Blog
It’s not just “Big” “Fat” “Rich” “Foreign-owned Toyota” that’s suffering
Toyota owners, every time there’s a new sensationalist headline or a congressman spouts more demagoguery regarding your make of car, the value drops. Last…
Blog
The cut-and-paste Splinternet
The way Ben Kunz in a new Business Week artcle puts it, “Each device contains its own widening universe of services and applications, many…
Newsletter
Court Nominations, the TSA, and Climate Change Biases
President Obama nominates left-leaning Goodwin Liu to the Ninth Circuit court. President Obama chooses retired Army Gen. Robert A. Harding to lead the Transportation Security…
Blog
Obama’s two-faced nuclear energy policy, my article in the Philly Inquirer
President Obama fully supports expanding the U.S. nuclear-energy industry – or so he’d have us believe. Obama got lots of publicity with his recent…
Blog
Psychology behind denying driver error with sudden acceleration
I just came across this from a November article in the Los Angeles Times. Richard Schmidt, a former UCLA psychology professor and now an…
Citation
Credit Card Bill of Rights
Op-Eds
Obama Policies Will Increase National Debt by $9.7 Trillion
“President Obama’s policies would add more than $9.7 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, congressional budget analysts said Friday.
Blog
Obama’s Policies Will Increase National Debt by $9.7 trillion, Says Congressional Budget Office
“President Obama’s policies would add more than $9.7 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, congressional budget analysts said Friday. . .The 10-year…
Blog
Obama Nominates Left-Wing Extremist Goodwin Liu to Appeals Court; Liu is Possible Supreme Court Nominee
President Obama has nominated law professor Goodwin Liu, a left-wing extremist, to the nation’s largest federal appeals court, the Ninth Circuit. …
Blog
Human Achievement of the Day: Headache-free Liquor
Blog
CEI Weekly: DOE Seeks Lobbyists to Sell Green Jobs
CEI weekly is a compilation of articles and blogs from CEI's staff. This week features Chris Horner's FOIA findings from the Dept. of Energy, protests…
Blog
CEI in the News – March 5, 2010
Newsletter
Blood Donation, Green Jobs, and the EPA
Sixteen Democratic senators sign a letter urging the FDA to overturn a 1983 ban on gay man donating blood. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-GA) tries to…
Blog
What goes ’round comes ’round on global warming (my Forbes piece)
Some global warming skeptics have been using the remarkably cold winter and record snowfalls to attack the idea of global warming. Believers are crying foul.
News Release
Climategate Reloaded
Prominent climate scientists affiliated with the U.S. National Academies of Science have been planning a public campaign to paper over the damaged reputation of global…
Blog
Can a “runaway Toyota” be stopped with the brakes?
There have been many driver claims that they tried using the brakes but it couldn’t override the engine at the full throttle into which alleged…
Blog
Regulation of the Day 123: Donating Blood
If you’re gay, you can’t donate blood. It’s illegal. Rather than screening donors for sexual preference, they should be screened for blood-borne diseases. Straight people…
Newsletter
Climategate, Human Achievement Hour and the Citizens United Verdict
Peabody Energy is arguing that Climategate revelations undermine the IPCC’s evidence that greenhouse gas emissions are causing climate change. Activists prepare to observe Earth Hour…
Blog
Federal Register Reaches 10,000 Pages
It only took 4 working days to top 1,000 pages. Now, after 42 working days, the grand total is 10,158. That’s an average of 242…
Blog
Green Jobs Fantasy
I have a piece in National Review Online today outlining the fantasy behind Sen. Lindsey Graham’s latest attempt to keep cap-and-trade alive. Here’s the beginning:…
California Eminent Domain Report
An Interesting Argument Concerning Whether Eminent Domain for Economic Development Makes Economic Sense
Blog
Does Climategate Undermine the Scientific Integrity of EPA’s Endangerment Finding? You Betcha.
