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Obama Administration Gives Miranda Warnings to Enemy Combatants in Afghanistan, Even Though They Are Not Legally Required
The Obama Administration is now requiring investigators to give Miranda warnings to some “captured foreign fighters” in Afghanistan, advising them that they…
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Senators Act on Clean Water Restoration Act
Yesterday, in a mere one hour and seventeen minutes, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee sailed through S. 787—the Clean Water Restoration Act…
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Privacy Declared Public Good
Bruce Schneier, eminent cryptographer, has declared market failure. He points to what he calls a meta-problem: Those entrusted with our privacy often…
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The $60,000 Obama Health-Care Plan: It’s “Eye-Poppingly” Expensive on a Per-Person Basis
Obama’s health-care proposals will cost well over a trillion dollars, without providing universal coverage. They are so “eye-poppingly” expensive that even Congressional Democrats have…
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Taxes without Borders
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Regulation of the Day: The Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission
The State Department has renewed its membership in the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission. This will cost taxpayers more than $2 million in annual membership dues.
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The Stoning of Soraya M.
The Stoning of Soraya M. is a difficult film to watch, but worth taking the time to do so. The film . . . depicts…
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U.S. Civil Rights Commission Opposes Federal Hate Crimes Bill on Double Jeopardy and Civil Liberties Grounds
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has decided to oppose the federal hate-crimes bill. The Commission calls the bill a “menace to civil…
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Obama care: The Daily Horoscope of Policy
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Regulation of the Day: Parole Rules for Federal Prisoners
Today’s Regulation of the Day comes to us from the Department of Justice ($26 billion 2009 budget, 112,000 employees). Parole rules for DC offenders and…
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Clean Water Hoax
Sen. Barbara Boxer and company are going to bring the Clean Water Restoration Act (CWRA) up for full committee mark-up and vote in their Thursday…
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Obama Seeks to Mandate More Risky, Low-Income Loans by Banks, in New Financial Rules
The President has just announced proposals for a major overhaul of the financial system. The proposals would force banks to make even…
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HHS Secretary: Health Insurance Industry Needs Competition… With Government
In an AP interview on Tuesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius called for competition in the health insurance market. No, not between…
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Wasteful Regulation
The issue of “e-waste” has been receiving a lot of attention recently, mostly from critics concerned about discarded electronics being shipped off to developing…
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In re Bluetooth Headset Product Liability Litigation
“If you bought a Bluetooth headset between June 30, 2002 and February 19, 2009, the settlement of a class action lawsuit may affect your…
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Welcome
This is the blog for the Center for Class Action Fairness, a non-profit project founded by Ted Frank to provide pro bono…
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Tourism Bill to Be Combined With Anti-Civil-Liberties Hate Crimes Bill
If you were a tourist, would you like to come to a country where you could be tried twice for the same crime — even…
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Earmarks By Another Name
During the 2008 presidential campaign and even in the months following President Barack Obama’s election, Democrats in Congress and the administration have said…
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Regulation of the Day: Clean Air in Columbus, OH
Today’s Regulation of the Day comes to us from the EPA. One would think that regulators, seeing heartening results, would pat themselves on the back…
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Obama’s Speech to AMA on Healthcare Misses the Point
In a speech before the American Medical Association on Monday, June 15, President Obama pitched his plan for heathcare reform. The main thrust of the…
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One Policy, One System, Universal Service
Under that Orwellian slogan, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, or “Ma Bell,” operated its telephone monopoly for the better part of the 20th century.
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Dinner Movie: It’s a Wonderful Institute
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Motoring around the World on Motor City Workers’ Dime
Detroit can astound even the most seasoned political cynic, and now it’s done it again. As the Detroit Free Press reports, the trustees…
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Langer: Consumer Safety at Risk
Check out Andrew Langer’s excellent piece in today’s Roll Call addressing challenges for the potential new chairwoman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).
