Archives

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/16/2008

So much foreign-aid money is being spent on costly AIDS treatment in Africa, compared to other diseases, that “H.I.V.-infected children are offered exemplary treatment, while…

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/16/2008

International courts and “human rights” bodies issue rulings that purport to have the force of law.  But much of their reasoning is based not on…

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/16/2008

House leaders blocked the House from even voting on a trade deal between the U.S. and Colombia that would have cut America’s trade deficit…

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/15/2008

Ethanol and biofuels have been wrongly depicted by politicians like Al Gore as a solution to global warming.  But in reality, subsidized ethanol production gravely harms the environment, and also…

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/13/2008

In the Washington Post, David Ignatius writes about the long-run economic costs of mortgage bailouts, which infantilize voters.  Through bailouts, we are “creating a system of transfer…

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/13/2008

“Hundreds of thousands of people will be starving” soon, the International Monetary Fund says.  Government officials and food relief agencies quoted in the story…

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/11/2008

Last night, I watched an ABC News segment on the latest batch of canceled airline flights.  Hundreds of American Airlines flights have been canceled, stranding…

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/10/2008

The Senate has just passed a bad, pork-laden “foreclosure relief” bill that would actually increase foreclosures, as the Washington Post earlier noted.  House leaders are…

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/10/2008

We previously wrote about the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would ban private-sector employment discrimination based on sexual orientation, and how the bill’s requirements regarding “conditions of…

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/08/2008

Ron Bailey writes about the “global food crisis” that has resulted in food riots across the world, in countries like Mexico, Pakistan, Indonesia, Yemen, Haiti, and…

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/08/2008

Previously, we wrote about how the Senate “foreclosure relief” bill will actually increase, rather than reduce, foreclosures, while costing taxpayers a bundle, and how…

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/07/2008

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman debunks the idea that converting from oil to ethanol will cut global warming: “The subsidized conversion of crops into…

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/07/2008

Most housing discrimination laws don’t prevent you from living with roommates of a particular sex (not surprising, given than women generally don’t want a male roommate).  But…

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/07/2008

The Washington Post today editorialized against the Senate housing bill, the so-called “Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008,” noting that it is actually “A Pro-Foreclosure Bill”…

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/07/2008

In an effort to help borrowers and some overextended big banks, the Federal Reserve cut interest rates to very low levels, triggering a fall in…

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/05/2008

Wheat production is down in the world’s breadbaskets, like the United States, as farmland shifts away from wheat to ethanol production.  Ethanol production has increased because of government ethanol mandates…

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/05/2008

Liberal reporter Darryl Fears, who covers racial and civil-rights issues for the Washington Post, has a truly odd perspective.  In an article on the declining membership…

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/05/2008

Senate banking committee chairman Chris Dodd is preparing a bill that would bail out mortgage borrowers who borrowed so much, and made such small…

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/04/2008

The federal appeals court in New York City killed a $200 billion class action lawsuit against the tobacco industry brought in the name of America’s…

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/03/2008

The Wall Street Journal warns taxpayers to “hold onto your wallet.”  Why?  It cites Congressman Barney Frank’s multibillion dollar mortgage bailout bill, which may pass the…

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/03/2008

Voters have replaced a liberal Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice, Louis Butler, with a moderate judge who ran against him.  Butler’s appointment to fill a vacancy…

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/03/2008

The bill fashioned by Senate leaders to supposedly “help” homeowners struggling with their mortgages contains tons of left-wing pork, such as money for “mortgage counseling”…

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/02/2008

The Senate is poised to pass a foolish mortgage bailout for certain borrowers.  Robert Samuelson explains in the Washington Post why a similar House…

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/01/2008

Senate leaders of both parties are hammering out a deal to pass a “foreclosure relief” bill that would apparently contain a mortgage bailout for certain borrowers who…

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/01/2008

Maryland legislators are inflicting a moronic new “diversity” mandate on Maryland colleges. Legislation to force institutions of higher learning in Maryland to create…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/31/2008

The Fed has cut interest rates to ridiculously low levels to try to bail out mortgage borrowers and prop up the U.S. economy.  But that has led…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/31/2008

The Supreme Court turned away the Justice Department’s appeal of a ruling that will make it harder to prosecute New Orleans Congressman William Jefferson, who was…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/31/2008

Recently, the Virginia Supreme Court struck down regional taxes to pay for transportation improvements, such as the perverse grantor’s tax on homeowners, based on the principle…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/31/2008

Yahoo Finance discusses how mortgage bailout measures turn Aesop’s fable about the ant and the grasshopper on its head, rewarding irresponsibility and punishing thrift…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/29/2008

