The Open Market Blog

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 03/30/2008

One of the most ignorant and gratingly common complaints about American politics is that of their being bland, uninteresting, and failing to engage large segments…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 03/30/2008

In his latest column, former CEI Warren Brookes Fellow Tim Carney looks at how rent-seeking opportunities based on  feel-good environmental campaigns, which are currently…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/29/2008

Bailing out mortgage borrowers is a bad idea that most Americans oppose.  Yet the “Bush administration is finalizing details of a plan,” “backed by…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/28/2008

“U.S. capital markets again lost ground against global competitors last year, highlighting the need to streamline regulation and crack down on excessive securities litigation,…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/28/2008

Most Americans oppose a mortgage bailout, both for borrowers and for lenders.  They oppose bailouts for homeowners by a roughly 2-to-1 margin (53 percent…

• By: Richard Morrison
• 03/28/2008

The National Center for Public Policy Research has a new study, and Internet ad, on the proposal to list the polar bear under the…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/28/2008

Mark Tapscott writes about disgraced New York politician Eliot Spitzer’s hypocrisy in the Examiner.   Spitzer flouted the rules while loudly berating others for real or imaginary transgressions,…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 03/28/2008

In today’s New York Times, a feature story profiles a project to create a national economic planning supercomputer by the socialist government of Salvador…

• By: Gregory Conko
• 03/28/2008

Courtesy of Todd Zywicki at the Volokh Conspiracy, I’ve just learned that President Bush will be appointing William Kovacic to chair the…

• By: Lene Johansen
• 03/28/2008

Morning edition had an amazing story about the government race to patent the atom bomb this morning. The patenting process actually jeopardized the secrecy…

• By: Marlo Lewis, Jr.
• 03/27/2008

Today, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson announced that EPA would respond to the Supreme Court global warming case, Massachusetts v. EPA, by issuing an Advance Notice of…

• By: Michelle Minton
• 03/26/2008

The US government is no stranger to ridiculousness. As Eli pointed out in his recent study on dumb product bans, the logic (I use…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/26/2008

“Lawsuit Abuse Kills Puppies,” reports Ted Frank at Overlawyered.  “Rogier von Bakel is furious at his local SPCA because they would rather put a…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/26/2008

American lawyers, who are overwhelmingly liberal, cite foreign law when it is politically inconvenient, and ignore it when it isn’t.  They like to cite it to argue…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/26/2008

Prodded by the President, Congress belatedly moved to curb abusive class-action lawsuits through the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005.  But when one door to extortionate…

• By: Gregory Conko
• 03/26/2008

Courtesy of Ivan, I’ve been directed to this press release from the Weston A. Price Foundation decrying a U.S. FDA and California Department of…

• By: Lene Johansen
• 03/26/2008

The “healthier food in the school lunch” story is inevitable if you work for a local paper, but it never excited me. No matter what…

• By: Lene Johansen
• 03/26/2008

The Europeans quarrel with plants bred with molecular plant breeding methods continue. French farmers are pushing for it, but they lost the court case…

• By: Michelle Minton
• 03/25/2008

picture via freedomandshit.org I’ve been following the discussion on bad British teeth between Eli and Fran and while it may be…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/25/2008

In order to isolate Colombia’s pro-American, democratically-elected government, Massachusetts Congressman James McGovern sent what commentators have likened to “love letters” to a bloodthirsty Colombian terrorist group, FARC, that smuggles…

• By: Hans Bader
• 03/25/2008

It’s hard for educated people with valuable skills, like doctors and scientists, to immigrate because Congress won’t lift the unrealistically low cap on H-1B…

• By: Marlo Lewis, Jr.
• 03/25/2008

When the European Union (EU) officials negotiated the climate treaty that became the Kyoto Protocol, they did three clever things. First, in the…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 03/25/2008

Everyone likes generic drugs.  So do I.  Who wants to pay those shocking prices–you know, a couple bucks or even a few bucks a pill for…

• By: Lene Johansen
• 03/25/2008

This is an amazing story of science success, and of consumer loss. Phillip Larkin got funding from Tasmanian Alkaloids to create a more potent poppy…