The Open Market Blog

• By: Doug Bandow
• 09/18/2007

What’s a paternalist to do? The American people are getting fatter, but they ignore warning labels, as well as increasingly shrill advice from their nutritional…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 09/18/2007

Markets are wonderful. If there is a demand, markets will arise to fill it. Including the desire to feel good about oneself. How else should…

• By: Alex Nowrasteh
• 09/17/2007

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is currently assigned to deregulate special access rates, a service provided by traditional incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs).

• By: Fran Smith
• 09/17/2007

It’s official — buying carbon credits to offset CO2 emissions is like doing penance for sins, according to a high-level Vatican official. An article in…

• By: John Berlau
• 09/17/2007

D.C. Councilman and former mayor Marion Barry, as well as some of his colleagues on the City Council, have a novel idea on how to…

• By: Myron Ebell
• 09/17/2007

Who recently made the following statement? [T]he life of all mankind is in danger because of global warming resulting to a large degree from the…

• By: Richard Morrison
• 09/17/2007

Curve-aceous economist Arthur Laffer (and his colleague Wayne Winegarden) have a new study out this week, estimating the costs to the U.S. economy…

• By: Eli Lehrer
• 09/17/2007

As the health care debate heats up in Congress, in the media, and on the campaign trail, proposals to fix America’s health care system have…

• By: Angela Logomasini
• 09/17/2007

Activists on the left don’t seem to mind expanding bureaucracy and red tape when it hits businesses, consumers, property owners, and taxpayers in general. They…

• By: Eli Lehrer
• 09/17/2007

A very interesting USA Today story points to investors’ flight from actively managed mutual funds largely in favor of index funds. In general, mutual…

• By: Iain Murray
• 09/17/2007

The Indian government is finding out something that most of us have known for a long time: that measures aimed at dealing with global warming…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 09/17/2007

In an interview in the weekend Wall Street Journal, Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary has some choice words for the environmental fanatics trying to hobble…

• By: John Berlau
• 09/17/2007

Last night, in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said that on his first date with Andrea Mitchell, now…

• By: Clyde Wayne Crews
• 09/15/2007

The New York Times highlights the pro-capitalist literature of Ayn Rand today, citing several prominent businessmen influenced by her. The title above is her…

• By: Michelle Minton
• 09/14/2007

Julie’s post today included a link to the May ’07 Vanity Fair article focusing on CEI’s own Myron…

• By: Eli Lehrer
• 09/14/2007

The University of California, Irvine, has just made what appears to be a truly boneheaded move by withdrawing a left-wing law professors’ nomination to…

• By: Richard Morrison
• 09/14/2007

Shocking allegations, from the New York Times by way of Editor & Publisher: In their regular “Freakanomics” column which will appear in this Sunday’s…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/14/2007

Saudi Arabia continues to demand that American tobacco companies pay it billions of dollars for its smokers’ health care costs. Saudi Arabia is demanding…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/14/2007

The Dominican Republic has joined Nicaragua in objecting to a proposed increase in the tax on some premium cigars from 5 cents…

• By: Julie Walsh
• 09/14/2007

As a girl, I had a poster of a polar bear cub on my bedroom wall. Global warming alarmists often use this same image…

• By: Cord Blomquist
• 09/13/2007

Not the freshest news in the world, but I found it interesting when I discovered today that that Ask.com offers a service called AskEraser…

• By: Clyde Wayne Crews
• 09/13/2007

Here’s an idea; have your kids pick up trash and play with it. Gadget site hizs.com says this little plastic octopus “reinforces environmentalism in…

• By: Richard Morrison
• 09/13/2007

CEI analysts are frequent guests on TV news programs, and this week has been no exception. See below for a taste of recent interviews and…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/13/2007

I'm baffled by Eli's contention that Mark Warner, as governor of Virginia, controlled government spending. Warner became a champion big spender after initially practicing fiscal…

• By: Jody Clarke
• 09/13/2007

For several years now, environmental activists have been fighting to keep a gold mine from reopening in Romania: a mine that would bring much needed…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/13/2007

