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Things Get Heated at Senate Hearing on Climate Science
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CCAF Asks Supreme Court to Hear Challenge on Duracell Class Action Settlement
Today, the Center for Class Action Fairness petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case challenging an abusive class action practice where trial lawyers pay themselves…
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5 Reasons the COP-21 Meeting in Paris will Fail
A white paper from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is the first comprehensive report by Congress on international climate negotiations, encompassing the United…
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Congressional Committee Favors State-Based Legalization of Online Gambling
Wednesday’s hearing was not good for those hoping to make a case for a national online gambling prohibition. While the House Oversight Committee hearing was supposed…
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FAST Act Debrief: A Few Policy Notes on the Latest Highway Bill
Last Friday, December 4, President Obama signed into law the FAST Act, which reauthorizes federal surface transportation programs through Fiscal Year 2020 to the tune…
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Ex-Im Is Back from the Dead, Kind of
On Friday, President Obama signed into law a five-year, $305 billion highway bill. Marc Scribner, CEI’s resident transportation expert, has his thoughts on the…
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Protecting American Workers and Job Creators with the Omnibus
This week, Congress is working against the clock to avert a government shutdown and pass new spending legislation before the current continuing resolution expires on…
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Regulatory Dark Matter
How do regulations get made? Agencies have to follow specific procedures, first outlined in the 1946 Administrative Procedure Act. The trouble is that many agencies simply…
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Deck Stacked at House Oversight Committee Hearing on Internet Gambling
Tomorrow the House Oversight and Government Reform (OGR) Committee will hold a hearing titled, “Casino in Every Smartphone – Law Enforcement Implications,” to discuss…
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Deflate Drug Prices by Reforming the FDA
This Wednesday, the Senate Select Committee on Aging will hold a hearing on “sudden price spikes” among certain off-patent drugs. The most widely publicized of these…
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COP21: CEI’s Myron Ebell and Chris Horner Branded as Climate Criminals for Threatening Bogus Consensus
A group calling itself Avaaz (“Voice”) has plastered “wanted” posters of seven “climate criminals” on Paris streets and billboards during the COP21 climate negotiations. Avaaz worries that…
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RealClear Radio Hour: Polarizing Media & Intellectual Safety
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
With most of December still to go, the 2015 Federal Register is already the seventh largest ever, going back to 1936. It remains on pace to set the…
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Repealed 82 Years Ago, the Spirit of Prohibition Lives On
Tomorrow, December 5, many of us will raise a glass in celebration of Repeal Day—the anniversary of the end of that disastrous experiment of alcohol prohibition…
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COOL Ruling Puts U.S. in the Hot Seat
In a move intended to avoid harmful retaliatory tariffs from Canada and Mexico, five Democratic senators wrote to both majority and minority Senate leaders,…
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Four Takeaways from the COP-21 Paris Climate Treaty
As we near the end of the first week of the COP-21 negotiations in Paris, the focal points of the expected climate treaty have…
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Senate EPW White Paper: Essential Background on the Obama Administration’s Climate Treaty Agenda
A new white paper from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is the first comprehensive report by Congress on international climate negotiations, encompassing…
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Official Time and Criminal Misconduct by Federal Employees
With under two weeks until Congress must pass an omnibus spending bill to avoid a government shutdown, one policy that should be on the chopping…
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Five Facts on COP-21
As global leaders converge on Paris for the 2015 Climate Conference (COP-21), the goals of the meeting remain unclear to millions of Americans. To help…
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Will DOL’s “Fiduciary Rule” Silence Dave Ramsey?
