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Illinois’ Narrow Road to Pension Reform
On March 24, the Illinois Supreme Court struck down a Chicago pension reform bill that sought to address the city’s considerable pension shortfall. In…
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RealClear Radio Hour: Satire, Art, & Politics
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Common Property, Gains from Trade—and Statehood
Historian Staughton Lynd argued that the contemporaneously drafted Constitution and Northwest Ordinance of 1787 were themselves components of a larger implicit package that harmonized the…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
Friday’s Federal Register, the last before the Easter holiday, contained 1,005 pages, 14 final regulations, nine proposed regulations, and an impressive 119 agency notices. New rules…
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Advocates Attempt to Debunk Idea that Any Alcohol Is Beneficial
For most public health advocates, no amount of alcohol is safe. As they see it, any amount of alcohol increases a drinkers risk for certain…
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Glyphosate Saves Lives, Reduces Child Labor, and More
David Zaruk, aka the Risk Monger, has produced an excellent series of blog posts on why the herbicide glyphosate (the active ingredient in “Roundup”) is…
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Free Speech Violation in St. Paul Schools Undermines Anti-Private Ideology
Leftists who seek to ban home schooling and school vouchers, and restrict private schools, argue that is needed to prevent “indoctrination” or “balkanization.” Rather than developing a…
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Doing Away with Government Flammability Standards
During the past several years, there’s been much hype in the news alleging that flame retardant chemicals used on upholstered furniture pose unacceptable health risks. With…
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The Sharing Economy Is More than Just Uber
In an article for The New York Times, columnist Farhad Manjoo worries that the Uber model of app-based service companies has run its course. He points out…
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Judge Orders White House OSTP to Explain Why It Shouldn’t Be Sanctioned for Undisclosed Records
OSTP failed to disclose the existence of some records in response to a FOIA request until after a federal judge had already ruled in the…
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NLRB Case against McDonald’s Shows Need for Labor Law Reform
At the beginning of the month, the National Labor Relations Board and McDonald’s trial began. The case will determine whether McDonald’s is a joint…
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Welcome Kent Lassman, CEI’s New President
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The Public Pays for Union Political Activity
Taxpayer dollars in state and municipal governments across the country are, normally without public knowledge, used to subsidize government union political undertakings. Clearly, this is…
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RealClear Radio Hour: Populism’s Critic & Supranational Heresy
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
Along with nearly four dozen proposed regulations, new final regulations from the last week cover everything from cable boxes to Texas grapefruit. On to the…
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EPA: More Equivocation on SCOTUS Stay of Power Plan
The Supreme Court put a stay on EPA’s so-called Clean Power Plan (CPP) last month partly because five Justices thought there was a reasonable prospect the rule…
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Human Achievement of the Day: Don’t Buy the Hyperloop, Bet on Self-Driving Cars
Futuristic transportation technology often captures the imaginations of the press and public. Sometimes, it’s hype-driven nonsense: think the mysterious “IT” that became the mockery-inducing…
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Does Global Warming Cause Severe Cold Spells? Court Orders Release of Concealed Records
On January 8, 2014, the White House posted a curious video claiming that global warming causes more severe winter cold. Called “The Polar Vortex Explained…
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Berlau at SXSW: Let’s Cut Red Tape Strangling Uberization of Finance
AUSTIN, TX—President Obama traveled here to the ongoing South by Southwest festival from Washington, D.C., and so did I. In his March 11 presentation, he …
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Congress Proposes Bill to Nullify Overtime Regulation
This week, the Department of Labor took the last step before the final overtime rule is published and implemented. DOL sent the rule to…
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Human Achievement of the Day: Fighting Mosquito-Borne Diseases with Technology
For millennia, mosquitos have wreaked havoc on mankind, passing along myriad deadly or debilitating diseases. Mankind’s clever interventions—from screened windows to pesticides—have helped greatly control mosquito-transmitted…
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Senate FAA Reauthorization Bill Disappoints
This morning, the Senate Commerce Committee held a markup hearing on their Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization Act of 2016 (S. 2658). A couple of positive…
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Human Achievement Hour: An Enlightened Choice for Saturday Night
It’s a fun time of year . . . at CEI HQ anyway. Once again we prepare to celebrate Human Achievement Hour—the holiday we started…
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Trade Is Good, Using Trade to Weaken Foreign Investment Is Not
Free traders have long promoted an expansion of the rights of the citizens of one nation to buy and sell to one another. The old…
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After the Incentive Auction: Reimbursing Broadcasters for Channel Relocation Costs
This month, the FCC will kick off a much-awaited incentive auction that could reshape America’s airwaves.
