The Open Market Blog

• By: Fran Smith
• 04/28/2008

The 2007 Farm Bill, which has been in conference for months as conferees struggled with the threat of an Administration veto over budget-busting funding…

• By: Ryan Radia
• 04/27/2008

In less than 36 hours, one of the most anticipated—and most demonized—games in years will hit the shelves. Grand Theft…

• By: Cord Blomquist
• 04/25/2008

Last week a scad of stories from Reuters to News.com covered the growing push for a “Do Not Track” registry similar to the…

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/25/2008

In the Wall Street Journal today, Stanford’s Ronald McKinnon argues against the Federal Reserve’s policy of cutting interest rates to almost nothing, and debasing…

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/25/2008

Nate Beeler has an an excellent editorial cartoon, “Food for Thought,” that captures the deadly and costly consequences of ethanol subsidies, in today’s Washington Examiner.   Many go…

• By: Ryan Radia
• 04/24/2008

A representative of Merchants Payment Coalition responded to my recent blog post on credit card price controls, making several valid points…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 04/24/2008

…ugly things happen — at least for organized labor, which enjoys monopoly representation under the Wagner Act. Unlike for other services, individuals usually face…

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/24/2008

Nicholas Kristof has a column today in the New York Times, “Better Roses Than Cocaine,” in favor of the proposed free-trade agreement with Colombia,…

• By: Angela Logomasini
• 04/24/2008

It’s a funny thing about the greens. They support government controls over everything in society in the name…

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/24/2008

The House Speaker is seeking to dump the House version of a bill in favor of a much more draconian Senate version preferred by…

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/24/2008

The Senate majority yesterday did not achieve the 60 votes needed to cut off further debate and summarily pass the Lilly Ledbetter Fair…

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/24/2008

Today, the Senate will consider (and almost certainly pass) the Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act.  Earlier, I discussed the irrational fears behind this law, and…

• By: Ryan Radia
• 04/23/2008

After changing its mind about throttling Bittorrent traffic last month, Comcast has pulled a 180° on network neutrality. Last week, Comcast announced plans to publish…

• By: Cord Blomquist
• 04/23/2008

Just as pink was the new black and The Backstreet Boys were the new New Kids on the Block, the FCC is now turning “Localism”…

• By: Hans Bader
• 04/23/2008

George Mason University Law Professor David Bernstein has a thought-provoking post on the seizure of hundreds of children, including nursing infants, from their mothers,…

• 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…