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LibertyWeek 47: Persian Powder Keg
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Danger: Reusable Grocery Bags
Writer Michael Shaw recently produced a very interesting blog post and article on reusable grocery bags. Most of us might think the only…
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Misinformation Won’t Save Species
If we want to help save species, we need to start getting the facts right about what problems we need to address. Unfortunately, the press…
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More Government Waste, Corruption, and Corporate Welfare, Thanks to the Obama Administration
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In Cover-Up, Obama Fires Inspector General to Shield Crony and Waste Taxpayer Money
Obama is firing an inspector general, Gerald Walpin, who uncovered wrongdoing by a prominent Obama supporter and opposed letting him off the hook. Ironically,…
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Senate Passes FDA Tobacco Regulation Bill; Obama Will Sign It
The Senate has just passed the FDA tobacco regulation bill by a 79-to-17 vote. The bill now goes to President Obama, who has…
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Barney Frank Asked about Executive Pay Curbs; Throws Tantrum
Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) appears to be working in tandem with the Obama administration on making executive pay subject to shareholder votes. That seems…
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Steve Forbes celebrates CEI’s 25th year
Steve Forbes in the Washington Times today has a very nice tribute to CEI on its 25th Anniversary. Forbes points out some of CEI’s…
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FDA Poised to Regulate Tobacco, Which May Backfire
Congress is about to enact a bill to subject tobacco to FDA regulation. Mark Berlind notes one anomalous feature of the bill: it…
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Confiscating wealth in the name of fairness
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Eleventh Circuit Grants Rehearing in Reeves v. C.H. Robinson Worldwide, Which Gutted Statutory Limits on Sexual Harassment Claims
Can you sue your employer because your co-workers listen to raunchy radio programs? A federal appeals court is reconsidering its 2008 ruling…
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Public Wants Wasteful Stimulus Package Canceled
By a margin of 45% to 36%, the American people want to cancel the $787 billion stimulus package, reports pollster Rasmussen Reports. Economist…
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Regulation of the Day: Saving the Children
On June 26, the National Commission on Children and Disasters is having a meeting. They will be talking about another meeting from the day before.
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Supreme Court Vacates Stay Order in Chrysler Case, Refuses to Rule on Legal Challenges At This Time
The full Supreme Court just vacated the stay that Justice Ginsburg earlier entered that had temporarily blocked the government’s plan for Chrysler. Why it…
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Supreme Court Temporarily Blocks Illegal Chrysler Giveaway to UAW
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg yesterday granted a stay temporarily blocking the government’s plan for Chrysler, which would give effectively give most of…
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LibertyWeek 46: The Great Porn Wall of China
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Sinful Proposition
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Going on 20: The Big Dig Disaster Continues
Remember Boston’s “Big Dig?” If not, here’s a brief recap: It’s the highway project/death trap originally budgeted for $2.6 billion that ended up…
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Stimulus Package Kills Jobs, Drives Up Unemployment
Unemployment is now even higher than the Obama Administration said it would be if there were no stimulus package. At least 1.5 million…
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Greider: Democrats Not Stalinist Enough
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Danson in the Dark
Actor and noted intellectual Ted Danson has a piece on CNN.com entitled "World's Biggest Fish Are Dying." To his credit, it is not about whales.
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Save a Tree Hug a Capitalist.
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Illegal Takeover of Chrysler: Pension Funds Have Standing in Indiana State Police Pension Trust v. Chrysler, LLC
Earlier, I wrote about the Indiana pension funds’ challenge to the Obama Administration’s plan to effectively give Chrysler to the UAW Union, while cheating…
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Schumer and Cantwell’s deceptive advertising on shareholder “rights.”
If deceptive labeling of bills in Congess were punishable by regulatory agencies, Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA) would be paying a hefty…
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Regulation of the Day: Drawbridge Schedules in Sturgeon Bay, WI
Today’s Regulation of the Day comes to us from the Department of Homeland Security (208,000 employees, $52 billion 2009 budget).
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Court Rebuffs Challenge to Illegal Chrysler Bailout and Takeover; Pension Funds Will Appeal to Supreme Court
A federal appeals court has refused to block the Administration’s illegal auto bailout, which rips off taxpayers and pension funds to enrich…
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Regulation of the Day: Taxpayer-Funded Advertising for Mushrooms
This is the first installment of an occasional series that shines a little light on what the regulatory state is up to. Today’s Regulation of…
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LibertyWeek 45: Save the Beer Barns!
