Thank you!

  The Capital City Free Press has ceased publication as of August 8, 2025. We would like to thank everyone for 24 extraordinary years! We deeply appreciate your support and hope you have enjoyed this adventure with us. 

Teaching our children to be better than us

  Do parents have moral standing to impose standards on their children that they themselves did not follow when they were kids? Is it ever ethical for parents to lie to a child about their youthful experiences?

Yosemite embodies the long war over US national park privatization

  The Trump administration’s cuts to the National Park Service’s budget and staffing have raised concerns among park advocates and the public that the administration is aiming to further privatize the national parks.

  The nation has a long history of similar efforts, including a wildly unpopular 1980 attempt by Reagan administration Interior Secretary James Watt to promote development and expand private concessions in the parks. But debate over using public national park land for private profit dates back more than a century before that.

Can AI think – and should it? What it means to think, from Plato to ChatGPT

  In my writing and rhetoric courses, students have plenty of opinions on whether AI is intelligent: how well it can assess, analyze, evaluate, and communicate information.

  When I ask whether artificial intelligence can “think,” however, I often look upon a sea of blank faces. What is “thinking,” and how is it the same or different from “intelligence?”

Idi Amin made himself out to be the ‘liberator’ of an oppressed majority – a demagogic trick that endures today

  Fifty years ago, Ugandan President Idi Amin wrote to the governments of the British Commonwealth with a bold suggestion: Allow him to take over as head of the organization, replacing Queen Elizabeth II.

  After all, Amin reasoned, a collapsing economy had made the U.K. unable to maintain its leadership. Moreover the “British empire does not now exist following the complete decolonization of Britain’s former overseas territories.”

  It wasn’t Amin’s only attempt to reshape the international order. Around the same time, he called for the United Nations headquarters to be moved to Uganda’s capital, Kampala, touting its location at “the heart of the world between the continents of America, Asia, Australia and the North and South Poles.”

PBS and NPR are generally unbiased, independent of government propaganda and provide key benefits to US democracy

  Champions of the almost entirely party-line vote in the U.S. Senate to erase US$1.1 billion in already approved funds for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting called their action a refusal to subsidize liberal media.

  “Public broadcasting has long been overtaken by partisan activists,” said U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, insisting there is no need for government to fund what he regards as biased media. “If you want to watch the left-wing propaganda, turn on MSNBC,” Cruz said.

  Accusing the media of liberal bias has been a consistent conservative complaint since the civil rights era, when white Southerners insisted news outlets were slanting their stories against segregation. During his presidential campaign in 1964, U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona complained that the media was against him, an accusation that has been repeated by every Republican presidential candidate since.

President Donald Trump sues The Wall Street Journal: First Amendment analysis

  President Donald Trump is suing The Wall Street Journal owner Rupert Murdoch and publisher Dow Jones & Co., as well as two reporters, after the paper published an article stating that Trump sent a letter to financier Jeffrey Epstein in 2003 that included a lewd drawing and birthday wishes containing sexual innuendo. Two years later, in 2005, police began investigating Epstein, who in 2008 pleaded guilty to prostitution-related charges involving underage girls. He was arrested again in 2019 on sex-trafficking charges involving allegations that dated back to the early 2000s. He died in prison later that same year.

This is how you solve a major Alabama problem. This is why Alabama won’t do it.

  Our governor likes to say Alabama is “open for business.” Our leaders insist we are the most “pro-business” state in the nation.

  This is, of course, situational. Private solar panel companies are effectively shut out of Alabama, thanks to a rooftop solar tax supported by Alabama Power and maintained by the Public Service Commission.

  And the love of free markets and enterprise doesn’t extend to workers who take the initiative and try to get the best deal for their labor. That’s when celebrations of entrepreneurship turn into demands for obedience. (Nothing seems to enrage an Alabama politician more than the thought of an employee talking back.)

Loopholes and slippery slopes

  As a former law professor, I know all about loopholes.

  I trained students to find omissions and ambiguities in wording — a perfectly legal way to evade the clear intent of laws and agreements. After all, that’s what lawyers are paid to do. And, despite commonly expressed disdain when lawyers do this, that’s precisely what most clients want and expect when they hire a lawyer.

Attacks on the U.S. innovation ecosystem are an attack on a wellspring of American prosperity

  Fifty-six years ago, on July 20, 1969, the United States landed a man on the moon, culminating a decade-long race that showcased the ingenuity of America’s public sector, its universities, and its thriving private industry. The moon landing was a singular accomplishment in the history of humanity and a triumph of the U.S. innovation ecosystem. The United States’ unparalleled science and technology advantage, developed in large part through federally funded research and development (R&D); world-class colleges and universities; and its openness to the best and brightest from anywhere created not just the technologies that define the modern world but also many of the world’s most successful companies. Now, the Trump administration is dismantling America’s science and innovation lead. The impacts will be felt for decades.