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A More Unequal America
Inequality grows hand-in-hand with the growth of the regulatory state. The proliferation of regulations increases economic inequality, since powerful people and politically connected companies know how to shape and manipulate…
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Illegal Change to Obamacare Is Designed to Scapegoat Insurers, Not Restore Canceled Insurance Policies
If aliens from outer space read today's newspapers, they would assume that America is a dictatorship, not a republic, and that President Obama has the authority…
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Under Obamacare, People Pay More for Inferior Health Plans, Lose Health Insurance They Liked
A Colorado woman who championed Obamacare lost her insurance plan. As a CBS TV station in Denver noted, "Millions of people are getting cancellation…
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Senate Poised to Pass Employment Non-Discrimination Act
Yesterday, the Senate voted 61-to-30 to invoke cloture on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would ban workplace bias based on sexual orientation or…
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Racial Preferences in Obamacare, and Discrimination, Too, Based on Weird Ideology
The Daily Caller has an interesting story about race-conscious provisions and racial preferences contained in Obamacare. It's a subject that has received remarkably little…
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Racial Preferences and Red Tape Grow Under Federal Dodd-Frank Act
Last Friday on National Review's The Corner, Roger Clegg wrote about the 2010 law governing the financial sector, the Dodd-Frank Act, and the racial "diversity quotas"…
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Glitches and Errors Widespread on Obamacare Health Insurance Website
In addition to the Obamacare web site glitches that left people unable to purchase insurance despite hours or days of trying, the website dramatically…
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J.P. Morgan Settlement Rips Off Taxpayers and Investors, Punishes Some Alleged Victims
Recently, The Washington Post reported that J.P.Morgan will pay $13 billion to settle lawsuits against it by the federal government and two…
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Costly Anti-Bullying Programs Backfire
Countless tax dollars have been spent on anti-bullying programs, and 49 states have anti-bullying laws. After New Jersey passed a broad anti-bullying law, hundreds of schools…
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Judge Rules Federal Government Cannot Close County Park in Shutdown
Earlier, I wrote about the federal government's use of the federal government shutdown as an excuse to close many private businesses. Those were businesses that lease…
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More Myths About the Government Shutdown
Young people often don't realize that government shutdowns used to be common, until the middle of the Clinton administration. The George W. Bush presidency was an exception…
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Obama Administration Unnecessarily Shuts Down Many Private Businesses in Government “Shutdown”
PJ Media's Bryan Preston reported Wednesday that the "White House [is] ordering hundreds of privately run, private funded parks to close," using the government…
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Obama Administration Uses “Government Shutdown” as Pretext to Block Access to Tourist Attractions
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Obamacare Quadruples Rates for Some, Subsidizes Some Wealthy Who Retired Early
Due to Obamacare, North Carolina "will see individual-market" health insurance rates "triple for women, and quadruple for men." In Tennessee, Obamacare will…
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Modest Food Stamp Cuts Are Long Overdue
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Massive Marriage Penalties in Obamacare Health Insurance Exchanges
On the Obamacare health insurance exchanges, being married can cost you a lot. Get divorced (or avoid getting married, if you live together), and you…
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Labor Department Imposes Disability Hiring Quotas, Even in Divisions that Don’t Get Federal Contracts
The Obama Labor Department has just finalized rules that will effectively require businesses that get federal contracts to adopt a 7 percent hiring quota for the…
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Student Barred from Handing Out Constitution on Constitution Day, In Sad Sign of the Times
At Modesto Junior College, a student was prevented from handing out copies of the Constitution on Constitution day. He was also "told he needed to fill…
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Ignoring the Government’s Role in the Financial Crisis, Five Years Later
When it comes to reporting on the 2008 financial crisis, many journalists are experts at ignoring the elephant in the room: the government's role in…
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More Harm from “Disparate Impact” Regulations
Earlier, we wrote about the Obama administration’s attempt to inject a race-conscious “disparate impact” provision into colorblind anti-discrimination laws like the Fair Housing Act,…
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CEI Opposes Risky, Race-Conscious Federal Lending Requirements in Supreme Court Case
“Disparate impact” is a term in anti-discrimination law for when a neutral policy happens to affect minorities more than whites. One example is a standardized…
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Scholars React to President’s Call to Shrink Law School from Three Years to Two
We earlier discussed (and agreed with) President Obama’s suggestion that law schools cut their length of study to two years from the current three…
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President Obama: Cut Law School from Three Years to Two
President Obama, a lawyer who once was a lecturer at the University of Chicago, recently urged law schools to reduce the length of study from three years…
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New Mexico Court: Go Into Business, Lose Your First Amendment Rights
In Elane Photography v. Willock, the New Mexico Supreme Court ruled yesterday that a wedding photographer violated the New Mexico Human Rights Act by…
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Let in More Foreign Doctors to Fix Looming Shortage of Physicians Aggravated by Obamacare
“Bring on the foreign doctors,” writes Slate’s Brian Palmer: If President Obama’s health care reform plan is implemented in its current form, the United…
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President’s Dog Airlifted at Enormous Expense to Taxpayers? Debunking Claims Made Against Budget Cuts
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Federal Income-Based Repayment Plan Encourages Skyrocketing Law School Tuition