Bailing out mortgage borrowers is a bad idea that most Americans oppose.  Yet the “Bush administration is finalizing details of a plan,” “backed by…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/28/2008

“U.S. capital markets again lost ground against global competitors last year, highlighting the need to streamline regulation and crack down on excessive securities litigation,…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/28/2008

Most Americans oppose a mortgage bailout, both for borrowers and for lenders.  They oppose bailouts for homeowners by a roughly 2-to-1 margin (53 percent…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/28/2008

Mark Tapscott writes about disgraced New York politician Eliot Spitzer’s hypocrisy in the Examiner.   Spitzer flouted the rules while loudly berating others for real or imaginary transgressions,…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/26/2008

“Lawsuit Abuse Kills Puppies,” reports Ted Frank at Overlawyered.  “Rogier von Bakel is furious at his local SPCA because they would rather put a…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/26/2008

American lawyers, who are overwhelmingly liberal, cite foreign law when it is politically inconvenient, and ignore it when it isn’t.  They like to cite it to argue…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/26/2008

Prodded by the President, Congress belatedly moved to curb abusive class-action lawsuits through the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005.  But when one door to extortionate…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/25/2008

In order to isolate Colombia’s pro-American, democratically-elected government, Massachusetts Congressman James McGovern sent what commentators have likened to “love letters” to a bloodthirsty Colombian terrorist group, FARC, that smuggles…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/25/2008

It’s hard for educated people with valuable skills, like doctors and scientists, to immigrate because Congress won’t lift the unrealistically low cap on H-1B…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/24/2008

U.S. immigration authorities have denied Saman Ahmad permission to stay permanently in the U.S.  He put his life on the line for four years as…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/21/2008

The Wall Street Journal comments on House leaders’ pandering to trial lawyers by blocking “liability protection for phone companies that assisted the government…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/21/2008

“Inflation is walloping Americans with low and moderate incomes as the prices of staples have soared far faster than those of luxuries,” reports…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/20/2008

The politically-correct National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) has brought a disturbing lawsuit against an insurance company for an product aimed at church-goers, which provides…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/20/2008

There’s a tendency among many liberal “civil rights” bureaucrats to assume that any practice they dislike must be “discriminatory.”  Thus, when businesses mandate the use…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/19/2008

Michigan’s Proposition 2, which bans racial preferences and set-asides in government contracts, state jobs, and public university admissions, was upheld yesterday by a federal…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/18/2008

Under the Sarbanes-Oxley law, regulators have imposed incredibly expensive requirements for auditing American businesses, costing our economy $35 billion annually, and reducing the…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/17/2008

The Federal Reserve is trying to save irresponsible borrowers from themselves by cutting interest rates to ridiculously low levels, even though that will trigger increased…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/10/2008

Eliot Spitzer, the sanctimonious New York Governor and former state attorney general, has been linked to a prostitution ring. CEI earlier rated Spitzer as…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/10/2008

Reacting to a California Court of Appeal decision declaring that there is no constitutional right to home-school one’s child, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/10/2008

Why on Earth should Congress bail out subprime borrowers who took out bigger mortgages than they could afford (especially since some of them exaggerated their…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/09/2008

Washington, D.C. spends more per student in its public schools than does any state, for worse results in educational achievement than that of any state.  D.C. schools are literally falling…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/07/2008

Congress is now so bent on overregulation that is that it’s getting a plea for restraint from George McGovern, the 1972 Democratic presidential nominee.

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/07/2008

California doesn’t think much of home-schoolers. A state court ruling recently held that a couple had no constitutional right to home-school their children, and…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/06/2008

Apocalyptic global warming scenarios peddled by people like Al Gore seem increasingly far-fetched, as Bearing Drift notes. “A recent article from Canada’s National Post…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/06/2008

When parents object to political indoctrination and sexually intrusive questions aimed at their children by public school officials, the courts insist that they have no…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/05/2008

Virginia’s governor, Tim Kaine, plans to call the state legislature into special session to try to come up with new taxes to replace the…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/05/2008

In The Washington Post, Robert Samuelson explains that the government is doing more harm than good by attempting to delay the inevitable popping of…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/03/2008

Mississippi’s attorney general, Jim Hood, is praising a shady prosecutor who put innocent people in jail, calling him a “straight arrow.” Mississippi’s legislature…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/03/2008

The DC Examiner editorializes against a Senate bill that would “reform” the consumer product laws by giving state attorneys general broad powers to sue…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/03/2008

Investor’s Business Daily comments on the decision by the House of Representatives to exempt an oil company controlled by Venezuela’s anti-American leftist dictator from…