The Washington Post has more coverage and commentary on the unconstitutional D.C. voting rights bill, which would give the District a Congressman even…

• By: Michelle Minton
• 09/13/2007

Treehugger.com’s quote of the day comes from Grist.org’s April ’06 interview with Elizabeth Kolbert—the lit. major-turned armchair scientist…

• By: Clyde Wayne Crews
• 09/13/2007

When the sun swells into a red giant in about 5 billion years, “Earth Might Survive Sun’s Explosion,” observational evidence of other star systems…

• By: Sam Kazman
• 09/13/2007

At my temple last night the rabbi’s sermon started off beautifully, examining Rosh Hashanah as the birthday of the world.  But it quickly turned into…

• By: Michelle Minton
• 09/13/2007

I am always cautious when someone utilizes the “do it for the children” argument. Usually it signals a lack of rational justification and the necessity…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 09/12/2007

In the current issue of Commentary, City Journal contributing editor Kay Hymowitz criticizes libertarianism as fatally flawed by some internal "cultural contradictions" (this essay…

• By: Clyde Wayne Crews
• 09/12/2007

OK going off topic. I just learned from a friend that one of my favorite musicians died Sunday nite, September 12. The great Hughie Thomasson…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/12/2007

In The Washington Post, several Congressmen argue that although the Constitution says that Congressmen and Senators must represent “states,” it does not really mean…

• By: Angela Logomasini
• 09/12/2007

A story in today’s Washington Post highlights the fact that with all the news about Chinese toy recalls, regulators are ignoring other, more serious…

• By: Fran Smith
• 09/12/2007

Good news from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today. Life expectancy in the U.S. is at an all time high…

• By: Michelle Minton
• 09/12/2007

In her August 31st post titled “Bush pulls a Hillary on Housing???” with its gratuitous punctuation, Michelle…

• By: Eli Lehrer
• 09/12/2007

Well, someone had to do it. UnlikeWayne I don’t mind the freegans. Yes, they’re annoying and self righteous. But they do practice what they…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/12/2007

A federal judge has struck down a bossy New York City regulation that ordered restaurants to list calorie-counts on their menus for each menu…

• By: John Berlau
• 09/12/2007

I recently returned from my first visit to Columbia, Mo., since I graduated from the University of Missouri there 1994. I am a graduate of…

• By: Iain Murray
• 09/12/2007

William, before air conditioning the British in India would cool their offices by means that did not involve electricity. They hooked up a large ceiling…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/12/2007

Swedish-style snus, a smokeless tobacco product, are much less hazardous to your health than cigarettes. Yet in most of Europe, they are banned, supposedly on…

• By: Iain Murray
• 09/12/2007

That’s what Time magazine seems to think: Uh-oh. Here comes trouble. Let’s stipulate that the Model T did everything that the history books say:…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/12/2007

The Wall Street Journal has an editorial today about how “low green card quotas have left the U.S. with an undersupply of nurses that…

• By: Michelle Minton
• 09/12/2007

Is it a preponderance of scientific evidence or an inundation of media coverage that, like a feedback loop, spurs on the theory that global warming…

• By: John Berlau
• 09/12/2007

Angela, Thanks for noting the cite on why the SEC “reforms” of Sarbox would still mandate that companies be suggested to broad reviews for…

• By: Clyde Wayne Crews
• 09/12/2007

Richard dissected them below. Simple living is one thing, but Free-lunch foragers seem irretrievably ridiculous and hypocritical. The dripping contempt for capitalism, while…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 09/11/2007

Anita Roddick, the hyper-politically correct founder of the Body Shop chain of cosmetics stores, has died. She is being widely lauded as a…

• By: Angela Logomasini
• 09/11/2007

Today's New York Post reports that a medical center funded by the federal government to research potential health effects of the World Trade Center…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/11/2007

The FDA tobacco regulation bill poised to pass Congress may trigger a trade dispute with Indonesia, according to the Asia Times. Indonesia objects to…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 09/11/2007

Spiked Online’s Brendan O’Neill has a thoughtful, and interesting, take on Osama bin Laden’s latest video, in which he denounces the current U.S. administration for,…