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Public Utility Land Grab Hits a Snag
In Springfield, Missouri, the city-owned utility provider–City Utilities–recently attempted to seize a parcel of downtown property in order to build a bus terminal. The owner,…
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Green Power Collides with Endangered Species
The greens are getting a taste of their own medicine. For years, they have used the Endangered Species Act to regulate use of private and…
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Twenty Years since Tiananmen Square
China is a very different place than it was twenty years ago. It was on this day in 1989 that one anonymous, brave soul halted…
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Illegal, Unfair Auto Bailout That Harms Retirees and Taxpayers Challenged in Chrysler Bankruptcy
The Indiana State Teachers’ Retirement Fund is rightly challenging the diversion of tens of billions of dollars of federal TARP bank bailout money to…
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Cheers for Indiana Treasurer’s halt to Chrysler Bankruptcy
The Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals and Indiana state Treasurer Richard Mourdock stand up against the Obama administration’s nationalization scheme.
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Can EPA ban gasoline? Can Obama enact Kyoto II without Senate ratification?
A recent report by New York University school of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity suggests as much. See my commentary on Masterresource.Org.
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NYT: “Buy American” angers allies, loses jobs
The New York Times opined today that the so-called stimulus bill’s “Buy American” provisions are having some unintended consequences –…
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Feinstein Withdraws Support for EFCA (for now)
California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein is withdrawing her support for the so-called Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), organized labor’s top legislative priority, reports a…
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Union Keeps Special Privileges Through Taxpayer Bailout of General Motors
The federal government is spending more than $50 billion to bail out General Motors, with no end in sight. But the UAW union…
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Teamsters’ Pension Fund Panic
The Teamsters union is threatening a strike that could cripple the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Reports AP: The Teamsters union is threatening a strike it says…
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Obama Justice Department Protects Racist, Anti-Semitic Hate Group and Anti-White Voting Rights Violators
Members of the New Black Panther Party, one of whom was an Obama campaign poll watcher and local democratic official, used nightsticks and racial…
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Stupid Border Tricks
Beginning today, American and Canadian citizens will now be required to carry new forms of government identification in order to cross the shared border. Former…
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Obama Panders to the UAW: $30 Billion More for Wasteful Auto Bailout
The federal government is giving another $30 billion in taxpayer money to General Motors to allow it to operate without having to cut…
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Bankruptcy judge should put breaks on “Government Motors”
President Obama and his auto task force should respect the role of the bankruptcy court and recognize that its role is not to rubber stamp…
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Campaign Should Highlight Value of BPA
According to the Washington Post, packaging industry representatives are looking for ways to fight off regulations of a substance used in packaging called Bisphenol…
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How to Stop Another GM: Abolish Pensions
GM, of course, declared bankruptcy today. A number of things—bad management, poor products and screwy labor relations—hurt the company. But in the…
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Corporate Welfare on a Vast Scale: Obama’s Cap-and-Trade Scam Threatens Economy
One of Obama’s own advisers admits that the cap-and-trade energy-rationing scheme backed by the “Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats” would “have a trivially small…
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Stimulus Package Shrinks Economy, Destroys Private Sector Jobs
Most of the $800 billion stimulus package has yet to be spent, but it’s already harming the economy, both by triggering trade wars that have…
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Wasteful Obama Auto Bailouts Disturb Even Liberal Washington Post
Even the liberal Washington Post, which endorsed Obama and has not backed a Republican for president since 1952, is getting fed up with the…
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Against Freedom, Against Art, Against Reality
The crusade against film depictions of tobacco smoking is once again gaining momentum. The American Medical Association Alliance, in coalition with several other well-funded special…
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The AFL-CIO’s “Creative Accounting”
The AFL-CIO has obscured its poor financial condition through “creative accounting,” says Machinists union President Tom Buffenbarger, reports Associated Press. Tom Buffenbarger, president of…
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Obama Justice Department Winks at Racist Voter Intimidation
Black Panthers in Philadelphia used nightsticks and racial epithets to drive white voters away from a polling place. “Career lawyers pursued the case for…
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Anti-GMO Zealots vs. Starving Zimbabweans
In Zimbabwe, the most food aid-dependent country in the world, officials and self-styled “consumer activists” have begun raiding shops suspected of selling genetically-modified food,…
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The Cost of Cybersecurity in Context
During his remarks, President Obama noted that "cyber crime has cost Americans more than $8 billion." He continued, "My presidency has so far cost Americans…
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Does the ethanol mandate increase CO2 emissions?