Instead of exercising its “judgment,” as required by Sec. 202 of the Clean Air Act, to determine whether greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions endanger public health…
Newsletter
The Fed, Homeschooling, and Sport Gambling
After many congressional attempts to limit the power of the Federal Reserve, some senators are now moving to give more power to the Fed. A…
Blog
The “Toyota Defense” to manslaughter
This was inevitable. CNN reports that one Koua Fong Lee, serving an eight-year prison term for killing three people when his 1996 Toyota smashed…
Blog
Regulation of the Day 122: Home-Schooling in Germany
It is illegal to home-school your children in Germany. One family faced "[F]ines eventually totaling over $11,000, threats that they would lose custody of their…
Study
This Land Ain’t your Land; this Land Is my Land
A Primer on Eminent Domain, Redevelopment, and Entrepreneurship…
News Release
Dodd-Corker Fed Bill May Contain Left-Wing “Shareholder” Power Grab
Dodd-Corker Fed Bill May Contain Left-Wing "Shareholder" Power Grab 17 Center-Right Groups Object to "Proxy Access" Provision Empowering Unions, Other Progressives Washington, D.C., March 3,…
News Release
Land-Grabs Put Entrepreneurs, Poor in Dire Spot
Washington, D.C., March 3, 2010 – When government seizes land from private owners to serve a purpose preferred by bureaucrats and big business, it…
California Eminent Domain Report
‘Anti-Lobbyist’ Obama Administration Recruited Left-Wing Lobbyists to Sell Bogus ‘Green Jobs’
After two studies refuted President Barack Obama’s assertions regarding the success of Spain’s and Denmark’s wind energy programs, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)…
Swamp Politics
Questions Swirl Around Wind-Jobs Studies
Blog
Toyota’s sudden acceleration problem suddenly accelerates again
Yes, I know I wrote a blog with a similar title but this is new. I previously noted that in December the National Highway…
Blog
Light It Up: Earth Hour 2010
Blog
Why the British media are so much better than ours
Blog
On KOGO (San Diego) 600 AM at 6:35 PM
I’ll be on Top Story with Chris Reed tonight at 6:35 pm Pacific discussing recent CCAF cases and the problem of bad class action…
Blog
Objection to Costco fuel settlement
Our clients were perturbed at a settlement that sought to pay up to $10 million to the attorneys, but zero to the class, along…
Blog
Sports Gambling Ban Unconstitutional?
Is the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) unconstitutional? NJ democrat Senator Raymond J. Lesniak thinks so and has succeeded in bringing the NJ…
Blog
Debunking the Smear Campaign against the Murkowski Resolution
In recent weeks I have penned four columns debunking the smear campaign against Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R-AK) Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution of disapproval…
Newsletter
Bank Loans, NASA, and Fish Tanks
Chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Sheila Bair chastises large banks for tightening their qualification standards for loans. The emails released by NASA’s Goddard…
Blog
Regulation of the Day 121: Cussing
It’s officially “Cuss Free Week” in California. Last Thursday, the state legislature passed a resolution to make the first week of March swearing-free.
Swamp Politics
Climategate: This Time It’s NASA
The "Climategate" scandal, which broke in November 2009, revealed what many skeptics had privately suspected. Prominent climate scientists at the University of East Anglia’s…
Fredericksburg Free-Lance Star
Virginia AG Cuccinelli Takes on EPA
The Environmental Protection Agency's mission is to protect humans and the environment. But who protects humans from the EPA? The answer, in part, is Virginia…
Wall Street Journal
Proposed Facebook Settlement Comes Under Fire
The Wall Street Journal reports on Ted Frank's objecion to the AOL settlement that gave unclaimed class member's money to charities in order to entice the…
Blog
CCAF in the Wall Street Journal
Our objection to the AOL Footer case (currently on appeal) was covered in the March 2 Wall Street Journal: Late last year,…
Blog
LibertyWeek 82: Lessons from Chile
Blog
Chris Horner Debates Global Warming and Al Gore
CEI Planet
CEI Planet: January – February 2010
To view this issue of the CEI Planet, please click here to download the PDF file. Below are selected articles from the January-February 2010 issue: …
Blog
Regulation of the Day 120: Fish Tanks in Barbershops
In Tenneessee, it is illegal for barbershops to have fish tanks. That could change as soon as today, though.
