The end of free speech? Katherine Mangu-Ward at Reason has an excellent cover story about how "the left eats its own and the right shows its true colors." Here's my favorite part:

The people wielding those "No Free Speech for Fascists" placards don't really know what they're asking for. If the justification for restrictions on the speech of one man is violence committed by another, there can be no end to the litany of people who may be gagged in the name of order.

Extremism is generally frowned upon in American politics, and rightly so. But defense of speech rights is one place where absolutism is not only healthy but necessary. A bipartisan world in which everyone gives in a little on the edges—in which we sneak some limits on hate speech into our laws and keep folks who carry guns from yelling too loud—is a world slipping its way down a dangerous slope, where neither the trusty ACLU nor even very many principled citizens can be relied upon to fight for unpopular expression.

Read the whole thing.

Occupational licensing and migration. TWS has argued about the perils of occupational licensing (see Felten, Eric, and Rhoads, Steven E., among others ...), but there's another good criticism of it making the rounds these days: it hurts interstate migration. Tyler Cowen highlights a new paper by Janna E. Johnson and Morris M. Kleiner from the University of Minnesota:

…we find that the between-state migration rate for individuals in occupations with state-specific licensing exam requirements is 36 percent lower relative to members of other occupations. Members of licensed occupations with national licensing exams show no evidence of limited interstate migration.

Put simply, if your profession is licensed by your state, you're less likely to move in many cases because moving to another state doesn't mean you can immediately take up your profession. Lawyers, one can understand, given the individual nature of state and local laws, but hairdressers and barbers? 

On entitlements and the High Cost of Good Intentions. Over at EconTalk, the venerable podcast hosted by Russ Roberts, John Cogan discusses his new book, The High Cost of Good Intentions. Here's the writeup:

Cogan traces the evolution of government pensions beginning with Revolutionary War vets to the birth and evolution of the Social Security program. Surprises along the way include President Franklin Roosevelt as fiscal conservative and the hard-to-believe but true fact that there is still one person receiving monthly checks from the Civil War veterans pension program. The conversation concludes with Cogan's concerns over the growing costs of financing social security payments to baby boomers.

The podcast runs about an hour.

In Ireland, lawmakers are trying to criminalize sharing fake news. Poynter reports:

If you use a Twitter bot or share fake news in Ireland, go directly to jail, do not pass go and possibly pay €10,000.

That’s the spirit of a bill Irish lawmakers proposed this week, which would make using a bot to create multiple online presences with the goal of influencing political debate a criminal offense. Actively promoting fake news on Facebook or Twitter in that way would be punishable by five years in prison or fines of up to €10,000.

What could go wrong?

Liberal college: Please call us, not the police, if our students shoplift. Oh, Oberlin! The loony liberal college on America's north coast has done it again. Last fall, a beloved local bakery became the target of the small liberal Ohio college town's ire after three students were arrested for robbing (and beating!) a shopkeeper who believed they were shoplifting wine. (They pleaded guilty.) Now the #woke Oberliners—both students and the administration—are after the bakery, accusing it of racism. And so, the bakery is suing:

On Nov. 7, the Gibsons sued Oberlin and Meredith Raimondo, vice president and dean of students, for slander, accusing faculty members of encouraging demonstrations against the bakery by suspending classes, distributing flyers, and supplying protesters with free food and drink.

It says Raimondo took part in the demonstration against Gibson’s with a bullhorn and distributed a flyer that said the bakery is a “RACIST establishment with a LONG ACCOUNT of RACIAL PROFILING and DISCRIMINATION.”

Today, the lawsuit says, college tour guides continue to inform prospective students that Gibson’s is racist.

Dave Gibson, the bakery’s owner, says the lawsuit is about standing up for his right to crack down on shoplifting without being branded as a racist. The suit says Oberlin demanded that he stop pushing criminal charges on first-time shoplifters and call school deans instead.

“I have not taken a paycheck since this happened more than a year ago,” Gibson said in an email. “Sometimes you have to stand up to a large institution. Powerful institutions — including Oberlin College — and their members must follow the same laws as the rest of us.”

Did you catch that? Oberlin wanted the Gibsons to call them instead of the police. What's more:

The clash has inspired Oberlin senior Jake Berstein, who said he witnessed the initial altercation, to produce a podcast trying to create a conversation that “isn’t being had” between the two sides.

“Gibson’s has become all that is wrong with America,” Berstein said. “It’s a classic case of those political bubbles that don’t communicate with each other, and don’t want to.”

Which is the most millennial thing ever: a podcast about a college and its students teaming up on a bakery that just doesn't want to get robbed. Go Gibson's! 

The Bridge to Nowhere on the Border. Did you know in Texas there is an abandoned bridge to Mexico out in the middle of nowhere? La Linda International Bridge, as it's known, is blocked off nowadays, but was once used by Dow Chemical to "haul processed fluor spar into the United States from a Mexican mining operation in La Linda -- the United States Customs Service closed it in 1997, blocking it with concrete barricades." The New York Times reports that, back in 2002, the bridge was slated for destruction. 15 years later, it still exists. Check out the photos.

—Jim Swift, Deputy Online Editor

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