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Haley in it to win it

With Donald Trump’s decisive victory in the New Hampshire Republican primary, the possibility of anyone else securing the party’s presidential nomination is vanishingly small. That depressing reality doesn’t mean that former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley should abandon her campaign to overtake Trump, which she vowed to continue. “New Hampshire is first in the nation—it is not the last in the nation,” Haley said, promising to carry her campaign to her home state’s GOP primary on Feb. 24. Haley is right to suggest that it is wrong for the nomination to be sewn up because ...

Sanders on big pharma

Socialists love nothing more than an old-fashioned show trial. Witness Bernie Sanders’s announcement last week that he’ll subpoena the CEOs of drug makers that have challenged the Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA) price controls. It’s a rite of passage these days for CEOs to get hauled before Congress. But the purpose of Congressional hearings is to conduct oversight and inform legislation, not punish government opponents. The latter is what the Vermont Senator is doing as chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Mr. Sanders last Thursday ...

On campus free speech

Universities have always been a home for the world’s great arguments. Professors and students are supposed to debate the issues of the moment, gaining understanding of the other side’s views, refining and strengthening their positions, and learning how to solve problems. Argument thrives in a culture of openness, and maintaining that culture ought to be paramount for universities, as well as any institution that wants to shape public policy or debate. There are many ways to stifle a culture of openness; in recent years, both the far left and the far right have shown a willingness ...

Protecting journalists

No war has killed so many journalists so quickly. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says that at least 83 media workers have died since 7 October. Seventy-six of them were Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza, while three Lebanese citizens were also killed, and four Israelis were killed by Hamas in the 7 October attacks. Even given the total number of deaths in Gaza—at least 24,600, the Palestinian authorities say—the media toll is shocking and disproportionate. On one estimate, it amounts to a tenth of all journalists there compared with a reported one in 100 of ...

SCOTUS and vagrancy

Good news for West Coast denizens. The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear an appeal challenging a judicial ruling that established a de facto constitutional right to vagrancy. Wouldn’t it be rich if conservative Justices rescue progressive cities from themselves? (City of Grants Pass v. Johnson.) A panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2022 blocked the Oregon town of Grants Pass from enforcing “anti-camping” laws on public property. The judges said the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment prohibits cities from arresting or imposing penalties on ...

Olowalu landfill conjures memories

Maui folks of a certain age may remember a foul smell wafting over the road between Olowalu and Lahaina. Sort of a blend between rotten eggs and the smoke of a branding iron pressed to a calf’s hide, the acrid stench was the product of a persistent underground fire at Olowalu Dump that lasted for years at the end of the 1970s and into the ‘80s. This was when county dumps were scattered around the island, including in Waikapu, Makawao, Hana and Olowalu. In those bygone days, a favorite pastime of many dump users was to have a look around to see if anything worth salvaging had ...