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Congress Rewards Education Department for Overreaching and Flouting Checks and Balances
At Powerline, lawyer Paul Mirengoff writes about one of the many disturbing provisions buried in the budget-busting omnibus spending bill currently being passed by Congress as…
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Pennsylvania Legislature Begins Process of Firing Attorney General Kathleen Kane
Last month, Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane stubbornly clung to office, refusing to resign even after she was suspended from practicing law for her alleged…
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Unconstitutional Sexual-Orientation Set-Asides in Massachusetts
Government contracts should go to the lowest bidder, not be set aside for a particular group. So it is unfortunate that Massachusetts’s governor is now…
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The Misguided Attempt to Censor Yik Yak
People often seek to restrict new means of communication in ways that would never be applied to older forms of communication, sometimes based on fear…
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More Affirmative-Action Red Tape for Contractors: Sexual Orientation Added in California
Governments impose a cobweb of complicated and confusing affirmative-action mandates on government contractors. That imposes billions of dollars in compliance costs on contractors. It also …
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Pennsylvania Attorney General Suspended from the Bar, Still Refuses to Quit
Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane was suspended from the bar on October 22 for apparent violations of the law by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. A…
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Education Department Power Grabs Criticized in Congress
Yesterday, The College Fix published an interesting story titled “Department of Education shredded for lawless overreach in Senate hearing.” It was about Congress getting annoyed with…
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Education Department Harms Innocent Colleges and Students through Illegal Title IX Mandates
The Education Department, where I used to work, is becoming more and more extreme in how it interprets and applies federal law. Sometimes this comes…
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Cato, CEI File Amicus Brief to Protect Donor Confidentiality and Freedom of Association
The Cato Institute and CEI recently filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court, urging it to stop California Attorney General Kamala Harris from making intrusive…
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More Punishment for Thrifty Seniors from Federal Medicare Laws
If two couples make almost the same amount of money, should one of them be charged $2,000 more in Medicare Part B premiums? Logically, no,…
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CEI Issues Report on the Nation’s Six Worst State Attorneys General
Today, CEI issued another of its periodic “worst state attorney general” lists, in a lengthy report explaining why those attorneys general received that dubious distinction. (Previous …
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Feds Double Down on Failed Affordable Housing Mandates
Federal affordable housing mandates do little to increase homeownership rates, but they did help cause a devastating financial crisis in 2008 by encouraging risky lending. Yet the Federal…
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Is President Obama’s Energy Wish Coming True?
In a January 17, 2008, interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, then-Senator Obama said that “electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket” under his plan to…
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Dodd-Frank Act Strangles Small Banks
The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act was enacted partly to end “too-big-to-fail” banks, but it has done quite the opposite. It has curbed competition with big banks…
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Dodd-Frank’s Conflict-Minerals Rule Increases Violence in the Congo
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HUD’s “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” Rule Is about Social Engineering, Not Desegregation
Failure to meet a racial quota is not the same thing as segregation. That basic fact has eluded the federal Department of Housing and Urban…
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EEOC Legislates New Federal Ban on Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation
When Congress declines to pass a law that would expand an agency’s powers, the agency will sometimes respond by making up the law on its own.
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Federal Financial Aid Drives Up Tuition and College Costs, Study Finds
The federal government is now admitting that its own financial aid is partly to blame for rising tuition, reports Blake Neff in The Daily Caller:…
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Supreme Court Expands Power of Trial Lawyers Over Elections in Arizona Ruling
The Supreme Court’s recent healthcare decision in King v. Burwell wasn’t the only case in which it twisted clear statutory or constitutional language in order to protect…
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Supreme Court Ruling that Fair Housing Act Bans Disparate Impact Creates Confusion and Uncertainty
The Supreme Court’s June 25 decision in Texas Dept. of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc. creates confusion and uncertainty in multiple respects. In…
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Dodd-Frank Conflict Minerals Rules Cause Smuggling, Starvation, and Harm to U.S. Businesses
The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act effectively restricted U.S. business’s ability to obtain minerals from the war-torn nation of the Congo and surrounding countries. That caused massive …
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Obama Administration Pressures Colleges to Adopt Unconstitutional Speech Codes
Under the Obama administration, the Education Department has pressured schools and colleges to restrict speech, including off campus speech, even when it is protected by the…
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DOJ vs. Reason.com Commenters: When Everything Is Deemed a “Threat”
The Supreme Court has said that true threats can be banned without violating the First Amendment, but that doesn’t mean that hyperbolic rants are unprotected…
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Fourth Circuit Flouts Appellate, Evidence, and Class-Action Rules in Brown v. Nucor Corp.
In the past, businesses have been happy to put new factories in states like South Carolina and Virginia, due to their right-to-work laws and relatively…
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Welfare Recipients Relabeled As “Workers” Despite Doing Little or No Work
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President Again Makes False Claims about Supreme Court’s Ledbetter Decision
On April 15, President Obama once again made false claims about what the Supreme Court did in its decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire &…
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The “Draw Muhammad” Contest and the Futility of Trying to Correct Journalistic Mistakes about the Law
Journalists often not only get the law wrong, but then have the audacity to smugly talk down to people who attempt to correct them (usually…
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Deceptive Discrimination Laws
Discrimination may be bad for business, but that doesn’t mean laws banning discrimination are good for business. Often, these laws are like the proverbial Trojan…
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New York Times Clings to Discredited Legal Myths about Corporate Personhood
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