About: Jacob Sullum
Posts by Jacob Sullum
A Ruling Against a Man Arrested for a COVID-19 Joke Highlights the Influence of a Pernicious Analogy
Back in March 2020, a dozen or so sheriff’s deputies wearing bulletproof vests descended upon Waylon Bailey’s home in Rapides Parish, Louisiana, with...
A Ham-Handed Bill Attacks the First Amendment in the Name of Protecting Minors From Online Harm
Late last month, a Senate committee considered a 50-page bill with a name that includes the word “kids” and approved it unanimously. Those...
Methanol-Tainted Liquor and Xylazine-Tainted Fentanyl Illustrate the Same Prohibitionist Peril
When the celebrated Iranian artist Khosrow Hassanzadeh died of methanol poisoning this month, everyone but his country’s most ardent theocrats recognized that prohibition...
Critics of the Ruling Against Biden’s Anti-‘Misinformation’ Crusade See No Threat to Freedom of Speech
Last week, a federal judge in Louisiana issued a preliminary injunction that bars a long list of federal officials and agencies from encouraging...
A Post-Clemency Prosecution Shines a Light on a Broken System
A month before he left office, then-President Donald Trump freed Philip Esformes, a Florida nursing home operator who had served nearly five years...
Congress Considers Conditions on the Government’s License to Steal
Two years ago, the FBI seized the contents of safe deposit boxes used by hundreds of people at U.S. Private Vaults, a Beverly...
Ron DeSantis Dangerously Blurs the Line Between State and Private Action
Ron DeSantis, who officially launched his presidential campaign last week, presents himself as a champion of individual freedom against overweening government. But as...
The Perils of “Rule by Indefinite Emergency Edict”: Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch Highlights a Vital Lesson From the COVID-19 Pandemic
On March 15, 2020, two days after then-President Donald Trump declared a national COVID-19 emergency, Cornell law professor Michael Dorf urged Congress to...