Author: Norman Leahy

The bipartisan moral panic over TikTok now looks like it will have official legislation to enforce its fears and censor what Americans can see and do on their devices because…China. As CNBC reports: [Sen. Mark] Warner [D-Va.] said he is working on the bill with Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., adding that he is concerned over the type of content that Americans are seeing on TikTok. “They are taking data from Americans, not keeping it safe, but what worries me more with TikTok is that this can be a propaganda tool,” he told “Fox News Sunday.” Warner’s legislation comes after U.S.…

The one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has seen a spate of “what have we learned” articles in the press. Included in that wave of thought pieces are reflections on the effectiveness of sanctions applied against Russian oil and gas exports. The upshot: traders are finding ways around those sanctions. Some of them in plain sight. According to a report in Bloomberg, Russian oil tankers are transferring their cargoes to other ships in the comfortable confines of a bay near Greece. And the transfer business is booming: At least 23 million barrels of Russian crude and additional volumes of…

Remember the headlines from a few months ago? The IRS is getting an additional $80 billion over the next decade. Half of it is going to tax enforcement, but a fair chunk, roughly $25 billion, is going toward such things as “information technology development.” What could possibly go wrong? The money devoted to technology is sorely needed. A recent Government Accountability Office report reminds us why: …GAO’s analysis showed that about 33 percent of the applications [running on IRS computer systems], 23 percent of the software instances in use, and 8 percent of hardware assets were considered legacy. This includes…

The Republican presidential field is likely to grow much larger than it is right now. But regardless of who enters the race, they will all have to contend with the presumptive frontrunner – if not outright favorite – for the nomination: former President Donald Trump. Trump’s campaign was nearly non-existent following his entry into the race back in November. But in recent weeks, the Trump campaign has begun making itself known in ways that show how Trump’s third presidential run will be the most sophisticated yet. In part, that’s because Trump is doing what his challengers really can’t: work the…

There was a bit of an online sensation when a story broke that Puffin Books, part of the Random House publishing group, had a group of sensitivity screeners read and edit the children’s books from the late author Roald Dahl. The changes were sweeping and, as one can imagine, idiotic: Augustus Gloop, Charlie’s gluttonous antagonist in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which originally was published in 1964, is no longer “enormously fat,” just “enormous.” In the new edition of “Witches,” a supernatural female posing as an ordinary woman may be working as a “top scientist or running a business” instead…

Editor’s Note: Dear readers, We apologize for the service outage tonight. Our team is working with our marketing platform to resolve this incident. We’re working hard to make amends and provide you the service you deserve. Original Article: The push to electrify everything in our lives in the name of lower emissions has always seemed a bit optimistic, given the nation’s rickety and increasingly dodgy electric grid.  But there’s another, more troubling, menace to the grid that exceeds its mechanical shortcomings. According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, vandalism aimed at transformers, substations and power lines is on…

The moral panic over social media continues to roll on, with various state legislatures introducing measures that would restrict children and teenagers’ access to the platforms. Legislation under consideration in Utah would go several steps further. According to an analysis from Utah State University’s Center for Growth and Opportunity, every Utah resident would be required to provide an age-verifying ID to social media sites before being allowed to log on: *The two bills aren’t just age verification mandates for teens, they also mandate ID verification for everyone over 18. *Since expired ID cards won’t count, the poor and the elderly…

Many news organizations are struggling to stay afloat, particularly those at the local level. As these outlets reduce staff, or close outright, there’s a growing concern…from the press…that so-called “news deserts” will engulf more of the country and eventually become so great as to threaten democracy itself. Setting aside the substantial self-interest underlying these concerns, what are the preferred means of keeping the deserts at bay and democracy out of the dustbin? A heaping dose of corporate welfare: The Rebuild Local News coalition is pushing for a comprehensive list of tax credits to keep afloat local newsrooms, such as a…

With former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley declaring her candidacy for the GOP presidential nomination, attention has rightly focused on which candidates will follow. Could Sen. Tim Scott be ready to declare? How about former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo? Or the big one: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis? All in good time. But on the Democratic side, we’re still waiting to see if and when Joe Biden will make his reelection bid official. Yes, there’s still an outside chance Biden surprises everyone and decides not to run again. While that would set off a scramble of epic proportions on the Democratic…

While the political class continues to gin up a moral panic over Big Tech, social media and other such hobgoblins elsewhere, the government itself is about to create the mother of all financial tracking systems. And yes, it tramples any commonsense notions of privacy, transparency, never mind accountability, in the dust. As Reason’s Jennifer Schulp writes: The Consolidated Audit Trail is intended to collect and accurately identify every order, cancellation, modification, and trade execution for all exchange-listed equities and options across all U.S. markets, allowing the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to track orders and identify who made them. It’s…