Newsletter
SEIU, Insurance Rates, and Gun Control
President Obama appoints Service Employees International Union President Andy Stern to the deficit commission. Congressmen grill representatives of Anthem Blue Cross during a congressional hearing…
Blog
Voltaire on Government
Wall Street Journal
Administration Keeping Cozy with Union Bosses
President Barack Obama has appointed Service Employees International Union President Andrew Stern to a new commission tasked with coming up with recommendations to…
Wall Street Journal
Proxy Access: The Obama-Dodd-Alinsky Shareholder Jujitsu
What would Saul Alinksy do? In the wake of defeats for the Obama administration last month both with Scott Brown’s stunning Senate…
Wall Street Journal
Administration Keeping Cozy with Union Bosses
President Barack Obama has appointed Service Employees International Union President Andrew Stern to a new commission tasked with coming up with recommendations…
Wall Street Journal
Contrasting Concurrences of Clarence Thomas: Deploying Originalism and Paternalism in Commercial and Student Speech Cases
Study
Copenhagen Climate Conference
Full Document Available in PDF Green activists are appalled that last December’s UN climate conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, did not produce…
American Spectator
You Stay Classy, Sacramento
In many countries, electric utilities struggle to keep up with demand, and often fail. The World Bank estimates that almost 1.5 billion men, women, and…
Blog
Ralph Nader’s shocking solution to the Toyota “problem”
The answer to the problem of Toyotas running amok, says Ralph Nader in a Los Angeles Times op-ed today? Choose one response: 1. More…
American Spectator
The EU Searches for a Monopolist, Finds Google
If policy makers set the terms in a primitive year like 2010, nobody will have to respond to Google.
Amarillo Globe News
Texas Attorney General Abbott Takes on the EPA
The Environmental Protection Agency’s mission is to protect human health and the environment. But who protects humans from the EPA? The answer, in part, is…
Blog
Good quotes from the Honda case
Quotes from the court’s order. On the appropriateness of disparate class treatment (pp. 25-29): Courts generally are wary of settlement agreementswhere some class…
Blog
Torches, Pitchforks, and Congress
“It occurred to me that this panel would only take place, of the industrialized nations, in the United States of America. That in every other…
Blog
Biden announces retirement (savings program)
Vice President Joe Biden announces retirement (savings program). If only we were so lucky. (In reality, it doesn’t matter. As he recently said,…
Blog
CEI Weekly: Marlo Lewis’ Music Video Against Climate Change
CEI weekly is a compilation of articles and blogs from CEI's staff. This week features Marlo Lewis' music video, "How I was not Al Gored…
Blog
Obama Names SEIU’s Stern to Deficit Commission
President Barack Obama has appointed Service Employees International Union (SEIU) President Andrew Stern to a new commission tasked with coming up with recommendations to…
Newsletter
Immigration, Bake Sales and Snow Removal
The Wall Street Journal reports that E-Verify, the federal database intended to track undocumented workers, actually fails 54% of the time. The New York City…
Blog
Disturbing parallels between the Toyota hysteria and the Audi 5000 debacle
Toyota stands accused of 34 sudden acceleration incidents over the last 10 years that are “linked to” or “associated” with fatalities, a figure that in…
Tech News World
Microsoft vs. the Zombie Hordes
Letters
Letter to Barney Frank
Full Document Available in PDF The Competitive Enterprise Institute is a not-for-profit non-partisan educational and research institute dedicated…
Blog
E-Verify is a Spectacular Failure and Should be Abandoned
The Wall Street Journal today reported that the E-Verify system, a Federal database designed to identify undocumented workers and prevent their employment, fails to…
Blog
Regulation of the Day 119: Bake Sales
School bake sales are basically banned in New York City. Mayor Bloomberg and the city’s Department of Education worry that they contribute to child obesity.
Blog
Toyoda’s coerced confession
Blog
If we want elephants to die off, we only need to do what we’re doing
They can be saved, however. Dan Hannan in London talks about “privatising” the elephant (and watch the video): To us, elephants are…
Blog
The Internet as medical diagnostic tool scores again!
I was having extreme itching in my toes that I’ve never experienced before. I reconstructed the circumstances under which it arose, plugged them in, and…
News Release
Political Interference Distorting Comcast-NBC Deal
by Competitive Enterprise Institute media policy analysts Ryan Radia and Wayne Crews on the proposed merger of Comcast and NBC-Universal.
Wall Street Journal
Judge Questions Coupon Settlement in Honda Class Action
The Wall Street Journal reports on Ted Frank's objection to the Honda settlement which gave lawyers millions and class members small coupons. The…
Blog
In-Flight Wi-Fi: Security Threat?
