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Guatemalan Children Starve Due To Ethanol Mandates
The New York Times reports that ethanol and biofuel mandates in the U.S. and Europe are fueling rising hunger in Guatemala, which now has the fourth-highest…
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The Constitution And Broad First Amendment Freedoms Are Obsolete, Say Left-Leaning Judges And Constitutional Law Professors
The progressive Georgetown University constitutional law professor Louis Michael Seidman argued Monday in The New York Times that we should just ignore the Constitution and…
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Chicago Voters Reelect Legally Insane Judge
In November, Chicago voters re-elected a legally insane judge charged with a crime of violence. "The Cook County Democratic Party…
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Community Reinvestment Act Induced Banks To Take Bad Risks, Economic Study Finds
The Community Reinvestment Act, which "prods banks to make loans in low-income communities,” encouraged banks to make riskier loans, concludes a recent study…
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Fear The Regulatory Cliff, Not The Fiscal Cliff
Economist Bruce Bartlett notes that by cutting the federal budget deficit, the much-feared fiscal cliff will actually increase the size of the economy in the…
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Free Speech, The Disfavored Stepchild Of The Law
In a recent column, George Will discussed how college students have been disciplined for racial or discriminatory "harassment" for constitutionally protected expression, such as…
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Appeals Court Overturns Dismissal Of Challenge To Obamacare Contraception Mandate By Religious Colleges
According to law professor Jonathan Adler, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit effectively overturned a district court’s dismissal of a challenge…
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Expert On Gun Regulation Says “Assault Weapons” Bans Are Useless
President Obama is backing a revival of the federal assault weapons ban that expired in 2004. UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh, perhaps the leading…
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PolitiFact Is The Liar Of The Year
PolitiFact falsely depicted Michael Cannon, the director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute, as suggesting that state law overrides federal law, erroneously…
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Obama’s Low-Quality College Bailout Will Fuel Skyrocketing Tuition
We wrote earlier about perverse federal financial aid policies that encourage colleges to jack up tuition. Recently, the Obama administration came up with something even worse.
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Appeals Court Hears Challenge To Obama Administration Power Grab Over NLRB
This morning, the D.C. Circuit heard oral arguments in Noel Canning v. NLRB, which includes a challenge to President Obama's "recess" appointment of two…
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Victory For Small Business: Lawsuit-Spawning Disabilities Rights Treaty Blocked
"By a vote of 61 to 38 with two-thirds needed, the U.S. Senate" Tuesday "failed to ratify the far-reaching Convention on the Rights of Persons…
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More Lawsuits Against Doctors, Hospitals Due To Senate Amendment 3215 To NDAA
Earlier, I wrote about a proposed amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for 2013, which would dramatically increase lawsuits against schools and…
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New Pressure On Schools To Adopt Quotas, Speech Codes, And Low Standards?
Lawsuits against schools and colleges have nothing to do with our troops and their needs. But that didn’t stop Senators from seeking to add a harmful…
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Obama Breaks Pledge Against Middle-Class Tax Hikes By Proposing Tax Increase On Dividends, Capital Gains
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Myths About Thanksgiving
The first Thanksgiving didn’t usher in a time of plenty for the Pilgrims. The Pilgrims continued to confront the specter of starvation until they ditched…
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Investment Falls Off A Cliff, Threatening Economy
Investment has fallen "off a cliff" reports The Wall Street Journal, as companies worry about the "fiscal cliff" at the start of next year,…
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Liberal Judges: Equality Is Unconstitutional
On Thursday, a federal appeals court, dividing along ideological lines in an 8-to-7 ruling, struck down a provision of the Michigan state constitution prohibiting racial…
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Bad Economic Omens Since The Election
Since the election, the stock market has fallen substantially. The S&P 500 has fallen over 5 percent. The prospect of "Taxmageddon" (massive tax increases…
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FEMA’s Wasteful “Disaster Socialism”
In the Washington Examiner, Shikha Dalmia of the Reason Foundation notes that FEMA has been as slow after Superstorm Sandy as it was after…
