Liberty Movement News for August 21, 2023

YOUR NEW DAILY NEWS HOME 
FOR THE LIBERTY MOVEMENT

Good morning! The Liberty Movement is either 50 years old or nearly 250 years old or perhaps as old as Magna Carta, depending on your view of history. Regardless of its age, we are overdue for a daily industry newsletter that tracks the comings and goings of those who make up the movement, the accomplishments of the movement, where we’ve been, and where we are going, what we’re reading, what we’re writing, what we’re listening to, etc. We’ll start barebones and then see where we go. If you like this idea, please let me know at Mark@Millerappellate.com. Also if you have news you want me to share, email me at that same address and I’ll try to get it in the next daily update if it fits what we’re doing here. If you don’t like this idea, then keep it to yourself.  On with the show…

First up: Congratulations!

Congratulations!

I am delighted to share the news that my good friend and mentor, Todd Gaziano, will officially start tomorrow as the Center For Individual Rights' (CIR's) new President. Todd and I worked together for many years at the Pacific Legal Foundation, many of you no doubt know Todd from his many years as a leader within The Heritage Foundation, and no one knows better than Todd how to build upon outgoing CIR President Terry Pell's record (and CIR's record) of #SCOTUS wins (including the important free speech viewpoint discrimination landmark case known as Rosenberger, among several others). With Todd at the helm of CIR, you should expect some more big wins for liberty, freedom, and Americans' constitutional rights. Please join me in congratulating Todd!

What We’re Reading

What kind of Judicial Restraint Are We Talking About?

Gary Galles of The Independent Institute has a thoughtful new essay about the ongoing attacks on SCOTUS here: https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14646.

He begins: 

After the most recent Supreme Court session, in which President Biden didn’t like some of its rulings, as with denying him the unilateral power to forgive student loans as a violation of the constitutional separation of powers, he said, “this is not a normal court,” not just conservative, but rather “like a throwback, some of the decisions that they’re making,” which has “done more to unravel basic rights and basic decisions than any court in recent history.”

Biden’s character assassination of the current Supreme Court echoed Justice Kagan’s student loan case dissent: “In every respect, the Court today exceeds its proper, limited role in our Nation’s governance,” but instead, “From the first page to the last, today’s opinion departs from the demands of judicial restraint.”

Such accusations of the Supreme Court’s failing to exercise appropriate judicial restraint, however, bypass a crucial question: What kind of judicial restraint are we talking about?

Read the whole thing.

What We’re Listening To

The Institute for Justice’s newest Short Circuit podcast episode, Searching for Something, is available here:

 https://ij.org/podcasts/short-circuit/short-circuit-285-searching-for-something/  

What’s it about? From the IJ site:

A whole lot of searching going on this week. First, Scott Regan of IJ reports on a Ninth Circuit opinion involving, among other things, an iCloud account. How does the Fourth Amendment apply to the gazillions of pieces of data stored on our phones? It depends on what the officers are searching for, and their searches. Then, in a very different search, a DC police officer asks a guy to show his waistband. Twice. And then the guy runs and throws a gun in the bushes. Were the officer’s requests seizures? Searches? Unreasonable? The evidence is suppressed but the judges disagree on a few things. Your host reports on this case from the DC Circuit.

Worth a listen.

Final Shot

Each day I’ll end the daily newsletter with either something inspiring, thoughtful, or funny. Today let’s go with inspiring:

Let’s fight for liberty while our strength lasts. Have a great day everyone!

-Mark