“Slavery Is Freedom” and “Tax Hikes Are Tax Relief.” So we didn’t go over the fiscal cliff and instead got a deal that delivers no cuts in government spending, raises taxes on “the rich” (the definition of which consistently changes), expands the size and role of government, keeps the red ink flowing at record levels, and provides ... MORE
Alaskan liberty goes up in smoke under new air regs. Not-so-unintended consequences of overregulation are in the air. Newly adopted rules limiting airborne soot imposed by bureaucrats in Washington threaten to freeze the choices — and toes — of individuals living more than 4,000 miles away in subarctic Alaska. ... MORE
Lachlan Markay on an inconvenient truth. A new film starring Matt Damon presents American oil and natural gas
producers as money-grubbing villains purportedly poisoning rural
American towns. It is therefore of particular note that it is financed
in part by the royal family of the oil-rich United Arab Emirates. The creators of Promised ... MORE
Test-taking frauds. Nearly two years ago, U.S. News & World Report came out with a story titled "Educators Implicated in Atlanta Cheating Scandal." It reported that "for 10 years, hundreds of Atlanta public school teachers and principals changed answers on state tests in one of the largest cheating scandals in U.S. history." More than three-quarters of the ... MORE
Big Brother is in the building. TechDirt notes: In a radio interview,
Wall Street Journal reporter Julia Angwin (who’s been one of the best
at covering the surveillance state in the US) made a simple observation
that puts much of this into context: the US surveillance regime has more data on the average American than the Stasi ever did on East Germans. ... MORE
The gutting of the Fourth Amendment. Until 1990, sobriety checkpoints were illegal
in California and the United States. But a Supreme Court decision
overturned 200 years of protection from illegal search-and-seizure. The Supreme Court case Michigan Department of State Police vs. Sitz changed how we party and how we view the police. ... MORE
The New York Times comes on strong. For three years running, I've closed the Old Year with a
seasonal burst of bile, my annual Five Worst Op-Eds column. As before, this year's malicious listicle rewards bad arguments and bad writing, with extra points for warped values. 5. Eric Posner, "The World Doesn't Love the First Amendment," ... MORE
Congress needs to order a slice of wisdom. This week, as a new Congress was being sworn in, the Food and
Drug Administration
released two sets of controversial and long-delayed food-safety
rules. Another FDA rule that’s been long in the making is the agency’s proposed menu-labeling rule. The purpose of that rule, first proposed
in 2010 as ... MORE