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Conservative Self-Deception In 2012 Hid Need For Policy Changes
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Government Pressure to Remove Billboards Against Voter Fraud Is Not “Market Forces”
Earlier, I wrote about illogical but widespread claims (found on Huffington Post, Daily Kos, and elsewhere) that billboards noting "Voter Fraud Is a Felony"…
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Auto Industry Expert: “Romney’s Plan Also Would Have ‘Saved’ Detroit”
Earlier, we noted that the auto bailouts temporarily look more successful right now than they likely will be in the long-run since Toyota's bogus safety issues,…
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Did Bush Save General Motors? Obama Messed Up Chrysler
If you accept the dubious logic the federal government "saved" the auto industry (which requires ignoring other things that rescued General Motors, such as the…
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Obamacare Will Increase Health Insurance Costs In California, Washington, D.C., And Elsewhere
California officials concede that their state’s Obamacare exchange will hike premiums for policyholders by up to 25 percent. In the District of Columbia, small…
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Investigators: Operation Fast And Furious Was Product Of “Deliberate” Obama Administration Strategy
According to The Daily Caller, congressional investigators have concluded that Operation “Fast and Furious” was “a product of DOJ ‘deliberate strategy’ laid out by” Attorney General “Eric Holder”…
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Scapegoating Free Speech To Hide Massive Government Failures?
Earlier, I wrote about how the U.S. government had scapegoated free speech for the terrorist attacks in Libya, claiming that the attacks were…
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PolitiFact Fixes Two Of Its Three Errors Related To The Supreme Court’s Ledbetter Decision
PolitiFact just revised a webpage discussing the Supreme Court’s Ledbetter decision that once contained an error that we discussed here and brought…
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No, Billboards Denouncing “Voter Fraud” Don’t Violate Constitutional “Right To Vote”
One of the most basic principles of constitutional law is that the Constitution only binds the government -- not private individuals -- so…
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PolitiFact Smears Supreme Court, Provides False Political Talking Point For Democratic Party
Earlier, the left-leaning "fact-checker" PolitiFact made the false claim the Supreme Court had declared employees are barred from suing over pay discrimination even…
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Welfare Nation
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Obama Makes False Claim About Supreme Court Decision; Fact-Checkers Parrot It
Reading a Supreme Court decision is so hard! If you are a fact-checker, it's much easier just to let President Obama, a critic of a…
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Canadian Government Official Calls Anti-Abortion Speech Illegal “Bullying”
Bullying has been defined by opportunistic politicians to include a broad range of speech, including core political speech. The latest example is anti-abortion advocacy:…
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Mother Nature And Good Luck, Not Big Government, Saved General Motors… For Now
There are lots of claims that the federal government saved the American auto industry by bailing it out. (Never mind that Ford didn't get…
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Obama Administration Imposes Racial Quotas On School Discipline In Oakland
Under pressure from the Education Department, which investigated it over "racial disparities" and "disparate impact," the Oakland, California, school system has agreed…
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University Of Texas Violates Court Decisions On Use Of Race In Admissions
When journalists and commentators discuss the Fisher v. University of Texas case, they seem to grapple only with whether the University of Texas's race-conscious admissions…
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Deficit Exceeds $1 Trillion For Fourth Straight Year
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Unemployment Falls As Part-Time Work Expands
Unemployment fell from 8.1% to 7.8%, aided by an increase in part-time employment: "Some 582,000 Americans took part-time positions because of slack business conditions…
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Regulations For Thee, But Not For Me
To liberals, regulations are great -- until they ensnare a liberal politician. Then, suddenly there needs to be an exception to the regulation. An example of…
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Obama Administration Shirks Legal Obligation To Protect Military Voters
“Military absentee ballot requests” are “down 92% in key battleground state Virginia,” notes Cornell Law Professor William Jacobson. “The government has become quite efficient…
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Obama Administration Promotes Dependence On Welfare And Food Stamps: A Bigger Priority Than Public Safety?
