The Open Market Blog

• By: Hans Bader
• 06/19/2008

Congress has banned drilling for oil in much of America, even barren, desolate Arctic land, cutting our domestic oil supply.  The ban harms the environment…

• By: Hans Bader
• 06/19/2008

A Richmond businessman lost 86 pounds eating only at McDonald’s.  Former CEI adjunct scholar Soso Whaley lost 18 pounds over the course of 60 days…

• By: Hans Bader
• 06/19/2008

The Supreme Court ruled today that federal labor law bars a state from curbing the rights of employers to speak out about union organizing by…

• By: Hans Bader
• 06/13/2008

Locally-grown and produced food isn’t necessarily better for the environment, or more economical for society, than food produced elsewhere.  It often costs more and results in more…

• By: Hans Bader
• 06/12/2008

A New York judge has ruled that his own pay should be raised, and ordered New York’s legislature to increase the pay of every state judge in…

• By: Hans Bader
• 06/12/2008

The Supreme Court today ruled that Guantanamo Bay detainees in the War on Terror can bring habeas petitions to challenge their confinement.  But as Chief…

• By: Hans Bader
• 06/12/2008

The militia of Zimbabwe dictator Robert Mugabe is burning to death the wives of his critics.  Rulers of most neighboring African countries continue to support Mugabe…

• By: Hans Bader
• 06/11/2008

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who used the Fair Housing Act as a pretext to restrict speech critical of housing projects back when he was Bill…

• By: Hans Bader
• 06/10/2008

Ethanol subsidies, which have contributed to hunger, riots and environmental destruction across the globe, are now contributing to slave labor on sugar plantations in…

• By: Hans Bader
• 06/10/2008

“In 2004, as regulators warned that subprime lenders were saddling borrowers with mortgages they could not afford, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban…

• By: Hans Bader
• 06/05/2008

In a blistering attack, the Wall Street Journal today criticized the Federal Reserve’s inflationary easy-money policy, which aims to bail out mortgage borrowers through low interest rates, but…

• By: Hans Bader
• 06/05/2008

“U.S. and British diplomats were attacked Thursday as they tried to investigate political violence in Zimbabwe and a U.S. Embassy staffer was beaten,” reports…

• By: Hans Bader
• 06/05/2008

The California State Teachers’ Retirement System suffered “more than one billion in lost investment returns” after it divested from tobacco company stocks in 2001, reports…

• By: Hans Bader
• 06/04/2008

The ACLU claims to exist to protect the civil liberties and constitutional rights of all Americans, but it’s really just an unprincipled left-wing lobbying group.  Recently,…

• By: Hans Bader
• 06/01/2008

War-torn Afghanistan, a critical front in the war on terrorism, is being impoverished by rising food prices aggravated by ethanol subsidies and mandates, reports the June…

• By: Hans Bader
• 05/30/2008

Texas’s Child Protective Services (CPS), which the state supreme court ruled acted illegally in seizing more than 400 children, repeatedly abused children, according to…

• By: Hans Bader
• 05/30/2008

The Greenlining Institute, which is funded by money diverted from class-action lawsuits brought in the name of consumers, is now lobbying the California legislature…

• By: Hans Bader
• 05/29/2008

The Texas Supreme Court has just affirmed an appeals court ruling that Texas’s Child Protective Services (CPS) illegally seized more than 400 children whose…

• By: Hans Bader
• 05/29/2008

Ethanol subsidies are contributing to worldwide hunger.  Islamic extremist groups are exploiting that hunger by tying food aid to anti-Western political indoctrination.  (Ethanol…

• By: Hans Bader
• 05/29/2008

The Supreme Court made up some new laws on Tuesday because it thought they were a good idea, as the Washington Post’s editorial today notes.

• By: Hans Bader
• 05/29/2008

State Child Protective Services (CPS) are increasingly seizing children from their parents for trivial reasons or over baseless, anonymous allegations, as the Washington Examiner describes…

• By: Hans Bader
• 05/28/2008

Texas Child Protective Services (CPS) illegally seized 465 children from parents in a religious sect based on an anonymous, fabricated allegation by a woman outside the sect…

• By: Hans Bader
• 05/27/2008

The Washington Examiner has an interesting editorial today called “Environmentalism Isn’t About the Environment.”  It describes how environmental measures expand and metastasize government power in ways…

• By: Hans Bader
• 05/26/2008

In the Washington Examiner, Daniel Ballon and Lawrence McQuillan criticize a bill pending in Congress that would lead to credit card companies reducing their rebates to…

• By: Hans Bader
• 05/25/2008

The federal government massively subsidizes corn-based ethanol production, even though it consumes as much energy as it generates, thus doing nothing to cut greenhouse gas emissions.  Yet the federal government…

• By: Hans Bader
• 05/22/2008

“An appeals court has ruled that Texas had no right to seize hundreds of children from a polygamous sect.”  The children were seized after someone pretending to…

• By: Hans Bader
• 05/21/2008

In the Wall Street Journal, Holman Jenkins explains why mortgage bailout proposals would reward greedy and foolish borrowers and speculators in certain regions at…

• By: Hans Bader
• 05/21/2008

The Wall Street Journal criticized yesterday’s appeals court ruling that paper money discriminates against the blind.  Even the National Federation of the Blind…