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Human Achievement of the Day: Fashion
On March 19, I will celebrate Human Achievement Hour instead of Earth Hour. The choice is easy: take an hour out of the evening to feel…
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Human Achievement of the Day: Polio Eradication
Polio used to be a parent’s worst nightmare. The virus mostly affects children, and hampers the brain’s ability to communicate with muscles. While its…
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Questions for CFPB Director Richard Cordray
Tomorrow, Richard Cordray, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, will face questions from the House Financial Services Committee. Here are some of the questions…
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RealClear Radio Hour: Free the Market: Ending the Corporate Welfare Racket
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Oversight Hearing Will Find Federal Regulatory Transparency Quite Opaque
The 2015 edition of White House Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) annual Draft Report to Congress on the Benefits and Costs of Federal Regulations was latest we’ve seen…
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USA Act Increases Accountability, Restores Congress’ Power of the Purse
Separation of powers is one of the United States government’s most basic principles. But for several decades, presidents from both parties have gradually concentrated more…
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DOT Compromises Safety and Efficiency for Union Favoritism
Today, a draft proposed rule from the Department of Transportation’s Federal Railroad Administration has been making the rounds. It will be published in the…
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Collusive Deals with Class Action Lawyers before the Supreme Court
Class-action lawsuits are commonly settled for things that benefit the lawyers bringing them, not the class of allegedly victimized people they are supposedly suing on…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
It was just another week in the world of federal regulation, with new rules covering everything from Nixon’s archives to black bears. On to the…
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Advancing Capitalism at the New Intellectual Forum
Yesterday, my colleague Fred Smith and I co-hosted the New Intellectual Forum, an exciting event that brought business leaders and free market intellectuals together for…
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FCC’s New Privacy Mandates – What’s Next, Internet Czar?
Today, the Federal Communications Commission unveiled a proposal to regulate how broadband providers may collect and use their customers’ information. If the FCC’s impending privacy…
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Bashing Trade Is a Popular Election Year Target
Pundits are opining that Bernie Sanders’ significant win in the Democratic primaries in Michigan was primarily due to his vehement anti-trade stance. Donald Trump’s surge…
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NLRB vs. McDonald’s: The Trial Begins
The long awaited McDonald’s trial in National Labor Relations Board joint employer case begins today. In RealClearPolicy, I discuss the less-than-transparent proceedings leading up…
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Beware of Misleading CBO Score of the AIRR Act
The AIRR Act (H.R. 4441), the FAA reauthorization bill in the House, contains badly needed reforms of U.S. air traffic control. See my FAQ on what…
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In Memoriam: Giancarlo Ibarguen
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Not Much Business Sense on Capitol Hill
Members of Congress, even some Democrats, are finally coming to terms that the Department of Labor’s proposed overtime rule may be bad for business. Why…
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RealClear Radio Hour: Unauthorized Climate Treaty & Biofuel Scandal
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Regulation Poses Biggest Threat to Monarch Butterflies
Like many nature lovers and gardeners, last year I launched a milkweed garden for monarch butterflies, starting from seed. After a long summer of manually picking pesky…
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Obama Administration Policy Threatens Youth Job Opportunities
The National Labor Relations Board’s long-awaited trial involving McDonald’s will begin this week on March 10. The case puts the franchise model in the…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
After several years and multiple lawsuits, the TSA deigned to issue a formal rule for its use of full-body scanners. CEI’s Marc Scribner finds that the…
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Oregon Legislature Approves Aggressive Renewable Power Law
Oregon lawmakers this week approved a bill (S.B. 1457) to increase the state’s renewable portfolio standard from the current target of 25% by 2025…
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Chairman Smith Turns Spotlight on RICO20 Ringleader
Who says climate politics is a battle between greedy corporations and idealistic scientists? In “The Climate Change 1%,” the Wall Street Journal reports that…
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Is Conservative Opposition to the Passenger Facility Charge Softening?