An article in this month's Infotech & Telecom News on a TSA proposal to ban in-flight wi-fi quotes me at length. Here's what I had…
Blog
Banks trying to recoup from bad loans and inadequate reserves urged to lend
There’s a juxtaposition in a Washington Post article today that deserves a “Wha?” The article focuses on the huge drop in bank lending in…
Blog
Lessons from Snowpocalypse: Fire the DDOT
Blog
Conning the can makers regarding bisphenol A
A Washington Post A1 article, “Alternatives to BPA containers not easy for U.S. foodmakers to find,” makes the case very nicely. The plastic hardening…
Blog
Regulation of the Day 118: Unlicensed Dogs
In Los Angeles, it is illegal to own a dog without a license. Packs of wild, unlicensed dogs roam the streets at night. People are…
Newsletter
Hot Dogs, Global Emissions, and Google
A leading physicians group warns that hot dogs are a choking hazard for children. Trade economist Jagdish Bhagwati comes out in support of a World…
Blog
The government’s conflict of interest in the Toyota witch hunt
You don’t need to look for ulterior motives in the government attacks on Toyota, which include not just the current congressional hearings but such things…
Blog
Victory in Honda case
At Monday’s fairness hearing, Judge Phillips upheld our objection to the coupon settlement; Legal Newsline has coverage. Here is our reply brief,…
Ecomerce Times
Europe Sets Antitrust Sights on Google Search
Heartland
TSA Rules Threaten In-Flight Technology Use
SE Texas Record
Group puts the brakes on Honda class action settlement
The SE Texas Record reports on Ted Frank's victory in an objection to a proposed Honda Motors settlement which would defraud thousands of consumers.
Blog
Who are the biggest CO2 emitters?
I am posting Benchmarking US Air Emissions (2006), a joint report by Ceres, NRDC, and PSEG, because it apparently is no longer available on the Internet,…
Blog
Bhagwati on climate change — please, no
In today’s Financial Times, noted trade economist Jagdish Bhagwati strays again into the climate change debate – and he doesn’t apply his usually sharp…
Blog
Regulation of the Day 117: Hot Dogs
The AAP says hot dogs are a choking hazard for children. According to the data, Little Timmy is literally more likely to be struck by…
Blog
Dangerous Green Hysteria May Impact Food Safety
According to a story in today’s Washington Post, food and packaging companies are having a difficult time trying to find and employ alternatives to…
Newsletter
Credit Cards, Organized Labor, and the Stimulus Anniversary
New credit card regulations go into effect this week. The Washington Post has a front-page story on the difficulty of…
Tech News World
FCC Aims to Haul Digital Have-Nots Across the Divide
Opposing Views
Are Hot Dogs Really at “High Risk” of Killing Kids?
Hot dogs are delicious. Especially if you don’t think too hard about what they’re made of. Kids love them. So do adults. With baseball’s spring…
Blog
LibertyWeek 81: CPAC 2010 in Review
Richard Morrison, Jeremy Lott and Marc Scribner give you Episode 81 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We cover CPAC 2010, Toyota’s reception in Washington, the credit…
Blog
Credit CARD Act penalizes thrift and entrepreneurship; interchange fee controls would compound harm to consumers
Today, the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure (CARD) Act of 2009 goes into effect. While the law, passed last May, is being hailed as…
Blog
Myths about Labor Myths
Sunday’s Washington Post features a supposed myth-debunking piece about organized labor that is so misleading that it’s hard to know where to begin driving…
Newsletter
Desk-Doodling, Broadband, and the Stimulus Anniversary
A twelve-year-old girl in Forest Hills, New York is arrested for doodling on her school desk. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski announces he wants faster broadband…
Blog
Stimulus Spending Helps the Few, Hurts the Many
Blog
WaPo + “Climate Insurance” Translated
Today’s Washington Post editorial on global warming (“Climate Insurance”) is especially ridiculous. You can certainly read it for yourself, but I’m going to do…
Blog
In the news
Forbes.com: interviewed discussing warning labels Los Angeles Times: quoted on the future feeding frenzy around Toyota Triangle Business Journal: commenting…
News Release
Credit CARD Act Penalizes Thrift And Entrepreneurship
Today, the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure (CARD) Act of 2009 goes into effect. While the law, passed last May, is being hailed as…