It is indeed sad that 40 percent of millennials favor the government banning speech that some deem offensive, according to a recent Pew poll. Even…
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RealClear Radio Hour: Rocker Conservationist and Apocalypse Averted
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Pennsylvania Legislature Begins Process of Firing Attorney General Kathleen Kane
Last month, Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane stubbornly clung to office, refusing to resign even after she was suspended from practicing law for her alleged…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
Despite a respite for Thanksgiving, the 2015 Federal Register is now on pace to set an all-time record page count. It began publication in 1936. New regulations…
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Douglass North, 1920-2015
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Much to Be Thankful For
Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and all of us have much to be thankful for. Over at Inside Sources, I have a Julian Simon-inspired take on the…
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Thanksgiving: Massachusetts Discovers Property Rights
Thanksgiving is a day layered in tradition and myth. The standard story makes much of the creative efforts of our ancestors, the assistance provided by…
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Washington’s Thanksgiving Turkeys: Here’s Your Chance to Fill Up on the White House’s 218 Economically Significant Rules
The president will pardon a couple turkeys again this year for Thanksgiving. The birds will take a carbon-intensive cross country flight from San Francisco International…
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Fracking: The Gift Keeps Giving
“U.S. proved crude oil reserves hit levels not seen since 1972, surpassing 39 billion barrels in 2014, according to newly released federal data,” Michael Bastasch…
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3 Political Food Developments to Be Thankful For
For most of us in the U.S., we don’t have to worry about getting enough food. Quite the opposite actually; holidays like Thanksgiving can be…
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A Fundamental Misunderstanding of Free Enterprise
Today, in The Guardian, columnist Zoe Williams repeats an idea often advanced by progressives, that entrepreneurial activity is dependent on the action of others, especially “government,”…
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Problems with Mandatory Drone Registration
On Saturday, the Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Registration Task Force issued its recommendations on a mandatory UAS registration proposal. The report is available here. On…
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Government Submits TSA Body Scanner Final Rule Schedule to Court
On October 23, 2015, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ordered the Department of Homeland Security to produce a schedule for final rule…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The number of new regulations on the year passed the 3,000 mark last week, and the Federal Register is nearly on pace to set an all-time record…
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RealClear Radio Hour: Dodging The Devil’s Bargain, Appreciating Crowdsourced Evolution
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House Commerce Committee Approves “Pizza” Bill to Ease Onerous Calorie Labeling Rule
While most consumers are blissfully unaware, a provision tucked into the Affordable Care Act could cause food vendors a lot of headaches. Starting on December…
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Anti-Capitalism on Campus
Prof. Brad Thompson of Clemson University writes this week in Minding the Campus on the impact of corporate donations to institutions of higher education. In particular, he describes…
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The FAQ on COP-21
What is COP-21? The 21st session of the Conference of Parties (COP-21) in Paris is a United Nations meeting to adopt a plan requiring greenhouse…
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NLRB Attack on McDonald’s
No one accuses the government of being responsive to the public. Whether you are a veteran seeking care or need to renew your license at…
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Calling All Public Choice Scholars
Earlier this month the Cato Institute generously hosted a small roundtable discussion of CEI’s recent study “Virtuous Capitalism: Why there Is Less Corruption in…
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Unconstitutional Sexual-Orientation Set-Asides in Massachusetts
Government contracts should go to the lowest bidder, not be set aside for a particular group. So it is unfortunate that Massachusetts’s governor is now…
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Less than 1 Percent of Federal Regulations Get Cost-Benefit Analysis
The Obama administration likes to assert that all the rules and regulations pouring out of Washington have positive net-benefits. Billions of dollars in postulated net…
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Virtuous Capitalism in Theory and Practice
Government is responsible for billions and billions of dollars of corruption and corporate welfare. Considering the potential returns on investment compared to honest entrepreneurship, it…
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Should a Billionaire Decide Where Pennsylvanians Can Gamble?
The casino industry has been good for my home state of Pennsylvania. For whatever ills one might claim goes along with gambling, the gaming industry…
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Net Neutrality Questions FCC Commissioners Need to Answer
In a House Energy & Commerce Committee oversight hearing on Tuesday, November 17, all five Federal Communications Commissioners will testify. Net neutrality, the FCC’s broad push…
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A Look Ahead to CEI’s Future
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The Mild, Mild West: Regulation in America
Over at the newly launched U.S. edition of the U.K.-based CapX wesbite, Wayne Crews and I have a short primer on U.S. regulation: America…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
Wednesday’s Veterans’ Day holiday made it a short work week, but the Federal Register still passed the 70,000-page mark, with new regulations covering everything from Flugzeugbaus to…
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RealClear Radio Hour: American Colossus and Private Alternatives
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Judge Allows Deposition of EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy
Clean Air Act §321(a) requires the EPA to monitor job losses due to the agency’s environmental regulations. In March 2014, Murray Energy, an Ohio-based coal…
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Senate Likely To Vote on Resolutions To Block EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Rules for Power Plants Next Week
The Senate is tentatively scheduled to take up the two resolutions of disapproval of the EPA’s greenhouse gas rules for new and existing power plants…
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Farewell and Toast to CEI’s Future
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CFPB’s Database Should Be Bipartisan Privacy Concern
The behemoth Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) played a big role in Tuesday night’s GOP presidential debate on Fox Business, both during the commercials and…
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Five Infuriating Facts about Federal Regulation
Each year, we produce Ten Thousand Commandments (10KC), an extensive report on the size, scope, and true cost of federal regulations. 10KC exposes the burdens put…
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Daily Fantasy Sports Betting: Gambling or Game of Skill?