CEI is a strong supporter of transportation user fees. We prefer tolls over fuel taxes, and local airport user fees over tax-funded federal…
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Australian Bank Devalues Rewards Scheme in Anticipation of Interchange Fee Cap
I fear I am beginning to sound like a broken record on the subject of payments card interchange fees, with the needle stuck on “We…
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Uber Publishes Core Principles to Guide Seattle’s Union Election Procedures
Uber maintains that Seattle’s recent ordinance that extends collective bargaining privileges to ridesharing drivers is illegal. However, to cover its bases, Uber issued a letter…
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Barack Obama as FCC Chairman
The saga of executive branch overreach continues, and we got a twofer today. The House Judiciary Task Force on Executive Overreach held a hearing this…
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RealClear Radio Hour: Millennial Politics & Choice
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DC Streetcar Opens as a Monument to Morally Bankrupt Urban Planning
On Saturday, February 27, the DC Streetcar finally opened its 2.2-mile stretch on H Street and Benning Road N.E. Years delayed and for a cost…
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UnChartered Cronyism: The FCC’s Attempts to Block Cable Merger
When you hear about “crony capitalism,” what comes to mind? The Export-Import Bank? The ethanol mandate? Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Tax credits and loan…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
As the 2016 Federal Register passed the 10,000-page mark, new regulations cover everything from salmon to wine. On to the data: Last week, 67 new final regulations…
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Opening Briefs Filed in Case Challenging EPA Greenhouse Gas Rules for Existing Power Plants
The opening briefs (here and here) for the petitioners in West Virginia et al v. EPA—the lawsuit challenging the EPA’s greenhouse gas rule for existing power…
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Ethanol Mandate Is Immortal Unless Congress Repeals It
In last week’s Texas presidential primary debate, one of the candidates opined that he did not need to call for repeal of the Renewable Fuel…
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Minimum Wage: The End of Teenage Work Experience?
A new report from JP Morgan Chase & Co. finds that the summer employment rate for teenagers is nearing a record low at 34 percent. The…
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The One Year Anniversary of Net Neutrality
In the pen and phone era, one of the many examples of the descent into arbitrary lawmaking influencing an entire sector of the economy is…
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NLRB Undercuts its Own Employees’ Rights
If the NLRB cannot respect the rights of its own employees, is it really capable of governing all private-sector labor relation disputes?…
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The Supreme Court Should Hear the Appeal of EPA’s Chesapeake Bay TMDL Rule
The Supreme Court will soon decide whether it will hear an appeal to overturn the latest outrageous power grab by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
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New Poll Numbers Paint a Fascinating “Portrait of America”
During a presidential campaign, pollsters ride high. Despite perennial criticism, “horse race”–style campaign reporting nevertheless keeps political junkies glued to Twitter, awaiting the latest…
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The Speech Sen. McConnell Should Give about Supreme Court Vacancies
In a Washington Post op-ed, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) staked out an early position against…
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Up in the AIRR, Part 2: Unmanned Aircraft Systems
To date, CEI’s analysis of the Aviation Innovation, Reform, and Reauthorization (AIRR) Act (H.R. 4441) has largely focused on proposed air traffic control reforms, which CEI…
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Why and How Congress Should Fight the President’s Climate Treaty Power Grab
President Obama claims the recently adopted Paris Agreement on climate change is not a treaty but rather an executive agreement—a pact he can approve…
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Sharing Economy in the AFL-CIO’s Crosshairs
The AFL-CIO is meeting in San Diego to shape its policy initiatives for the upcoming year. One increasingly popular type of work arrangement is…
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Utah’s Disastrous War on Electronic Cigarettes
Despite the fact that tobacco products kill nearly half a million Americans each year, it is vaping products—which help people quit smoking—that have become a…
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Up in the AIRR, Part 1: Passenger Facility Charge Modernization
To date, CEI’s analysis of the Aviation Innovation, Reform, and Reauthorization (AIRR) Act (H.R. 4441) has focused on proposed air traffic control reforms, which CEI strongly…
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RealClear Radio Hour: Ed Latimore & Ted Frank
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OCR’s Evasive Letter to Sen. Lankford about Colleges and Title IX
An agency can disregard logic and jump to conclusions when it imposes legal mandates outside the notice-and-comment rulemaking process, since it never has to address…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
It was a short work week in Washington due to George Washington’s Birthday, also known as President’s Day. Even so, federal agencies still published new…
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Is EPA Trying to Centrally Plan the Auto Sector (in Addition to the Electric Sector)?