That may seem counter-intuitive, because burning ethanol merely puts back into the air the carbon dioxide (CO2) that corn crops recently pulled out of it, whereas burning gasoline…
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More Bailouts at Taxpayer Expense
Mortgage lenders are getting even bigger taxpayer subsidies to write off mortgage loans for potentially delinquent borrowers, reports today’s Washington Examiner. “President Barack Obama…
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Laffer Curve No Laughing Matter
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Sotomayor NOT first Hispanic Justice — Cardozo was
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Compare and Contrast
Bjorn Lomborg, November 2007: …although it may seem almost comically straightforward, one of the best temperature-reducing approaches is very simple: paint things white. Cities…
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LibertyWeek 44: Is Sotomayor the New Souter?
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Lamb Roast: Mankind’s Doom
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A Bleak Regulatory Future for the Tech Sector
May so far has been full of omens for the future of technology regulation. On Monday the 11th, the Obama administration announced that it would…
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Divorce Courts Harass Our Troops and Small Businesses
Memorial Day is an opportunity to thank our troops, and open our eyes to the disgraceful way they are treated by divorce courts. The bias…
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Profiles in Hypocrisy: Gov. Arnold Pushes Violent Game Ban
California legislators, along with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, are still trying to ban the sale of violent video games to minors. Now, they’re taking their…
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Waxman-Markey: Coercion for its own sake
Most media coverage of H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES), focuses on the bill’s cap-and-trade program and the free rationing…
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Obama CAFE kills
President Obama unveiled Tuesday a plan to sharply increase federal gas mileage rules for vehicles sold in the United States, eventually bringing the requirement up…
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Chrysler Confronts Grim Future, Despite Billions in Taxpayer Subsidies
The federal government poured billions of dollars into Chrysler, which then went bankrupt and merged with Fiat. But Chrysler may never revive, thanks to absurdly…
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NBCC/CRA study estimates Waxman-Markey would reduce employment by 2.3 million jobs in 2015
The National Black Chamber of Commerce (NBCC) today released a study by Charles River Associates (CRA) on the economic impacts of H.R. 2454, the American…
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Fulfilling Prophecies
CBO estimated today that unemployment will top out at around 10.5% before it recovers. Congress is doing its part to make CBO’s dire prophecy a…
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Class Warfare Against the Financially Responsible
Earlier, the Obama Administration pushed through $250 billion in mortgage bailouts, to bail out even some high-income borrowers with normal mortgage payments, and…
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Retirees, Taxpayers Ripped Off to Subsidize UAW
Obama accused critics of his decision to give control of Chrysler to the United Auto Workers Union of being “speculators.” But it turns out…
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Ivan Osorio on the United Auto Workers and the Recession
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California here we come?
As McClintock writes, “Congress is well under way toward imposing the same policies on the rest of the nation. California is just a little further…
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Happy 203rd Birthday, John Stuart Mill
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Insightful commentary by Keith Hennessey on Obama’s fuel economy rules
In this insightful, informative post, Keith Hennessey, formerly the senior economic advisor to President G.W. Bush, cautions that Obama's new fuel economy rules could destroy 50,000…
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EWaste Recycling Bans: Wasting Opportunity
Computer giant Dell Inc. has announced that it will stop sending computers for recycling to developing nations. Green groups have been fighting to stop…
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John Berlau Debates Corporate Insurance Policies
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Wasteful Stimulus Package Fails Even In Short Term
1.2 million Americans have lost their jobs since the $800 billion stimulus package was signed into law. The Congressional Budget Office predicted it would…