That is the big question in New York today after that state’s attorney general issued a cease and desist order to DraftKings and FanDuel—the two…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
New rules last week covered everything from relaxed grape handling to unclaimed funerary objects.
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Churchill: A “Foolish Moth”, and FDR’s Raw Deal
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China Burns 17% More Coal Than Reported
China has been burning up to 17% more coal per year than previously reported, according to new data released by the Chinese government. New York’s…
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O Says No to Keystone XL
President Barack Obama on 6th November determined that the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline is not in the national interest and therefore denied the cross-border permit necessary…
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CEI FOIA Reveals Clinton Email Security NDA
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Bureau of Labor Statistics Releases October Jobs Report
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Text of Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Pact Released
The office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) has released the complete text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) – a huge trade pact…
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Passcode for Liberty: Why the Government Shouldn’t Restrict Encryption (Video)
Most Americans own a smartphone and use cloud computing services such as Gmail, Dropbox, and Facebook. Increasingly, we store sensitive data on our devices and…
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Who’s Playing Politics on the Keystone XL Pipeline?
“The White House on Tuesday said President Obama had no intention of bowing to a request from the company behind the Keystone XL oil pipeline…
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What Does the World Think of Capitalism?
The Legatum Institute in the U.K. has an important new international poll out about public attitudes towards capitalism and the business world. They hired YouGov to…
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Republicans Should Support Rep. King’s Amendment to Prohibit Davis-Bacon Requirements
The House of Representatives is voting on the Highway Trust Fund this week. Numerous amendments have been added to the bill. One that should garner…
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Don’t Spare the ROD: An Inventory of Resolutions of Disapproval under the Congressional Review Act
Before Thanksgiving Day, both chambers of Congress are likely to consider so-called “Resolutions of Disapproval” to attempt to reject major, cripplingly expensive Environmental Protection Agency regulations…
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Freddie Mac’s Loss Shows Need to Protect Taxpayers from GSE Raids
I wish baseball great Yogi Berra were still here—upon the release of Freddie Mac’s new quarterly report showing a sudden Q3 loss—so he could offer…
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Federal Menu Laws Need Some Common Sense
This week, the House Energy and Commerce committee will hold a mark-up hearing on the Common Sense Nutrition Disclosure Act (H.R. 2017), a bipartisan bill intended…
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Sell a Kidney, Save a Life
Last week I blogged about the idea that some things should not be part of a market economy, and highlighted one rather silly example of…
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RealClear Radio Hour: Modern Environmentalists
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The pace of new rules has picked up recently, with 80 or more final regulations and more than 2,000 Federal Register pages for the second straight week.
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Congressional Resolutions To Block EPA’s Climate Rules and DC Circuit Decision on Stay of Power Plant Rule
Congressional Resolutions To Block EPA’s Climate Rules Are Introduced and Set To Move Quickly Representative Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee’s…
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Halloween Not So Scary for Parents
When it comes to Halloween these days, it seems that parents scare more easily than their children. For the past 15 years, I have checked…
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The 5 Most Horrifying Halloween Monsters from Washington
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Equity Crowdfunding at Last, But Still Incomplete
More than three years after the JOBS Act was signed into law by President Obama, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) today will finally vote…
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The Real Question about Fantasy Sports Gambling the GOP Debate Missed
In this clown-car of a GOP primary, it’s inevitable that the discussion will sometimes veer onto more superficial avenues of questioning. After all, news is entertainment and…
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Barbara Boxer: Confirm PR Flak for Key Safety Role or the Transportation System Gets It
Yesterday, the Senate confirmed Sarah Feinberg to head the Federal Railroad Administration. Feinberg has been acting administrator since January. She replaced Joseph Szabo, who had…
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The Misguided Attempt to Censor Yik Yak
People often seek to restrict new means of communication in ways that would never be applied to older forms of communication, sometimes based on fear…
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Ex-Im Revival Passes the House
The House has passed Rep. Stephen Fincher’s Ex-Im revival bill, by the margin of 313-118. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has publicly said the Senate…
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House Committee Pushes Back against NLRB Assault on Small Business
Today, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce passed H.R. 3459, the Protecting Local Business Opportunity Act, a bill that would restore the traditional…
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CEI at Money20/20
I’m here on the Las Vegas Strip at Money20/20, a trade show and forum in the area of FinTech—a term used to describe a…
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Signs of Life for Ex-Im?