With the Clean Power Plan, President Obama’s marquee climate policy, the Environmental Protection Agency is trying to run the electricity sector. Of course, the agency…
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Justice Scalia’s Death Scrambles EPA Power Plant Litigation
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Todd Stern Reassures Europeans That Republicans Won’t Undo Paris Commitments
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CEI Remembers Justice Antonin Scalia
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House Oversight Committee Demands Agencies Reveal Union Subsidy Data
On February 12, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee sent out letters to federal agency heads to provide more information on union “official…
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IBL’s Trovato Presents Latest Index of Liberalization
The Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., recently hosted Massimiliano Trovato for a policy forum discussing whether the European Union is a friend or foe of economic…
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Save the Date – 2016 Annual Dinner and Reception
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Regulatory Threats to Flexible Employment & Worker Freedom: What Can Congress Do?
The Competitive Enterprise Institute hosted a panel of experts last week to discuss the regulatory threats to flexible employment and worker freedom. The panel also…
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Congress Gets Some Common Sense on Nutritional Disclosure
Last week, members of the House approved a bill that giving customers the nutrition information they want while minimizing harm and cost. Now it's up…
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Spinning the Stay
A few days before the start of the COP-21 meeting in Paris, U.S. climate negotiator Todd Stern filed a declaration urging the D.C. Circuit Court of…
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Overregulation Turns Sydney into International “Laughing Stock”
American city officials, take note: Sometimes the remedy to a purported problem is worse than the disease. This is a lesson fans of Sydney’s once…
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Presidential Candidates Neglect Regulatory Bureaucracy
Allowing a $19 trillion federal debt when it was obvious that interest rates couldn’t remain zero forever is Exhibit A that legislatures rarely control spending.
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News Cycle Contradicts Green Energy Revolution
Last Thursday, The Wall Street Journal’s Jeff Bennet and Christina Rogers reported that auto dealers “are telling auto makers to limit production of passenger cars in…
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NYT Editorial Board Repeats Falsehoods on Air Traffic Control Reform
The New York Times editorial board has staked out a position on proposed air traffic control reform legislation, and it doesn’t like it. To anyone…
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RealClear Radio Hour: Government Monopoly & Public Parks
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The big regulatory news this week is the Supreme Court’s decision to delay the EPA’s big power plant emission regulation. Other than that, agencies issued…
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A Majority of States Now Right to Work
Today's historic vote in West Virginia means that now in a majority of states, workers can’t be fired from their job if they choose not…
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Democrats’ Debate Further Demonstrates Illegitimacy of Obama’s Climate Pivot
In the wake of Tuesday’s unexpected decision by the Supreme Court to stay the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, politicians and commentators are…
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How George Washington Propelled First Great Disruptive Technology
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The Improvisational Fed, and Unpredictable Regulations
Improvisation can be a wonderful thing when performed by talented hands—Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and the like. The Federal Reserve, especially for the past several…
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House Committee Narrowly Approves Eleanor Holmes Norton’s Deadly E-Cigarette Science Denialism
Following three government reports in the 1980s highlighting the low cabin air quality caused by cigarette smoking and the health risks of passive smoke,…
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Permanent Moratorium on Internet Taxation in Customs Bill
Today the Senate voted 75-20 in favor of the conference report accompanying H.R. 644, the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015, the so-called customs…
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A Banner Day for Rule of Law, Constitution, and Common Sense
In an unexpected and unprecedented decision, the Supreme Court last evening granted an application by more than two dozen states to stay implementation of the…
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FOIA Production on Clinton Email Scandal and Security Training
The following documents were produced in response to CEI's FOIA requests seeking records of IT training by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her aids…
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In Defending Clean Power Plan before the Supreme Court, EPA/DOJ Misrepresent Clean Air Act with Lame Editing Tricks
Lawyers for the EPA and the Department of Justice (DOJ) are trying to pull a fast one on the Supreme Court. Through creative formatting, they…
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RealClear Radio Hour: Budding CEOs and PC University
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PITFA a Poor Hostage for Internet Sales Taxes
Despite the premise of many a political cartoon, U.S. senators aren’t stupid. But a few of them are hoping to bamboozle at least 60 of their…
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House Votes This Week on Common Sense Nutritional Disclosure Bill
Many, if not most proposals that make their way through Congress seem to have comically unsuitable names. However, at the end of this week the…
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CDC Alcohol and Pregnancy Scare Tactics Backfire
Are you a woman of childbearing age? Do you binge drink constantly and have unprotected sex on the reg? Well, the CDC wants you to…