While the Obama administration left the Mexican government completely in the dark about Operation Fast and Furious (which sent guns to Mexican drug cartels), …
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Obama Imposes Billions In Costs On Taxpayers In Order To Prevent Legally Required Disclosures
Yesterday, ABC News reported that "Defense contractor Lockheed Martin heeded a request from the White House . . . one with political overtones – and announced…
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Obama Administration Sent Guns To Drug Cartels
The Obama administration's botched Operation Fast and Furious, which provided weapons used in hundreds of crimes and killing sprees in Mexico, was broader than…
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Omens Of Another Recession? Durable Goods Orders Drop Sharply
In a bad omen for the economy, "durable-goods orders" sank "13.2% in August," far more than economists "had expected." “Bookings also fell for machinery,…
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Massive Payoff To City For Dropping Challenge To Tool Used To Impose Racial Quotas In Lending
The Obama administration declined to pursue a fraud claim worth up to $180 million against a city to get it to drop its pending…
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Scapegoating Free Speech
In the aftermath of a terrorist attack in Libya that killed our ambassador and three other Americans, the Obama administration was quick to scapegoat a…
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Wall Street Journal: Obama Administration Undermined Welfare Reform’s Work Requirements
"The Administration has made welfare's work requirements far weaker," explains The Wall Street Journal in a detailed editorial today: an HHS regulatory "information…
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EPA Celebrates Mass Murderer Che Guevara For Hispanic Heritage Month
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Rules Are For The Little People, Not Cabinet Secretaries
Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Health & Human Services, violated the Hatch Act by engaging in partisan politics at a "taxpayer-funded public event." But…
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Disturbing Calls For Censorship In America By Professors, Journalists, U.S. Diplomats, And Egyptian Government
In response to a film that mocked Mohammed, journalists on MSNBC, a professor, and the Egyptian government called for punishment of the film's producers.
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Lawmaker Bullies Employer Because Its Employee Supported Gay Marriage
Maryland State Delegate Emmett Burns (D-Baltimore), who has a long record of hostility to business (a 90 percent bad MBRG rating), gave more evidence of that…
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Federal Government: Fire Good Employees, Hire Bad Ones
The Obama administration is pressuring employers outside the financial sector to hire felons, even as its regulations force employers in the financial sector to fire "thousands…
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Fact Checking Lilly Ledbetter’s False Speech At The Democratic National Convention
Former pay-discrimination plaintiff Lilly Ledbetter, in speaking at the Democratic National Convention on September 4, repeated the false claim that she learned about the…
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Massive Fraud Against Clients In Class Action Lawsuit Brought By Obama As Lawyer?
I have often written about abuses in class-action lawsuits, such as lawyers ripping off their clients, or using settlement money for ideological causes…
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“Fact Checker” Repeals The Laws Of Supply And Demand: The Bias Of PolitiFact
The left-leaning, self-proclaimed "fact checker" PolitiFact ignored the most basic economic law, the law of supply and demand, in claiming that cap-and-trade legislation, which…
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Higher Education Bubble Spawns Demographic Decline Among Educated Americans
The Washington Times takes note of the burgeoning higher education bubble in a recent editorial: The cost of a college education has…
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Obama Justice Department Recruits Lawyers With “Severe Intellectual Disabilities,” But Excludes Conservatives
Reality is often stranger than fiction. A former Justice Department lawyer, who publishes at PJ Tatler, has obtained documents from the Justice Department detailing…
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Prominent Lawyer: Obama Administration Illegally “Eviscerates Welfare Reform”
In The Washington Times and a recent study, attorney Andrew Grossman explains in detail how the Obama administration violated the law in claiming…
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Is Government Motors Headed For Bankruptcy Again?
The tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer money spent on the auto bailouts did not fix the automakers' underlying problems, but rather helped…
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Wishful Thinking About Religious Freedom And Gay Marriage
One of the reasons that social conservatives oppose gay marriage is the belief that if it is legalized in a state, private institutions, like…
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California’s Unconstitutional Proposition 37
Writing in the Daily Caller, legal commentator Walter Olson says that California's Proposition 37 is bad policy that will only enrich opportunistic lawyers:…
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Equal Pay Should Be For Equal Work, Not Unequal Work
Yesterday, I criticized the assumption that people should receive equal pay for unequal work, such as requiring the average woman to be paid exactly…
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When Wage Gaps Are Fair
When I and my wife first got married, she worked shorter hours than I did, and used her additional time outside the workplace for activities…
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Supposed “Bipartisan” Consensus Can’t Waive Laws Such As Welfare Reform And Its Work Requirements
As I've noted before, the Obama administration violated the text, structure, and purpose of the 1996 welfare reform law, in claiming the authority…
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Yes, Obama Did Gut Welfare Reform
Earlier, I wrote about how the Obama administration gutted welfare reform. Now, the New York Times is claiming that the Obama administration did…
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The Myth Of The Phoenix: Losses Resulting From Purity Tests Don’t Plant The Seeds Of Future Success
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Obama Administration Aggravates The Minority Achievement Gap, Increases Risk Of School Violence
If you want to fix the achievement gap between black and white students, you must first fix the behaviors that contribute to it, like the…
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Chick-Fil-A And Free Speech: New York City Council Speaker Pressures University To Punish Restaurant For Speech
New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn wants to kick Chick-fil-A out of New York because its CEO said he opposed gay marriage. She…
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Harassing Newborns And Their Mothers: Mayor Bloomberg’s Latest Overreach
The New York Post reports, “Mayor Bloomberg is pushing hospitals to hide their baby formula behind locked doors so more new mothers will breast-feed.” When…
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Maryland’s Unconstitutional School Discipline Quotas
Crimes and infractions are not evenly distributed across racial groups, as the Supreme Court noted in United States v. Armstrong, 517 U.S. 456 (1996). …
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I Never Said Title IX Was Unconstitutional, Or Only Applied To Sports, Contrary To Media Matters’ Claims
Over the years, I have often written about applications of Title IX to areas other than sports, once handled Title IX cases as a…
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Billions of Tax Dollars Spent Raising False Hopes Among Homeowners
The Obama Administration's Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) gave "banks $1,500 bonus payments and servicers $1,000 bonus payments for each loan modification they processed. This…
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Scaremongering ABC Reporter Brian Ross Blames Innocent Man For Colorado Shootings, Leading To Death Threats Against Him
When a 24-year-old shooter killed at least 12 people in a Colorado movie theater, ABC's Brian Ross was quick to suggest that the…
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Obama Administration Urged Self-Reliant Hispanics To Go On Food Stamps
The government encouraged self-sufficient Hispanics to apply for food stamps, in a Spanish-language radio campaign that continued until English speakers finally became aware…
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Obama Administration Guts Welfare Reform’s Work Requirements
As The Washington Examiner reports, "In a quiet move Thursday — barely noted beyond the conservative press — the Obama administration 'released an official…
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Americans Pay Taxes On Overseas Income, Including Bank Accounts In So-Called “Tax Havens”
Recently, there has been a lot of coverage of the fact that Romney, Obama, and other politicians like Dick Durbin and Debbie Wasserman…
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FDA Delay Likely Killed Thousands, Imposed Billions In Costs
The FDA didn’t approve a home test for HIV until 24 years after it first received an application. According to an FDA advisory committee,…
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$14 Billion More in Improper Government Payments
As CNN notes, federal and state governments overpaid unemployment benefits by $14 billion in 2011 — or approximately 11 percent of all benefits paid.
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Judge Lifts Order That Banned Dan Valenti From Blogging About Newsworthy Accident
In Berkshire, Massachusetts, “a judge lifted a harassment prevention order against local blogger Dan Valenti that kept him from writing about Meredith Nilan and forced…
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Government “Protects” Kids By Jailing Their Mother When She Calls 911 For Help
A Tennessee mom, April Lawson, has been jailed for letting her kids play at a park, after she called 911 to report that they…
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Quotas Limiting Male Science Enrollment: The New Liberal War on Science
Quotas limiting the number of male students in science may be imposed by the Education Department in 2013. The White House has promised…
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More Evidence Of A Higher Education Bubble: Even Scientists Can’t Find Jobs In Their Field
Even “very good chemists with PhDs from Stanford can’t find jobs” in their field, and end up working in menial positions, like "low-wage office…
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Maryland Court Dissolves Injunction Against Blogger; Massachusetts Judge Orders Blogger to Take Down Blog Posts
A Maryland judge has vacated an injunction obtained by ex-terrorist and convicted felon Brett Kimberlin against a conservative blogger, Aaron Walker, who…
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A Dream Deferred: An Independence Day Story About Becoming An American Citizen
On July 4, Popehat’s Ken White posted a touching story about Filipino World War II veterans belatedly given their promised American citizenship in the…
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Power Back On Faster In Virginia Than In Maryland: Political Incentives At Work?