Last night the House of Representatives voted on a rare discharge petition, under which a controversial bill can skip the usual committee process and go…
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Onions Have No Futures
Lots of people object to markets in certain commodities. Kidneys, archeological relics, adoption rights, and a host of more prosaic items have been deemed by…
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As Senate Cybersecurity Vote Nears, CISA Remains Seriously Flawed
If Congress wants to lift barriers to beneficial information sharing without endangering individual privacy, it’s essential that legislation contains robust safeguards against unwanted uses of…
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Return of the Employee Free Choice Act
Labor law has dramatically changed under the Obama administration via the pro-union National Labor Relations Board. Many longstanding Board precedents have been tossed aside in favor…
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Glyphosate in Tampons, Oh My!
You may have seen the hilarious headlines about putting Monsanto in your vagina (if not, you’re welcome/I’m sorry). This hyperbole comes on the heels of a…
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More Affirmative-Action Red Tape for Contractors: Sexual Orientation Added in California
Governments impose a cobweb of complicated and confusing affirmative-action mandates on government contractors. That imposes billions of dollars in compliance costs on contractors. It also …
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Drinking in the Dark
Bellion Vodka has one strange website. Bellion claims to be “the next step in the evolution of spirits” and “a smarter way to drink.” Its…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
A normal week ended with a bang, with more than 450 pages of EPA regulations swelling Friday’s Federal Register to more than 800 pages (normal is around…
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Has Global Warming Increased U.S. Hurricane Damages?
Estrada et al. (2015), a study published this week in Nature Geoscience, finds “an upward trend in [hurricane-inflicted U.S.] economic losses between 1900 and 2005…
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Bonn Climate Negotiations Still Come Down To One Question: Where’s the Cash?
The last officially scheduled negotiating session before COP-21 (the twenty-first Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) in Paris concluded…
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Record Number of States Launch Legal Challenge to Clean Power Plan
Twenty six States this week filed legal challenges to the Clean Power Plan in the federal court of appeals for the D.C. Circuit. As far…
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Senate and House Move Quickly To Block EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Rules for Coal and Gas Power Plants
The EPA’s greenhouse gas emissions rules for new and existing coal and natural gas power plants were finally published in the Federal Register on Friday, 23rd October. …
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Court Rules against Government in TSA Body Scanner Case
Earlier today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled against the government in CEI’s challenge to the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) illegal…
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Pennsylvania Attorney General Suspended from the Bar, Still Refuses to Quit
Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane was suspended from the bar on October 22 for apparent violations of the law by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. A…
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33 Groups Call on Congress to Defund Portfolio Attack by Labor Department
Today, a coalition letter signed by leaders of 33 leaders of free-market and conservative public policy organizations urges Congress to defund the Department of…
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Wayne Crews’s Essay Recognized as Part of 2015 Fisher Award
A collection of essays on the economic challenges facing the United States, as well as paths for recovery, were published by The Fraser Institute in…
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Back to the Future in Payments Technology
One of the things Back to the Future Part II almost got right about 2015 was how Biff paid for his cab ride—with a thumbprint. A lot…
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Virtuous Capitalism, or, Why So Little Rent-Seeking?
The venerable Fred Smith and I have a new paper out today. Click here to read it. In the paper, we try to solve the Tullock…
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Is a Drone Registration Mandate Illegal?
Today, the Department of Transportation announced the creation of a task force to develop recommendations for a national drone registration mandate. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx stated…