At the end of April, President Trump met with Democratic congressional leaders at the White House. Instead of the backbiting that usually precedes and follows such meetings, what emerged was tentative agreement on cooperation toward "a $2 trillion infrastructure plan to upgrade the nation's highways, railroads, bridges, and broadband."

The headline on Hans Bader's piece at the Foundation for Economic Education is true as far as it goes: "Lifting the Ban on Kidney Sales Would Save 30,000 American Lives Annually." Bader draws on an earlier essay by Ilya Somin at The Volokh Conspiracy, who in turn riffs on findings published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

On April 1, The Supreme Court of the United States ruled against death-row inmate Russell Bucklew's appeal of his execution method. Nixing his claim that a rare medical condition would make the execution unconstitutionally "cruel and unusual" by virtue of being excruciatingly painful, the Court (in an opinion written by Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch) held that the Eighth Amendment "does not guarantee a prisoner a painless death."

On April 18, US Attorney William Barr released Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on the probe into "Russian meddling" in the 2016 presidential election. The report cleared President Donald Trump and his campaign team of allegations that they conspired with the Russian government in that meddling. But on the question of "obstruction of justice," Mueller punted in an eerily-familiar way.

I haven't read the Mueller report yet. I'm writing this on the day of its release (with redactions) by US Attorney General William Barr. I'll read it later, but I didn't have to read it, or even wait for its release, to reach one conclusion from it: It's time to amend the Constitution to limit the President of the United States to one term.

Because I'm both a Libertarian and a loudmouth, I'm frequently hit with questions about libertarianism (and the Libertarian Party). Recently this one came up:

"What is the most controversial belief of Libertarians?"

Could it be our support of immigration-freedom (and, generally, freedom to travel)?

Or our demand for separation of school and state?

Perhaps our hard-line support for gun rights?

Or our stand for legalization of all drugs?

On April 11, the ongoing saga of journalist and transparency activist Julian Assange took a dangerous turn.  Ecuador's president, Lenin Moreno, revoked his asylum in that country's London embassy.

"Congressional Democrats and Republicans," reports ProPublica, "are moving to permanently bar the IRS from creating a free electronic tax-filing system."

A February Harris poll finds that 49.6% of Millennial and Generation Z Americans would "prefer living in a socialist country."

US Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), among other politicians, proclaim a message of "democratic socialism," evoking an ideology last ascendant in the early 1900s when Eugene Debs and Norman Thomas moved the needle in US elections.

Governor Andrew Cuomo "insisted Monday (April 1) that New York will pass a law to legalize recreational pot before the Legislature adjourns in June," The New York Post reports. He's been promising legalization for some time. Many New Yorkers had hoped the measure would be included in this year's state budget.

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