The Open Market Blog

• By: Hans Bader
• 10/11/2007

The City of Belmont, California has banned smoking in most apartment units as well as in public parks and other public spaces. (In Santa…

• By: Hans Bader
• 10/11/2007

Jacob Sullum writes in Reason about the downside of the FDA tobacco regulation bill. CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman earlier wrote to Congress…

• By: Hans Bader
• 10/11/2007

David Freddoso has an interesting column in National Review Online about the D.C. Government’s lack of concern for crime victims. The District justifies its…

• By: Hans Bader
• 10/09/2007

One of the problems of letting the Nanny State tell you what you can put into your body is that it often tells you to…

• By: Hans Bader
• 10/08/2007

Bjorn Lomborg has an insightful op ed on global warming in Sunday’s Washington Post.  He discusses how global warming regulations, such as carbon emissions restrictions, fail to provide as…

• By: Hans Bader
• 10/08/2007

Andrea Peyser had an interesting column this weekend in The New York Post about how wealthy parents are billing the public for their children…

• By: Hans Bader
• 10/05/2007

Most courts have rejected claims that websites have to be redesigned, at great inconvenience and expense, to accommodate their tiny number of visually-disabled visitors. But…

• By: Hans Bader
• 10/04/2007

The London Daily Mail reports on a lawsuit pending in an English court: Schools will have to issue a warning before they show pupils…

• By: Hans Bader
• 10/04/2007

My wife loves fish, especially tuna and sashimi, but when she was pregnant with our daughter, she didn’t eat much fish, since the FDA and…

• By: Hans Bader
• 10/03/2007

There are a lot of problems, ethically, legally, and constitutionally, with a state attorney general hiring trial lawyers to sue on behalf of…

• By: Hans Bader
• 10/03/2007

As legal commentator Ted Frank observes, the $11.6 million in damages awarded in the Isiah Thomas sexual harassment case was excessive and at odds…

• By: Hans Bader
• 10/03/2007

The New York Times has an interesting story today on the potential marketing of Snus, a form of smokeless tobacco that does not require…

• By: Hans Bader
• 10/03/2007

Bush just vetoed a multibillion dollar bill expanding the SCHIP health care program, which would have increased budget deficits as well as cigarette and…

• By: Hans Bader
• 10/02/2007

The distinguished legal commentator Stuart Taylor, who exposed prosecutor Michael Nifong’s misconduct and lies in the Duke lacrosse rape case, has an interesting…

• By: Hans Bader
• 10/01/2007

The Associated Press has an interesting article on Congress’s use of regressive taxation and tax increases to pay for expansion of health care coverage.

• By: Hans Bader
• 10/01/2007

School districts receive federal subsidies for bilingual education programs. That can give them a financial incentive to needlessly put Hispanic kids who already know a…

• By: Hans Bader
• 10/01/2007

Supreme Court justices have a politically sensitive job, issuing rulings that are politically charged. As Finley Peter Dunne observed a century ago, the Supreme Court…

• By: Hans Bader
• 10/01/2007

The Supreme Court has decided not to hear the Engle case, in which the Florida Supreme Court threw out a $145 billion class-action punitive…

• By: Hans Bader
• 10/01/2007

“Some in Fairfax Public Housing Make Six Figures.” That’s the title of a story in The Washington Post, which reported Sunday that families…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/28/2007

A lobbying firm has been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars, including $160,000 in the first half of 2007, to lobby for the FDA…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/28/2007

The Wall Street Journal has an editorial today on the SCHIP health-care bill, which would expand health care coverage for children, and even some…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/27/2007

The Senate Democratic leadership has added Ted Kennedy’s controversial hate-crimes bill to a defense authorization bill, in an effort to make it politically impossible…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/27/2007

Robert Novak has an interesting column in the Washington Post on the backroom politicking behind the SCHIP health-care bill that has passed Congress, but…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/26/2007

The Wall Street Journal’s OpinionJournal aptly describes the cynical posturing of Lee Bollinger, Columbia University’s president, who first invited the oppressive Iranian despot Mahmoud…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/26/2007

The District of Columbia is currently defending Washington, D.C.’s gun ban before the Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller. It argues that the…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/25/2007

You can’t board a plane or enter many courthouses without having some form of photo identification. But you can vote in many states without identification…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/25/2007

Congress may be on the verge of increasing tobacco taxes to expand the federal SCHIP health care program so that it covers not only low-income…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/24/2007

NASA’s James Hansen has called those who are skeptical of his alarmist predictions about global warming “court jesters.” But he himself apparently used to believe…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/24/2007

Motions to dismiss a lawsuit against God by Nebraska State Senator Ernie Chambers have been filed. Lawsuits against God have tended to be dismissed…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/24/2007

A Columbia University dean, John Coatsworth, has defended his university’s invitation to Iran’s anti-American ruler, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, by saying that it would have been equally…