• By: Hans Bader
• 02/29/2008

The Virginia Supreme Court today struck down a state law giving unelected bodies the power to levy taxes in Marshall v. Northern Virginia…

• By: Hans Bader
• 02/29/2008

I have more posts on child-snatching by government agencies, strange sexual harassment rulings, and punitive damages for oil spills, at Point of…

• By: Hans Bader
• 02/27/2008

Government social workers have an incentive to overreact to erroneous allegations of child abuse, and take children away from loving parents, because they reasonably…

• By: Hans Bader
• 02/27/2008

The Virginia General Assembly last year voted to let counties increase their commercial property tax in order to pay for new transportation projects. The counties…

• By: Hans Bader
• 02/27/2008

The Supreme Court decided two discrimination cases this week that confirm that the Supreme Court is not “pro-business “in discrimination cases, as liberal journalists claim.

• By: Hans Bader
• 02/26/2008

Today, I have two posts at Point of Law. One is about how a recent Supreme Court decision may preempt state regulations on vehicle…

• By: Hans Bader
• 02/25/2008

American immigration law is utterly dysfunctional. Legal immigrants who fight for America in Iraq and Afghanistan wait years to become citizens. Skilled workers needed…

• By: Hans Bader
• 02/25/2008

This week, I am guest blogging at Point of Law. My first blog post is about ideological and sexual double standards, which are…

• By: Hans Bader
• 02/22/2008

The Duke lacrosse players are now suing Duke, its president, and various government officials. They were belatedly recognized as innocent after months of being…

• By: Hans Bader
• 02/22/2008

In a 6-to-3 decision, the Washington State Supreme Court has upheld a state-enforced garbage monopoly even though Washington State has a state constitutional “equal…

• By: Hans Bader
• 02/21/2008

Earlier, we wrote about a bill (S. 2045), the Consumer Product Safety Commission Reform Act, that would impose criminal penalties on company executives, and…

• By: Hans Bader
• 02/21/2008

Virginia is facing serious problems, like a budget deficit and unanticipated shortfalls in transportation funding, despite mushrooming taxes in recent years. So what…

• By: Hans Bader
• 02/20/2008

The Supreme Court has just decided three cases ruling that federal law preempts contrary or conflicting state laws. It limited the ability to…

• By: Hans Bader
• 02/19/2008

The Supreme Court has refused to revive the ACLU’s lawsuit against the government for warrantless surveillance of communications with suspected terrorists. Ironically, the ACLU’s…

• By: Hans Bader
• 02/19/2008

Harvard, my alma mater, discriminates against Asians in admissions. Asians are less likely to be admitted at any GPA or SAT score than members of…

• By: Hans Bader
• 02/18/2008

Helen Smith writes about how California privacy laws kept police from searching for potential suspects in the killing of a psychologist.  Overlawyered discusses the…

• By: Hans Bader
• 02/15/2008

To pay for transportation spending, Virginia’s legislature and governor gave regional transit authorities in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads the power to levy a new…

• By: Hans Bader
• 02/15/2008

House leaders blocked consideration of a bill that would extend the federal government’s power to monitor overseas terrorists and communications with them from the U.S.,…

• By: Hans Bader
• 02/14/2008

Privacy deserves protection, but not to an extreme — particularly when it comes at the expense of civil liberties, public safety, and the rights of…

• By: Hans Bader
• 02/14/2008

“In a test of the American Dream, Adam Shepard started life from scratch with the clothes on his back and twenty-five dollars. Ten months later,…

• By: Hans Bader
• 02/14/2008

Ordinances that ban smoking in commercial establishments increase drunk driving fatalities, apparently by encouraging smokers who want to go out drinking to travel further…

• By: Hans Bader
• 02/14/2008

The Wall Street Journal applauds the Senate’s passage of a bill that would continue to allow the government to use warrantless wiretaps to monitor…

• By: Hans Bader
• 02/14/2008

At Hamline University, a college student who expressed conservative views on gun control and affirmative action was recently suspended and ordered to undergo a “…

• By: Hans Bader
• 02/13/2008

The District of Columbia justifies its complete ban on handguns and functional firearms (even for self-defense), which is being challenged in the Supreme Court, as…

• By: Hans Bader
• 02/13/2008

Federal and state discrimination laws have been interpreted by the courts as banning speech that creates a “hostile work environment” for members of protected classes.

• By: Hans Bader
• 02/13/2008

Sometimes an excuse for something is worse than the action itself. That's true of a recent court ruling rejecting a teenager's First Amendment challenge…