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Anti-Business Myths Pervade Reporting on Religious Freedom Legislation
Sometimes, the media propagates anti-business myths, in the course of reporting on legislation that has little impact on business. So it is with its recent reporting…
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Is Ferguson “the Norm”? In Some Ways, Yes
Recently, the Justice Department issued a report that was very critical of the Ferguson police department and courts. In response, President Obama stated that “he doesn't believe…
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When Regulations Undermine Justice and Due Process
Recently, I participated in a March 13 panel discussion at the National Press Club titled “Bringing an End to Second-Class Justice,” discussing how federal micromanagement…
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Civil Rights Commissioners Oppose Budget Increase for Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights
On February 26, two members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Gail Heriot and Peter Kirsanow, wrote to the chairmen of the congressional appropriations committees, to…
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University of California Dean: Academic Freedom Makes Students “Feel Unsafe”
Recently, the dean of the School of Social Welfare at the University of California at Berkeley condemned a professor’s constitutionally protected remarks, including but not limited…
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Another Illegal Rule from the Education Department
Recently, I wrote about a report to the Senate by a task force of college presidents, on how the Education Department is illegally dumping an avalanche of new…
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Education Department Floods Schools with New Uncodified Bureaucratic Mandates
Recently, a task force of college presidents chronicled massive regulatory overreaching by the U.S. Department of Education, which, on a daily basis, floods the nation’s…
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NPR Wrongly Suggests Hate Speech and Blasphemy Are Unprotected by First Amendment
NPR gets a lot of taxpayer money based on a false pretense of objectivity and accuracy. Its departing ombudsman, Edward Schumacher-Matos, says that “as a public…
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Congress Should Reject Obama Budget Increase for Education Department Office for Civil Rights
The Obama administration perversely rewards agencies that overstep their authority by giving them budget increases to handle the increased workload that results. A classic example…
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Obama Administration Learned Nothing from 2008 Financial Crisis, Mortgage Expert Says
Ed Pinto had a depressing and revealing op-ed in The Wall Street Journal Friday about how the Obama administration is artificially creating markets for risky mortgages, using…
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Study: Cutting Unemployment Benefits Boosted Hiring
President Obama’s policies reduced employment and slowed America’s economic recovery by discouraging people from working. The Congressional Budget Office says Obamacare will shrink employment by around …
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Did Slanted NPR Story Lead to Hasty, Illegal Education Department Sexual Harassment Rules?
Bad things can happen when an agency (like the Education Department) throws caution to the wind and regulates based on slanted media coverage from National…
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Obama Seeks More Double Taxation and Job-Killing Taxes in State of the Union Address
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Terrorist Attack on Charlie Hebdo Reveals the Sorry State of Free Speech in the West
My wife Sylvie, who grew up in France, is terribly shocked about yesterday’s terrorist attack on the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, which murdered 12 people, including…
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Bureaucrats Demand That Harvard Parrot Their Uncodified Views about Sexual Harassment
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Central “Planning” Often Creates Disorder, While the Free Market Provides Consistency
Government planning often contains contradictory elements that provide inconsistent signals for regulated entities about how to behave. For example, the New Deal of the 1930s…
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Dodd-Frank’s Conflict Minerals Rules Increase Misery
Earlier, we wrote about the misery inflicted upon the Congo and millions of desperately poor people by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act’s “conflict minerals” provisions. A…
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Taxpayer-Funded Green Ministries in Prince George’s County Violate the Constitution
Reporters like separation of church and state, unless it’s progressives violating it. Then, they lose interest in the concept. A recent Washington Post story cheerily reported on churches…
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Biased Anti-Bias Regulations
Anti-bias regulations are sometimes biased and at odds with civil liberties. The Cato Institute’s Walter Olson gives a recent example from a left-leaning region in Spain:…
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Minneapolis Adopts Unconstitutional Racial Quotas in School Discipline
Given a choice between following the law, and doing what a bureaucrat with power over them wants, many people will do what the bureaucrat wants,…
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Voters Approve Minimum Wage Hikes
As pollsters predicted, voters approved increases in state-level minimum wages in four states (Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota), although to levels less than the increase…
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Education Department Harassment Rules Metastasize through Administrative Fiat
The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), where I used to work, today declared that schools can be liable for bullying (or anything else)…
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Federal Obamacare Officials Once Recognized the Falsity of Their Current Argument about Tax Credits
The Obama administration has claimed that despite recurring language in the Obamacare law limiting tax credits to people who buy insurance on an “exchange established…
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Feds Apply Double Standards against Private Employers
Government contractors could face a financial death sentence over labor law, civil-rights law, or wage-and-hour law violations under a recent Obama executive order I discussed…
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Taxpayers to Subsidize “Ministry of Truthiness”
The Washington Free Beacon reports: The federal government is spending nearly $1 million to create an online database that will track “misinformation” and…
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Obama “Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces” Executive Order Will Punish Firms in Pro-Worker States
Earlier, we discussed President Obama’s recent Executive Order 13,673, which “will allow trial lawyers to extort larger settlements from companies, and enable bureaucratic agencies to extract …
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Duplicative New Affirmative-Action Rule Drives Up Taxpayer Costs and Restricts Competition
Does it make sense to require a park campground operator that has a few hundred employees at 120 different locations to come up with 120…
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Executive Order Pressures Employers to Capitulate to Baseless Demands and Meritless Claims
A July 31 executive order from President Obama, E.O. 13,673, will make it very costly for employers to challenge dubious allegations of wrongdoing against them,…
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Due Process Eroded by Bills like CASA That Let Agencies Keep Fines They Impose
Due process is being eroded by recent bills that would authorize agencies to impose massive fines on regulated industries, and then keep those fines for…
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Federal Official Says Campus Speech Should Be Restricted to Protect Young People’s Brains
U.S. Civil Rights Commission member Michael Yaki says that speech on college campuses should be restricted to protect young people’s developing brains. This is yet…