A recent item in The Washington Post explains "how Georgetown Law gets Uncle Sam to pay its students’ bills," averaging $158,888 over three years,…
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The Misleading Push for the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
Last year, the Senate did not ratify the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, with supporters falling just short of the two-thirds…
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The Rip-Off that Is Occupational Licensing
Occupational licensing rules allow trade schools in some states to force students to attend them, enabling the schools to charge students lots of tuition for…
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More Economic Suffering Due to Obamacare
The Washington Post reports on the ever-growing number of people losing wages and facing pay cuts due to the 2010 healthcare law: For Kevin…
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The Government’s Wasteful Obsession with Subsidized Homeownership
The government has spent vast sums of money promoting homeownership through subsidies, tax exemptions, and bailouts. For example, in prosperous Alexandria, Virginia, certain people who…
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Unions Plead for Changes to Obamacare, Citing Lost Wages and Benefits
The Wall Street Journal reports today that the leaders of three major labor unions are asking Congress to make fundamental changes to Obamacare, saying that without such changes, it will…
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Senate Committee Passes ENDA, Which Would Lead to Meritless Litigation and Erode Free Speech
A Senate Committee has voted 15-to-7 to approve the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, "a bill that would prohibit employers from discriminating against workers on the basis…
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European Court Invalidates “Whole-Life” Sentences: Fuzzy International Norms Erode Sovereignty, Freedoms, and Safety
It's common to see supporters of U.S. ratification of international treaties claim that they will not radically uproot existing U.S. practices or freedoms, because their…
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Another Reason to Love the Sequester: Budget Cuts Prevent Agency from Destroying Valuable Computer Equipment
An agency unnecessarily destroyed $170,000 worth of computing hardware, and planned to destroy $3 million more, in response to garden-variety, easy-to-guard-against malware that…
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Obama Administration Discards Reporting Requirements in Obamacare
The Obama administration has illegally discarded the reporting requirements mandated by the 2010 healthcare law, which were designed to prevent countless billions of…
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French Cheese Ban: An Attack on “Scientific Principles” in Violation of Treaties Protecting International Trade?
Earlier, we wrote about the U.S. government's de facto ban on the commonplace, perfectly healthy, normal-smelling French cheese mimolette (which I once confused with…
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Another Federal Appeals Court Rules against Obama Administration’s Contraceptive Mandate
Contraceptives are easy to obtain, and forcing employers to include a broad array of contraceptives in employee health insurance makes as little sense as forcing…
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Federal Regulations Make Americans 75 Percent Poorer
"Federal regulations have made you 75 percent poorer," and as a result, "U.S. GDP is just $16 trillion instead of $54 trillion," says an…
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President Repeats False “Equal Pay” Statistic Claiming Women Earn 77 Percent of What Men Do
President Obama repeated a myth about equal pay and pay discrimination, as the economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth notes at RealClearMarkets: Last week in the…
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Obamacare and Activist State Courts Drive Up Health Plan Costs
The so-called rate shock from Obamacare has hit Ohio. The state’s Department of Insurance announced last Thursday that the average individual-market health insurance premium…
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Legal Ignorance of the Day: Federal Officials Seek to Restrict Religious Speech and “Hate Speech”
To be appointed to a Justice Department position in the Obama administration, you may need to satisfy various ideological litmus tests. But apparently…
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Wisconsin Town Criminalizes Parents for Kids’ Bullying and Offensive Speech
Law Professor Eugene Volokh has an interesting post on a Wisconsin town's "bullying" ordinance, which criminalizes speech by minors as "bullying" or "harassment" if…
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Education Department Attack on Free Speech and Due Process Criticized in Washington Post, Chronicle, and Other Papers
Earlier, I wrote about a recent letter from the Education and Justice Departments demanding that the University of Montana define as a reportable "sexual…
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IRS Political Harassers Could Theoretically Be Fired, as Required by 1998 Law
Earlier, I wrote about how, thanks to civil-service regulations, it is hard to fire government employees for misconduct, despite often-ignored Constitutional provisions, such…
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Anti-Business and Anti-Freedom: The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
In the American Spectator, CEI Vice President for Strategy Iain Murray and Geoffrey McLatchey explain why the Senate should be skeptical of the United Nations Convention…
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Firing Government Employees Is Too Hard; the Constitution Intended for It to Be Easier
It's hard to get rid of a career bureaucrat, even at the managerial level. "After you've been here for a year, it's easier to kill…
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Legal Fallacy Underlies Defense of IRS Harassment by Progressives
Progressives such as those at the Daily Kos are arguing that it would have been just fine to for the IRS to investigate all groups…
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Obama Recess Appointments Violate Constitution; Another Appeals Court Rules Against the NLRB
Another federal appeals court has ruled that President Obama's so-called "recess appointments" to the National Labor Relations Board were unconstitutional because the Senate was not…
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IRS Investigated Groups for Teaching about the Constitution
The IRS didn’t just investigate groups based on their perceived political views, but also targeted groups for “educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights”…