison plus three years of supervised release for using his position to extort money. During a traffic stop in 2025, Wade learned the driver was...
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Brickbats: August/September 2026
Police in Davie, Florida, arrested Demarquize Dawson under a state law criminalizing the concealment of license plate information because the frame on his rental car covered the first S in Sunshine State. Dawson spent a night in jail and suffered a...
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Trump's New Birthright Citizenship Executive Orders Are Mostly Theater
President Donald Trump signed two executive orders on Thursday that attempt to restrict birthright citizenship narrowly. This comes a little over a month after the Supreme Court struck down his attempt to suppress birthright citizenship much more...
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Review: Feuding Neighbors Snoop on Their Enemies
The word neighbors evokes white picket fences, borrowed cups of sugar, Norman Rockwell, and Mr. Rogers. The HBO docuseries Neighbors shows the decay of this ideal in a world saturated with surveillance technology. Each episode chronicles petty...
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Brickbat: Cash Back
New York Assemblywoman Nikki Lucas (D-Brooklyn) has proposed a bill that would require supermarkets and other retailers to give customers who use self-checkout a 10-percent discount. Lucas argues that shoppers are doing work once performed by cashiers,...
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Brickbat: Banned T-Shirt
In Australia, Ian Minus was fined $1,500 dollars (U.S. $1,050) after being convicted of knowingly displaying a Nazi symbol in public without reasonable excuse. Minus wore a T-shirt with a banned Nazi swastika outside a royal commission investigating...
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Brickbat: Where in the World?
The U.S. State Department apologized after showing a map of Africa at an international AIDS conference in Brazil that mislabeled every country it highlighted. The incorrect map, which appeared to have been created with AI tools, placed countries such...
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Brickbat: The Other Side of the Street
City officials in Bnei Brak, Israel, have set up gender-segregated sidewalks near event halls and wedding venues, with signs and barriers directing men and women to walk on opposite sides of the street. This followed a directive from the city's...
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Archives: August/September 2026
5 years agoAug/Sept 2021"In the two decades since the September 11 attacks, the absence of REAL ID enforcement has not made domestic flights more vulnerable to terrorism. Meanwhile, the federal government and the states have not been able to implement...
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Walt Whitman's American Vistas
On Democracy, by Walt Whitman, introduction by David Bromwich, Library of America, 210 pages, $12.50 When Walt Whitman was born in 1819, traversing Long Island took days and was probably best done on foot. Brooklyn, still independent of New York City,...
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Review: When Banks Do the Government's Bidding
Financial institutions have become a tool for suppressing speech. Rainey Reitman learned this in 2011, when PayPal froze the account of a group she was working with to help free whistleblower Chelsea Manning. After negative publicity, PayPal reinstated...
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A Pennsylvania Mom Says the Cops Were Called on Her 4 Times-for Letting Her Kids Be Outside
Whenever Ms. Gordon lets her sons go outside now, she cleans house. "All right, my kid just went around the block to his friend, let me sweep," she says. "Because I know if the house is clean, that's the first step toward making a good impression on...
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Brickbat: We'll Know It When We Read It
Hong Kong Secretary of Security Chris Tang warned booksellers to make sure the books they sell do not harm national security, comparing it to making sure food is safe to eat. This came after police raided two independent bookstores, Have A Nice Stay...
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Brickbat: Waiting on Hold
Brian Hurton died alone in East Kilbride, Scotland, after calling 999 twice, complaining of severe breathing problems. Dispatchers told him both times that no ambulance would be sent right away because they were busy. Instead, they said a clinician...
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The Best and Worst States To Be a Smoker
A smoker landing at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City would have to pay $19 for a pack of Marlboros. If that same smoker drove a few hundred miles south to North Carolina, he would pay less than half that price. The same product...
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California's War on Goats Could Worsen the Wildfire Crisis
Wildfire risk just got a lot worse in California, where some of the state's most effective fire prevention specialists-goats-are under regulatory attack. As of July 1, the state's standard minimum wage and overtime laws now apply to goat-herding...
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Georgia Cops Keep Getting Arrested for Misusing Flock Surveillance Data
What the flock is happening in Georgia? In just a matter of months, 18 law enforcement officers in the Peach State have been arrested for misusing Flock Safety camera data in what seems to be a deeply concerning trend, highlighting the need for...
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Review: The D.C. Museum Where Everything Is for Sale
If you need a break from the "free" (taxpayer-funded), "patriotic" (statist) museums dotting Washington, D.C., check out The Mansion on O Street. Located in a series of converted row houses in the Dupont Circle neighborhood, the museum is, in both form...
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Brickbat: Exactly Wrong
Melbourne, Florida, Police officer William Markle has resigned after body camera video showed him and other officers mistakenly tackling and handcuffing a 15-year-old boy, leaving him with a broken arm. Police were searching for a runaway described as...
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Brickbat: That's the PITs
Four Georgia State Patrol troopers were fired after an internal investigation found they tried to profit from police pursuits by filing personal injury claims against the insurance companies of drivers they had chased. Investigators said the troopers...
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Brickbat: In-N-Out but Not Thru
Officials in Culver City, California, are considering a permanent ban on new fast-food restaurants with drive-thru lanes. The proposal grew out of opposition to a planned In-N-Out location, with city leaders and some residents saying drive-thrus create...
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Brickbat: Friends Helping Friends
A federal judge in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, sentenced police officer Jaron Taylor to three years of probation and $38,670 in restitution for his part in an auto insurance fraud scheme. Prosecutors said Taylor worked with other officers to file...
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The Hidden Problem With Democrats' $25 Minimum Wage Bill
Across the country, progressive politicians continue to push for an ever-higher minimum wage. Whether it's New York City's Mamdani-led pursuit of $30 by '30, L.A.'s $30 "Olympic wage" for hotel workers, or Seattle's minimum wage for the gig economy,...
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A Pipeline Company Seized Their Land and Left Them With a $383,000 Bill. What Will the…
What is someone owed when their land is seized via government force? The Supreme Court announced last month that it will weigh in on that question. It is, of course, not the first time the justices have considered a version of the query: Eminent...
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Review: Thomas Jefferson's Monticello Is Celebrating America's Semiquincentennial
At Monticello, the central Virginia home of Thomas Jefferson, the phrase Our Guy Wrote It is emblazoned on banners and T-shirts hailing the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson's estate is also the home to "1776: Road to the...
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Why Foreign Tourism to the U.S. Is Declining Under Trump
America is celebrating its 250th birthday and hosting the world's biggest sporting event this year. But these days, we are welcoming fewer guests to the party. Foreign tourism to the United States has slumped since President Donald Trump returned to...
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Brickbat: Reading, Writing, and Gender Studies
A Brazilian court sentenced Audato and Ieda Denardi to 50 days in prison after convicting them of "intellectual neglect" for homeschooling their two daughters instead of using a state-approved education program. According to the ruling, the parents'...
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Brickbat: Making Myself Useful
A jury in Wales convicted Detective Inspector Emma Gardner of the North Wales Police of unauthorized access to computer material, for illegally accessing confidential police computer records to look up information for her friends. Prosecutors said...
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Photo: A New Map of the Universe
In April, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) in Arizona completed its five-year mission to produce the largest-ever high-resolution 3D map of the universe. DESI "observed more than 47 million galaxies and quasars and 20 million stars"...
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Andy Serkis on Animal Farm, Authoritarianism, and Humanizing Monsters
:15 :15 Download Andy Serkis: What Orwell Understood About TyrannyAndy Serkis has played some of contemporary film's most memorable characters: Gollum in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies, Kong in King Kong, Caesar in the Planet of the Apes...
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