I wish all OpenMarket readers a Happy Fourth of July. Things are finally returning to normal here in most of the Washington, D.C., region, where…
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Food Safety Regulations That Kill
In Reason magazine, Baylen Linnekin writes about "the sickening nature of many food-safety regulations," like the "poke and sniff" inspection method mandated by the…
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Obamacare Upheld, 5-to-4: A Perverse Decision That Undermines Political Accountability
Today, in a really perverse ruling, the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare's individual mandate as a tax in a 5-to-4 decision, even though Obamacare's supporters…
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A Political Climate that Discourages Setting Up a Small Business
The EEOC has punished a cafe owner for not selecting a hearing- and speech-impaired applicant for a cashier’s position, even though such impairments obviously…
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Supreme Court Strikes Down Mandatory Life Sentences Without Parole for Teenagers, But Does Not Cite “International Norms”
The Supreme Court has just ruled 5-to-4 that states cannot mandate life sentences without the possibility of parole for murderers under age 18, no matter…
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Who’s the Outsourcer-in-Chief? Obama
Earlier, after discussing all the jobs that have been sent overseas by the Obama administration using taxpayer subsidies, I dubbed President Obama the “…
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Supreme Court Ruling in FCC v. Fox Television Stations Undermines Vague Regulations at SEC, EEOC, and NLRB
In its ruling yesterday in FCC v. Fox Television Stations, the Supreme Court overturned the FCC’s finding that Fox Television was guilty of…
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FCC v. Fox Television: Protection Against Vague Laws Applies to Civil Cases and Protects Businesses
Past Supreme Court rulings like FCC v. Pacifica (1978) allow the federal government to ban "indecency" in broadcasting, and give the government a freer…
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Supreme Court Issues 5-to-4 Rulings, But Not On Obamacare
The Supreme Court announced four decisions today, three of them decided by slender 5-to-4 margins, but not the long-awaited ruling about the constitutionality of…
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Auto Bailouts Incurred Extra $26 Billion in Unnecessary Expenses Due to Political Favoritism by Obama Administration
In a new report, labor economist James Sherk and bankruptcy-law professor Todd Zywicki found that taxpayers lost billions in the auto bailouts…
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Legislators Seek to Create New, Unnecessary Protected Class: Gun Owners
Generally, the Constitution only binds the government, not the private sector. For example, the First Amendment protects speech, and even insults, but that doesn't…
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Employment Non-Discrimination Act Makes as Little Sense as Chemotherapy for a Cold
American business is quite happy to hire gay and lesbian employees, and needs no federal mandate to do so. Virtually all Fortune 500 companies already…
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The Private Sector Is Not “Doing Fine,” Contrary to Claims by President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
Far more people have lost their jobs in the private sector than in the public sector, and the percentage of the economy consumed by…
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Government Restrictions on Salt Consumption May Cost Lives
Some government officials would like to curb salt consumption, even though such restrictions could increase death rates. “The Department of Agriculture’s dietary guidelines still…
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Twisting the Law to Punish Heretics: Elane Photography v. Willock
Judges are supposed to interpret laws narrowly if a broader interpretation would potentially encroach on religious freedom. For example, in NLRB v. Catholic Bishop…
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A Liberal War on Women: “New Law Keeps Many Homemakers from Qualifying for Credit Cards”
The Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009 (CARD Act), a law passed by a liberal Congress and signed by President Obama, “…