The Open Market Blog

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/23/2008

In his interview with The Economist, Congressman Barney Frank undermines the case for his much-criticized mortgage bailout bill.  He admits that such bailouts create…

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/23/2008

“Sharply rising food prices” “have sparked riots around the world and threaten U.N.-backed feeding programs for 20 million children, the top U.N. food official said…

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/23/2008

The Washington Post today editorialized in favor of an unnecessary bill, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would extend the deadline for bringing…

• By: Fran Smith
• 04/23/2008

Well worth reading in today’s Wall Street Journal — former Secretary of State James A. Baker, III’s cogent analysis of why it is critical…

• By: Iain Murray
• 04/23/2008

Yesterday, a listener on the Michael Medved show challenged me that (I paraphrase), “Denmark has adopted wind power at no cost.” I said that I…

• By: Lene Johansen
• 04/23/2008

As food prices soars to new heights, researchers at Texas A&M makes a potentially revolutionary discovery. They discover a plant gene for saline tolerance…

• By: Lene Johansen
• 04/22/2008

Brian Williams and his team at NBC announced Sweden to be the greenest country on the planet, and I sure hope their correspondent enjoyed…

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/22/2008

The Wall Street Journal has an editorial today against the FDA tobacco regulation bill.  It argues that the bill contradicts the government’s own lawsuit…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 04/22/2008

Thus spoke CEI’s Myron Ebell at yesterday’s launch of the Hot Air Tour, sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, in time for Earth Day.

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/22/2008

In the Washington Post, two prominent environmentalists have an editorial, “Ethanol’s Failed Promise,” which explains how ethanol subsidies and mandates are destroying the…

• By: Lene Johansen
• 04/22/2008

We continue our amazing series about tummy ecology. About 1.5 kilo of your body weight is the bacterial flora in your tummy, and…

• By: Lene Johansen
• 04/21/2008

The Green Issue of Vanity fair has already drawn fair critique for being campaign journalism with one-sided sourcing. My primary interest was a story…

• By: Lene Johansen
• 04/21/2008

This week brought two great writers and arbiters of truth to Washington, DC. Authors Richard North and Christopher Booker were in town to talk about…

• By: Fran Smith
• 04/21/2008

At a press briefing with South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak at Camp David on April 19, President Bush announced that Korea will reopen its…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 04/21/2008

The European Union finally is doing something useful.  It is defending people against noisy bagpipes. Reports the Sunday Times: THEIR high-pitched skirl has put…

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/20/2008

The Washington Post has an editorial debunking false claims made by House leaders against the proposed trade agreement with Colombia.  “There are two important…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 04/19/2008

Last fall I spoke on globalization at the John Locke Foundation, a state-based think tank headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina. It’s a great group. Of…

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/19/2008

As chairman and CEO of taxpayer-subsidized mortgage giant Fannie Mae, Franklin D. Raines promoted reckless lending policies that helped cause the housing bubble and mortgage crisis.  …

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/18/2008

The Washington Examiner has a must-read editorial called “Baby Snatching by Arlington County.” It shows that if County social workers seize your…

• By: Marlo Lewis, Jr.
• 04/18/2008

Today’s Wall Street Journal carries a front-page story by Ann Davis and Russell Gold on the surge in natural gas prices. The subtitle reads, in…

• By: Marlo Lewis, Jr.
• 04/18/2008

  In An Inconvenient Truth (AIT), Al Gore, recalling the sudden break up of the Larson-B ice shelf in the Antarctic Peninsula in 2002, implied that the…

• By: Iain Murray
• 04/18/2008

At a time when liberal condescension is an important issue in domestic American politics, we shouldn’t forget that it is extremely important in the global…

• By: Fran Smith
• 04/18/2008

With negotiations stalled on the 2007 Farm Bill, President Bush is expected to sign a one-week extension of the current law so that lawmakers…

• By: Iain Murray
• 04/18/2008

As the ethanol disaster gets more and more apparent, the liberal left is trying to wriggle out of any responsibility for it, blaming it on…

• By: Cord Blomquist
• 04/17/2008

The FCC is continuing its desperate search for a reason to exist. This year it's decided to assert its relevance by reengaging an issue that…

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/17/2008

Point of Law reports on an appeals court hearing Tuesday over the constitutionality of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.   (The PCAOB, which produces tons of red tape…

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/17/2008

A global warming lawsuit by Eskimos seeks to impose conspiracy liability on oil and power companies for giving money to groups that question the…

• By: Iain Murray
• 04/17/2008

Meanwhile, British grocery chain Sainsbury’s has rejected the idea, proposed by the British government as its major (yes…) environmental initiative, of charging shoppers for…

• By: Iain Murray
• 04/17/2008

This, from British Tory leader David Cameron, who has made his name as a conservative promoter of green issues, is very interesting: Launching the…

• By: Iain Murray
• 04/17/2008

British Conservative Party finance spokesman George Osborne seems to have a blinkered approach to certain aspects of the economy: “An economic strategy for the…

• 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: Jonathan Tolman
• 04/16/2008

Following up on Angela’s post: What is even more egregious about the Post article on Bisphenol A (BPA) is that it fails to put…

• By: Angela Logomasini
• 04/16/2008

Reading the headline of a Washington Post story today, you would think that government researchers have made a new and major finding on a…

• 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: Iain Murray
• 04/15/2008

We’re hearing some very bad things about the President’s likely unconditional surrender on global warming tomorrow. One senior source suggested that the last line of…

• By: Eli Lehrer
• 04/15/2008

Doug, Obviously, stories like the one you related show that socialized medicine is a bad idea. In this context, it’s worth noting two things:…

• By: Ryan Radia
• 04/15/2008

With all the recent talk of net neutrality, it's easy to lose sight of the fundamental problem with broadband in America: the…

• By: Christine Hall
• 04/15/2008

I know, I know, the French are targets of easy ridicule here in the USA. But still. Seems French lawmakers passed a bill making it…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 04/15/2008

It’s really hard being Bill and Hillary Clinton.  They are good liberals, but have collected an incredible $109 million since leaving the office.  So…

• By: Ryan Radia
• 04/14/2008

I don’t visit ATMs much anymore. Instead, I mostly rely on credit cards. Credit cards are now accepted by all kinds of stores, from small,…

• 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: Doug Bandow
• 04/11/2008

You’ve got to love socialized medicine.  You have to wait for appointments.  You have to wait when you call to schedule appointments.  And you’ve got…

• By: Richard Morrison
• 04/11/2008

Former Open Market editor Peter Suderman emailed this week with a new FreedomWorks video on the mortgage bailout. The message is simple – people…

• 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…