Austin, long the liberal redoubt in conservative Texas, is quickly becoming the model A revised version of this article originally appeared in City Journal (here). Thanks to Real Clear Policy (here)! During the 1970s, Austin—the state capital and home to the flagship campus of the University of…
Texas
Low-Key Competence Is the Ticket for Austin’s Top Cop
An abridged version of this essay appeared in City Journal on May 15, 2019 as “Lone Star Exception” (here). Thank you, Real Clear Policy! Across the country, many large cities sacrifice public safety to political correctness, catering to minority voters by hamstringing—or even demon…
Will San Antonio’s Voters Stand Up for Chick-fil-A?
A slightly abridged version of this essay appeared in City Journal on April 25, 2019 (here) as “Standing Up for Chick-fil-A.” Thanks to Real Clear Politics! And thanks to the New York Post (here). San Antonio, a predominantly-Hispanic city named after the Catholic Saint Anthony of Pad…
Fear and Loathing in the Lone Star State
A respected writer sullies his legacy with a tendentious partisan screed This essay originally appeared in Law & Liberty on April 22, 2019 (here). Thanks to Real Clear Policy and Real Clear Books for the links! When asked by Law & Liberty if I would be interested in reviewing Lawrence Wri…
Suing the State Bar of Texas
On March 6, 2019, three lawyers in Texas (including me) sued the State Bar of Texas for being forced to pay dues to an organization that is engaged in political activities we object to. Here is a piece I wrote for the Texas Scorecard regarding the lawsuit. Commentary: Texas Lawyers Fight Against …
Blacklisting Chick-fil-A
A popular fast-food chain becomes the target of LGBT intolerance A condensed version of this essay appeared in City Journal on March 26, 2019 (here). Thanks to Real Clear Policy, Real Clear Politics, Real Clear Markets (here), and Instapundit (here)! And the N.Y. Post (here)! And the Dallas Morni…
Texas Law Review Joins the Resistance
Thanks to Instapundit! (here) I have reminisced at length about my student days at the University of Texas School of Law (here), and also expressed concern about the leftward drift of the Texas Law Review, on whose editorial board I served during 1979-80 (here). Recent events have only heightened…
Beto: The Left’s Latest Empty Vessel
A slightly-edited version of this article first appeared in Law & Liberty, titled “Doubting Beto,” on January 22, 2019 (here). Thanks to Real Clear Policy! Are American voters ready to elect a President who openly questions the relevance of the Constitution (or, for that matter, w…
A Tale of Two Systems
This article first appeared in Texas Scorecard (here). In higher education, policymakers can debate many things—tuition levels, the need for bloated administrative bureaucracies, and the utility of identity politics in academic curricula, to name just three examples—but the free speech rights…
Profile of UT President Greg Fenves in NAS’s Academic Questions
My profile of UT President Greg Fenves in the Spring 2019 issue of the National Association of Scholar’s quarterly publication, Academic Questions, entitled “Gregory Fenves: An Unlikely Radical at the Helm of UT-Austin,” is now available online. The link is here. It begins: Greg…